Are there any good Qaddafi-themed poop jokes?

I feel constipated. Not physically, but creatively. It's not quite writers block, in fact it's almost the opposite. There are so many things that I am poised to write about, but all of them are waiting for a trigger, an event, a green light. There are rumblings, ominous portents, but everything is still half-baked.

I blame Qaddafi.

The message that Egypt and Tunisia sent to the rest of the Arab world was, "This can happen anywhere"

For the past two months, Qaddafi has been trying to send a very different message, "Not here, it can't"

Thankfully, this has not stemmed the flow of uprisings nor has it broken the will of protesters in Bahrain, Syria, or Yemen. Nonetheless, we didn’t get to see a dictator step down this past month.

However, instead of getting one in March, we may get two (or three) in April.

It looks like the endgame is in place for the old president of Cote d'Ivoire. Despite his best efforts, his army has evaporated out from underneath him. This is, presumably, in no small part due to the fact that by most estimates two thirds of the military voted for his opponent in the election. The new president and his supporters have retaken most of the country, and Gbagbo is conspicuously absent.

Yeah, I know, Cote d'Ivoire isn't part of the Middle East, but if you go back and look at the very first posts that I wrote for this blog, you'll notice that the post-election conflict was one of the issues that motivated me to start writing this. Certainly, the circumstances are quite different, but watching a despot fail in his attempts to retain power in the face of a populace whose patience has expired is nonetheless inspiring.

I know my predictions for Qaddafi's departure have so far been overly optimistic, but Gbagbo will very likely be gone by next week.

As far as Qaddafi goes, it is only a matter of time before he reaches the end of his rope. His failure to capture the eastern cities has deprived his forces of the additional fuel supplies they were hoping to seize, thereby mobility severely. Air-strikes on weapons depots have also drastically impacted his military capacity. His attempt to reinforce his weakened forces with additional mercenaries may buy him a few more days, but I think it is unlikely that he will retain control for more than another week. (I've been wrong before, but I think the end is in sight at last.)

Perhaps, once brother leader has been removed from his position this damnable constipation will be relieved.

Qaddafi, you are an impacted stool impeding the natural functions of democracy’s colon. I look forward to seeing you flushed down the toilet of history.

What's the current situation in Libya right now?

This is an old post - click here for the most recent update on Libya.

You should also be checking http://www.libyafeb17.com/

The specificities of the coalition campaign are probably well beyond the knowledge of anybody except for those military and intelligence personnel directly involved (and presumably some key government officials as well). Suffice it to say dozens of tanks and armored vehicles have been destroyed on the ground, and the vast majority of Qaddafi’s anti-air capacities have been eliminated. US Air Force C-130s are now broadcasting to the Libyan people, and the No-Fly zone is now in effect from Tripoli to Benghazi.

It is worthwhile to point out that this is not simply a "no-fly zone". The wording of the UN resolution was to protect the safety of Libyan civilians, and although many members of the Arab League are balking at the scope of activity, what we're seeing is a full implementation that will probably come as close to implementation of ground forces without the actual implementation itself.

Many of the military officials involved have expressed minimal optimism regarding their expectations for this undertaking, emphasizing repeatedly that they will not be removing Qaddafi from power, they will simply be destroying as much as possible of his capacity to inflict harm on civilians.

Some of them have said that the result may simply be a stalemate on the ground, but don't believe that for a minute. These guys know exactly what's going on. Qaddafi's goose is cooked, but the actual work of removing him will be left to the Libyan people themselves.

Here's the thing, as I've been saying for the past week, the rebels are not as badly off as most people are assuming.

Qaddafi's forces have been hemorrhaging troops continuously for weeks. Entire battalions have defected, and are under the command of generals who were formerly loyal to Qaddafi. The discouraging events of the past week are not evidence of the Revolution's failure; they are the realities of war - specifically the realities of urban tank combat in North Africa. Patton said, "war is hell", but we in America haven’t had the opportunity to see the effects of large-scale ground combat since the first Gulf War (and war may be too strong of a word used to describe that conflict – it implies that there are actually two sides fighting).

