[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

you are saying that all this is about events more than 20 years ago?

Nope, not saying that at all, infact no-where in this thread have i said that. If you are referring to this, the OP, "committed against his own people during the ongoing popular uprising and for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103", then see underlined word. Secondly, those aren't my words, in case you weren't sure. Do i jump on the Hague's ICC's band wagon? Hell yea.

Why not, you know, deal with it while Libya was problematic, and not 20+ years later?

Agree, why not? However, this is worth pondering over:

During the 1970’s and 1980’s, Gaddafi was roundly mocked for an over-inflated ego of such grand proportions that he routinely spoke of himself in world-historical terms. A self-styled “Che Guevara” of the Arab world, Gaddafi mostly annoyed the neighboring despotic regimes.
They saw not a revolutionary in Gaddafi, but a competitor, someone who endangered their geopolitical influence. As such, they repudiated Gaddafi for his ill-conceived invasions of Egypt and Chad—and stepped up efforts to decrease his political power in the region. A kind of “cold peace” took hold between Libya and its neighbors for the next two and a half decades, as neighboring despots ignored Gaddafi’s eccentricities in exchange for a piece of Libya’s oil wealth.
The West did not anticipate Gaddafi’s war against the Libyan people. Neither, it seems, did the Arab states. Gaddafi hid below the radar of Western and Arab leaders for nearly a quarter of a century, engaging in a pseudo-isolationism that allowed his political activities to go mostly unchecked. After he lost his battle for dominance in the Arab world, you see, Gaddafi reinvented himself.

No longer the Arab incarnation of Che, Gaddafi retired his military garb and replaced it with royal dress inspired by Libya’s former King Idriss. Abandoning his doomed political maneuvers in the Middle East, Gaddafi now saw himself as a pan-African prophet, destined to take up the project of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and imbue the African citizens to the south with a new sense of anti-colonial zeal. An African liberator who would raise the collective consciousness of the sub-Saharan population, taking Fanon’s postcolonial message to the masses.
Thus, Gaddafi went South of the Sahara—and, indeed, all around it—and spent the next two decades there delivering populist speeches, sleeping in tents, kissing babies, organizing photo ops, bribing sub-Saharan autocrats and funding intrastate conflict. On witnessing some of his campaigns throughout southern Africa, one could legitimately wonder if he ever spent any time in his home country. As many people outside of Libya ignored Gaddafi for a very long time, the people of sub-Saharan Africa got to know him quite well.
As a result, millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa were not at all surprised by Gaddafi’s fierce repression. After all, Gaddafi had been pillaging their resources, cozying up to their dictators and exploiting their conflicts for decades before his crimes against the Libyan people caught the world’s attention.
A re-invention of sorts, and under the radar of Western leaders. 2 key points as to why nothing was done back then.
But why is that an arguement in the first place? Why was nothing done back then? Well, if we have a chance to bring to justice someone then does this question really matter in the present? Moot really.

Also i tell you that no one at an official level has said this has anything to do with retribution for events 20+ yrs ago**

Yea, so?

the events of the last 20 yrs have shown instead someone who has tried more than anything else to do business. And your citation supports that.

Where?

but surely with the war crimes commissions and talk of genocide, rather than say, trying to put down an armed uprising supported by foreign special forces, imported weapons and high tech weapons used by allies, you are referring to massacres and genocides.
perhaps you can indicate to me which massacres and genocides have taken place, and refer to some evidence of them. surely there is evidence?

Sure:

http://newafricaanalysis.co.uk/index...or-war-crimes/

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/20...12/145202.html

Oh yea and who could forget this:

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/200...ison-massacre/

In relation to the word massacre(s), isn't that what is occurring?
The massacre of his own people, systematically?
Or should we rather use a word like killing? Which would be wrong and underemphasizing the eradication, brutal at that of people who don't see eye to eye with him.