Saif al-Islam Qadaffi the 38-year-old son of longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Qadaffi promised this week to fight that nations steadily intensifying uprising to the last man, the last woman and the last bullet.
We will, said the finger-wagging son in a televised address, destroy seditious elements.
Besides proving that, in this case at least, the acorn has not fallen very far from the tree, the younger Qadaffi like his father, who also promised a fight to the death established himself to be a despot of his word.
The rivers of blood he promised are indeed starting to flow. By midweek, the bodies were piling up in the streets of Tripoli, with a death toll estimated in the hundreds. Troops loyal to the Qadaffis are firing live ammunition into crowds; even jet fighters are reported to have fired on the masses.
Clearly, the Libyan strongmen are doing their best to avoid the fate of Tunisia and Egypt.
Yet, perhaps ironically, it seems they are paving the way for precisely that fate.
The erstwhile leaders of Egypt and Tunisia proved themselves unaware of (not to mention insensitive to) the tidal wave of reform that is sweeping the Arab and Muslim worlds, at least until it was too late to save their own thrones. Both opted for bloodshed over compromise and both were sent ignominiously packing.
In bloody Libya, where the official enthusiasm for bloodshed has been considerably greater than in Egypt or Tunisia, the Qadaffis and their loyal henchmen are even likelier to face an unhappy ending. Their attempts to intimidate, terrorize and murder demonstrators resemble the actions of a man who tries to put out a fire by tossing a burning match into a can of gasoline.
We suspect the flames in Libya are only going to grow larger and hotter. The evidence is already suggesting that Qadaffis 42-year-old regime is beginning to unravel at the seams, with military officers, diplomats and tribal leaders jumping ship, and with reports that major cities are already under the control of protesters.
Aside from the large cost in human life that this revolution will almost surely demand, Qadaffis misfortunes are nothing but good news.
After more than four decades of autocratic dictatorship, his legacy can be summed up briefly: a determined and sustained supporter of anti-Western terrorism (a campaign that climaxed with the infamous Lockerbie bombing); a pernicious and uncompromising foe of Israel; a violent, cruel and often irrational oppressor of his own people.
Qadaffi and his thugs richly deserve to be overthrown, and if their overthrow leaves a power vacuum, we can hardly imagine anyone or anything worse filling it.
I will die as a martyr at the end, Qadaffi said defiantly this week, vowing to fight to my last drop of blood. For once, we hope the madman gets his way.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
