I agree that Libya ostensibly seems to get the better of the deal of normalization; but there are some pluses for us: The surrender of a considerable stockpile of WMDs; The settlement payments of the Lockerbie murders; The real possibility that Libya’s relatively easy restoration to 3 million barrels of export oil production will do some part in mitigating the global stranglehold of OPEC. But most importantly, the introduction of cell phones, dish TV, and the Internet have stirred the ostracized Libyan people, who really were subject to the madness of the Green Book (e.g., everyone once required to raise a chicken). When I visited there in April, I was struck how almost no one I talked to off the record had a single good thing to say about Qadhafi. As one Libyan put it: “We sell oil and don’t even have the asphalt to fix the holes in the road from the airport.” And with much of their oil near the border with a teeming, often hostile, and largely oil-less Egypt, the 7 something million Libyans in an empty Texas-sized country now seem to be almost relieved by the presence of the 6th fleet out in the Mediterranean. I wrote about some of these strange issues in an article “Libyan Holiday” in the next City Journal. The ruins at Leptis Magna and Sabratha are spectacular. Even more remain unexcavated, and — like much of the country’s oil – ironically in no small part were kept pristine for three decades under the sands by Qadhafi’s incompetence.