RAS LANUF, Libya  It is a bromide of dictators like Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi that they stand as the only bulwark against forces of chaos and religious militancy. The tragedy of Libya’s uprising, its genesis in peaceful protests over a government’s disdain for its people, is that Colonel Qaddafi’s own brutal repression from Tripoli east to Ras Lanuf and beyond may make the platitudes reality.

The protests upending the Arab world have ranged from the climactic success of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt, to the brutal crackdowns in Syria, whose government forced just a handful of demonstrators to sign pledges never to protest again, and to the uneasy standoff in Bahrain between Shiite protesters and a Sunni royal family. Libya has begun to emerge as its own model  the darker side of the forces unleashed this year by the immolation of a young man in the Tunisian hinterland.

Everyone here seems to have a gun these days, in a lawlessness tempered only by revolutionary ebullience. Young men at the front parade with the swagger that a rocket-propelled grenade launcher grants but hint privately that they will try to emigrate if they fail. Anti-American sentiments build, as rebels complain of Western inaction. And the hint of radicalization  religious or something more nihilist  gathers as the momentum in the three-week conflict clearly shifts to the forces of one of the world’s most bizarre leaders.

“This better not go on any longer,” said Dr. Salem Langhi, a surgeon who was working around the clock at a hospital that was abandoned as Colonel Qaddafi’s forces rushed in. “It will only bring misery and hard feelings among people. Losing lives and limbs doesn’t make anyone optimistic.”