I know Guy Rundle’s work isn’t all that popular with a lot of commenters here; but this is his latest dispatch on the Libyan mess:
With Muammar Gaddafi’s forces now beginning to slowly beat back and possibly overwhelm the rebel forces through superior firepower, especially air power, the question of outside support through the means of a no-fly zone and other measures, has become urgent — if it is not already too late.
That seems to me to be even more incontestable than it was when he wrote it yesterday. It’s looking increasingly clear that Gaddafi has a good chance at snuffing out the revolution, or at least dealing it a huge setback, in the process destroying and ending many lives.
Rundle is also on safe ground, I think, when he says of responses, or rather a lack of effective response:
Yet at this point where the actual revolutionary crisis point has occurred, the moment where a revolution marks a break point between the old and the new, where things must be thought afresh, right and left in the West have become paralysed, unable to live up to their own principles, and retreating into consoling narratives, or even into abject silence.
The right’s paralysis was encapsulated in an editorial published in The Australian, stung into response by repeated charges that it was willing to start two wars for “the freedom” of peoples that didn’t ask for them, while turning its back on people who are clamouring for a limited and much less involving form of support. How did they respond to the charge that Libya demonstrated that the “Bush doctrine” was a comforting fantasy? By retreating into fantasy about Bush and Reagan “……”.
So these sterling examples urge us on to take action? Er, not exactly: “The Australian is heartily encouraged by the overthrow of dictators and the emergence of democratic movements in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere in the region.” That’s it.
The cognitive dissonance is total. By celebrating the fantasy notion that Arab people rising up were “inspired by George Bush”, any present obligation to the people themselves can be written off.
Large sections of the right, and also significant groups of the left-liberal pro-Iraq war group have retreated from any engagement with the Libyan rebels, under the banner of “no foreign intervention”.
But this is to obscure the categorical difference between “intervention” — with its suggestion of a massive and autonomous operation, performed without reference to forces on the ground — and “support”, which involves assisting a group of people who are making their own revolution, and who have requested assistance.
That there has been a request for support is without question. It has come from the interim government in Benghazi. Abdel Jilali, Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister, has made this explicit. They want outside forces to “help to protect Libya’s people from Gaddafi’s assault and help put an end to his war”.
Once that request has been made by some group with reasonable claim to legitimacy, the situation is categorically different to an act of intervention. It does not have to be honoured, but nor can it be ducked. The right can please themselves on this — hypocrisy is ultimately fatal to a political movement — but, sadly, many on the anti-imperialist left show no recognition that a request for support requires a different political response.
That this accurately represents much left opinion is also incontestable. For instance:
Solidarity with those fighting for their democratic and national freedom is our obligation.
We can best discharge it by demanding that the government at long last takes its hands off the Middle East and its people, leaving them to settle accounts with their own rulers.
This seems to be a common position on the left; “the Libyan people have to make their own revolution”.
It seems not to answer, perhaps not to want to answer the question of what meaning is given to “solidarity” if that revolution is violently crushed. There’s a fair bit of evidence that Gaddafi’s regime has more than enough materiel, military strength and money to do so.
Perhaps economic sanctions might do something eventually, but there will always be the huge counter-pressures available to the regime via its control of oil, if that can be effectively seized back. Meanwhile, the regime, represented by Dr Said Gaddafi, once the bright young hope of Anthony Giddens and the New Labour crew at the LSE, is spruiking the bizarre anti-terrorist rhetoric of official Western discourse. Similarly, some left voices seem alarmed at the potential for fueling Al-Qaeda. Or something.
It’s hard not to conclude that a lot of this left rhetoric is much the same as the exhortations coming out of the Obama administration.
Kate Hudson writes:
They are fighting to determine their own future and it is they themselves who must and will make it.
But, as Rundle says:
The trouble is, in making that revolution the Libyan people are, as free revolutionary subjects, asking for material support. In which case, the refusal to even consider arguing for such amounts not to non-intervention, but to a refusal of solidarity.
To “let them make their own revolution …” in such condition is not a guarantee of autonomy, but to treat a people like children. It is to go beyond respect for national self-determination, to a rigid respect for national boundaries more characteristic of realpolitik conservatives than internationalist radicals.
Lenin’s Tomb doesn’t want “the West” to be “the principled agent of emancipation here”, but seems blind to the irony of writing “we are left with disembodied slogans”. Indeed.
No one is forming an Abraham Lincoln Brigade or an International Brigade. No one is forming an International Solidarity Movement. No.
No. No one is. They’re talking about imperialism and solidarity. On blog posts.
Or as Rundle says:
The affirmative anti-imperialist position has become its opposite, in a hyper-interconnected world. It’s now a manifesto for passivity and fatalism.
That all this left rhetoric defaults back to a fetishisation of national sovereignty (and isn’t it precisely the sovereignty of the people versus the sovereignty of the national ruling clique at issue in Libya right now?) is clear from this woeful effort at The Guardian:
There is no point is repeating that Libya is not our country or our business. It was always going to be bloody one day. I find it incredible that Labour ministers, as they simpered in Gaddafi’s presence, could have thought he would lie down like a lamb should his people rise against him. But unless we redefine words, he is not committing genocide and his brutality is hardly exceptional. If the rebels win it should be their victory, emerging from a new balance of power inside Libya. If they fail, they must fight another day. There is no good reason for us to intervene.
