HUNGRY:

The U.S. Can Help Libyans Defeat Gadhafi (PAUL WOLFOWITZ, 2/21/11, WSJ)

Moammar Gadhafi is one of the world's most despicable despots. For 42 years he has held his subjects in a prison of fear that makes Hosni Mubarak's Egypt look free by comparison. He has trained and supported killers like Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh, fueling horrific wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other African countries that have killed hundreds of thousands of Africans—an estimated 200,000 in Liberia alone, 5% of the population. And it is he—not his agent Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was welcomed back to Libya as a hero last year—who bears ultimate responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and the deaths of 270 innocent civilians.

It is difficult to understand why the U.S. is equivocating when it should be expressing clear support for the amazingly brave Libyans whom Gadhafi is slaughtering. There is no way of knowing what may follow the Libyan dictator's demise, as Gadhafi has made sure that no alternative leadership could even show its face, that no civil-society groups could organize, and that foreign mercenaries are empowered in place of the kinds of professional militaries which have acted with distinction in Tunisia and Egypt. The danger that Islamist groups—the ones most able to organize under these conditions of extreme repression—may exploit a Libyan power vacuum is real. But that is no reason to hope for a continuation of Gadhafi's brutal buffoonery.

The U.S. should come down on the side of the Libyan people—and of our principles and values.