Some thoughts on the Libyan devel­op­ments of this weekend:

Libya has been work­ing to shed its pariah image for years, but it still hasn’t gone far enough

There’s no doubt Libya has been a bad seed since the 1969 coup brought Col. Muam­mar Abu Min­yar al-Qadhafi to power. His gov­ern­ment exported ter­ror­ism, rev­o­lu­tion and gen­er­ally rocked the boat wher­ever pos­si­ble. But because of the United Nations sanc­tions imposed in 1992 for the bomb­ing of Pan Am 103 over Locker­bie, Scot­land in 1988, Libya’s sup­port for ter­ror­ism has been wan­ing. In 1999, the sanc­tions were sus­pended and on Sept. 12, 2003, they were finally lifted. How­ever, Libya is still a nasty place to live, with mas­sive human rights vio­la­tions on par with Sad­dam Hussein’s. Human Rights Watch says

Over the past three decades, Libya’s human rights record has been appalling. It has included the abduc­tion, forced dis­ap­pear­ance or assas­si­na­tion of polit­i­cal oppo­nents; tor­ture and mis­treat­ment of detainees; and long-term deten­tion with­out charge or trial or after grossly unfair tri­als. Today hun­dreds of peo­ple remain arbi­trar­ily detained, some for over a decade, and there are seri­ous con­cerns about treat­ment in deten­tion and the fair­ness of pro­ce­dures in sev­eral on-going high pro­file tri­als before the Peo­ples’ Courts. Libya has been a closed coun­try for United Nations and non-governmental human rights investigators.

Sound famil­iar? By the way, today, Dec. 21, 2003 is the 15^th anniver­sary of the Locker­bie attack that killed 270 peo­ple. Fam­ily mem­bers of the vic­tims are not pleased with this deal. Pres­i­dent Bush, in his remarks on Fri­day, made no men­tion of the bomb­ing. So Amer­ica gets to over­look a his­tory of ter­ror­ism and human rights abuses and Qad­hafi likely gets full diplo­matic recog­ni­tion and and end to the eco­nomic and diplo­matic iso­la­tion that many Libyans resented. The unin­tended con­se­quence will be that Col. Qad­hafi just got a new lease on his polit­i­cal life, since this will allow him to crack down on dis­sent, much of which has been of the Islamist variety.

This leads me to another point:

Point­ing to the Iraq war as the dri­ving force in get­ting Libya to coop­er­ate is just an attempt to claim a suc­cess from the deba­cle that Iraq has become.

British Defense Sec­re­tary Geoff Hoon said, “We showed after Sad­dam Hus­sein failed to coop­er­ate with the UN that we meant busi­ness and Libya, and I hope other coun­tries, will draw that lesson.”

Hm. Have we? And will they? A good chunk of the U.S. mil­i­tary is tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan or oth­er­wise engaged. It’s highly unlikely the U.S. could mount another mil­i­tary cam­paign to top­ple a gov­ern­ment even if it had good rea­son to do so. The threat of a Iraq-sized inva­sion is an empty one and Iran, Sudan, North Korea and, yes, Libya know it.

Instead of fear­ing the Bush Doc­trine of pre­emp­tive attacks, “bad guy” coun­tries can see that pos­sess­ing WMDs is a good way to wring con­ces­sions from a super­power they might not have received oth­er­wise. Because the U.S. doesn’t have any other choice. It’s these rogue nations with WMDs that are argu­ing from a posi­tion of strength, not the U.S.

Pres­i­dent Bush said on Fri­day,

We obtained an addi­tional United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion requir­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein to prove that he had dis­armed, and when that res­o­lu­tion was defied, we led a coali­tion to enforce it. All of these actions by the United States and our allies have sent an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to regimes that seek or pos­sess weapons of mass destruc­tion. Those weapons do not bring influ­ence or pres­tige. They bring iso­la­tion and oth­er­wise unwel­come con­se­quences. (Empha­sis added.)

Some prob­lems with that. No Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion have been found. Iraq said it didn’t have them, and damned if Saddam’s regime wasn’t telling the truth this time. The whole world thinks the WMD charge is a MacGuf­fin. By the way, the res­o­lu­tion Bush men­tioned, UNSCR 1441, said:

The Secu­rity Council, …

Decides that, in order to begin to com­ply with its dis­ar­ma­ment oblig­a­tions, in addi­tion to sub­mit­ting the required bian­nual dec­la­ra­tions, the Gov­ern­ment of Iraq shall pro­vide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA, and the Coun­cil, not later than 30 days from the date of this res­o­lu­tion, a cur­rently accu­rate, full, and com­plete dec­la­ra­tion of all aspects of its pro­grammes to develop chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal, and nuclear weapons, bal­lis­tic mis­siles, and other deliv­ery sys­tems such as unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles and dis­per­sal sys­tems designed for use on air­craft, includ­ing any hold­ings and pre­cise loca­tions of such weapons, com­po­nents, sub-components, stocks of agents, and related mate­r­ial and equip­ment, the loca­tions and work of its research, devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties, as well as all other chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal, and nuclear pro­grammes, includ­ing any which it claims are for pur­poses not related to weapon pro­duc­tion or material; …

all of which it appears now Iraq actu­ally did. The gov­ern­ment of Iraq said they didn’t have any uncon­ven­tional weapons and — whad­dya know?! — they didn’t.

I was as sur­prised as any­one. I called the 7,000-page Iraqi dec­la­ra­tion that the coun­try was “devoid of weapons of mass destruc­tion” a sui­cide note, and won­dered what the Iraqis were up to. (Note to con­sis­tency watch­ers: Before the war, I believed Sad­dam pos­sessed some kind of uncon­ven­tional arse­nal, just not one worth going to war over. Some chems, cer­tainly, maybe some bio­log­i­cals, no nukes — that was my guess. I was wrong.)

Plac­ing the Libyan deal in the con­text of the Iraq war is what is so infu­ri­at­ing. Actu­ally, it’s this administration’s shift­ing ratio­nales, attempts to claim suc­cesses and cyn­i­cal of-the-momentism that are really infu­ri­at­ing. I mean, the ratio­nale for invad­ing Iraq right this very minute was to dis­arm the coun­try of WMDs and remove an immi­nent threat to the sur­vival of the United States. When that threat (and the arse­nal) were proven to be a lie — or a gross incom­pe­tence in read­ing intel­li­gence data — the war became one of lib­er­a­tion. And now the United States makes a deal with an oppres­sive dic­ta­tor who killed a lot of inno­cent civil­ians — and a fair num­ber of Amer­i­cans — in a string of ter­ror­ist attacks. And claims a failed pol­icy and a quag­mire were the rea­sons for this bit of good news.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s a good thing that Libya has agreed to give up its uncon­ven­tional weapons pro­grams; any suc­cesses in rid­ding the world of nasty weapons are wel­come. But let’s not kid our­selves here. This is a deal with a devil, and the U.S. is mak­ing it because it has no other choice; forcible regime change is out of the ques­tion because the U.S. doesn’t have the resources. This is a big win for Qad­hafi, a smaller win for Amer­i­can and Britain, and a wash for the peo­ple of Libya who now have a leader with a soft­ened image, but still a fist of iron.

*UPDATE 12/22* Juan Cole has some “excel­lent thoughts”:http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html#107199393231717277 on this issue. George over at War​blog​ging​.com also “weighs in”:http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000780.php, and includes a handy “dic­ta­tor com­par­i­son chart.” And Josh Mar­shall, again, “finds a real nugget”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_12_21.html#002338 in the Pak­istan con­nec­tion to Libya’s WMD programs.