How the world turns: A friendly Gadaffi, no longer a ‘terrorist’, awaits GMA in Tripoli

Since this writer has come to be known for kilometric columns (mea culpa for my cacaothes scribendi) – and even kilometric headlines – I must repeat: How the world turns.

While Gaza is burning, Beirut is being bombed by an angry Israel, the Hezbollah and Hamas are defiantly trying to fight back (the former lobbing rockets into the Haifa area and northern Israel) – with the distinct possibility of a jittery but resentful Syria being sucked into the fray, the Libyan capital of Tripoli seems the center of tranquility.

Formerly dubbed a "terrorist state", Libya has been taken off the Hate List by the United States & Friends, and its leader of many decades, the once-bitterly-anti-Western and more so anti-American, Col. Moammar Gadaffi, transformed into one of the anti-terrorist league’s smiling friends in the Middle East.

Sanamagan! This just goes to show that good public relations and the semblance of true contrition (welcome happy tourists, bring euros and dollars!) – plus a treasury bulging with petro-euros – can work wonders in the desert.

When the ultra-nationalist colonel and his cohorts seized power from King Idris of Libya in a 1969 September Revolution – inspired by Egypt’s Gamal Nasser – Gadaffi was crowned by the Free Unionist officers President of the Revolutionary Command Council.

Shortly after, his government took over 51 percent of the capital of foreign banks. In December, Gadaffi kicked the Americans out of Wheelus Field air base, and directed all American troops to leave by June 30, 1970.

Gadaffi then was elevated to Prime Minister, quickly arresting the previous P.M. Mahmud Maghrabi.

On February, a law was enacted amending previous legislation on oil. The Bunker Hunt oil company, a US group, was nationalized, so were British Petroleum and other foreign oil interests (sounds like Bolivia nowadays). Then a union was planned between Tripoli and Cairo. The United Arab Republic idea, however, didn’t last long. Gadaffi’s Revolutionary Government next proposed that all Arab resources be pooled in an all-out war against Israel. (Evidently, today, he’s sitting this one out).

Over the years, Gadaffi gained the reputation of making his country a haven for terrorists and, in fact, a "manufacturer" of terrorists. In the interim, though, he charmed Imeldific (Romualdez Marcos) who visited him – with her entourage – in his tent, and got the late Defense Undersecretary of Macoy, our friend (former Congressman) Carmelo Z. Barbero to sign the Tripoli Agreement, which binds us to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (IOC) to this day.

Libya’s greatest feat and disgrace is that Libyan-based "bombers" were pinpointed as being behind the destruction of the Pan-American airliner over Lockerbie (Scotland) in December 1988, in which 270 passengers, many of them headed home for Christmas, perished. (Syria had initially been blamed).

Indeed, deciding he had to lash out in retaliation for a series of terrorist attacks (Libyan aircraft, for instance, clashed with the US Navy in the Gulf of Sirte), US President Ronald Reagan launched a bold operation in 1986, a flight of jets from an airfield in Britain to attack Tripoli – in particular Gadaffi’s residence.

The warplanes maintained complete radio silence on a flight which took seven hours (they had to skirt countries which refused them overflight in their air space), then they pounced entirely unexpected out of the blue. The rockets and bombs missed Gadaffi by five minutes. He was unscathed but members of his family, including an adopted child, were killed. "Assassination by aircraft" – a tactic utilized frequently by Israel – didn’t work this time for the United States.

But now. Hello. Gadaffi has become America’s good buddy.

Truly it has been said, there are no permanent enemies, only permanent national interests. With the exception I must sorrowfully add, in the case of the Israelis and the Palestinians. I fear this is a hatred which may last till the last breath. Sad, but as the Russian writer Gogol put it, it’s "the weight of the dead souls" which bars any reconciliation. Unless a miracle comes from God in Heaven (Inshallah!) The Jews and the Arabs, both Semites, are the children of the same Father – Abraham or Ibrahim – but they are locked in Palestine in a murderous embrace.

Our own President GMA, for her part, having partied with Brunei Darrusalam’s oil-rich Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah in his 1,700 Palace in Bandar Seri Begawan to celebrate the Sultan’s 60th birthday, she’s next due in Tripoli to meet the "new" Gadaffi.

Do you know his first name Moammar or Muammar means?

In January 1942, while the great field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Germany’s "Desert Fox", and his Afrika Korps battled British General Auchinleck and his Eighth Army in the Great Sirte Desert, there was jubilation in one of the nomad tents, belonging to the Arab-Berber kabyle (tribe). A baby boy had just been born – described as "beautiful and strong." He was to be the last of the family, the only brother to three adoring elder sisters. His father, Mohammed Abdel Salam ben Hamed ben Mohammed, a man of nearly 60, was overjoyed. He offered thanks to "Sidi Muammar," a saint honored in the entire Tarhuna region – he had prayed fervently to him for the blessing of begetting a son. Thus he called the boy, Muammar – "he who builds up."

After a lifetime of tearing down, will Gadaffi now become a builder? This is a consummation, in the troubled Middle East, today exploding and burning devoutly to be wished.

* * *

Don’t expect US President George W. Bush, now in St. Petersburg with Russia‘s President, the non-Democratic but popular Vladimir Putin, for the G-8 summit, to back off from his support of Israel’s all-out attack on Lebanon, in a search-and-destroy operation – which is wrecking others, too – intended to blast the hated Hezbollah militants to smithereens once and for all. He may urge "moderation" for PR purposes, but Bush and the Americans want the Israelis to destroy the Iran-sponsored terrorist organization, a Shiite paramilitary (cum political party), which calls itself "The Party of God."

