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My Gaddafi letter in the INDY

 
_A Gaddafi victory would teach a terrible lesson_
 
You headline your front-page story "Why won't the world help us? – Libyan rebels plead for intervention" (10 March). I couldn't agree more.
 
Ben Ali and Mubarak went because they or their minions or their armies were not prepared to murder their own populations en masse. Gaddafi, however, is. If we now fail to act in ways that help the free Libyans to beat him, and he triumphs, with unimaginably terrible consequences for the Libyans who dared with desperate bravery to oppose him, every dictator in the world will learn the lesson.
 
Every dictator will ask themselves: "Am I being violent enough? Am I going as far as Gaddafi did? For, if not, then I'll probably lose; whereas, if yes, then I'll probably win."
 
Is that really the lesson we want the world to learn from the Arab Spring?
 
 
My letter [published as the lead letter in the print edition of yesterday's INDY] is the 5th one down, here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-perspectives-on-the-census-2238533.html

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