Where Does Libya Go From Here?

John Baird "honestly believes" that Libya's Transitional National Council is the right choice to lead the country, but there's no guarantee that it will.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird takes to the pages of the National Post today to reiterate the case for Canada's involvement in the Libya mission, citing “Twenty thousand martyred, another 50,000 injured” as the reason NATO continues to bomb Tripoli day in and day out. Baird argues that the Transitional National Council, the diplomatic arm of the rebel movement, while far from perfect, has good intentions. “The vision they have laid out for a free Libya is admirable,” says Baird. “Their timeline for transition to democracy is aggressive.” That may be true. But by no means are those intentions necessarily shared by the rest of the rebel movement, factions of which have apparently carried out retributive attacks against Gadhafi supporters. We hate to rush judgment on the fate of the TNC while Gadhafi is still in power, but Baird should be advised from painting the rebel leadership in such glowing terms, lest its “admirable” vision not turn out as planned.

Plus, as Victor Davis Hanson points out in The National Review, “the only thing worse than starting a stupid, unnecessary war against a madman is losing it,” which looks increasingly possible as the North African endeavour drags on through the summer. “This tiny police state of less than seven million people, conveniently located on the Mediterranean Sea opposite nearby Europe, continues to thwart the three great powers of the NATO alliance and thousands of 'Arab Spring' rebels,” writes Hanson. Reports of Gadhafi nearing the end of his rope have emanated since the first day of the campaign, yet he's still holed up in Tripoli or thereabouts. Further, the unanimity with which the campaign started has disintegrated, with Russia, China, Germany, and Italy calling for its end, as well as France showing signs of war weariness. Which would essentially leave Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. to shoulder the load.

That weariness could indirectly force the rebels to end their campaign and sit down at the negotiating table with the Gadhafi regime, posits Time's Tony Karon. “It's plain to see that the timetable and urgency for such a solution is driven by NATO's waning commitment to a fight the rebels would struggle to sustain without direct western involvement,” he writes. The TNC maintains it will not negotiate with Gadhafi still in power, but the longer the war drags on the more that becomes untenable. Karon imagines much of the Gadhafi regime will be grandfathered into the next government, which “some might cynically brand an 'Egypt solution,'” as much of Hosni Mubarak's security apparatus is still kicking around to Libya's east. This brings us back to Baird, whose vision of an inclusive democracy post-Gadhafi is disconnected from the reality that Libya will in all likelihood be run by competing factions that have been shelling each other for months, and that hated each other for decades before that.