There may be “no point… repeating that Libya is not our country or our business” but aside from vacuities, isn’t that what this writer is actually saying?
I think there does have to be scepticism about the use to which concepts such as “responsibility to protect” are put, and no doubt the Camerons and Sarkozys of the world have ulterior motives. But I have never been one to argue that there are no circumstances whatever when there can be legitimate military intervention. In that I have been consistent over the years, while rejecting the rhetoric of the “pro-war left”.
But this strikes me as an exceptional situation. It is extremely unclear to me how these various left authors might react if, as appears quite likely, the result of what is now happening is a victory for Gaddafi. Keep their heads down, I imagine. But at the moment we seem to have a lot of self-referential tropes masquerading as acts of solidarity. What if Rundle is right?
All that matters is whether the request comes from legitimate leadership, is strategically viable, and can be limited in scope. Those conditions appear to have been met.
In any event, it now appears that it is much less likely that anything will be done, and Gaddafi will be left to his own devices, to do as he wills. Because that’s really the only way of interpreting what is now happening.
Ps: I have a lot of sympathy for Kevin Rudd’s position in all this. Aside from the usual desire to cause trouble manifested in the “rift” stories by some Labor “sources”, it appears plausible that Gillard’s distancing of herself from Rudd’s remarks actually represents a desire to be closer to the American position. I don’t know how that plays with the “anti-war left”, since, objectively, as might be said, they’re on the same side as Robert Gates and Julia Gillard, perhaps for different stated reasons. But all this goes to show, I think, just how fractured the usual default ideological lines of division are by these sort of events. It seems that the assumption of actual agency by Libyan people has thrown a huge spanner in the works of Western political discourses, on lots of points of the political spectrum.
NATO squibbed, USA squibbed, it’s disgusting. All that rhetoric about freedom means nothing if they don’t act soon. They’re scared of a couple of bad headlines if they miss a anti-aircraft battery and hit a house or something. This comes from a mob that regularly bombs weddings etc with pilotless drones in Afghanistan/Pakistan. That sort of horrific mistake happens in warfare, but what’s the point of all that hardware if you don’t use it to help people who need you to use it urgently?
Oh that’s right. Western imperialism is the point, yet again, and the not-bombing in Libya in the face of Gaddaffi slaughtering his own population is the proof of the pudding.
Rundle is worrying over nothing.
Just as Rwanda paid the price of US failures in Somalia, Libya will be the fall guy for Afghanistan and Iraq.
There will be no fly over and Gadaffi will provide “stability” using weapons that contribute richly to western shareholders.
Yep, because the West does nothing, and Gadaffi stays in power, or maybe there’s some sort of fudge where after he’s finished slaughtering people, some more “acceptable” regime figure disguises the tyranny and we’re back to business as usual. USA/NATO Western Imperialism (fully endorsed, to all intents and purposes, by Her Majesty’s Loyal Western Left), in this instance, means that by not responding to a request for support with anything meaningful, they take sides against the Libyan people in revolt.
Rundle:
1. An argument can be made that the revolutionary leadership is legitimate.
2. It is questionable whether the anti-Gaddafi forces can prevail without actual foreign boots on the ground. Once the West makes any commitment it will be practically impossible for the west to limit the level of its commitment until it establishes sufficient force to garrison Tripoli.*
3. Practically it is possible for the West to garrison Tripoli but from a strategic point of view that would look like Baghdad or Kabul and therefore would not be a victory, but would be a defeat.
In short, only one of Rundle’s conditions appears to have been met.
____________
* Unacknowledged by commentators is why the Gaddafi regime succumbed so quickly in Benghazi yet appears to be stable in Tripoli. It cannot be ruled out that Gaddafi is popular in Tripoli. That being the case, the west, by supporting the revolution, may find itself garrisoning a hostile capital city.
Btw, if anyone wants to read something both laughable and tragic, try the argument that “soft power” is the best way to go:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/08/soft-power-west-intervene-libya
Of course Said Gaddafi’s fracking alleged PhD thesis was also about how soft power and niceness would spread democracy.
Unbelievable.
Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq. Yep, Western forces have sure liberated a lot of people there. Ah, but this time it will be different eh?
So, John, what do you say when and if Gaddafi wins and the revolution is crushed?
A modest proposal, based on Katz’ observations:
If Tripoli is happy with Gaddafi’s rule, but the residents of Benghazi aren’t…
why not assist the residents of the parts of Libya that clearly don’t want Gaddafi’s regime, without necessarily assisting them to conquer Tripoli.
It worked for the Kurds, didn’t it?
1905 – No. 1917 – Yes.
2011 – No. 20?? – Yes.
The Libyans need an improved revolution.
I’d be happy with RM’s suggestion, so long as the revolutionaries are interested in partition. From what I’ve heard so far, however, there is no support for partition. The people of Benghazi are nationalists, not separatists.
On the other hand, the Kurds are a distinct ethnic group who have never wanted to be part of Iraq. However, the British refused to listen to them.
This is a complete repudiation of the complaints about Bush going into Iraq – he could (and did) argue exactly the same points and they were reasonable points if we take Rundle’s fame.
The general principle I work from is that once the military is used, the outcome is always worse than it would have been.
