Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

‘The beginning of the end’

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 10:00am - 12 Comments

The Prime Minister talks about the latest developments in Libya.

“We have to be careful. . . This is the beginning of the end of the Gadhafi regime. I don’t say it is the end,” Harper said during a trip to the Arctic Tuesday. “We anticipate it will be at least a few days for the process of regime change to actually be in place…

“To this point, notwithstanding the fighting and the loss of life, there is good reason to be optimistic,” he said. “This is a revolution essentially affected from within. People have overturned a tyrant. We’ve seen the areas that the rebels control. We’ve seen life go on.”

He anticipates, the Globe reports, that the military mission will end in the “not-too-distant future.” Spencer Ackerman (and Matthew Yglesias) reminds everyone not to get ahead of themselves.

Tags: Colonel Gadhafi, Gadhafi, Libya, Matthew Yglesias, Moammar Gadhafi, NATO, Spencer Ackerman, Stephen Harper, UN

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TonyAdams

“Our anticipation is that the military mission will obviously. . . terminate sometime in the future but we’ll first make sure the job is actually finished,” Harper said.Then the task of rebuilding a country after civil war must begin.Libya needs monetary assistance, help with governance and responding to the many needs of its people …… ” TorStar article

I just did a quick search and didn’t see anything but does anyone know if Harper has commented about whether Canada would be willing/capable to send troops into Libya?

Transitions from tyrants to rudimentary democracy do not always go according to plan. UK having debate about whether troops in Libya will be necessary and I wonder what Harper/Cons are thinking.

Daily Mail, Aug 24 2011:

Amid the confusion of war, with few reliable reports on the fighting beyond Tripoli, all that seems certain is that Colonel Gaddafi’s regime is done for. The big question that remains, of course, is what happens next.

Even before the rebels’ victory is complete, there are increasing doubts over the ability of Libya’s fledgling National Transitional Council to prevent a descent into anarchy and reprisals.

Inevitably, therefore, calls are growing for an international peacekeeping force to keep Libya’s 140 tribes from each other’s throats and oversee a smooth handover to a new government.

Anonymous

I’d be SHOCKED if the PM put ground troops in to Libya unless there’s some MASSIVE international effort through the UN, which there almost certainly won’t be, and I’m certain he’s never suggested it. That said, I know I read somewhere that Qatar would be willing to offer ground troops for a post-Gaddafi mission, and it wouldn’t shock me if other nations in the region were similarly willing to commit ground troops, once we’re sure Gaddafi and his loyalists are pretty much defeated. If there’s a big peacekeeping force assembled through the UN we might particiapte, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen, and I’m almost certain it’s never been discussed publicly by the PM.

I’d also be pretty surprised though if we didn’t put reasonably significant non-military personnel in to Libya at some point, such as government advisers, election experts (and monitors when the time comes) etc. I don’t see our military contribution going beyond planes and bombs though (guards for our embassy excepted, when we re-open it).

Anonymous

I agree that we will probably provide assistance in infrastructure and capacity building – assisitng the Libyan justice system, for example. I don’t see the need for foreign troops. Libya is unlikely to face organized resistance like the Taliban and they have already shown in Benghazi that they can manage their internal affairs quite well, considering the circumstances. I’m not sure why they would need any outside assistance in “peacekeeping” in the normal sense – and the UN experience of “peacekeeping” in the middle of a fractured civil war between non-governmental factions, as in Somalia – if worse comes to worst – doesn’t indicate those activiites are very useful.
Anonymous

I agree that we will probably provide assistance in infrastructure and capacity building – assisitng the Libyan justice system, for example. I don’t see the need for foreign troops. Libya is unlikely to face organized resistance like the Taliban and they have already shown in Benghazi that they can manage their internal affairs quite well, considering the circumstances. I’m not sure why they would need any outside assistance in “peacekeeping” in the normal sense – and the UN experience of “peacekeeping” in the middle of a fractured civil war between non-governmental factions, as in Somalia – if worse comes to worst – doesn’t indicate those activiites are very useful.

Anonymous

And here’s where the ‘regime change’ the west so casually engages in falls apart.

The UN should long since have set up an agency to go into a country, and assess the damage after a fall, so a mini-Marshall plan can be prepared to fix the infrastructure and get the people back on their feet again….and most importantly the lay-out of a democratic society. A way to set up an elected body, a judicial system, a constitutional set of principles, and a banking system.

When various factions see they will be treated fairly and equally, they are much less inclined to fight, so it’s vital those things are available.

Any country that has been under a dictatorship for any length of time has none of those things….and doesn’t know why they’re needed, or how to put them in place.

Just removing the dictator means the country will fall into chaos….and at some point another ‘strong man’ will come along to offer stability….and people will be right back where they started.

Trading one dictator for another is not a solution.

We should have learned from Russia. After the fall they were left on their own to cope as best they could. Russia has always been ruled by one man….and it went from the Tsar to the various dictators of communism….and now they have Putin and a lot of very rich gangsters. This is no improvement over the last century in spite of all the upheaval.

Yet at the time, we could have helped. Russians didn’t even know how to get a bank account, they’d never had one….or even a banking system. And we ignored them. Now look what we have.

We never seem to look ahead, so we don’t invest in future stability.

Anonymous

I am sure there will be assistance once the fighting is complete. There is no need for a mini-Marshall plan when the Libyans have over 70 billion in soon to be unfrozen (by the EU and US) assets .

Anonymous

We’ve never helped anyone before, so there’s no reason to believe we’ll do it this time.

70B is chicken feed.

Anonymous

$70 billion is an awful lot of chicken feed for a country of 6.5 million people!

Relative to GDP it’s the equivalent of 72.8% of Libya’s GDP. If an equivalent amount of Canadian assets relative to GDP were frozen it would work out to $1.14 TRILLION.

Anonymous

There is no connection between population size and money
Anonymous

There is no connection between population size and money

TonyAdams

Busy today with work so I could not check earlier but I thought Harper or his speech writers were getting a bit cheek.

Harper’s “… beginning of the end … ” rhetoric is bowdlerized version of famous Churchill speech he gave after Allies won battles in Tobruk/El-Alemain which are in Libya I believe.

Churchill, Nov 1942 ~ “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Anonymous

Sure, but Harper’s, what, the seven BILLIONTH person on the planet to use that phraseology in a context like this? Plus, I might give Churchill credit for “end of the beginning”, but Harper didn’t even use that. Surely Churchill doesn’t get credit for “the beginning of the end”! I’m almost certain that the first occurrence of “the beginning of the end” is the Bible, or some Roman senator or something. Maybe Shakespeare at the latest. And I KNOW it’s pre-Churchill. It’s the title of a Tolstoy book.