NATO is the toast of Libya's National Transitional Council even as Gaddafi's gaffes and guilt do not fade in his foes' books, cautions Gamal Nkrumah Back before the NATO bombardment drowned everything else emanating from Tripoli, Libyan political noise meant Muammar Gaddafi, the country's leader since 1969. This is a man who after four decades in absolute power is now designated as a danger to society and enemy of his people by his adversaries. The heart of the war for the heart and minds of Libyans comes in the debate over the country's political future. It is a sort of mortal combat in words and ideas, ideological orientations and radically different perspectives of looking at the world. Gaddafi's take on his mentor the late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt, though inspired and far-reaching, goes against Nasser in that the latter offered to step down and relinquish power when Egypt lost the Six Day War of June 1967. Gaddafi on the other hand declined to cede authority and surrender to his enemies some of who had been lifelong comrade-in-arms and close political associates. Gaddafi's gaffes repeatedly demonstrate the consequences of overreaching, of excessive confidence in his own capabilities and personal charisma. He swerves violently between self-righteousness and reason, inventiveness and imbecility. The denial of human dignities to his Libyan adversaries coupled with the short circuiting of the legal process and kangaroo courts now threatens to embolden the grief-stricken victims of his excesses to take the law into their own hands. And, the international community, Western nations to be precise, to egg them on. However, Gaddafi is making much political capital of one of the great humanising moments in Libyan history. Gaddafi is determined to demonstrate the power of his regiments run by his sons and cohorts and not just to annihilate but to humiliate and dehumanise those who dared to threaten his autocratic governance. This issue has come to the fore because of the stunning military triumphs of the pro-Gaddafi regiments in western Libya. Tripolitania has emerged as the battlefront for the race to rule Libya. There is a crucial difference between the fighting in Cyrenaica three months ago over the subjugation �ê" or liberation �ê" of eastern Libya, depending on one's political standpoint, by anti-Gaddafi forces, and the protracted conflict to control Tripolitania. Tripoli, the Libyan capital, is the bedrock of Gaddafi's Fateh Revolution. The green flag of his Jamahiriya flutters freely over the city. Elsewhere in Tripolitania, the situation is more in flux. The Gaddafi regime has slimmed down in structure and brought in a new team of diehard Gaddafi loyalists. The opposition forces are now determined to remove Gaddafi and his family from power. Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC) said intermediaries had indicated that a proposal from the Libyan strongman was in the works, but he did not disclose any conclusive details. "We expect to get an offer from Gaddafi very soon. He is unable to breathe," Ghoga extrapolated. "We want to preserve life, so we want to end the war as soon as possible," Ghoga added. "We have always left him some room for an exit," Ghoga summed up tongue-in-cheek. The irony is that it has become increasingly difficult for Gaddafi, his family and close aides to secure safe passage out of Libya. "Crimes continue today in Libya. To stop the crimes and protect civilians in Libya, Gaddafi must be arrested," International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luiz Moreno-Ocampo said this week. Promptly thereafter arrest warrants were issued against Gaddafi, his son Seif Al-Islam and Libya's intelligence chief Abdullah Al-Sinoussi. Libya's Justice Minister Mohamed Al-Gamoudi protested that the ICC indictment of Gaddafi was a cover for NATO to pursue its ultimate aim of assassinating the Libyan leader. It is obvious that Moreno-Ocampo and the ICC want to make an example of the unrepentant Libyan leader. Gaddafi and his son "conceived and orchestrated a plan to deter and quell by all means the civilian demonstrators," presiding judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng declared in reading out the ICC ruling. NATO officials, however, are uncertain as to who exactly would arrest Gaddafi and hand him over to the ICC. "It is not for NATO to enforce that warrant, that is for the appropriate authorities," said NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu, failing to state precisely who the appropriate authorities are. "Time is on our side, not on Gaddafi's side," declared British Prime Minister David Cameron. Western leaders are determined to see Gaddafi brought to book. Yet, the West is invoking arbitrary law and demonstrating the least proficient kind of double standards. The cost of the war in Libya is fast escalating and nobody has a clue as to precisely which country is footing the bill. The Western taxpayer is paying dearly for a conflict in which there is no end in sight. NATO has predictably taken the side of the Libyan collaborators and against Gaddafi's resistance to foreign interference. The pertinent point, and terrible tragedy is that there is little hope now that mediators �ê" the United Nations, the African Union and certainly not the Arab League �ê" can reconcile the different claims of the contending factions and Libyan protagonists. Fissures, meanwhile, are now showing within the Western alliance. The discrepancy in the Western stance on Libya on the one hand and Syria, Yemen and Bahrain on the other hand has given the international community cause for pause. The grandees of Western powers have proven incapable of winning a war by proxy in Libya. Britain's shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy concluded that Western leaders must heed the advice of the military in military matters. "It is time to listen to military advice�ê� and provide our forces with capabilities that match our foreign policy ambitions," Murphy upped the ante. The cost of military operations in Libya to the British taxpayer has now exceeded the $150 million mark. British Premier Cameron was furious that Air Field Marshal Sir Simon Byrant openly admitted to the international media that morale was "fragile" among NATO troops in Libya. There is a sense of d��j� vu �ê" the Western aggression against Iraq, based on the WMD lie led to a fracture of the allies. The Libyan operation is going down the same road. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini was even more forthright than Sir Byrant. He called for a suspension of the NATO campaign because of the high civilian casualties. Ironically, Italy was among the Western nations most eager to bomb Libya into a pulp. General Charlie Bouchard, head of the NATO aggression against Libya, was far more upbeat. "We will see this mission through. We have significantly destroyed Gaddafi's military capacity to the point that he has no capability to run any offensive," Bouchard boasted. Wishful thinking, perhaps? From his headquarters in Naples, Italy Bouchard reaffirmed NATO's determination to hunt down Gaddafi. "I don't believe that any scaling down of operations is appropriate or required at this time. In fact, we stay the course," he quacked. The Libyan leader is not accustomed to the Western-style democratic practice of now-you-see-them, now-you-don't world of multi-party pluralism. Moreover, his people, too, are not so familiar with such lurid scenarios. Western leaders and alliances with Third World potentates have an irritating habit of changing in a flash, something that a 40-year-old dictatorship finds hard to deal with. The most remarkable thing about Gaddafi's probable relinquishment of power in Libya as his friends drop off one-by-one will be the manner of his leaving office. NATO's unremitting bombing of Tripoli means that the intrepid Libyan non-leader may soon have to evacuate his beloved capital. There are talks going on with senior South African officials to provide him asylum. There are precious few spots in the world that lie beyond the reach of Western political and economic tentacles; South African leaders may not like the latest imperial thrust into their continent, but they are realists and feel it is better to make their presence felt in the void now being created in Libya to prevent the worst-case scenario. South Africa has in the past given political asylum to renegade African potentates such as Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile-Mariam. International condemnation of the "extreme and lethal violence" of the Gaddafi regime, especially in Western and Gulf Arab circles, merely reflects the stranglehold the West holds on public discourse on such matters and is a bargaining chip intended to paint the NATO "extreme and lethal violence" in soft pastille shades, as Western plans to reshape a pro-Western Libya proceed. Gaddafi is habitually portrayed as the imperial gadfly, pesky nuisance. Now the tables are turned with NATO warplanes buzzing overhead.