Really, even if you take out Gaddafi’s air capabilities, then it is still very likely that his land forces are sufficiently strong enough to crush the rebellion. From the POV of the legitimate government of Libya this is a civil war, not a freedom fight and any legitimate government would take arms against its own people in this case.
Finally, I must restate the point that no matter how bad you think it is going to be, foreign military intervention always makes it worse. Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, but I almost sure that there was considerable feeling on this very blog that nevertheless, the invasion caused the unnecessary (and additional) deaths of more than a million people.
How can we argue reasonably “this time, fer sure!” just because we sympathize with the aims.
I don’t think Gaddafi will ever regain the power he had before. However, that’s no reason for complacency. All the dithering is sickening but predictable. I think this will be protracted and bloody unless we get some international solidarity and decisive action. First time for everything.
What is Merkel talking about? Is he joking? I know Libya’s pretty tribal but people from around there tell me Gaddafi’s more or less universally loathed.
Maybe it’s a Freudian thing, but Kim has misquoted Richard Seymour from Lenin’s Tomb. He was actually asking why the US and Europe “should be the privileged agent of emancipation here”, which goes precisely to the point he is making about what type of “solidarity” we are talking about here.
In the absence of our side being able to organise solidarity from below (e.g. like that seen during the Spanish Civil War), we are not actually organising solidarity but calling for benign imperial intervention. Indeed, in the case of Libya we are talking about the same militarised states that were only a few weeks ago calling Gaddafi a rehabilitated ally of the West, even as he brutalised his people.
The effect of Western intervention will be to give major powers the opening to dictating events in at least one country in a region that is fast slipping out of their control. To imagine that intervention (even as “minor” as a no-fly zone) will not come with such a price tag is to shut one’s eyes to how major power politics work.
Which leaves us with the urgency behind calls for intervention: to put a stop to the killing & to rid the country of a dictator. In his book Violence, Slavoj Zizek makes a powerful case that the Left liberal attachment to humanitarian intervention is predicated on deadening serious analysis of the underlying causes of such conflagrations in favour of immediate military involvement by great powers. That such intervention strengthens the hand of the most destructive nations (the ones with the most power) is as good an argument as any that we shouldn’t be keen on it. Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent act of all.
Kim @7 asks what “if Gaddafi wins and the revolution is crushed?”
Well, then Gaddafi wins and the revolution is crushed. Which would be horrific and tragic, but revolutions are full of such risks by definition.
At least that wouldn’t automatically strengthen the hand of US and European foreign policy in the region, providing them an entree they would like to use (but so far have been too scared to).
Better that the West’s military pretensions in the Middle East and North Africa are as weak as possible. Look what happened the last time they felt confident to intervene to “topple a dictator” there…
Comparison with the Iraq invasion is odorous. That invasion stank like a truckload of rank fish, we all know that. This should be a clear case of urgent humanitarian intervention. Besides, it shouldn’t be a full-scale invasion, it should be an operation to provide the rebels with the arms and support they’re screaming out for. The more they are supported and thereby legitimized, the more likely will Gaddafi’s hirelings see the writing on the wall and defect. The situation is vastly different from Iraq. For a start the international opposition to Gaddafi’s regime is more substantial and clear-cut.
And from the right-wing realists at STRATFOR some good reasons why a no-fly zone could be a disaster.
Seems to me the only sure way to help the rebels is to mount a ground invasion — and who in Libya is calling for that?
I think the problem is that the Western powers, and the Left for that matter, look at the revolutionaries and ask themselves “who are these people”?
Liberal interventionists need a coat of arms. What’s Latin for “This Time, For Sure!”?
For the main design, I propose a halo’d vulture bearing a sprig of hemlock, supported by two F-22s rampant.
Sam:
For the genuine left they are people, and that is enough. For the western powers they are an impediment to the flow of oil, and if someone within their ranks can be found who can ensure said flow that person will be the benificiary of any western intervention.
re: the Stratfor analysis, which I read, because I am a subscriber to their service. Their first point, that a no-fly zone is not an antiseptic act, is perfectly true. But it’s no reason not to act. Nothing is antiseptic, almost by definition.
Since that article was written 4 days ago, the “limited harrassment” by regime air forces seems to have significantly escalated and Gaddaffi’s use of his air superiority has become, it seems to me, the decisive factor in turning the tide of the war on the ground. The additional factor is then the nature and conduct of the ground operation. If it is merely possible to give the rebellion breathing space it may yet be able to organise itself into something effective on the ground.
The difference between Iraq / AfPak / Haiti etc is that their people did not ask for a ground operation, but got one anyway (and one could always make the argument, although I would not necessarily agree, that papa Bush should have finished the job against Saddam properly in 1991).
I was wondering when someone on the left might get up on his hind legs and actually take a stand.
Then I read some of the LP comments. What a bunch of gutless, worthless wonders.
The people have asked for imposition of a no-fly zone, and even stronger forms of intervention if it should become necessary. Have enough confidence in them to know when and how to bringthat intervention to an end.
Christ, some of you fascist-appeasers turn my stomach. And you probably still have the cheek to call yourself’left’ ! Amazing.
fuck I hate marxist-leninist analysis of international politics. Guys, you fucked it up in 1917, you fucked it up royally in 1936, so don’t bother trying to argue either way this time around. Marxist-Leninism has nothing to contribute to international politics that is worth listening to. The people at Lenin’s Tomb need to learn that the world has changed since Stalin shafted the Spanish republicans, and now as then their analysis will always fail.