To the Americans, the Hezbollah – who hold two seats, by the way, in the 128-member Lebanese Parliament and are very influential in the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora – are the Party from Hell.

The Hezbollah are viewed as the surrogates of Tehran (Iran), initially of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, and now of the nuclear-ambitious government of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad (who says that Israel must be erased from the map).

Between the Hamas in Palestine and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the US believes, the regimes in Damascus (Syria) and Tehran (Iran) wish to bludgeon Israel to its knees – as well, as boosting the Shiites, the majority population in Iraq, to gain predominance there, too.

In sum, the United States would dearly love to have the Israelis, who have bombed and hit more than 100 targets in and around Beirut, and the Bekaa Valley close to the Syrian border, obliterate Hezbollah, come what may.

Washington DC recalls that the Hezbollah has been behind the worst attacks on the US in Lebanon. If you’ll recall, Ronald Reagan landed 1,400 US Marines in Lebanon to help enforce a ceasefire. The American battleship USS Virginia, anchored off coast, shelled Muslim-leftist coalition forces which were threatening to overrun Lebanese Army positions.

Four months later, on April 18, 1983, a car-bomb exploded next to the US Embassy in Beirut, reducing the front of the building to rubble, and leaving 63 dead. The terrorists timing was impeccable. Meeting inside at that moment were Beirut’s CIA operatives with a number of their assets.

That year, in October, 243 US Marines – most of them asleep – were killed when a Hezbollah suicide-bomber rammed a truck filled with explosives into their barracks near the international airport. The blast was so powerful, it left a crater four meters deep.

Twenty-six minutes later, another suicide-bomber did the same thing in a building housing members of the French contingent of the multi-national force, with more than a dozen killed.

The Hezbollah also hijacked TWA Flight 847 in 1985, and brutally killed a US Navy Diver who was on leave who happened to be aboard, then threw his body on the tarmac. The Americans managed to positively identify the three perpetrators of that murder, still at large, and they are now on the Most Wanted list issued by the US government in September 2001.

You can bet, the Yanks will get them. (They're not Osama bin Laden).

The kidnappings of Americans and other Westerners in Lebanon began in 1982 (shortly after Ariel Sharon’s Israeli invasion of Lebanon). The first was the Acting President of the American University of Beirut, David Dodge, who disappeared. Others followed, including Terry Waite, a representative of the British Archbishop of Canterbury who was believed abducted by Hezbollah. In all, more than a dozen were taken between 1982 and 1992. Five of the victims died or were "executed" by their merciless captors. These included American Army Lt. Col. William Higgins and William Buckley, the chief of the CIA’s Lebanese operations.

What’s alarming is that this time, it appears, the Israelis, cold-bloodedly, not in a rage, are going for broke. They are few in number as a people, but don’t forget, they’ve won ALL their wars. They’re determined that "never again" will the Jews face another Holocaust, and meekly be led to the slaughter as in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Klooga, and Bergen-Belsen. On each IDF patch is the slogan, "Massada Shall Not Fall Again."

In 1948, as I earlier mentioned, seven Arab armies tried to destroy the fledging Israel. The Israelis whipped them all – seizing the rest of Palestine. In 1967, the Six Day War got them the Golan Heights – within sight of Damascus, as well as Gaza and the Left Bank. The Yom Kippur War almost caught them off-guard, but they slugged it out and triumphed in the end. There were the War of Attrition, two intifadas – but Israel has stood it all. The Hezbollah brag that they are the only Arabs who defeated Israel, forcing the Israelis to withdraw from South Lebanon in May 2000. If the IDF had resolved to fight, taking more losses, the Israelis could have punched out those militant guerrilla forces – but they withdrew within their own borders.

That, Jerusalem now believes, was a mistake. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has the most powerful air force, the toughest infantry – often too tough and ruthless – and the heaviest artillery. (The Hezbollah have been raining more than 200 Quassam rockets are raining on Haifa and Northern Israel, but the Israelis are undaunted).

Do they mean, this time, to go all the way?

To Damascus? That would be a mistake, but they still could lick the Syrians of Mr. Assad. Their navy ships are blockading Lebanon, and bombarding coastal targets. Is it a just war? Probably not in Lebanon (the poor Lebanese!) but the Israelis are sick and tired of rockets, incessant infiltration, and attack by the "Party of God" who wish only to heap fire and brimstone on their land – and drive them into the sea. The IDF has called itself "David’s sling" in the past – but what they’re using are not slingshots.

And – quite possibly – with their "mad dog" assaults in full swing, who knows what they’ll target next? Even the head of the snake in their calculation, "powerful" Iran itself?

Has the world forgotten? In 1981, nine F-16 ground-attack aircraft of the IDF, escorted by five F-15 fighters zoomed unexpectedly into Saddam Husssein’s Iraq and dropped, from a great height, to a low-level approach to evade radar detection. They erupted out of nowhere, and with pinpoint accuracy, took out the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha. Saddam’s nuke ambitions were destroyed in a flash of flame and a series of wild explosions. Then the Israeli jets flew home – another day, another shekel, as they say.

The air attack on a neighboring state aroused international condemnation, of course. But the Israelis mildly remarked, they did what they had to do.

Can they do this again? Anti-aircraft systems are far more deadly and efficient. But the Israelites in the Holy Bible, invented deception and espionage. David’s sling, remember?

Will George W. Bush then be able to blink, and exclaim in all innocence: "Who, me?"