Al-Qaeda? Rubbish! Daphne Caruana Galizia might be right somewhere, somehow

Recently, she stated sarcastically at her blog:

Tonio Borg was quoted by The Times as saying that the revolution in Libya “is different from the one in Tunisia and Egypt because it did not start in the capital city and there is a strong tribal element. The Tunisian revolution was secular.”

And the revolution in Libya is….what, led by Al Qaeda?

George Vella was more voluble, and he too thinks that the revolution in Libya is spearheaded by Islamic radicalism, though there is no evidence of this at all – rather the opposite – and the only ones saying it in Libya are members of the Gaddafi regime. The rebels gather in mosques because they don’t have opposition party clubs which serve that function.

Andrew C. McCarthy states that:

Qaddafi’s opposition is not driven by al-Qaeda. It is driven by sharia. Various factions want Qaddafi out so that they can install sharia and build a real Islamic state — one that is virulently anti-Israeli, anti-Western, and anti-American, a mirror image of what the Muslim Brotherhood is now poised to sculpt in Egypt. For now, Islamists have encouraged military Western help because they lack the resources needed to oust Qaddafi themselves — just as Bosnian Muslims could not defeat the Serbs, Iraqi Muslims could not defeat Saddam Hussein, and Afghan Muslims could not defeat the Soviet Union without American help. But as we’ve seen time and again, the embrace of American support never translates into an embrace of Americans.

The Muslims of the Middle East will gladly use us, but they will turn on us the second our temporarily useful assistance becomes an intolerable transgression against sharia. That’s why the Islamists of the Arab League were all for a no-fly zone when it was pitched as a mere verbal warning to Qaddafi’s air force, but quickly condemned it when it turned out to require a bombing campaign that was sure to kill some Muslims.

We’ve seen this show before. The rebels are not rebels — they are the Libyan mujahideen. Like the Afghan mujahideen, including those that became al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Libyan mujahideen comprise different groups. What overwhelmingly unites them, besides opposition to Qaddafi, is sharia. The Libyan mujahideen will exploit us but never befriend us. If they succeed, so be it. But we have no vital interest in orchestrating that success, even if it would mean a thug like Qaddafi finally gets his just deserts. If we empower them, we will eventually rue the day.

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