Lenin’s Tomb doesn’t want “the West” to be “the principled agent of emancipation here”, but seems blind to the irony of writing “we are left with disembodied slogans”. Indeed.
No one is forming an Abraham Lincoln Brigade or an International Brigade. No one is forming an International Solidarity Movement. No.
No. No one is. They’re talking about imperialism and solidarity. On blog posts.
Ironies are indeed in plentiful supply. You’re complaining about discussions of imperialism and solidarity on blog posts, in a blog post discussing imperialism and solidarity. You also seem oblivious to the point that I was making, which would have some bearing on your position here. You are calling for the region’s most brutal, thuggish forces to impose a military solution, though limited in principle by a UN remit, to one front in a region-wide revolution that is in part aimed against those forces. Your basis for doing so is your apparent commitment to human rights and democracy, your support for these revolutionaries. Given this, it’s of some moment whether what you’re doing really amounts to solidarity, or whether it’s a risk-free long-distance call for war of the sort that people made over Kosovo to such appalling effect, and which contributed to the moralisation of imperialist violence in the 2000s. Given that you show absolutely zero concern for any of the ways in which this could go awry, and could be used to impede the revolutionary wage, and given that you don’t appear to have done anything much about your passionate support for Libyan revolutionaries beyond calling for imperialist states to intervene militarily, it looks very much like the latter.
You quote Guy Rundle:
“All that matters is whether the request comes from legitimate leadership, is strategically viable, and can be limited in scope. Those conditions appear to have been met.”
That isn’t all that matters, and those conditions haven’t been meet. Those conditions haven’t been met, because it hasn’t been established that a no-fly zone is ‘strategically viable’ in the sense of being a good idea for Libyans, nor has it been established that it can be limited in scope – the military logic of such an intervention being to prevent Qadhafi from crushing the rebellion, it could very well escalate. Rules of Engagement aren’t by themselves sufficient. It matters that the US is currently supporting the military suppression of revolutionary political movements across the Middle East. It matters what kind of agent is being called on to morph into a global emergency service. It matters, because it has consequences for the people of Libya, and anyone who is willing to take risks with their lives without even broaching the subject has no business finger-wagging at anyone else. It also matters whether we have established, or even attempted to establish, that this request both reflects the broad thrust of opinion in the revolutionary movement. So far, there have been a number of equivocating calls from individuals in the resistance. It is not good enough to cede judgment in this situation – you still have a responsibility, whether you like it or not, to try to adjudge whether in making such a call those elements are selling the revolution a pup. It also matters whether there are alternatives. In fact, there are a host of regional actors – Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia – who are respected, who have some werewithal to assist, and who are part of a regional constellation of forces that is to differing degrees increasingly independent of the forces that have recently devastated Iraq with far more savagery than Qadhafi has at his disposal. They could provide military support, humanitarian aid and diplomatic backing for negotiations. But this isn’t even a debate in the Anglophone countries, because the assumption is automatically made in favour of US-led interventions, despite the obvious problems with such an idea.
One last thing. Simon Jenkins would not thank you for calling him a ‘left voice’. He’s a repentant Thatcherite with a libertarian streak, about as ‘left’ as John Gray.
Your position is 100% not correct. Anti-imperialist in Europe support Gaddafi against islamist-monarchist fascism !
Including sending of International Brigades …
SPANISH REPUBLIC 1936 – JAMAHIRIYA 2011, LIBYA IS OUR “WAR OF SPAIN” : NO PASARAN !
By Luc MICHEL & Przemyslaw SIERADZAN
FREE LIBYA :
USA – OTAN – “BARBUS”, DEGAGEZ DE LA LIBYE !
USA – NATO – “BEARDED”, GET OUT OF LIBYA!
INTRODUCTION of Luc MICHEL :
Western media organise a complete inversion of language, like the « novlangage » of Orwell’s 1984.
The so-called “Libyan opposition”, alliance of Islamists (muslim version of Fascism) and monarchists (far-right reactionaries), with the suport of Al Qaida and AQMI (Al Qaida au Magreb Islamique), backed by British (MI6), US (CIA) and Egyptian secret services, are falsely presented as democrats and revolutionaries …
The Libyan jamahiriyan revolution, with its total Direct Democracy, is presented falsy also as dictatorship.
Like German Nazi and Italian Fascist regimes armed in 1936 the Far-right Fascist general Franco – leading a coalition of Fascists, monarchists and religious reactionaries – and organised foreign intervention, TODAY, USA and NATO do exactly the same. They organise a Coup in Libya and after its failure they install a civil war.
Libya is OUR “War of Spain” and this time we will win it with Gaddafi and his Jamahiriya, the “Republic of the Masses” : NO PASARAN !
“SOME ANTI-IMPERIALIST REMARKS ABOUT LIBYA”
The Libyan Revolution (1969) has to be defended !
by Przemyslaw SIERADZAN (Poland) :
I noticed that in MANY points the situation in Jamahiriya resembles Spain in 1936 (during Franco’s fascist uprising against the Republic).
