Libya's new gong show

Libya's new gong show
Gadhafi may be dead, but a different dictator reigns

Meet the new dictator of Libya — pretty much the same as the old dictator, but with a less-crazy fashion sense.

When the Berlin Wall fell, democracy activists such as Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel took the reins of power.

In Libya, we've just got Mustafa Abdul-Jalil. Who is he? He is the new dictator. What did you think? He was elected?

But he's totally different from Gadhafi. Sure, he spent his whole life working for Gadhafi.

In 1975, right after he graduated from law school, he became a prosecutor, pursuing Gadhafi's enemies. In 2007, Gadhafi appointed him to be the dictatorship's "justice minister."

Being a justice minister under a dictatorship is a contradiction. It usually means presiding over sham trials. Which is exactly what Abdul-Jalil did.

In a ham-fisted attempt to cover up horrendous hygiene conditions in Libyan hospitals, and to blame foreigners for a rise in AIDS cases, Abdul-Jalil's "justice system" convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, claiming they purposefully infected 400 children with AIDS.

It goes without saying that the charges were bogus. It was classic dictatorship distraction, blaming an outside group for a huge domestic screw-up. And Abdul-Jalil's courts came down with a death sentence. It was only when senior European politicians intervened that the accused were let go.

That's what a justice minister does under a butcher like Gadhafi. He tries to put a lawyer's robe on a dictator's actions.

For four years Abdul-Jalil was happy to do Gadhafi's bidding. It was only this spring, when Gadhafi started to fall, that Abdul-Jalil fled, and claimed he was always against Gadhafi ­— yeah, that's right. Always against him.

Well, he's the dictator now.

Abdul-Jalil didn't just study law at law school. He studied Sharia law,­ that is, law where the constitution is the Muslim Qur'an.

Last week, Abdul-Jalil declared that Libya will be a Sharia state. And he took the first steps to making it so, repealing Gadhafi's ban on polygamous marriages.

He also announced that he's going to take Libya's banks back to the medieval age, banning interest, and only allowing Sharia-compliant banking.

So when it comes to being an Islamic fundamentalist, Gadhafi was a moderate compared to the new guy. Look, there's nothing new here. So one Arab dictator was replaced with another Arab dictator.

Well, there's one thing new here. We Canadians fought for this. Canada sent over 500 men and women, from our air force and navy, to help pummel Gadhafi into submission. We did Abdul-Jalil's fighting for him.

Thank God no Canadian Forces died in that foolish effort to secure Europe's conflict oil for them — God forbid Europe would have to buy its oil from someone other than Libya or Saudi Arabia for a change.

Why did we root out Gadhafi? Why are we pledging more money and help to the new dictator? Why are we standing by while Gadhafi's justice minister implements Sharia law?

We never had a proper reason to go to Libya. It made no sense. We don't have a Canadian national interest over there. It was crystal clear from the start that the only reason NATO cared about Libya, and not Syria, for example, is that Libya has a lot of oil.

But is me-tooing Europe really reason enough? Why are we still going along with this gong show?

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY