There are some relationships that are just doomed from the start: Bobby and Whitney, Amy Winehouse and drugs, Lindsey Lohan and alcohol, etc. It seems as if every time Ms. Winehouse says “no, no, no, no” to rehab she says, “yes, yes, yes” to climbing psychedelic trees. Although she claims that her penchant for indulging in the forbidden fruits of society haven’t had deleterious effects on her work, her mere appearance tells another story. For those of us who enjoy her tough British contralto voice, her personal decline into an abyss of hopelessness has hurt us deeply. Although many of us have tragic flaws, it becomes problematic when we mix two ticking time bombs together because the explosion is that much more dangerous. In the world of geopolitics, the partnership of Hugo Chavez and Muammar Qaddafi is more dangerous than P. Diddy and Jenifer Lopez in a NYC club.

As the world sits and watches the Libyan crisis devolve into a civil war, many policymakers, activists, and concerned citizens are worried about the potential merger of power between Qaddafi and Chavez. According to Chavez, the U.S. and other Western nations are exaggerating the events in Libya to justify military intervention. Maybe Chavez is smoking the same dope as Charlie Sheen because his rants are becoming slightly comedic. His offer for international mediation is nothing but him thumbing his nose at the international community. The Venezuelan leaders attempt to mediate is nothing more than a ploy to help a friend hold on to power.

The protests in Libya and the rest of the Middle East and North Africa are organic grass roots movements that were sparked by dictatorship, human rights violations, wikileak cables that demonstrated government corruption, unemployment, extreme poverty, and exorbitantly high food prices. Numerous eyewitnesses and identity documents of captured soldiers show that Qaddafi is employing foreign nationalities to attack Libyan civilians. In fact, on February 22nd, there were reports of mercenaries from Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Mali , Sudan,Tunisia, Morocco, and possibly even Asia and Eastern Europe, fighting in Al Bayda. A 21-year-old university student called Saddam claimed mercenaries had killed 150 people in the previous two days in the city of Al Bayda. Mercenaries from Chad, Mali and Niger were reportedly working in the rest of eastern Libya on suppressing the protests in Libya. Additionally Qaddafi warned against the use of Facebook and issued warrants for the arrest of prominent Internet activists and bloggers.

When you mix the craziness of Qaddafi with the brash and unabashedly anti-Western Chavez you create a cocktail for disaster. I doubt Chavez can bring peace to Libya, if anything he will exacerbate the situation due to the fact that he is pariah in the international community. Perhaps Chavez, Qaddafi, and Mubarak should seek out some relationship counseling with Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pmEV_oAwCs