By Chad Arias / Staff Writer

Free from tyranny (Wikimedia Commons)
By Chad Arias / Staff Writer
“Ding dong, the witch is dead!”
Munchkins all over Libya are dancing and singing throughout the streets to celebrate their freedom from the tyrant, Muammar Gaddafi.
The “Wizard of Oz” serves as a perfect metaphor for the intense, violent, and otherwise depressing events leading up to the demise of Gaddafi.
Instead of a falling house, NATO shot a predator missile that ended up obliterating Gaddafi’s fleeing convoy.
From there, Libyan accounts say they found their ex-leader hiding “like a rat” in a drainage pipe.
The swift hand of the Libyan rebels took the life of their fugitive leader instead of taking him to trial.
This initial action committed by the rebels seems to have upset members of NATO and, more importantly, the United States government, who was originally sympathetic to the rebel cause.
In recent history, Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak, the respective dictators of Iraq and Egypt who also met their inevitable end, fit into the same category as Gaddafi—cruel, ruthless and downright evil.
Despite their deplorable deeds and reputations, however, they were still taken alive in the end and put on trial.
America, in particular, views these actions as the essential steps toward the establishment of a democracy in a country originally subjected to a dictatorship.
Libyan rebels broke away from the crowds and did away with their dictator the best way they knew how: death.
These actions sent a clear message to the countries a part of NATO that the citizens of Libya will deal with their problems using their own ways.
Since Gaddafi’s death, his corpse has been put in a freezer on display for Libyans to view.
This act may sound barbaric to our Western culture, but in some Arab nations, public executions are a common practice.
Fear has since come over NATO due to the realization that they don’t have control over the current situation.
When a dictator of 40 years is suddenly slain, there is usually a massive power vacuum that forms as a result.
In Libya’s present state, a new regime with an anti-American dogma can easily take power.
Rather than watch this happen, the U.S. government would much rather set up a pawn of their own on the throne of Libya to benefit themselves as they’ve done so many times before.
America has a long history of interfering with the affairs of other nations for their own personal gain.
In other words, the reasons for America’s involvement in foreign affairs have not always been the most righteous.
In the 1950s, for example, we experienced the Korean War, something of which was largely based on the irrational fear regarding the spread of communism.
This fear then lead us to take part in the Vietnam War and ultimately ended with the U.S. giving arms to Osama Bin Laden in hopes that Afghanistan would fight against the threat of Soviet occupation.
The outcomes of the events listed above reveal the high cost of American involvement in matters that don’t concern us.
There were 54,246 lives lost in Korea, 58,000 in Vietnam, and well over 72,000 casualties so far in the “War on Terror,” not to mention the thousands of soldiers already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Our government may cling to noble causes about human rights, but this is merely a scapegoat in the hopes of achieving much darker ulterior motives.
Greed, control, power, and influence are all motives that fuel American involvement in foreign affairs.
For example, one might find it rather odd that in the past 30 years, America has shown an interest in the Middle East.
Is it merely a coincidence that the Middle East controls more than 60 percent of the world’s oil supply?
All of sudden, the “Arab Spring” phenomenon seems to have taken hold in the Middle East top-poling dictators that previously held anti-American sentiments.
Whatever America’s reasons are for interfering in world events, the key point to consider is the lives they have sent to achieve this goal.
The U.S. government must have a due cause to put its own citizens in the line of fire, and Libya is just one example of this.
Whether they will start to move forward or fall backwards is left entirely up to them.