Abdul Belhaj, head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an official Al Qaeda affiliate and listed by both the US State Department and the United Kingdom Home Office as a terrorist organisation, is one of the head honchos of the NATO-backed TNC.

Not only does this known and convicted terrorist have NATO's blessing to torture, brutalise and execute any Libyan who does not submit to TNC rule - and he's been doing helluva lotta that in recent weeks - he even gets an op. ed. gig at one of the great pillars of the Western liberal media, The Guardian, to whitewash his known terror links.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/27/revolution-belongs-to-all-libyans

Before Libya, this bogus war on terror/Al Qaeda, though utterly, transparently fake and misguided, might have had at least a smidgeon of logic. Now, it doesn't even have THAT.

Other than to people living in Arab countries does all this actually matter?

If an Al-Qaeda friendly regime takes power in, say, Libya, why should I care?

Protagonists of a "war on terror" will reply that such a regime could give shelter to terrorists who will launch attacks on Western countries.

Newsflash:

People afflicted with the Jihadi ideology are constantly attempting to launch attacks on Western countries.

I am not naïve about this. We need to be vigilant. And so far this vigilance appears to have paid off. Successful terrorist attacks on Western countries have been few and far between.

And, to make a more controversial point, in the decade since 9/11 America and Europe have been their own worst enemies. Most of what ails them are self-inflicted wounds.

So why don’t we in the West leave the Arabs to sort out their own problems as best they can while we focus on fixing our problems?

And we can simply give a friendy warning to whatever regime takes over in Libya. Don't let your territory be used as a launch pad for terrorist operations against us or we'll bomb your oil infrastructure to smithereens.

The best way to fight Islamic terrorism is to free outselves from reliance on Arab - especially Saudi - oil.

Well said Killarney.The war on terror is a lie.This a the Western Banking,military,industrial war of imperialism.Every country they invade has either oil,gas,lithium,drugs or is on a route to make the exploitation of energy viable.

The real terrorists are in Wall St and the US Federal Reserve.They are both the financial and war mongering terrorists.

Stevenlmeyer said
"The best way to fight Islamic terrorism is to free outselves from reliance on Arab - especially Saudi - oil."

'Nuff said really. I quite agree.

It seems our business presence in the middle east is the main cause of terror anyway- particularly through what they believe as being the rich powerful west screwing the Arab world over (ignoring of course that the riches stakeholders in the Middle East oil industry are Arabs- most notably, the Saudis)- but most of the people that believe that aren't educated enough to know- so it doesn't matter.
The high probability that much of the push for our military actions come from these same powerbrokers and oil-rich governments wouldn't help (such as the Wikileaked cable of the Saudi government encouraging the USA to 'take action' on Iran). The fact that some of these governments are unpopular would only make matters worse.

Only strict separation from the fundamentalist world and the moderate, secular world will really help ease tensions- there will be no pressure to conduct practices or transfer of people or resources that would increase tensions, and after a few generations, the fanatics over there won't even know who we are- just some old story about devils from far away at most.

Most importantly, we will have no plausible hand in anything that goes wrong there- whether our presence was for the better or not.