In a League of Its Own

One little problem with taking our marching orders from the Arab League, writes Claudia Rosett. It ain't exactly the good guys:

Little publicized fact: Right up until the Arab League suspended Libya’s participation, due to Gaddafi’s highly visible slaughter of his own people, which country held the annually rotating presidency of the Arab League? Why, Libya. It was Muammar Gaddafi who played host to the Arab League’s summit last March, welcoming the worthies in lavish style to a gathering attended by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

That tells us something about the character of the Arab League, a club of 21 Arab states plus the Palestinian Authority. Among its more moderate members are such countries as Morocco, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. Among its — shall we say — more troubled and troubling members are Syria, Sudan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1945, the Arab League has been on balance one of the modern world’s most enduring clubs of despots. Its abiding preoccupation, apart from a lot of internal squabbling, has been blaming the miseries caused by its own despotisms on the sole full-fledged and enduring democracy in the region — which is Israel.

None of that would suggest the Arab League is well-equipped to guide the Arab world into a democratic era. For the most part, it does not represent the people of its member states, but their oppressors...

In that case, let 'em do their own fighting.