culture is that so much pride on a show that you vote for something less there's the taliban bad guys vicious beginning libya's national transitional council has announced the country's liberation from the kicked off each paper showing what kind of country. get up sometimes you see a story and it seems so horny you think you understand it and then he lives something else and you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything is off you don't know i'm charming welcome to the big picture. download the official anti up location show i phone the i pod touch from the i choose up still. life on the go.

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live to. follow the welcome to cross talk computor a little in our spacious beginnings libya's national transitional council has announced the country's liberation from the good dollar figure skater ship what kind of country libya will now become is anything but clear will be ruled under islamic law and will the rule of law prevail in the wake of gadhafi is killing and his national unity an illusion with so many factions vying for power. to take you. live. to cross libya's future i'm joined by daniel serwer in washington he's a professor a real lecturer at johns hopkins school of advanced international studies also in washington we have paul coring he is a foreign correspondent for the globe and mail and in new york we go to katie he is a journalist political cartoonist and author of the anti-american manifesto all

right gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want to me very much encouraging but first what are libya's prospects moving forward well you know as you mentioned in the beginning the road ahead of libya is anything but clear and i dare say it is all because of duclos city the place city which has a company and the death of moammar gadhafi as well as the entirely been campaign as the media continues to chew over the ghoulish details of the close leader's death we're taking back to the history of libya's ties with the west which reveal the democracy and humanitarianism were really on the agenda from a time when qaddafi was branded the mad dog of the middle east to a period when his relations with the west warmed and all of the elections were absolved by price of defense and oil deals this is what senator mccain had to say about libya only to hear is ago ties between the united states we're going to take a short term in recent years and not long after libya had to stop. partnerships with a whole slew of western leaders the libyans rose in defiance of gadhafi israel and

the west flashed the responsibility to protect card and launched in a dimension in support of that uprising seven months later the mission is complete the manhunt for gadhafi drawing to a close by these very rebels but the west has helped to arm we came. now there's much talk about the future that faces libya where there will be able to preserve its domestic unity aleck's the government that can show itself to be different from the barbarity which has marked the rebels' recent actions and finally avoid being doled out to foreign stakeholders who are very many competing elements within the t.n.c. and different political philosophies i hope those of played out in the democratic way otherwise the alternative is some ghastly descent into war many say it was the hate for qaddafi which coalesced libya's fractious forces perhaps it is for the fear of seeing a country apart then to see. jovial promise on sunday to nightly be under the law

of sharia and we'll just have to see how can this have to democracy well let's talk about democracy first i want to go to ted ted what kind of democracy can you possibly make in a libya that is just offered a civil war like this it hardly has any state institutions whatsoever. well obviously anybody who claims to be able to predict the future of this new regime would just be telling lies and making up stories but that said you know this is going to be a for medical challenge we're not even really sure if democracy is what the t.n.c. has in mind now that they've taken power and certainly they're prepared the origins suggest that that's not necessarily in the cards but certainly even if they do they are serious about forming a coalition of all the various factions and tribes and political factions that created the existed during the forty two year reign of more market there's no telling where this is going to go it is just so hard to cobble together such of

vast country and i think a lot of people are unaware of exactly how big libya is and how fractured it is it's not going to be in a zakk parallel to iraq but i think we can see certain parallels ok paula how does a country like libya that really has me have really many state functions i mean it's it was all based on one man and his family for forty two years i mean don't they have to work on state building before they start building democracy or can you build a democracy without a few you know. no i don't think you can and i think perhaps as the tenants. of the media and outside observers kind of see democracy is something that gets installed or built almost overnight you know societies in transition even in a twenty first century that that's. difficult our view is process and at this stage libya needs sort of civic civil society peace.

