In what may be--and certainly is hoped to be--his last national address Col. Muammar Qaddafi today vowed to crush Libya's rebels as the Chinese government did theirs in Tienanmen Square in 1989.
I will never forget reading understated George Will's lead sentence in his column, when it looked like the Chinese people might really force the government to democratize: "These are the most momentous days in mankind's history." For George Will to write that was...impressive.
And then the Chinese government massacred the students.
The difference between Beijing, 1989 and Tripoli, 2011 is that the Libyan rebels armed themselves. They knew that Qaddafi would slaughter them, they decided to die fighting, not just protesting. The Chinese students, the Chinese people, did not think the People's Liberation Army would open fire on them. Indeed the army had not. Unforgettably, the "Lone Student" forced a tank to detour around him, and then...stop. The Libyan rebels seized a tank, and drove it into an army barracks. It would be as if the Lone Student had seized that tank and driven it straight into Zhongnanhai.
The Chinese government won the battle of Beijing in 1989. Col. Qaddafi will not win the battle of Tripoli.