The following are the resemblances:
1) The mutiny is carried out under the monarchist flag, has a reactionary character, is carried out in the name of an abolished monarchy
2) The mutiny has religious character (in Spain – orthodox Catholic, in Libya – wahhabite Muslim)
3) In both cases the mutiny is led by conservative militaries, who rejected their obedience to the republic
4) The mutiny is backed by the most reactionary forces in the world (Legion Condor, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy – in Spain, US and British advisors and navies – in Libya)
5) The mutiny has started on the periphery of the state (Canary Islands – 1936, Cyrenaica – 2011)
6) The “International Brigades” are formed to defend the Spanish Republic, Libyan Jamahiriya receive international support (Pan-African brigades and forces, Arab volunteers, Pan-European revolutionary militants organising the battle of the media in all Europe)
7) Rebels have established a parallel government and are trying to topple down the republican authorities using the brute force, under conservative slogans…
9) The legend of 1936 war lives on in revolutionaries circles – the situation in Libya resembles it very, very much! Radical revolutionary militants in Europe should perceive Gaddafi-led government the same way as the republican spanish government of Largo Caballero, who had to defend himself against fascist coup by Franco!
NO PASARAN!
El libyan Pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!
WHY WE ARE FIGHTING FOR THE JAMAHIRIYA !
For the liberty of the Libyan people and women,
With the Libyan women, who has taken arms against the Islamist fascism and regression,
With the Libyan loyal Army and Militias, who battle against foreign backed “rebels” and Western neo-colonialism,
Against NATO, US imperialism, the “beardeds”, Liberty march along with US !
Like in Spain in 1936, with Libyan Jamahiriya against the Fascism of the XXIth Century, the ugly twins of Americanism and Islamism : NO PASARAN !!!
_____________________________
ELAC – Euro-Libyan Action Committees
Paneuropean Network to Defend the Libyan Jamahiriya
Réseau paneuropéen de Défense de la Jamahiriya libyenne
http://www.facebook.com/EuroLibyanActionCommittees.ELAC
elac.agitprop@yahoo.com
The leaders in the Middle East are sitting back and cheering Gaddaffi on. If he crushes the revolution with immense bloodshed their own people are likely to look at this and say” Well revolution is too hard. Best put up with what we have”
This also applies to those powers that want a “Stable” Middle East as well.
So, therefore, all the dithering over a no fly zone.
sg @23, thanks for that cogent response to the debate. I feel completely chastened and now realise the folly of not supporting the glorious record of liberal imperialism.
Those people in the Arab world who hate the US for backing brutal dictatorships against them, and even those who overthrew tyrants in Egypt & Tunisia, are bonkers. They should’ve called for the West to solve their problems.
Oh, it was already solving them. Sorry.
For once, as an ardent antiwar person, I agree with support. This is genuine grass roots revolt against a brutal, pyscopathic, nut-job ruler. If we have even the slightest shred left of our continually shouted from the roof ‘principles’ (always assuming we ever had any in the first place), then we want to aid a broadly supported new Govt taking over with the minimum casualties and in the shortest time (a lah Egypt).
Now support can take many forms without actually getting any of our troops in harms way of course. Obviously hard words to Gaddafi, like “get out and you can keep some money, stay and you get nothing”.
Plus a lot of other things can be done, like deliver a bunch of hand held anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles . Easy to do, just make contact with the rebels and arrange a drop off. Ask the Israelis just how potent these anti-tank missiles are nowadays.
At the least this sort of things will level the playing field, evening up the advantage Gaddafi has with all the aircraft and tanks that we sold him!
After all if we could do that for the Mujahideen (Taliban predecessors) why not the Libyan people?
Military intervention in a small country on the other side of the world to install a government we’d prefer? How many times has that been tried? It always leads to a bloodier mess. Anyway, with all the other wars that we’ve started over the last decade, the West just doesn’t have the capability to intervene militarily. Who could possibly have predicted that?
OldSceptic:
1. The Mubarak analogy is irrelevant. Mubarak fell quickly, without outside aid. Gaddafi hasn’t.
2. You have not considered mission creep. What is the maximum level of support you would support for the uprising? If all previous steps fail would you support invasion? To fail to consider the worst case scenario in these circumstances is irresponsible. Delivery of actual weapons systems is already an escalation above imposition of an NFZ.
3. The Afghan Mujahideen combatted foreign invaders. In Libya, the west would be the foreign invaders.
BTW, I’d be in favour of an NFZ now that the Arab League has agreed to such a thing. The tyrants who comprise the majority of the Arab League have foolishly conceded legitimacy to a popular uprising. Hopefully, that concession will speed their demise, once the significance of their concession is grasped by their subjects.
I’m looking forward to the imposition of an NFZ over Saudi Arabia.
I do also find many of these comments appalling in their basic inhumanity, and tediously beside the point in their left-wing, right-wing posturings. My feeling about responding to the calls of those in Libya – clearly the majority – who want to get rid of their despot, armed to the teeth as he is with western weapons, is exactly the feeling I would have if I saw an innocent child being beaten to within an inch of her life by a brutish adult, I’d feel a moral responsibility to intervene. It’s a politics based on an ethics – as it should be. It’s Aristotelian. I’ve always hated bullies and I don’t think of this in terms of right, left, or centre.
