More trouble from Qaddafi?

Canada's contrarian historian, Jack Granatstein, asks a troubling question: What happens if Gadhafi survives?

As for Gadhafi, if he survives as now seems likely, we can expect him to pay hard cash to import the arms he needs from countries such as Syria, Pakistan, and North Korea, to resume terrorist operations against western targets, and to kill every one of the rebels he can. (The rebels, a motley crew, will slaughter captured Gadhafi loyalists.) And if the world is distracted by a conflict elsewhere (another Israeli-Hamas-Hezbollah war, for example), Gadhafi will likely send his re-supplied and better trained troops against the pro-democracy enclaves in eastern Libya.

Muammar Qaddafi was a source of trouble for much of the world during the 1980s, as he exported terrorism from his home base of Libya. Over the past two decades, however, he had been conspicuously quiet, minding his own country's business and largely refraining from antagonizing the west. However, if the Libyan leader survives the current civil conflict, will he return to his old ways? If Granatstein is right, this is a definite possibility. However unsavoury a ruler Qaddafi is, the current international effort to oust him could end up backfiring on everyone.