London Free Press

When my grandfather went off to war in Libya, he was there for a good reason. He hadn't volunteered but had been conscripted, yet he never had any doubts as to the righteousness of his task.

Guys under the age of 25 had been taken by the army more than a year earlier. Dave was 30 and had three children. But Britain needed the soldiers. First Egypt and later Sicily and Italy, but it was in Libya that he did most of his shooting.

He didn't want to die and he didn't want to kill, but he was prepared to do both to drown the monster of Nazism. There are some things, he later told his grandson, worth giving your all for. Some things worth the ultimate sacrifice. Can we really say this about the internal squabbles of a rancid and deranged dictator and his people?

Frankly, I would weep to see one Canadian die for the sake of modern Libya. There, it has been said. Libya is not worth one Canadian life.

Yes, of course I want peace for that country, as I do for the entire world, but only a fool would assume that we know who are the bad guys and who are the good. Col. Moammar Gadhafi is clearly a witless thug, but for many years now he has withdrawn from international terrorism and even tried to play the honest broker in the region.

British, American, French, Canadian and other world leaders obviously thought so, as they went to see him to proclaim the importance of their new best friend. And just in case we think it's all a western plot, the man was an icon of the left for decades. He financed the Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain, the IRA in Northern Ireland, numerous Palestinian terror groups and Islamic revolutionaries the world over.

In his own country he was a hero, as his Green Book and Green Revolution galvanized the Islamic world. The CBC aired an extremely expensive series about democracy, and had nice things to say about the Libyan leader. Now, suddenly, some of his people have rejected him and Canada sends aircraft and soldiers to bring him down.

It speaks soiled volumes that the hypocritical Arab League cries for western help and then condemns that same western help for intervening. "Don't hurt civilians," they demand after years of ignoring the plight of Arab civilians slaughtered by their favourite leaders. Civilians will be hurt, and the West will be blamed. Not only Gadhafi but many in the Islamic media are already calling us “crusaders” for daring to become involved.

Personally, I have no problem with being labelled as a crusader, but I have all sorts of problems with trusting that the end of one madman's rule in the Middle East will lead to the introduction of a pluralistic, moderate, progressive and pro-western democracy. In this part of the world, political nature abhors a dictatorial vacuum. In other words, authoritarians seem inevitable.

Libya is not worth one Canadian life. Nothing will change, and unlike in the days of my old grandpa, this is not our war. Libya, again, is not worth one Canadian life.

— Read Michael Coren's blog at canoe.ca/corenscomment

michael.coren@sunmedia.ca