Having been kept up by the scenes in Tripoli last night I could not help but smile for the people of Libya. In what was described as a surprise for the international community and the rebels themselves, it seems that the torturous reign of Colonel Gaddafi is finally at an end. His sons have been arrested and most of his army have all but given up, although there have been reports today of sporadic fighting on the border between Libya and Tunisia and in some neighbourhoods near Tripoli.
Although it will be very difficult to predict the future for Libya, as a team of rebels with no experience of running a country will inevitably run into many complications, what this does signal is a victory for those of us in Britain (both on the left and right) who called for and supported liberal intervention when Gaddafi began to brutally crack down on protests earlier this year. This was not like Iraq and Afghanistan, we argued. The Libyan people badly needed us and if we stood by and let Gaddafi massacre his people we would have missed an important historical moment.
