The tyrant leaves behind tremendous devastation. He punishes his people twice: First, as he sits heavily upon the people's chests, and second, when his atrocities invite intervention and its repercussions. This is not an exaggeration. The tyrant leaves behind an entire army of widows and orphans, and a sea of feuds. The tyrant leaves behind dungeons with blood congealed upon its walls, and havoc in the relations among communities. He leaves a civil war ready to ignite, and empty coffers as the massive wealth has been squandered on insane whims. The tyrant leaves the economy and administration in ruins. When the tyrant is ousted, it becomes often clear how many years of his country's life have been wasted. The tyrant bought canons but forgot to build schools, and when he indeed builds a school he sets out its purpose clearly: To create generations of minions to applaud him or join the killing machine that perpetuates his control and his regime. How painful it was to see what Iraq has become, following the ouster of Saddam Hussein, a torn, broken and debt-ridden country. A country that was ravaged by the leader, through domestic oppression and foreign incursions. Decades of the Iraqis' lives were lost in the shadow of the Vice President who then became the Venerable Leader and Mr. President. How painful it is today to see what Libya has become too, following the ouster of the tyrant. Four decades of the Libyans' lives were squandered, with the killing machine that spared no one, run by the ‘historical leader with his evil genius'. Absent are the foundations of a state, and instead, there is massive devastation that would take decades of toil, stability, sound governance and prudent policies to overcome. More dangerously, the tyrant continues to insist on not stepping down, before forcing his country to drink from the chalice of foreign intervention, although he had long justified his tyranny by claiming to fight and ward off such intervention. I asked the Libyan politician: Would it not have been better if you had waited a while, and overthrew Gaddafi's regime without NATO's help? He laughed and said, “We wish that could have been the way, but if we opted for this option, we would have certainly lived indefinitely under the shadow of the Colonel, and then handed it over to Saif al-Islam to rule our children. Every opposition prefers to have a victory of its own making, without any partners. But the killing machine sometimes leaves no room for change from within. It was not possible for any Libyan to lift his finger in his country, and Libyans did not dare to dissent even abroad. Those who engage in one-upmanship forget that Gaddafi's machine had chased dissenters in both nearby and faraway countries, that many states turned a blind eye to the crimes of this machine, and that some intelligence services even helped the latter. Should we choose to stay under the tyrant's rule then, only so that a politician or a writer would not denounce NATO's role? Were it not for foreign intervention, Gaddafi's forces would have committed an unprecedented massacre. Soon, a Libyan state will be established with no foreign military bases on its soil, and its decision will not be subordinate to anyone's. Most likely, this state will not be cut to fit the specifications preferred by NATO's member states”. The Libyan politician's talk reminded me of something someone else had said. A few years ago, with a wry smile, an Arab President received an Iraqi official. He told him: “You came on the back of American tanks”. The official replied, “We tried to remove Saddam Hussein with our own efforts but failed. Do I understand from your statement what we should have spent our lives in the shadow of Saddam's tyranny, and then our children in the shadow of Uday or Qusay's?” I conveyed what I heard because I fear the consequences of foreign intervention, and from using the latter as a pretext for the perpetuation or justification of injustice and tyranny. My concerns are made worse by the fact that those who intervened had themselves turned a blind eye to the practices of the tyrants in the past, and forgave them their atrocities and rehabilitated them. I thus conveyed what I heard, because it is the right of those who have suffered from the injustices of tyranny to also be heard, especially when the matter concerns their countries about which we often write from our distant offices.