the beginnings of economic renaissance democracy maybe a peace and it may be slowly growing peace that starts early but that there is no likelihood of an immediate democracy any more than there's a likelihood of an immediately functioning economy this is going to take a long time progress is going to be slow it will be fitful there will be setbacks the nightmare scenarios exist as well ok well that doesn't sound very optimistic daniel if i can go to you what do you think about building a democratic state with respecting the rights of all with this alleged it looks very clear from the video that it's being oh it's been put on the you tube and elsewhere of the murder of khadafi i mean is the national transition council getting off to a good footing there. i'm much more hopeful than my colleagues are i've been in libya i've talked with the libyans they're not going to accept another dictator. i don't think there's any reason why they should accept another dictator it is a long hard arduous road to democracy but they've laid out

a road map in their constitutional framework document it's much clearer than what had been laid out in tunisia which just successfully held its first elections it's much clearer than what has been laid out in egypt the current leadership has made it clear that it will not run for future office and frankly libya has vast resources not only the oil and gas in the ground but the money in western banks khadafi is going to finance the next regime in libya so there are no guarantees here let me be clear this is a long and arduous road but i think there's a good chance that libya can go down that road it should do it carefully it should do it slowly it shouldn't rush anything but you know the killing of canarsie from westernised was extremely brutal and murderous and

a legal as well probably a dream question a lot how you want to gently nearly all you want is you spend illegal is no no no i don't think that you can i don't think you can hold or the transitional council responsible for what was brutal. murder and made in fact be a war crime but i mean let's let's be clear here this is this is the end of a conflict and it's pretty clear that. there's lots of the fighting factions were only barely within the chain of command so i mean i think to focus on without defending what. seems to be a murder and a work ride but this time how to paint the entire transitional effort with that it's unfortunate it's terrible when the murder of protests when we do that also is probably quite convenient isn't it if i go to you ted i mean i guess we won't hear

a lot about lockerbie we won't hear a lot about rendition and we won't hear about other things that the bush administration and obama administration had to do with of war on terror but the passage of it's apples and oranges i mean legally what is the way this is going to read you will see this great stuff forget the role of the united states in this in what essentially was the murder of khadafi after all this was a drug american drone plane that attacked his convoy alongside a french wall warplane and these two and so really this was a joint french nato u.s. murder khadafi the fact that he was technically alive as he got out as he scrambled out of his convoy hardly negates the role of the united states in his murder and he would not have been murdered had that airstrike not occurred so this is this is a this goes part and parcel to the assassination of osama bin laden in pakistan you know the obama administration's enemies have

a way of just being disappeared and dumped into anonymous graves and obviously you can't help but ask yourself if there are not a bunch of inconvenient questions that would be asked at a war crimes trial at the hague that perhaps because ours would rather not see asked what do you think about that you could probably do three hundred to these. trials ok paul first and then you call her something and you were tara cleo you want you to pose that sort of thing rhetorical all you want you could say you know could actually it still be in power if there hadn't been a united nations security council mandate i mean what you're trying to do what you're trying to do is hang on what you're trying to do is some. the entire process by stringing together a bunch of things and saying you know there are errors. ministration is somehow responsible for the guess of all these people and you can make that argument but you're not going to find any support from me on it daniel you want to jump in there

but i mean a drone plane is not a son i think and i think this argument about this calling of of of the killing of qaddafi the. the military action against his convoy is murder is just nonsense it's no murder in any body's terms i be glad to see you don't but don't your own since the drones are designed you know if you can still drones are designed to kill it's just a nation there was no to clear are designed to limit people and they are clearly not very was not at war with libya it was an assassination to use it is like a foreign leader who could have been captured alive. you want it to spawn then you . i beg to differ i'll beg to differ on that subject i just don't think there's any sign that there's a war crime involved here i don't think it's murder i think it's it's part of an ugly process we call war the murder was in the ambulance so far as i can

tell by a young libyan and you know maybe he should be he should be held responsible for that but i just don't think that the attack on the convoy always go after the selfish never the big i am and i i don't believe anybody will ever prosecuted that way. all right gentlemen we're going to we're short break and after that show broke will continue our discussion on libya state with r.t. . but i. was struck with the idea possibly i do want to be on new zealand you know

