While the al-Megrahi fiasco still boiling away, this little bit of news has simultaneously bubbled up to the surface, but received almost no mention:

Libya Wins Swiss Apology For Arrest of Gaddafi Son

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz apologized to the Libyan government on Thursday for the brief detention last year of a son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, clearing the way for a return to normal diplomatic ties.

“We are apologizing for what happened to Hannibal Gaddafi and the two sides agreed to form a committee to discuss the matter,” Merz told reporters in Tripoli.

Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi said the two countries had agreed on a “normalization” of their relationship, a decision that was confirmed by Merz.

The row began when Hannibal Gaddafi and his pregnant wife Aline were arrested in a Geneva luxury hotel in July 2008 on charges of mistreating two domestic employees. Armed police forced open their hotel suite after being alerted to repeated altercations.

Libya cut back oil supplies to Switzerland and withdrew more than $5 billion in assets from Swiss banks in 2008 over the incident.

Geneva’s prosecutor dropped the case in September last year following the withdrawal by the plaintiffs of their formal complaint after they reached an undisclosed settlement with the Gaddafis.

A Geneva lawyer representing Libya and the Gaddafis said in April they had sued the Geneva authorities for more than 500,000 Swiss francs. A hearing on the civil suit was due next month.

Switzerland’s government said last month it wanted to hold a summit with Gaddafi to defuse the row and that Merz was prepared to meet the Libyan leader soon.

A Swiss statement said that two Swiss who have been detained in Libya will be able to leave the country “in the next few days.”

Swiss officials have named one of the Swiss prevented from leaving Libya as Max Goeldi, director of Swiss-Swedish electrical engineering conglomerate ABB in Tripoli, but have declined to identify the other.

“Both countries agree to set up independent arbitration to investigate the circumstances of the arrest of Hannibal Muammar Gaddafi and his wife,” the statement said, adding that Switzerland was prepared to apologize for the “unseemly and unnecessary” arrest of Gaddafi and his family.

I’ve reproduced it here in full for purposes of debate and discussion… but in keeping with Tim’s point on blogfluff, I won’t venture forth any conspiracy theories – except to suggest that we’re not getting the whole story on what’s going on with Libya. What have the Libyans got that’s inspired everyone to cater to their interests?

Between The Surrogates, Gamer, and now what’s being touted as James Cameron’s masterpiece, Avatar, this has been a year for pop culture promotion of proxy precepts…

OK, that was maybe a bit too alliterative for its own good. But I find it intriguing that such a robust theme is running through mainstream pop culture, and at the same time that the implications and consequences of surrogate warfare are being served up in daily doses of current affairs. Think coerced and unwitting suicide bombers, private military and security contractors, reliance on local militias in Iraq and Afghanistan. Think robotics in war, remote battlefield participation via drones and mechanoid substitutes for flesh and bone combat. You get the picture.

Trailers have been hard to come by so far (see the Visual Stream section here at CTlab for a couple of tasters pulled from YouTube). Michael Conroy, on the 15 minute 3D trailer that previewed in theatres on 21 August, writes:

The clips flitted from a battle command room, to a frantic forest chase scene, to lush magical glades and soaring, floating mountains between which dragons soared majestically in their hundreds. It’s impossible to describe in words the sheer beauty of Cameron’s realisation of his hybrid world of science fiction and fantasy, but as you observe the sheer scale, magnificence and care that has gone into the creatures and settings, you realise you’re experiencing a perfect moment of fantasy indulgence. You realise that yes, this is what science fiction and fantasy should look like. You may have had the same feeling when you first saw a lightsabre drawn, or those wondrous first moments of magic in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Cameron’s boyhood fascination with fiction really shows, but to me the world feels like some sort of beautiful merging of The Legend of Zelda, Halo and Bioshock. I was utterly awestruck by the majesty of the world presented, for the first time since Peter Jacksons’ interpretation of The Lord Of The Rings.

Interesting, too, that these are all science fiction movies. A cathartic genre?

I know some of you have been wondering, well, are they important or aren’t they? There wasn’t much clarity on this the last time we debated it. This time, those who’re involved are pretty heavy hitters.

Will the fog lift? Will reason prevail?

All I have to say, really, is thanks to everyone for all the book-grist. 🙂

Go read, at Foreign Policy’s blog empire:

• Stephen M. Walt, “The Safe Haven Myth.”
• Peter Bergen, “How Realistic Is Stephen Walt’s Realism?“

Shocking. This, from Malcom Dando, via Robert Evans and Reuters:

GENEVA (Reuters) – A leading expert on chemical and biological arms control called Wednesday for urgent efforts to stop new mind-altering drugs developed for medical purposes from being adopted by the military for use in warfare.

In an article in the U.S. journal Nature, British academic Malcolm Dando said civilian researchers in many countries seemed largely unaware of the danger and urged quick action to adapt a key arms pact to head it off.

“In the past 20 years, modern warfare has changed from predominantly large-scale clashes of armies to messy civil strife,” wrote Dando, citing the Bosnian conflict of the mid-1990s and current fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chemical agents and even gene therapy being developed in civilian life science laboratories “are particularly suited to this style of warfare; it is not hard to find people in the military world who think they would be useful,” he declared.

Read the rest here.

OK, really, this is it until the beginning of September. This one was too important to pass up: an AP report that the ISAF leadership has reached out to Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow. Some of the report:

BRUSSELS (AP) — Top U.S. officials have reached out to a leading Vietnam war scholar to discuss the similarities of that conflict 40 years ago with American involvement in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is seeking ways to isolate an elusive guerrilla force and win over a skeptical local population.

The overture to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stanley Karnow, who opposes the Afghan war, comes as the U.S. is evaluating its strategy there.

President Barack Obama has doubled the size of the U.S. force to curb a burgeoning Taliban insurgency and bolster the Afghan government. He has tasked Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander, to conduct a strategic review of the fight against Taliban guerrillas and draft a detailed proposal for victory.

McChrystal and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to the country, telephoned Karnow on July 27 in an apparent effort to apply the lessons of Vietnam to the Afghan war, which started in 2001 when U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The report quotes Karnow, as well as James McAllister, a political scientist at Williams College, who pointed out – among other things – that:

– In both wars, security forces had an overwhelming advantage in firepower over lightly armed but highly mobile guerrillas.

– Insurgents in both cases were able to use safe havens in neighboring countries to regroup and re-equip.

-He pointed to McChrystal’s order to limit airstrikes and prevent civilian casualties, linking it to the overuse of air power in Vietnam which resulted in massive civilian deaths.

I predict this will inspire multiple doctoral dissertations in the next five years, comparing the two wars (and others). Good thing I’m ahead of the curve. 😉

Read the rest here. While we’re comparing COIN lessons, make sure you take a peak at this latest report from friend and colleague Bill Rosenau at RAND, co-authored by Austin Long: The Pheonix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency.

That’s it, I’m outta here. See you all in a month.