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My wife was living in Libya when Khaddafi staged his coup. Her family, like all foreigners, were expelled shortly thereafter.

She wants to return for a visit now that Libya and Khaddafi have come clean. She tells me the beaches are fabulous.

I marvel at how quickly the world can change. If you had told me in 1984 that in 20 years we'd be buddies with Poland, Romania, and Libya, I would have tried to get you into a psychiatric hospital.

Although the Libyan gov't has indeed changed its tune and (hopefully) joined the civilized world, there are still quite a large # of nutty Islamists over there. .....so I think I'll wait a bit before thinking about surfing their beaches.

Yep, the change is incredible. .....the fall of the Soviets, the Islamization of Western Europe, the pro-American sentiments of many in Eastern Europe. Making those predctions in the early 80's would certainly elicited some laughs.

But in retrospect I think the most important event of the past quarter century was the fall of the Shah and the subsequent rise of radical Islam, and Carter's ineptitude in dealing with it from start to finish. It convinced Islamists that the U.S. can be messed with without consequence, and thus encouraged the spread of this disease that we're now trying desperately to eliminate.

"She tells me the beaches are fabulous."

Yeah, I remember some sort of song about that, something kinda catchy and finger-snapping, let's see... something like "From the halls of Montezuma/To the shores of Tripoli..."

Maybe that had something to do with Moammar's turnabout, on top of the liberation of Iraq, hm? Catchy tune that took on (shall we say) fresh currency...