Regardless, Qaddafi's field commanders (possibly one or two of his sons, probably with some direction from Qaddafi himself) committed to a campaign of speed and brutal force. It's sort of the equivalent of pulling your goalie in the last five minutes of a hockey or soccer game and putting an extra offensive player on the field in hopes of driving deep into the opponent’s territory and evening the score. Unsurprisingly, it's a very risky strategy. It has put his armor dangerously far from their supply lines, which are exposed and spread out over hundreds of kilometers. Tanks need a tremendous amount of fuel, and without infantry support they are susceptible to specific types of close range attacks. In urban environments, a handful of men with Molotov cocktails can cripple a tank if they are acting with little or no regard for their own safety or survival

Although it will take months, or even years to finally ascertain the correct sequence of events, my suspicion is that when Qaddafi's armor was moving into Benghazi they were entering a trap. Former Libyan soldiers (some say as many as 8000) were being held in reserve near Benghazi under the leadership of Libyan generals loyal to the uprising. The tanks that reached the city were rolling into the teeth of a resolute and ready resistance.

The French and American air strikes that took place yesterday and today were devastating, and they certainly saved civilian lives, but I suspect that even without them the Libyan resistance would have been successful in its defense of the city.

The real advantage of the airstrikes is their emotional effects. Pro-Qaddafi soldiers who yesterday or the day before were convinced of Qaddafi’s inevitable success are now more likely to abandon Brother Leader and his dwindling forces. That, I feel, will be where the ultimate success of the coalition efforts is seen. Not in the planes and tanks that they destroy, but in the message that they send to the remaining Qaddafi loyalists – It's over.

As I said before, the final victory will belong to the Libyan people – they are the ones who will ultimately remove Qaddafi from power.

So there it is. No Fly Zone over Libya.

I wasn't crazy about the idea, but when the Arab League backed it I was somewhat mollified (and pretty much assumed that it was inevitable).

It'll be interesting to see who gets to enforce it. The nearest US carrier is in the Red Sea, and can't do it without flyover permission from Egypt. The French have a Harrier/VTOL carrier in the Med, and the British have a Helocarrier nearby, but neither is ideal for air-to-air combat against dedicated fighter jets.

Qaddafi should do some good speechmaking tonight.

Gaddafi’s gift to the Middle East.

It’s a funny thing, but Gaddafi has really done us all a favor here.

As I said yesterday, he has secured himself a place on the list of history’s most hated leaders. Like a predator who shits in the carcass of his prey to spoil the meat for those who come after him, Gaddafi has done his best to ruin his country - one world or none, you might say.

I will not waste print with accusations of malfeasance - there will be plenty of time for that in the days and weeks to come. Instead I want to extend a measure of thanks to him on behalf of the Middle East.

Thank you Gaddafi.

Thank you for reminding the other dictators what tyranny looks like to the rest of the world.

Many years ago you made yourself into an icon of sociopathic megalomania - this week you have taken that to it’s logical conclusion.

Sure, the scale of your destruction won’t reach the magnitude of Pol Pot, or Mao, or Stalin, or Mussolini, or the other butchers of the 20th century. What will set you apart from them is the extent to which it is being watched by the world.

You unleashed ruthless foreign mercenaries on your own people and within hours the pictures of the dead and wounded were spread across the internet.

You made incoherent mumbling denunciations from underneath an umbrella on a rainy night and the whole world was mocking you before the sun was up the next day.

It’s not what you did, it’s that we all saw it as it happened.
You are now a symbol of what not to do.

If, for example, the people of Syria start to flood the streets of Damascus demanding their dignity and their basic freedoms, Bashar al-Assad will have to choose his course of action carefully lest he be labeled "another Gaddafi"

The Iranian government must now step a bit more gingerly when dealing with their own angry youth in order to distinguish themselves from the wickedness of the Libyan regime.

Bahrain and Yemen now have to second guess the potential repercussions from their own acts of violence against their subjects and citizens.

Force is no longer a reliable guarantee of regime survival, and brutality is harder and harder to enact unnoticed. The cost of control has risen sharply over the past few days.

Gaddafi has given the world, and particularly the Middle East, a striking lesson in what no longer works.

(Minor follow-up - congratulations Brother Leader, the statisticians over at fivethirtyeight.com have determined you to be the #1 ranked dictator)