Gadhafi’s Fate, and Our Own

Lessons of the Libyan despot's undoing

by Justin Raimondo, April 15, 2011

"......The lesson for us could not be clearer, although I doubt anyone in a position to influence matters is capable of learning it. As our leaders strut their stuff across the international stage, proclaiming this or that "doctrine," and solemnly declaring their willingness –nay, eagerness – to go to war in defense of this or that floating abstraction, the money is running out, and their long-suffering people are falling into penury. Today, they are strutting – but tomorrow will they, too, be scrambling to hold on to power? The global economic downturn is hitting the nations of North Africa and the Middle East hard: the sclerotic regimes that have ruled the region since the demise of Europe’s colonial empires, too brittle to resist the pressure from below, are shattering. The same pressures have already emigrated to Europe, and here in the good old US of A, the crisis is crystallizing a massive discontent that could turn, at any moment, into a massive populist upsurge replicating – and even intensifying – the furious energy we have seen unleashed on the streets of Cairo. Yet our "leaders" in Washington are still allowing themselves to be diverted by largely invented overseas "crises," when the real crisis is right here at home. As our elites ponder Gadhafi’s fate, and presume to sit in judgement, they would do well to heed the lesson of his undoing – for it may presage their own. "