One of my favorite articles from the selection, albiet from AP, focused less on what happened in Libya, and more on what's next for the United States. While one of our biggest foes has been taken down, there are still other dictators, foreign leaders, and regimes that we have on our radar.
The Castro regime, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Kim Jong Il are just a few.
However, the article also discussed the concern, or benefit, when the United States becomes "one major power among many competing for influence and markets." The belief that eventually the United States will have ultimate control over just about every aspect of trade and strategy.
Another article, again from Associated Press, discussed the logistics of how Gadhafi was brought down. The air of a "new Libya" emerged among the people, as they celebrated with guns firing. I enjoyed this article simply for it's straightforward fact telling. For someone who hadn't been keeping up much on the happenings in Tripoli and Libya, the sort of bullet-point, concise writing technique is ideal.
As for the Oregonian's coverage of Gadhafi's death, Syndicated columnist for the Washington Post David Ignatius offered these words:
"What Libya needs now is "nationhood," which isn't as simple as it sounds. The secular states that emerged in the Middle East after the Ottoman Empire were mostly military dictatorships parading under the banner of Arab nationalism. Yet they were founded on something larger than tribe or sect: the idea of a transcendent Arabism that had room for Christians, Druze, Alawites and the rest. Indeed, you can argue that the history of the Arab world over the past century has been a search for some such organizing principle as an alternative to the Sunni caliphate."
Overall, I'm disappointed in the Oregonian's reliance on Associated Press, but their updates from the source are timely and continual. Keeping the reader informed is key, and although it's not their own material, The Oregonian does just that.