Looks like al-Qaeda will be Leading Libya soon

What's utterly amazing about this development is how many people didn't see it coming. This is not rocket science. As bad as Gadhafi was, what's coming is far, far worse and many of us have been saying it for several months. The problem is that the people who either didn't see it (McCain) or who seem to outright welcome it (Obama) are the ones in power. We've heard rumblings in establishment media that we don't know who the rebels are. It's been the Tea Party and conservative blogosphere that does know who they are; they're Muslim Brotherhood-backed rebels who want to install an Islamic world caliphate. The United States has liberated al-Qaeda as a result.

Via Barry Rubin at PJM:

Finally, we have evidence that Islamists and even al-Qaeda supporters will play a central role in Libya’s new regime. Up to now there has been reasonable speculation that the U.S. government and NATO might be installing an anti-Western, Islamist government in Libya. Now there’s proof that this is so.

The actual government remains in the hands of non-Islamists, technocrats, ex-regime officials, and moderates. But the armed rebels who actually made the revolution have voted and their idol is…an al-Qaeda guy. Political power, said Mao Zedong, grows out of the barrel of a gun and in Libya’s case this seems a very reasonable expectation.

According to Al Jazeera, the network recommended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as fair and balanced, Abdul al-Hakim al-Hasadi, also known as Abdelhakim Belhaj, has been named commander of the Tripoli Military Council. He was formerly head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Moderates are understandably nervous.

In 1999, the group’s spokesman praised Osama bin Laden (remember him?) and said: “The United States no longer relies on its agents to constrict the Islamic tide; it has taken this role upon itself.” One of its former leaders worked to plan the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, resulting in massive loss of life. In 2003, members were involved in an al-Qaeda terror attack in Morocco.

Rubin sums the whole problem up quite perfectly:

...on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the killing of 3000 Americans by al-Qaeda, you don’t accept the appointment of an al-Qaeda supporter to run the new Libyan military.

True, in Turkey the Obama administration has supported an elected anti-American Islamist regime; in the Gaza Strip it saved an anti-American Islamist regime; in Syria, it did everything possible to avoid condemning an anti-American pro-Islamist regime; in Lebanon, it stood by and didn’t help the real moderates as an anti-American Islamist-dominated regime came to power; in Iran, it engaged an anti-American Islamist regime; and in Egypt, it said that it had no problem with an anti-American Islamist regime coming to power.

But actually installing an Islamist regime with Western weapons? That’s crossing the line.

I used to think these words would be the most damaging to the legacy of John McCain:



Three years later, these words my just trump those (fast forward to the 1:30 mark):



Rubin's entire piece is a must read.