Is Libya Free Now?

They killed Saddam five years ago. They hung him on international television between the afternoon soapies. There was a mock trial, the stars and stripes and their accomplices nominated themselves to be judge, jury and executioner. Is Iraq better off since they ‘liberated’ it? Was Abu Ghraib just a ploy by Muslim terrorists to give Operation Iraqi Freedom bad publicity?

No body bothered about the judge’s track records. The world was silent about the millions of bodies in Hiroshima, in Vietnam and in Africa.

And today again between the afternoon soapies history repeats itself as they parade Gaddafi’s body on every channel and every show. There it is half naked in the streets of Libya, bleeding, broken, lifeless. How would things have been without western intervention? Will Africa be allowed to make its own choices again?

Those same western powers decided that he was ‘evil’. They said nothing of their bloodied hands reaching greedily for pure oil. They spoke of a dictator and a human rights violator but they say nothing of their whores the gulf states and nothing of Saudi Arabia that pumps for them black gold.

They sing hymns about freedom and liberation and of the international justice systems that have allowed the Israelis to wreck their havoc on Palestinians after many, many meaningless judgments. They speak of freedom for Libyans when they mean assets for the G8.

Every democracy must be brought to book by its own people. Gaddafi was no saint but unlike other countries in Africa his people were educated (highest literacy rate on the continent), medicated and housed. He financially assisted many countries in the global south and no one was able to make the west cringe like he did.

In the civilised world, that we claim to live in, no one deserves to die this way.