From: Joseph Lister

I don’t admire what dictators do to their people and nations but using military force to dislodge them from power is not the best way to go as you cannot achieve democracy with bombs and purport to be liberating a nation in 21st Century.

Thinking that Libyans will wake up in a fortnight chanting Allahu Akbar for justice, freedom and democracy when the Country’s infrastructure has been destroyed, innocent people killed and probably Gadhaffi and his family killed by bombs is elusive.

It’s true the current bombing may succeed to see Gadhaffi out of power or killed but how about innocent Libyans and the country’s infrastructure?

Does it mean the West hasn’t learnt a lesson about Iraq, which is now a shell? Even the country’s leadership is a punch of puppets for Western powers.

Two wrongs don’t make a right…a tooth for a tooth will make us toothless while an eye for an eye will make us blind. If Ghadaffi was killing his own people to safeguard his dictatorial regime, does it mean there were no better mechanisms from the international community to address the problem instead of raining bombs from the Libyans skies and why was the military intervention hurriedly executed?

Its true Ghadaffi is one of the worst dictators of our time but is he the only dictator on the planet? Why Libya and not Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cote Devoire, Iran, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

In 2007, Kenya went through the worst crisis after elections were bungled which was a tragedy to democracy and justice but the international community did not come up with military intervention under the aegis of propagating global democracy.

Even when Kenya was up in smoke because of the stolen elections; resulting to killings and human displacement, the Global community led by the USA was the first to come up with the idea of power sharing between the winner and the loser. Was this democratization?

If the West want to propagate justice and democracy in the globe, it must be applied a close the board.

The situation in Libya is not simple the way the global community seems to think. The Libyan leader is not going to surrender in day; not even in a week … his armed resistance might take long and the sum total of this will be human suffering especially the vulnerable- women, children and the poor.

The US led forces attacked Iraq thinking that Saddam will surrender in a week but the war has taken a decade. The once flourishing Country is a shell. American taxpayers are reconstructing the Country. Many Iraqis and majority of the World feel that Iraq was better of with Sadam than it is today.

We all love democracy but shedding human blood to pave the way for the same is immoral and inhuman. Me think that peace is better than war and that the life of a single human being cannot be compared with the gold and silver that the Western powers are pursuing on Libya’s Oil under the aegis of democratization.

The repercussions of wars- from simple clan feuds, tribal conflicts to full fledged armed conflicts that the world has experienced does not help humanity.

Joseph Lister Nyaringo
United States