W.T.F.?
Up here in the cool blue North, the part of the continent where the banks didn't melt down and things are pretty much O.K., no thanks to the current right wing Prime Minister who's taking all the credit for it, we have a radio program called "As It Happens." It's great, and NPR carries it in various markets. Tonight they talked to a Canadian/Libyan who'd gone home to visit relatives with his family and got tangled up with the revolution. His name was Osama. He'd just lost his eldest son. He couldn't bury him. He couldn't find the body.
The family had a chance to get out. There was a ship leaving, and they could have got aboard. But they didn't. They didn't because his eldest son said that the Libyans didn't know what freedom was, what it looked like, how it worked, and it was their responsibility (because of their years in Canada) to stay and help their people. So he picked up a rusty kalishnakov, and went to war for freedom. And he died. And his father, Osama, grieves. If you could have heard him weeping...
"My son was a good boy. He was a good student and his future was bright. But he couldn't let his people die alone."
As he wept on the radio, I thought... "Where are all the "bringers of democracy" now? Where are the neo-cons who proposed that the proper "American project" was bringing democracy to the world? A brutal dictator is killing his people. We watch. We do nothing. We parse the international consequences, the treaties, the accords.
And we do nothing. And Osama weeps.