Libya: another Pandora's box
- By Jin Liangxiang
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China.org.cn, August 23, 2011
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Libyan rebel fighters celebrate as they drive through Tripoli's Qarqarsh district August 22, 2011. [Xinhua/Reuters] |
In the streets of Tripoli the past few days, people are exuding the same kind of jubilance as Iraqis did in the streets of Baghdad eight years ago, when U.S.-led coalition forces entered the capital city of Saddam's Iraq. While the global media is talking excitedly about the fate of Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi, reasonable analysts should be well aware that a "liberated" Libya most likely will be another Pandora's Box.
The bitter stories of Afghanistan and Iraq have not yet faded into memory, but the U.S. and the West at large seems not to be willing to learn from their previous mistakes. Though coalition forces successfully overthrew the regimes of Hussein and the Taliban within months, they have not been able to establish anything resembling Western-style democracy in those two countries. Afghanistan and Iraq have seemingly plunged into permanent turmoil without clear paths for the future. While the Iraqi and Afghan people struggle in a world of constant bloodshed, the countries' political leaders battle each other for power without regard for the general public.
There is nothing wrong with the West cultivating democracy in its own backyard, but it is quite another thing to impose their values on countries which have no such political tradition. Like in Afghanistan and Iraq, a transplanted democracy in Libya will prove to be another such case of failure.
