Monday, August 22, 2011

No more "Libyan Hit Squad" cartoons

When I was a kid, there were rumors that Libya's Colonel Muammar Gadhafi (given that he ran the country and was head of the armed forces, why was he only colonel?) had sent a hit squad to kill President Reagan.  I took it upon myself to visualize that in a comic strip called the "Libyan Hit Squad."  It was basically a takeoff of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, but I did get pretty creative towards the middle and the end.  Unfortunately, my artistic skills never matched my imagination, especially when it came to drawing people -- it was so bad I had to draw them with little sticks in their backs with signs identifying who they were and which countries they were from. Gadhafi had a little hat.

I kept the comics all these years, until, sadly, my cat Berenice decided to shred them all.  Berenice is an amazing, wonderful, extremely intelligent cat, but this was not among her prouder moments.  She seems to very much enjoy shredding paper.

Anyway, it appears that Colonel Gadhafi may not be sending hit squads against anyone anymore, since the civil war to remove him from power in Libya has apparently been successful.  Hot Air has a roundup.  The Rebels have surrounded Tripoli and gone deep into the city itself, and some of Gadhafi's personal guard have surrendered, but there are reports that he is trying to mount a counterattack.  With Tripoli surrounded, Gadhafi's military options look to be extremely limited.

Thus, it seems we have a new model for removal of an anti-American thug from power:
In some cases, we may need to fight a WWII style total war. Fine. In all other cases, we should go back to the 70s/80s model of backing indigenous fighters with the 90s/2000s addition of devastating airstrikes.
Sounds like a workable model to me, one that we should be following in Syria.

In the meantime, let's hope the darkest predictions about post-Gadhafi Libya do not come true.

1 comment:

  1. I asked his hit squad to come to my 10th birthday, but they didn't show up.

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