As to the aftermath and who gets the spoils, that might be an important consideration, but it’s not an important consideration when action is urgently required in the here and now to save lives and to relieve an intolerable situation. My solidarity is not of the left, the right or the centre – at least not in my thinking. It’s a solidarity with people being bullied and treated like shit. I know what it’s like.
Somebody has written about why we should bother about a small country on the other side of the world. Beside the fact that Libya isn’t a particularly small country, does size matter? Should we only intervene when big kids are being beaten up? As to ‘the other side of the world’, globalism, and global media reporting, has completely destroyed that ‘other side of the world’ concept. We respond to the anguish on people’s faces, right there on our TV screens, and we don’t, or shouldn’t, calculate the distance in kilometres between them and us.
We may disagree on what a flourishing state might look like, but we all agree that Gaddafi and his family are a million miles away from providing it. There are always risks involved in intervening in any violent situation, but in a situation such as this, when a people are crying out for help, how can we justify ignoring them? If this isn’t a clear-cut ethical issue I don’t know what is.
There is also a moral responsibility for those who have supplied Gaddafi with weapons, knowing full well his despotic proclivities, to undo some of the damage they have indirectly brought about. Such arms deals should be prosecuted under international law.
Maybe the Israelis should just be contracted to kill Gaddafi.
There is an odd assumption that supporting revolutionary struggles in the Middle East could be consistent with supporting intervention by those that have backed the governments (and hopefully states) being toppled or challenged.
It appears that some politico-obsessive deviation is leading to an urgent sense of ‘we must do or say something’, and limited imagination is making this into ‘we must support US intervention’, and the only way this can work is if those prior shameful instances where the Left supported imperialism were experienced as blackouts and the memories are lost.
To draw an analogy from the corruption of social democracy: it often wants to support workers, but it says that the objective ‘economic’ situation means that supporting workers means supporting bosses; as result social democracy is neoliberal, is a bosses’ party, and has convinced itself that this is how to lead workers. It is a bad way of thinking – and simply misreads the ‘objective situation’ – it reads ideological limitations into that situation. (And this is a generous account.)
I don’t have a positive position to put, and can’t list the sorts of alternatives that Richard Seymour has correctly noted, but it seems that there is a basic failure of thought that is leading to the conclusion that support for the leadership of the world’s most bloody, notorious and criminal military could ever be a sound position.
Intervene, maybe. But not, one suspects, by calling for a NATO bombing campaign.
Oh yes, a NATO ‘bombing campaign’* is just so inhumane when it’s the very thing that the opposition is asking for. These people rose up against a dictator who has obviously shown his brutality for all the world to see. This is already an armed conflict and we (‘the west’) are being asked for help by people who face being slaughtered by a vengeful despot. I don’t think that the ethical basis for armed intervention can be clear enough, unless you want to argue that there never is any basis for use of military force.
As to the ‘other side of the world’ argument, well, its not for NATO countries, is it? At least one of these NATO countries is almost entirely Mediterranean in nature; one has a necessarily large interest in the Med.; and a third views itself rather grandiosely as a semi-global power possessing a hegemonic interest in at least the western Mediterranean (FYI I mean respectively, Italy, Spain, and France). So this is exactly regional and in their sphere of interests; and their interests are suddenly found out to be in the direction of a strong power (Gadaffi) who can guarantee their “energy security” and fuck the thousands of corpses that power has to stand on.
Oh they’ll make a fine speech about brutality in the European parliament and the U.S. President will express his concern that Gadaffi has to go from the finely-manicured lawns of the White House rose garden. Meanwhile people will crap on about the level of anti-imperialist purity they possess (war is bad, m’kay?) , on the one hand, and on the other an equally bankrupt cheer squad nervously fidgets over the ‘dangers’ of intervention when they clearly cheered on two fully destructive wars launched purely from western imperialist motives. Their usually-frothing newspaper columns are swept with tumbleweeds on the matter, our own political leadership finely calibrates its position to align with its global master’s, and half the rest look to their shoes and make fine noises about imperialist ambition and oh-but-someone-innocent-might-get-killed. This would be “won’t someone think of the children?!” comedy gold if it wasn’t a tragedy being played out.
If the empty rhetoric about democracy and solidarity actually means anything – for any political ideology that spouts it – this is finally the moment we are actually being asked to prove it means something, and that our fantastically expensive military capability has a purpose beyond the bare expression of raw interests. And clearly, right and left, it does not.
* a no-fly zone involves bombing, yes, in order to establish basic air superiority, but it’s not a ‘bombing campaign’, e.g. the NATO actions in bombing key Serbian infrastructure to force a desired outcome in Kosovo.
ugghh .. can a moderator please fix my busted italic tag please.
Large segments of the left have apparently abandoned the impure terrain of politics for some morally pure domain of inaction. That is what I am taking from this discussion. If any kind of assistance offered on any terms is always equivalent to unmitigated support for US imperialism then what precisely is supposed to follow? Resting in the inertia of our own privilege is precisely the problem. Essemtialist thinking about ‘the West’ sits very well with such a stance. Has nobody considered that the non-equivalence between NATO and the UN might present a difference worth affirming?
Who’s calling for a NATO bombing campaign? That would be like responding to a bully in a house by destroying the house and hoping only the good guys crawl out of the wreckage alive. I’m not sure exactly what a ‘no fly zone’ entails, but it’s surely not that.
