Don't Worry, They're The Good Guys...

Picking up from where we left off last time - the new regime in Libya. Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm no fan of Gaddafi and I don't intend acting as an apologist for his regime - although, I can't deny the simple fact that David Cameron was opposed to him made me feel a certain sympathy for the late colonel - but the rush to endorse his opponents during the civil war smacked of naivety. Either that, or simple opportunism. As the aftermath of Gaddafi's defeat has shown, the rebels conduct also leaves something to be desired, with massacres of Gaddafi supporters and the destruction of their homes and the rounding up and shooting of black African mercenaries just the tip of the iceberg, I suspect. But never mind, they're the good guys, our leaders keep telling us, as if that makes human rights abuses of the sort we condemned Gaddafi for, OK. Personally, I blame Star Wars for this moral confusion.

You see, these guys in Libya were originally referred to as 'the rebels' and, as everyone knows, in Star Wars the rebels are the good guys. Luke Skywalker was a rebel and he was heroic - it therefore follows that the Libyan rebels must be heroic as well. Otherwise they wouldn't call themselves rebels, would they? Besides, the rebels in Star Wars had no qualms about inflicting a bit of collateral damage, did they? What about all those civilian workers constructing the incomplete 'Death Star' in the third film, eh? I'm sure most of them were blown to bits when they destroyed it. Hell, there are probably deleted scenes in Return of The Jedi which show the victorious rebels destroying the defeated Emperor's home planet - the entire population had supported the bastard, so they deserved it, didn't they? Not to mention the lost sequences where Chewbacca rounds up those green-skinned plant mercenaries from Arcturus IV the Emperor had been employing. The raping bastards deserved it, going around and sticking their tubers into innocent cacti on Tatooine, injecting them with their filthy chlorophyll...

The point I'm trying to make, (if, indeed, there is a point to all this), is that it is very naive to assume that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Just because one horrible dictator has been deposed, it's no guarantee that the regime replacing him will be any better. We really need to be very careful as to exactly who we boost into power in places like Libya. Sadly, I suspect that opportunism and self interest are the main criteria, rather than considerations about human rights and commitments to democracy and political tolerance. I strongly suspect that the Libyan rebels' main credentials when it came to getting Western support was simply to be pro-multinational oil companies.