Can democracy follow Gadhafi?

Can democracy follow Gadhafi?

Libya's Moammar Gadhafi is on the run. It's possible that as this newspaper was being printed, Gadhafi, Libya's dictator for 41 years, has been caught or killed.

Over the weekend, rebel Libyan clans, aided by air strikes from NATO, pushed into the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

This is being hailed as a great victory against a great tyrant.

And in many ways, that's true. Gadhafi hasn't just been a butcher of his own people, as most Arab dictators are. He has also been an active anti-Western terrorist, with a specialty in bombing civilian airliners, including a 747 over Scotland in 1988 that killed 259 people on board and another 11 on the ground.

But what now?

Let's assume that Gadhafi, like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, like Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, is about to be driven from power. But look at those two countries today: Still run by dictators — even though the international press gallery has moved on. Can liberal democracy take root?

Saddam Hussein was toppled in Iraq. Same with the Taliban in Afghanistan — both happened with NATO help, just like this war against Gadhafi. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part is holding those countries, stopping the rebels from becoming just as bad, and stopping opportunistic countries like Iran and Russia and China, and opportunistic terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, from taking over.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, it's taken hundreds of thousands of NATO troops on the ground — incurring thousands of casualties.

There is no appetite for that amongst NATO countries, even those who are in this war for oil.

The rag-tag coalition that is beating Gadhafi in Libya, called the NTC, doesn't exactly look like Canada's Fathers of Confederation. It includes communists, Islamic radicals and plain old thugs.

How do they make decisions? Well, three weeks ago, they arrested their own top military commander, Abdel Fattah Younes, and murdered him. Say hello to the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Is this really a foreign policy success? U.S. President Barack Obama will probably call it that, just like he called the toppling of Egypt's Mubarak a success. But the U.S. has no plan for the Middle East — Egypt is turning towards radical Islam and Iran, and away from freedom and the West. Look for the same in Syria, if it falls.

Obama has made it clear from the very first days of his presidency that he will not lift a finger for democratic activists in the Arab or Muslim world. Obama's speech in Cairo later that year was even worse — it didn't call for fundamental freedom; it did the opposite: It said dictatorships could each have their own definition of democracy.

Compare that to Ronald Reagan during the Cold War. Along with Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, he gave covert help to democratic groups, like Poland's Solidarity movement.

And Reagan gave moral support, publicly condemning the Soviet Union, calling it an Evil Empire, telling the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall. It sent a signal to democracy activists behind the Iron Curtain that they would be helped. Obama and today's useless NATO leadership are sending the opposite message.

They couldn't give a damn about democracy.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY