Despite all his shortcomings, the one thing Mohammar Qaddafi accomplished in Libya was a nearly perfect 100% literacy rate, practically the highest in the world and certainly higher than the U.S. or any of the NATO members who brought his regime down.
Libya is now a third world nation in every way. Armed bands of brigands have carved out their little fiefdoms in every part of the nation. There is no law in the countryside.
Libya was a strict Islamist state under Qaddafi. The new elections have continued this tradition, even deepened it. Now Libya is a strict Islamist state. One of the founding principles of Sharia Law is that women cannot be educated.
No doubt the literacy rate in Libya is far from what it was only a year ago. Soon it will, by definition, be less than fifty percent because the female half of the population will be banned from even learning how to read.
Libya was not a good place to live under Qaddafi, by all accounts. Is it better to suffer under the rule of a central government or under the equally ruthless rule of lawless ruffians? According to the West and our media, clearly the latter is preferable.
No one anywhere can deny that the fastest path to prosperity in any society is education. The vast majority of the terrorists and rebels and rioters in the Middle East are young men.
At least in Libya, they had book smarts. They ran a clean, efficient civil war. In the future their young warriors will be without the most rudimentary skills of reading and writing. Without even this thin veneer of civilization, they will be that much more likely to embrace the barbarism of terrorism.
We should have invaded Libya with an army of knowledge. Instead of giving the rebels mortars and armed helicopters and a no fly zone, we should have armed them with books and knowledge.
The thrill of an illusory freedom is fleeting. The thrill of learning is forever and always. A literate population can change. An illiterate one cannot.
An endless column of yellow school buses plowing across the open desert toward Tripoli and Benghazi might have accomplished far more than tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Maybe the next uprising will go better.
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