It is a sad day in the state of human affairs when we start recognizing the wisdom of a despot like Muammar Qaddafi.
To be clear, I don’t think Qaddafi is a wise or a good man.
You could put him, Bashar Al-Assad, and Saddam Hussein in a contest for tyrant of the year, and it would be a pretty heated contest.
They are evil men with evil desires, but to be quite honest, the West might have been better off with them.
And you might even make a case that so would the people who suffered under their regimes.
It’s crazy talk, I know, but stick with me, and let’s see if we can explore this very complex and sad question.
Qaddafi Called Tony Blair and Warned Him
I’m pretty sure he wasn’t calling his old pal in England to give him a friendly warning, but Qaddafi did call it.
This was revealed this week during a British inquiry investigating the Qaddafi ouster.
In early 2011, the rebellion against Qaddafi was picking up steam. Motivated by his own self-preservation, Qaddafi reached out to Tony Blair and told him that Islamists were setting up cells in Libya with the intention of taking over the Mediterranean, with their sights set on Europe.
Yes, that might seem like an odd warning from the man responsible for terrorist attacks himself, but it was the 1980s.
After Ronald Reagan dropped a few missiles in his lap, the guy chilled out and was content to live out his tyrant existence in peace with the West.
That didn’t help the Libyan people much, but we didn’t have to worry about terrorists emanating from Libya and finding their way to Europe.
Fast-forward to January of 2016, and Qaddafi is dead, terrorists are setting up camp in Libya, and Europe has already been struck on multiple occasions.
And while the heart of those attacks rests in Syria and Iraq, the premise is actually quite the same…
For it appears that if a dictator falls in the Middle East, the radical Islamists are sure to fill the void.
Tyrants Versus Islamists
Honestly, there is very little tangible evidence to suggest that the United States or Europe are better off for having disposed of these tyrants.
Assad is still around, but he hardly has control over his people and territory.
The only thing that stopped Egypt from joining this club after the people deposed of Hosni Mubarak was a military coup that took out the Muslim Brotherhood, which was just a cleaner version of radical Islam.
When Islamists fill the void, it never seems to fail that radical terrorism is close behind.
That is not a slight against every Muslim, just an observation of fact as evidenced by Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
You could say the same thing about the Taliban, which took over after the Soviets left Afghanistan.
So what’s worse? In a land where tribal allegiances seem to trump that of the state, and where the Sunni versus Shia divide is more violent than your average partisan politics, does it take a tyrant to keep everyone in check?
I’ve yet to see a safe and healthy version of Democracy take hold in the Middle East when given the opportunity.
Perhaps we have ourselves to blame for long demonizing the tyrants in the 1980s and ’90s to the point where the American public thought there could surely be nothing worse waiting in the wings.
Egypt was able to get a new tyrant in place, but I fear the other regions will not be so lucky. Once ISIS is destroyed, and it will be, Islamic Radicalism won’t be going away.
So who is next? Before we go down this road any further, it is fair to ask whether pursuing Democracy amongst a population who hates America is actually good policy.
