So it seems that, against the expectations, the Libyan government of Moammar Gaddafi is in the process of falling. At the time I type this reports have come out of the Tripoli that the rebel forces have entered the city, that they have captured two of the dictators sons and, according to them, the Republican Guard has surrendered.
There are still reports of fighting in the Libyan capital, but there is nothing like the all out bloody battle that Gaddafi had been calling for since the start of the uprising. So it seem, barring major reversals of fortune that another autocratic regime has fallen to the Arab Spring.
This then begs the question; What next? Unlike Egypt and Tunisia this was an all out civil war, instead of a peaceful and mostly bloodless overthrow the anti-government forces have taken control of their nation by arms. Will that make things better or worse?
Revolutions can go a lot of different ways. Overthrowing the government is really just the start, not the end game in a revolution. Revolutions can replace one dictator with another or can devolve in to horrible campaigns of terror.
Or they can go the way the United States did, successfully over throw the government and go on to set up one that is freer and more representative. We await the elections this fall in Egypt to see which way that nation will go, though there have been worrying signs that no matter what the outcome of that plebiscite they will still occupy a position of power as they did under Hosni Mubarak.
For all the failures of revolution we have seen in history I have a guardedly optimistic view of Libya. Even with the horror of the war they have been fighting, the time has been useful for them. They have been setting up governing procedures and have had a taste of what it will take to provide the services in terms of security that will be critical to establishing a stable government that have not been there in the other successful Arab Spring uprisings.
This is very important since a protracted fight can give rise to strong men who then substitute themselves for the previous autocrat and things do not materially improve for the people. Having held the eastern part of Libya from very nearly the start of the revolution there is some hope that they will be ready to put a transitional government into place.
Which is not to say that they are anywhere close to what the Founders had in place well before their revolution. The Continental Congress had been meeting for a long time before the Declaration of Independence was written
The good news is that the rebels have been working with nations of the European Union and the US to get recognized as the real government in Libya. Those conversations surely included some advice as to what type of government would be recognized and what type would not.
As leery as I am about any Western nation telling nations from other regions how they should govern themselves (after all it has worked out so beautifully for the US in Afghanistan and Iraq) it can’t hurt to have the ways and means of democracy proposed to the soon to be leaders of the Libya.
For now we can only wait and watch. Oh! And hope that the people who have been so successful in bringing down a government by force of arms are as successful at creating one that does not depend on those same arms to maintain itself.
The floor is yours.