really going to see them there among the trees yeah if you want to have sex go and have sex. the emission free cretaceous free zones for charge free. range from the free. free stews to free him down the road free blog to play video for your media project a free media to r.t. dot com. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so sleek you think you understand it and then you glimpse

something else and hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't. park was a big picture. taken . while the measure crossed i'm carol about to mind you were talking about libya after gadhafi. came. to the so. i might have to go back to paul in washington on the country's awash with arms right now is this a major concern for you as we see some kind of civil society state building going on because you know it's a lot easier to pick up a gun then let it go and plus with being so much to so many people disenfranchised

for so many decades they have power right now and they in power in numbers and weapons this is could going to take a long time to disarm this country if it's ever going to happen at all and yeah you know i think that's very true and i think there's two elements to. this sort of fact that everybody in libya is armed. the first one is as you say there's a you know unless people. are satisfied. quickly and that's hard to do that it's very easy to breed dissatisfaction people have put up with you know shortages of food and water and electricity and all the rest of it in the middle of the uprising in the rebellion but very very quickly there will be demands for normality and in the absence of normality the absence of power in the absence of salaries in the absence of that sort of thing it will be very very easy to have sort of armed factions taking on each other trying to seize think that that's aspect one and that's dangerous and up the second one is a far more difficult. danger to measure and that is.

arsenals included some very modern very sophisticated weaponry in particular thousands maybe as many as twenty thousand surface to air shoulder fired missiles and that of course is the is the. weapon of choice for any radical group anywhere any terrorist organization the ability to take down civilian airliners and or military aircraft with these shoulder fired weapons is huge a very dangerous. and nobody knows where they are already do you want to jump in there daniel. yes it is day and i think it's very important to look at the record here and the record of the national transitional council is that it successfully made arms disappear from benghazi within

a couple of months of the revolution there and the way it did that was to was to ensure people security i was in tripoli last month there were a lot of guns on the street or also some policeman and the situation was really settling down and went to a big celebration of martyrs square lots of women and children out in the evening for that celebration the way you get rid of the guns in the hands of the public is to ensure security and i think the m.d.c. has a good record on that the question of this is my history was there and you see much else right on that all right ted you want to jump in there just basically we saw the same exact situation in africa. we saw the same exact situation in afghanistan where. everybody has weaponry certainly it's possible to build a civil society but a heavily armed society the united states has eight guns for every man woman and child in it and yet you know the streets are not are not running with blood so

clearly it's possible but that said we are talking about the the basic need for some law in order is job one for the new libyan government and that if they can provide that then they're going to be able to move on to the next step which is rebuilding the economy and really building a political civil society and maybe some form of representative democracy later comes later but you know afghanistan people are still waiting for law and order ten years after the invasion that's the kind of thing that they don't want to see in libya do you think nato still has a role here i mean as a result of the united nations security council nine hundred seventy three it chose to side in a civil war a national transitional council do you think that if the national transitional council in its current form gets in trouble that nato will continue to support it against the three factions who could rise up in the next weeks or months in libya because like we've all agreed this country is awash with weapons and there's a lot to fight for and one of them is oil. well you know i don't think so i don't

actually think there's a need a roller and i think you'd be a mistake of nato thought there was one but i do think there's a role for libya's neighbors and for nations in the area i live is going to need lots of help there's no question that this country is rich and it has the resources to provide an. excellent living in a fine economy for its people but that's not going to happen overnight and it's going to be fundamentally important for other arab nations and european nations and america frankly to be there and be able to provide the kind of everything from technical support as you get oil fields running again to. to perhaps aid in setting up car and civil society you know there will be limits for how has been seen on the screen trying to build nations around the world and can you give me one

