Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Is Gaddafi Packing His Bags

It looks like Muammar Gaddafi will soon be following Charlie Sheen to the unemployment line.  When you get crazy crazy somebody eventually shows you the door.

Various Arab media outlets have been reporting that Gaddafi is trying to work out an exit strategy which probably includes tens of billions of dollars in parting gifts and some guarantee of not winding up like Slobodan Milosevic in the dock before the International Criminal Court.   Muammar, it seems, isn't quite as crazy as Charlie which is a good thing given that there are a couple of million Libyans who would like nothing better than to see the boss at the business end of a short rope.

Al Jazeera reports the anti-Gaddafi forces have offered Muammar & Company a promise of immunity of some sort if they clear out within 72-hours.


"If he leaves Libya immediately, during 72 hours, and stops the bombardment, we as Libyans will step back from pursuing him for crimes," Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the opposition National Council, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

He said the deadline would not be extended beyond 72 hours.

"  Based on our love for our country we have proposed to the [Gaddafi's] indirect negotiators that a solution can be reached,"  Jalil told Al Jazeera.

"  Conditions are that firstly he stops all combat in the fields, secondly that his departure is within 72 hours; thirdly we may waive our right of domestic prosecution ... for the crimes of oppression, persecution, starvation and massacres."

It's hard to imagine Gaddafi being crazy enough to bank on these assurances.  Matters of prosecution and amnesty are state functions and the rebel forces can hardly be construed as a state.   Even if Gaddafi was sufficiently delusional to believe these promises there are plenty of sane, shrewd and ruthless people propping him up who won't be taken in.  I think if Gaddafi actually wavers one of them might well put a bullet in the boss for selling them out.

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