Bad weather delayed the departure of a ferry that was supposed to get American citizens out of Libya Wednesday afternoon, although the State Department said that the passengers were aboard and safe. As they waited, President Obama made a statement about the disorder they were leaving behind. (There was speculation that concern about their wellbeing had been holding him up.) The response of the Libyan government to its opponents, he said, “violates international norms, and every standard of common decency.” He talked about Libyan citizens being able to speak without being answered with violence, and their freedom of assembly: “These are human rights—they are not negotiable.” He said that the United States would “prepare the full range of options” and that
Obama listed international organizations that had spoken up, from the Security Council to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. As he spoke, the conflict was already becoming increasingly international in other ways: Qaddafi’s former justice minister (he just quit) told a Swedish newspaper that he had evidence that Qaddafi had personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing, in 1986; international markets and oil prices were upset; in addition to the Americans waiting for the ferry, the nationals of many countries were trying to flee, including thousands of Egyptian migrant laborers; and, in a countervailing human current, there were reports that, as the Times put it, “thousands of African mercenaries and militiamen were massing on roads heading toward Tripoli,” coming to fight for Qaddafi, or rather for his money.
Maybe no country really goes to war, even against itself, or collapses, alone. That doesn’t mean that this is about us: the countries undergoing convulsions in recent weeks have wildly different relations to America. It was likely in answer to Qaddafi’s complaint that this was all being instigated by foreigners (Mubarak tried that one, too) that Obama said, “The change that is taking place across the region is being driven by the people of the region,” and reflects, above all, their “aspirations”:
“We just want to be able to live like human beings”: It sounds like he was quoting a young woman who spoke to the Guardian newspaper over the weekend, on the phone from “her barricaded home on the outskirts of Benghazi,” and used those words (others may have, too; as Obama said, it is the most basic aspiration). The Guardian described her as “a student blogger,” and said that she was crying. “I’ve seen violent movies and video games that are nothing compared to this,” she said.
Since then, Benghazi has fallen out of Qaddafi’s control—the death toll is unknown, with unconfirmed estimates in the hundreds or even, according to one French doctor who spoke to AFP, as high as two thousand—and Tripoli is well past the point of protests: it seems to be a war zone. The world may be watching—as well as it can, given the media and Internet restrictions—and the watching is important; it helps. But what we are seeing, and what matters more, is people in Libya, like the woman in the apartment outside of Benghazi, deciding how they want to live.
Read more from our coverage of the protests in Egypt, Libya, and beyond.
