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ìHow Qaddafi Became The Toast of Brussels,î by Matthew L. Wald, New York Times, 2 May, p. WK3.
Does it stink to see Qaddafi toasted in Europe, apparently forgiven for all past sins because he got scared enough by our takedown of Saddam to finally go through with his long planned effort to weasel his way back into the Westís good graces by surrendering his WMD assets?
It sure as hell does.
But by submitting to that key rule set and apparently getting out of the business of supporting terrorist groups, the Core at least has to offer Libya the economic connectivity it seeks. We should have no illusions about this evil man. He will misbehave the minute he thinks he can get away with it. But sometimes we need to topple bad leaders on-the-slow as opposed to on-the-fast. We need to flood Libya with connectivity, andóby doing soóreduce Qaddafiís hold over the population as quickly as possible. Rot him out from within and hold our noses while we do it. Itís definitely unfair to all those lives he helped snuff out in his years of support to terrorist groups and Libyaís own efforts to kill Americans at willóthe most successful being the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 strike. But getting Libya on a different path shrinks the Gap just a little bit, while opening that society up to connectivity long denied by Qaddafiís failed regime. When his time comes, history will be sure to judge his rule as despotic and disastrous for the Libyan people, but for now we suffer this injustice to encourage this new element of order in the region.
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