William C. Goodfellow: For Gaddafi, a Home on St. Helena
The writer is executive director of the Center for International Policy in Washington.
In an effort to break the stalemate in Libya and avoid further bloodshed, President Obama asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month to tell Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi that he will remain alive if he leaves Libya. Medvedev, in a news conference, said Russia would not take him in.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam, who certainly belong in The Hague — but at what cost?
Obama wants to avoid a repeat of the four-month battle to dislodge Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo. Thousands of civilians were killed, at least 800,000 were forced from their homes, and that country’s financial capital and largest city, Abidjan, was laid to waste.
Neither the United Nations secretary general nor the French military was able to talk Gbagbo out of his bunker. Facing the prospect of life in prison, he felt that he had no choice but to fight to the bitter end. Had they been able to offer Gbagbo a way out, the standoff might have ended months earlier. The way out would have been permanent exile.
In 1815, Europe had a similar problem. Napoleon Bonaparte was responsible for 17 years of devastating wars across Europe that took the lives of as many as 6 million people. He had escaped from his exile on the island of Elba, in the Mediterranean, and was able to raise an army of 200,000 before his final defeat at Waterloo....