The West’s refusal to come to the aid of Libya’s lightly-armed freedom fighters as they face planes, tanks, and heavy weapons may turn the Libyan civil war into the first great betrayal of the 21st century, reminiscent of many that stained the last century.
The classic among such episodes was the Spanish civil war of 1936–39. The morality play embedded in many tellings of this story grows blurry on second look because Communists came to dominate the Loyalist side. But this might not have been so had the West been less cowardly. As it was, while the US, France, and the UK maintained a policy of non-intervention, Mussolini and Hitler threw their own forces into the battle on the side of Francisco Franco’s Nationalists. They used Spain as a testing ground for the world war that they were emboldened to launch. Nor was the lesson of Spain lost on the heads of other states, including Stalin, who learned that if you wanted to be on the winning side, you’d be wise to follow Hitler.
In 1944, the Poles were victims of another great betrayal. With Hitler’s forces in retreat, the Polish underground rose against their German conquerors. The Red army, from whom aid was expected, double-crossed the Poles, deliberately pausing in its advance to give the Germans time to annihilate the rebels so that this same underground would not be able to resist Soviet control. Although farther from the scene, Western forces might have helped, but declined to do so out of deference to Stalin.
The West again remained inert in 1956 when Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian uprising, but the danger of nuclear war justified the choice. No such justification existed in 1992, when, as Yugoslavia came apart, Serbia launched a war against Bosnia-Herzegovina, mostly targeting civilians. The (George H. W.) Bush and Clinton administrations offered a parade of excuses for doing nothing while the UN imposed an arms embargo that in effect only handicapped the victims. Despite many warnings about how difficult it would be to intervene in the Balkans, three years and a few hundred thousand innocent victims later, NATO finally acted, and it took almost nothing to defeat the Serbs and stanch the bloodshed.
Meanwhile in 1994, the Hutus of Rwanda tried to resolve a civil war in that country by murdering all of its Tutsi citizens—the first indisputable campaign of genocide since the Holocaust. Although it would have been easy to stop, the US administration took the lead in opposing any outside interference, for which Clinton later mouthed oblique regrets.
From the latest reports, forces loyal to Libya’s grotesque tyrant, Muammar el-Qaddafi, are on the offensive against the rebels. As did Spain’s Franco, Qaddafi is using foreign forces. Mercenaries have been flown in from sub-Saharan Africa, and rebels claim they have downed aircraft and captured two pilots sent by fellow dictator, Bashar al-Assad of Syria. French outlets report that some ground forces from the neighboring dictatorship in Algeria have crossed the border in support of Qaddafi. But the West, led by ditherer-in-chief Barack Obama, keeps hands off.
Although revolution is in the wind in the Arab lands, Qaddafi could nonetheless win this lopsided war and secure his continued rule, no doubt after slaughtering thousands of Libyans who oppose him. 1989 was no less a revolutionary moment than today, and when the Chinese Communist rulers mowed down protestors around Tiananmen Square, it seemed that this vile tactic could not produce an enduring victory. But 22 years later, the butchers of Beijing still have a firm hold on power.
If the butchers of Tripoli succeed in putting down this popular uprising, they will establish a model that other of the region’s most harsh despots will emulate.
The US should impose a no-fly zone now and also provide weapons to the rebels who are pleading for help. The claim that we need the authorization of the UN Security Council is false. In a similar situation, NATO made war on Serbia over the case of Kosovo, where the depredations of the central government against its citizens were far less egregious than those in Libya, and where the overall state of human rights was mild in comparison.
Some NATO allies have expressed reluctance, but a strong push from Washington would in all likelihood bring them around. If it did not, we should proceed without NATO. The crisis will not wait, and the important thing is to prevent Benghazi from becoming the Guernica of the 21st century.