Of course this raises the question of what a no fly zone actually does entail. Presumably it’s telling a regime ‘hey don’t fly your planes in your own airspace’, a demand that almost begs to be flouted. And then who enforces compliance? I haven’t argued that intervention would be easy, just that it’s the right thing to do under the circs. I just hope that we could get a truly international operation underway in quick time to help the Libyans, so that no particular states will try to exploit the situation to their own advantage.
Worthy of Rumsfeld.
Quick research on no fly zones. They don’t have to entail bombing but in Libya’s case it surely would, as Robert Gates has pointed out. So, a limited, targeted bombing campaign, yes with the possibility of collateral damage. This kind of campaign was effective in Serbia, was it not? I didn’t think of that as a piece of ‘Western imperialism’ but others might disagree. Didn’t we do it to stop ‘ethnic cleansing’?
Depends on the rules of engagement.
On the declaration of an NFZ, Gaddafi could simply ground his planes. The overflying enforcers of the NFZ would have nothing to shoot at.
From what I’ve seen so far, Gaddafi’s ground forces alone are more than capable of mopping up the insurgents.
Then what, oh military geniuses?
Yes Katz, there is uncertainty and risk. Then what? You assess the risks, the goals, the available options, and figure out what to do next. But not acting at all, that’s always the most risk-free option eh?
If it’s a no fly zone that you’re after, that problem was
solved many years ago.
Oops
The solution:
SAL, in the Balkans campaign, Serbian targets were bombed because NATO deemed that in some ways the Serbian population as a whole were complicit in the atrocities meted out by Milosovic.
Let’s transfer that case to Libya. Are the residents of Tripoli complicit in Gaddafi’s actions in Eastern Libya? I thought that the official line of most western powers was that Gaddafi was an isolated tyrant.
Bombing targets in Tripoli, like bombing Belgrade, is an admission of the falsity of western rhetoric.
Katz @40,
“On the declaration of an NFZ, Gaddafi could simply ground his planes.”
Isn’t that kind of the point?
Where is your assessment?
I & U, please read the rest of the comment.
I generally agree with Tyro Rex. Katz, you seem to be dithering. You supported a no fly zone a little while ago, now it seems you’ve convinced yourself it won’t work, in spite of reporters on the ground telling us that Gaddafi’s massive air superiority is a major factor. Smug remarks about military genius don’t help matters.
As I’ve already mentioned, providing support to the Libyan people in this way might just be enough to turn the tide, and to get more people defecting from the regime. The effect on morale of such outside intervention might be a decisive factor. Anyway, what is your alternative?
Katz, my assessment would depend on the facts, at the time of the event. As I cannot predict the future, I cannot predict what my assessment would be.
The Serbian campaign was not an enforcement of a no-fly zone. It was actually an attempt to bomb Serbia into submission to NATO goals in Kosovo. Hence it targeted elements of infrastructure such as TV stations, and foreign embassies that were passing their signal intelligence onto the Serbs.
Unlike crayfish, humans can draw on the lessons of history.
Oh, I see Katz. You think we should get a team together to provide a risk assessment analysis, perhaps to report in three months’ time, paying particular attention to the human impacts of particular types of intervention, to a withdrawal or end-game scenario etc etc.
Stop being trite, Katz. A war is not a fucking crayfish pot.
No. Wars are worse. They a quagmires.
I really don’t know what ‘ethics’ has to do with any of this. Why do people bring it up?
It is also very pretentious to be discussing military strategy from arms chairs.
Katz, it seems possible that NATO could enforce a no-fly zone, blow up some tanks and enforce an arms embargo on Tripoli. I know they bought a lot of rockets from NATO, but they have to run out eventually. It’s not just the material damage that counts, either; the army might think twice about acting on Gaddafi’s behalf if they knew they were going to lose their best and brightest along the way.
And what’s wrong with mission creep, if it’s needed?
@22 Old Yobbo, it must be immensely gratifying to you that the Libyan rebels have so obligingly been slaughtered — otherwise how could you continue to indulge your primary interest in this topic, ie. to sneer and snipe from your Lefter-Than-Thou pulpit?
Imagine how awful it would be if the rebels had overthrown Gaddafi by now, and deprived you of the satisfaction of saying “I told you so”?
Tyro Rex, I know very well that the Serbian campaign wasn’t the enforcement of a no fly zone. That’s not what I said. I said that it was a limited, targeted campaign. You’ve described it as bombing Serbia into submission ‘to NATO goals’, as if these goals were nefarious. I thought the goal was to stop the ethnic cleansing, which the international community was up in arms about – apart from some Serbian allies. The bombing stopped when the ethnic cleansing stopped [at least as a part of government policy]. Of course any campaign we engage in in Libya will also be to get the government to submit, ultimately. To remove itself. That’s what most governments in the world, including our own, are demanding the Libyan government do. Of course, to achieve that purely by bombing would be a bad idea for a number of reasons, most particularly because it would take the ownership of this government overthrow away from the Libyan people who first instigated it.
And that worked out so well, too!
Chris Grealy, yeah I wonder who’s done that before?
I don’t think the rebels want a western presence, they just want more and better, arms than Gaddafi has.
Invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a bad idea and invading Libya no matter how noble we think the reason may be, would be just as bad an idea. Horrible as it sounds, we have to let the Libyans settle this.
