BY CHARLES ONUNAIJU

THE diplomatic twisted tongues of Washington and Brussels (European Union capital) cautioning restraint in Egypt’s 18-day revolt that ousted their main point’s man, in the region. Mr. Hosui Mubarak has given way to straight and hard talk in the case of Libya , whose eccentric leader, Muammar Ghaddafi has traditionally annoyed and irritated the powerful capitals.

Presidents Barrack Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron have given unambiguous marching order, urging the Libyan mercurial leader to get lost from his country. Even the United Nations Secretary General, the nosy Korean, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon whose homeland is the last frontier of cold war division has dutifully echoed Washington and Brussels, urging the Libyan strongman to vacate office and hinting that charges of crime against humanity might be slammed at Mr. Ghaddaffi.

The American led North Atlantic Treaty organisation (NATO) week convened a meeting to discuss Libya.  Article five of this cold war dinosaur is clear that its concern is principally to stage a collective military reprisal against any attack on one of its members. It is difficult to imagine how the Libyan situation threatens the 16 members’ organisation or any of its individual members.

The video footage of several international news channels on the Libyan situation has been a caricature of the huge and popular mass protests in Egypt , Tunisia , Yemen , and Bahrain that was and is still beamed at our living rooms.

Strange figures of over 1000 dead, several wounded and nearly 20,000 streaming into exiles in the neighbouring countries, yet not a single video footage of the carnage of this frightening scale. The dead victims of Mubarak’s Police bullets were widely shown and competent medical authorities issued up dated reports on casualties.

Could the rebel or opposition-held Eastern city of Benghazi , show footage of the regime atrocities as claimed, since they control it.  For all the impoverished evidence of the regime’s massive crack down of demonstrators, hard line rhetoric from Washington , Paris , London and Berlin is all that is on offer.

Not relying on the rag-tag Libyan opposition and few army defectors, United States of America, Britain, France and their colleagues in NATO are making frantic military preparation to directly invade Libya and possibly overthrow Colonel Ghaddafi in a similar way that Saddam Hussein was deposed.

It is only in the case of Libya , Colonel Ghaddaffi was not pinned with territorial ambition and even his modest chemical weapons programme was destroyed when he started a rapprochement with the West few years ago. As there are no smoking-gun international or extra-territorial crimes to hang on the Libyan maverick leader, he is accused of killing his own people, with very little evidence except for massive and sustained media hype.

But beyond the hype of the Libyan condition with a generous drama added to it by Mr. Ban Ki-Moon- led United Nations that have acted and spoken like an arm of US state department, what is the real sense of urgency and motive that Libyan regime must fall.

Colonel Ghaddaffi awash with oil money have puffed beyond his shoulders. He made a distinct political career in annoying the West and assaulting their values.

For the United States of America , Ghaddafi’s serial finger-poking on the face of a hyper-power (courtesy of former French foreign Minister Mr. Vederine) for which former President Ronald Reagan tried to punish him) is a forbidden apostasy to a liberal value that must be redressed.  For Britain, Ghaddaffi’s forage to the Northern Irish rebellion must have its pay back time.  But more fundamentally Ghaddaffi’s permanent affront and spiteful vituperations against the Israel Zionist regime must somehow be halted.

And given that corrupt Arab regimes who are open clients of the West have come under popular revolt and are falling like domino one after the other, means that the vitriolic anti- Western regime like Libya must fall along so that the message is not sent out and understood that regimes that lean on the West while it shortchanges its own people are not the only vulnerable ones.

Ghaddaffi was the soft underbelly of the anti- Washington/Brussels regime in the region. Ghaddaffi’s high visibility and eccentricity makes him far more vulnerable than the shrewd Syrian leader Mr. Bashir Assad or the hard and less-wordily Iran strongman, Mr. Ahmadinejad.

In addition to the fact that Ghaddaffi’s eccentricity has not usually complied with Western defined international diplomatic etiquette, Libya holds about 36 billion barrels of crude oil in reserves only after Saudi Arabia and a “moderate, peaceful and democratic regime” in Tripoli would ensure that the oil flows to Washington/Brussels and their satellites.  This will be, apart from the lucrative contract of their oil majors that would rush to the Libyan oil fields.

No doubt, the Ghaddaffi regime is in its twilight because its adversaries are both ruggedly determined and heavily resourced with the most fearsome machine of organised violence. Already the media-hyped Libya’s volunteer force would be necessary façade under which the Washington-led NATO would march on Tripoli.
Long before his current travails, Colonel Ghaddaffi has taken self-immolation route to counter revolution.

He and his sons and daughter got too cozy with power. The formal structure of government became largely a caricature, while his family wields the real power. He completely overshadowed his colleagues who shared the dream of the revolution with him. On the world stage, Colonel Ghaddaffi is the bold and most recognised face of Libya rivaled only by his British educated son, Mr. Seif Islam. Ghaddaffi’s eccentricity is compounded by annoying verbose meddlesomeness as to when he foolishly proposed that Nigeria should be broken along religious and ethnic lines.

While showmanship is necessarily a part of international diplomacy, Colonel Ghaddaffi took it to the extremes. He embarrasses and annoys his hosts with his female body guards and the Bedouin tents that he carries along on foreign trips. Ghaddaffi sometimes support worthy causes, but his support can be an embarrassment. Since his dream of a United Arab nation evaporated, he has turned to a bogus African Union government scheme, provocatively pestering his colleagues in the African Union to dissolve their governments to one supra-regime, where he imagines himself the king of kings.

But nothing in Ghaddaffi’s misdemeanor justifies the cruel plot of Washington/Brussels/ Tel-Aviv to sow discord and instability.  The orchestrated evacuation of foreigners in Libya is a very crafty alibi to act a long prepared script which is obviously to invade Libya , topple its leadership and establish a pliable and malleable corridor in an increasingly hostile region.