example where it works why would work in libya well you know there are places where it works and i'm not just talking about. if you look at places like east timor where frankly the australians took the lead it's slow it takes a long time people need to sort of dig in for a generation they need not to be seen is interfering they need to help you need to not do the kind of things like we've seen in haiti where i outside countries bail out every five years or even other and i agree they're going to get it if there was nobody there would be no plenty of examples where it's doesn't work there are plenty of examples where it doesn't work but there's no point being just sort of miserably pessimistic either you can look at the play well i mean has work why should be pessimistic there's so much oil there go ahead ted i mean it's worth fighting for our ticket. it's it's well it's hard to go run being pessimistic you're usually right when you are so it's worked out for me for a long time. unfortunately you know i think that you know going back to the

original question i think that the nato coalition would not hold together for that for a mission that would involve siding with one faction in a civil war it's one thing to do what they did at this point to try to see to let the t.n.c. seize power essentially replaying what happened in the fall of two thousand and one in afghanistan when the when nato essentially served as the defacto air force for the northern alliance which allowed the northern alliance to seize kabul and take over the country but this is exactly what they did in two in two thousand and eleven in libya but we're not going to see that seems easy that's linear that's something that the french and the in the italians and the americans can get behind but once this oil for the oil starts it's going to be a whole different matter ok let's bring up another issue that a lot of people talk about is not see the entries are i think. you can answer that i want to talk about the islamic card everyone likes to bring up. in connection so . you'll go ahead. i think the interesting thing about the state building

process in libya is that it's being led by libyans who haven't asked for a need to help who will accept some help from the europeans for america countries from the united states but they are the ones designing is they're pushing the program and to me this makes an enormous difference it seems to me would would be uncertain the lead you have a much better chance for success than if this were an external intervention ok i mean how do you feel about that members of the how long will that last canonically ok well i was i'd like to look at really the transition council itself because i mean there's still a lot of really murky figures there i mean people there don't have very good attitudes towards the american cia because of rendition i mean ties alleged ties to al qaeda and what you know what will be the flavoring of islam in the country it

moves forward i mean we heard on sunday they know there's going to be a lot of peppering of that maybe that's just to keep people on board but i mean is this building a democracy or you know these people going to be elected i mean where is the vetting process here i mean khadafi is gone fine but where do we go from here what do you think about that. the vetting process is called elections in a revolution you don't want the very top economies of the us in a revolution or in a revolution there is no there is no election whoever strongest and manage to kills their opponents is the de facto leader so whether if these people are ruffins or not worst the libyan people are stuck with them the real question is going to happen in the next stage economically you know libya is a rich country if and when it can extract its high valued crude oil out and put it if it doesn't have the capital to do it themselves which it doesn't seem like they will they are going to need to rely on foreign oil concerns the only the french or the italians who have most of the concessions and got involved it's actually as

a quid pro quo in this conflict so that's where the current where the problem of its foreign exploitation influence comments comes into play as we saw in iraq going back to the one nine hundred twenty s. and if i thing is that as long as libyans are in charge things night be ok but libyans aren't going to be in charge if they can't control their own resources what he knew what he said so far do. you know i mean. you know so far the libyan people with plenty of mistakes and plenty of difficulties for a very long summer as this sort of raid tag bunch of fighters got themselves organized and got themselves together and you're quite correct with a lot of the musical energy to support right it's well as well apt absolutely absolutely and and just as the american revolution had a lot of outside support too you can try and smear the libyan air first before it

gets under way but the reality. of the libyan effort. so far the libyan people have handled this very well i think they've got an even chance of continuing to handle it well. it's premature to prejudge the i think i think history is a very i think that i think there's history shows it shows a lot of reason to be worried but i mean you can't really take over another country with foreign assistance and then claim that you have full power look at the northern alliance in afghanistan they to taji carbonated factions took over but they've never been able to close the deal the same thing happened and now with shia dominated iraq installed by the united states you know history shows that really in civil war you have to let the factions the the indigenous factions fight things out to a conclusion and that did not happen here there was

a lot of foreign interference and so we don't know if the benghazi based rebels can govern this country and bring in and form some form of coalition that will be able to govern and gentlemen we've run out of here there's a little example just starting in libya many thanks my guest today in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are keep you next time remember cross-talk rules.