The other point is that we really know nothing about the rebels. I remember those “brave freedom fighters, the mujahadeen” being armed to the teeth by the US against the “Empire of Evil”, only to find that they no better than the Russians.
And to add salt to the wound, those very same weapons have been used against our troops in Afghanistan. Be very careful who you arm, they might aim those arms at you.
Maybe I’m too cynical, but just because the rebels say they are fighting for freedom, doesn’t necessarily mean freedom as we understand it. Wasn’t that what Gaddafi promised when he toppled the previous dictatorship?
Excellent news – if this report is right, the Arab League has suspended Libya’s membership and agreed to ask the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone.
Only Algeria and Syria opposed.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/13/3162584.htm
How about this.
The UN say they will back Gaddafi if a) ceasefire b) no retributions c) Fair election in 12 months. d) free media access
Results- killing stops now
anti-Gadafi drop their weapons ,cause no cavalry coming.And if their right=he’s gone in 12 months.
If Gaddafi’s right, and the people do love him, he stays.
Full media access
Rather complicates the claim made above at #25.
@62, good news indeed. A request coming from the region, not just the West deciding they know best.
@63, maybe there are some rumblings in the rest of the Arab League members? Egypt must have caused a few hearts to flutter uncomfortably.
“@62, good news indeed. A request coming from the region, not just the West deciding they know best.”
It’s in the form of a recommendation to the UN Security Council which, should it agree (by no means certain given the previously stated opposition of China and Russia to such a course of action) would be utterly reliant on ‘the West’ to enforce it. It’s pretty clear that the US is very reluctant to undertake no fly zone enforcement which kind of leaves NATO (divided on the issue) or Russia (extremely unlikely) as the only NFZ enforcement alternatives.
By the time a plan of action emerges, Gadddafi may well be in Benghazi..
Okay so we don’t do anything about a cry for help because, hey we might cause more harm than good, and maybe the people crying for help are just as bad or worse than those beating them up and treating them like shit, or maybe we’ll end up controlling the place and treating the bad guys and the good guys like shit. Can’t you see what paltry excuses these are for inaction?
People seem to want to see all the consequences of intervention before they intervene. That’s just impossible. People are fighting, against huge odds, to get rid of a regime that the international community is condemning with near-complete universality. We’ve expressed our support, but now it looks as if they might be crushed horribly. Too bad? Are you kidding?
Here’s a scenario. You save a kid from drowning when you hear him calling for help. His name happens to be Adolf Hitler, he grows up, etc. Did you do the right thing? Of course you did. A cry for help is a cry for help. It’s only wrong in hindsight, which we never have when we act. That’s what makes the writing of history so fraught and tricky. Much of the commentary here is historical – ‘we acted then, and look what happened’ – only there was no cry for help in the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq invasion was all about the Bush administration still wanting to assert itself after September 11. These scenarios are all vastly different from each other.
Just to add, having read it more closely, that I agree with Kim’s position on this issue in the original post, and with Guy Rundle. Hopefully NATO can be brought into alignment, quickly, on the matter.
“Doing anything” isn’t what’s under discussion; a violent military intervention is the option being debated. I’m not sure what to say to someone who thinks it irresponsibly wishy-washy to consider, prior to fully endorsing a military attack, whether it may cause more harm than good.
This is unbelievably similar to the Liberal Hawks and the Sensible Liberals spouting off before the Iraq War. The same old tripe of impugning the morals and courage of people who are very wary of war and the military, the same old “if you don’t do something now EVERYTHING that happens afterwards is your fault”, “you are the moral equivalent of HITLER because you would much rather wait and see”.
All this despite the current evidence of how much of a unintended cluster-fikc that Iraq has turned out to be.
And presumably, just like that moral giant Hitchens, you’ll be backing down in 5 years, though not without cries of “nobody could have predicted”, “how could we have known”.
When the military talks about “precision bombing” and “surgical strikes” they are lying – but they use those terms because (despite all evidences) soft-minded fools still make themselves believe them.
Stewart, aka Luigi @66:
Your Hitler analogy is a non-sequitur. We can accurately and confidently predict the outcomes of intervention by Western imperial powers much more than we can the future adult behaviour of children. This is because great powers invariably act within limits set by the self-interest of their ruling elites (as expressed through state structures). They have a verifiable and historically well-known record of doing so, no matter what great pronouncements about “human rights” they may use to cover their (mis-)adventures.
Marxists don’t use the word “imperialism” as a moral indictment but as part of an analysis of why powerful nations act in the way they do. Supporters of “humanitarian intervention” seem to have the need to forget the historical record of those powers and instead live in a dreamland where “this time” they will do the right thing, somehow contrary to their economic and geopolitical interests.
Rudd — who just weeks ago was very slow to disown Mubarak’s bloody regime — is keen for a no-fly zone, and Gillard agrees. They are both deeply committed to indefinite occupation of Afghanistan. Are these the forces the Left should be counting on to help the Libyan masses?
Some people never learn.
And what’s happening now isn’t violent? Surely at least two of the important distinctions between Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 are:
(a) What we have in Libya is the use of state violence to repress a revolution;
(b) Those who speak in the name of that revolution have requested military aid –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/12/gaddafi-army-kill-half-million
@70 – Well, then, