Bill Carmichael: Dictators left in the lurch

But I must have been wearing my soothsayer’s cap in this column last week when, in a piece about the momentous events in Egypt, I wrote: “It is one thing toppling a comparatively benign dictator like Mubarak, but an entirely different task to take on the ruthless and desperate monsters that rule Iran, Syria and Libya.”

The ink was barely dry on the page before Colonel Muammar Gaddafi unleashed his death squads against unarmed civilians.

The Libyan leader has since vowed to fight to the “last drop of blood” – making it clear that the lives of his own people count for nothing when weighed against his mad lust for power.

If the Arab Spring does spread to Syria, you can expect much of the same bloodshed, and we have already seen the brutal way the mediaeval bigots who rule Iran deal with democracy protesters.

It is precisely those countries that need reform the most where freedom will find it hardest to take root.

Gaddafi must be bewildered, however, not only at the pace of change in his own country, but also how all his best chums and cheerleaders in the West have suddenly abandoned him.

Who can forget the then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s trademark sickly grin as he warmly shook hands with Gaddafi after signing the infamous “deal in the desert” in 2004, shortly before major gas and oil deals were agreed with Shell and BP?

Or the grubby plan negotiated by the last Labour government and the SNP administration in Scotland to free the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, supposedly on compassionate grounds, although it certainly didn’t harm commercial deals being negotiated at the time?

But Gaddafi’s links with Left-wing groups and individuals in the West go back much further.

Like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi systematically looted his own people’s wealth and used some of the proceeds to bankroll “anti-capitalist” and “anti-imperialist” movements around the world.

So, not only was Libya directly involved in terrorism on its own behalf, such as the Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people in 1988, and the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984, it was also major proxy sponsor of terrorist groups such as the IRA and the PLO. The semtex and weapons used by the IRA to murder thousands was a gift from Gaddafi.

The laughable Workers’ Revolutionary Party, which once attracted the support of Vanessa and the late Corin Redgrave, was also funded by Gaddafi.

But none of his cheerleaders in the West have offered a peep of support during his latest troubles. How ungrateful!

The lesson for dictators everywhere is that the Left are fickle and fair-weather friends.

Home truths

What’s the point of David Cameron swanning around the Middle East pontificating about democracy – especially as no-one seems to be minding the shop back at home?

While other governments moved swiftly to rescue their nationals from Libya, the British Government’s response descended from dithering incompetence to black farce.

As a result, Britons were stranded for days in dangerous circumstances before the UK finally got its act together.

The irony of this is that the “Arabists” in the Foreign Office, who pride themselves in their knowledge of the region (and who are notoriously anti-Israeli), don’t have a clue what is going on.