You remember our guys, the NATO rebels in Libya.
School-teachers and clerks and truck-drivers, consumed with a sudden lust for freedom and democracy. With nothing but their will to win and daily NATO bombing runs they managed in a mere eight months to overthrow the tyrant Gadaffi.
With that victory in hand, the smug NATO overlords patted themselves on the back, declared mission accomplished, and went home. Presumably the Libyan school-teachers were to go back to their classrooms, the clerks to their clerking, and the truck-drivers to their Volvos and Hinos.
Alas, the freedom-fighters have had a taste of power and they like it! Who the hell wants to sit in the cab of a Hino diesel twelve hours a day when they can loot and pillage instead? And what fun is a classroom compared to the thrill of roaming from town to town executing Gadaffi loyalists?
Five months after their successful rebellion our rebels continue to keep Libya in a state of anarchy. Up to three hundred disparate militias control the entire country, none of them reponsible to any central authority. The lame-duck NTC sits powerlessly in Benghazi, or more often in London, and waits for the benevolent NATO powers to unfreeze more Libyan assets.
What they'll do then nobody knows, but at least they'll have the assets.
In the meantime, our rebels are busy exporting freedom and democracy to neighboring lands across North Africa. Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan are all benefitting from the efforts of our rebels-gone-wild.
In Mali the rebels have taken control of at least seven cities in the north of the country. That is seven more than they ever took in Libya without NATO assistance. Clearly the former school-teachers and clerks have had quite the impressive learning curve.
Their successful drive into Mali has created over 60,000 refugees thus far and threatens the viability of the country's government.
Where will our rebels stop? Who knows? We organized them and armed them, but we're not responsible for them anymore.
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