Quote:
Originally Posted by Fair&Balanced
They have as much of a structure in place as the Egyptians after they tossed Mubarak out, including the basics.
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Not exactly. Egypt had much outside contact and training even at the lowest levels of leadership. In particular were what and how its lower level military officers were trained. And similar knowledge gained via commercial enterprises. Libya has few people educated in concepts necessary for a democratic leadership. Even teaching foreign languages was all but banned in Libya to keep the people dumb and subservient.
Furthermore, rebel forces are many different and otherwise adversarial parties united only by one factor - a hate for Kaddafi. Once the common enemy is gone, then what?
Kaddafi is playing a wonderfully successful strategy to suck in the rebels, blast them back to Benghazi, and then suck them back in. His latest version makes air power less effective. It works because so little leadership and virtually no discipline exists among rebels ground forces. That knowledge will eventually come. But first the war must seesaw even for a full year. Rebel forces must learn to work with each other, learn about leadership, build common factors among who would otherwise be adversaries, understand concepts such as support and supply, and generally kill off so many peers to eventually earn and understand concepts not yet understood.
A quick fall of Kaddafi would be great in the short term and a long term disaster for Libya. Important in this war is for painful lessons to first be learned. A long war against a common enemy could be the catalyst that eventually creates a better Libya.
Just because a few top leaders are smart does not make a stable or productive country. Appreciate where most power must reside. And why western democracies are so successful. Among the little leaders (ie Captains and Sergeants) who finally learn concepts that western citizens take for granted. Libyans have been too isolated and too uneducated to have learned what makes a better human race. A long and painful war could be one solution. To teach so many Libyans how much they do not know and what is necessary to be able to learn.
Those lessons include respecting and cooperating with your adversaries. That means adversaries must spend a painfully long time together in the trenches. Where their number one purpose is to protect one another's lives.
This is summarizing what is necessary to "forge a nation". Kaddafi has spent 40 years destroying what is necessary to be a productive, peaceful, and growing nation. It will not be learned in months. A first step can be years suffering to earn a nation.
How long or at what expense did it take citizens of Lebanon, Cambodia, and Rwanda to finally learn these concepts? Libyians, with so many potential adversaries among the rebels and so little knowledge (grasp of the world), still have much to learn.