Dog-gone days

Holy, macaroni! Just when the world’s old skool despots had resigned themselves to standing idly by, while those global-jihadist-enemy-combatant upstarts relentlessly hogged the global spotlight — destiny’s child has seen fit to intervene.

The caped crusaders are back. By popular demand. And this time, they have promised to be bigger and better in a remake of a classic blockbuster. Of course, it has been no easy feat to keep world-weary-seen-it-all-before audiences perched on the edges of their proverbial seats. But fear not. It’s nothing that a little character revamping and twisted plots can’t handle. In fact, those good old men in their flying machines have even been thoughtful enough to leave the script’s ending literally up in the air.

This latest version kicked off with the dastardly duo of modern military interventions — Britain and the US — appearing to have dragged along their very own no-fly-zone sidekicks. Yet with Nato firmly in the firing seat as of this week, Washington can now take a much-needed breather and focus on a cunning plan to get its hawkish dove re-elected when the time comes. As for Britain, the new prime minister is so blase at having dragged his country into its first war of his 11-month tenure that he even took out time to come visit Pakistan. Let’s hope he doesn’t have too much of a blast.

In a bid to keep it real, the Libyan misadventure has been touted as a radical departure from recent interventionist tales in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. This is no Operation Regime Change. The altruistic goal is to, purely and simply, protect the civilian population from war crimes at the jaws of the Mad Dog of the Middle East, whose bark never comes without a bite. At least that’s what the promo says.

Unfortunately, from here onwards, the script more or less reverts to predictable form. Ceasefire calls appear to apply exclusively to Qaddafi and his henchmen. Thus the UN-mandated alliance has effectively taken sides in Libya’s civil war. Moreover, Washington is pondering whether to do the full monty and arm the rebel forces. It has also said the show is over and that Gaddafi must take a bow.

Spoilsport cynics in the audience have pounced on this as evidence of how the caped crusaders have yet again been seduced by the military action-regime change temptation. Stubbornly refusing to believe the battle-for-human dignity-and-freedom club classic remix, they may just find the Noam-Chomsky-school-of-thought much more lyrically sound. Ongoing military support to the rebels coincides quite nicely, he has pointed out, with their advance to the west of the country, home to the major sources of Libya’s oil production capacity.

But all is not lost. Different variations of a possible new cliffhanger remains is in the offing. Qaddafi has long yapped on about how the rebel pretenders to his throne are less of the civilian dissident type and more of the al Qaeda sympathiser sort. Of course this was initially and immediately dismissed as the over-the-top histrionics of a man who has never penned any sort of political swan song. But, rather thrillingly, it has now emerged that the old chap may not be as barking as previously believed. And then there are the warnings that al Qaeda is simply going to use this latest battle between good and evil to swoop in and do a runner with Libya’s weapons treasure chest. Just to remind everyone that they are still bigger and badder than the dastardly duo.

If either proves accurate, the caped crusaders will go down in history as having pulled off a home goal that even Washington’s former swaggering urban cowboy and his faithful poodle managed to somehow avoid. But perhaps it is only fitting that a Nobel Peace Prize-winning commander-in-chief, who has not only upped the military ante in Pakistan but also opened new military fronts in Yemen and Libya, is awarded this honour.



Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2011.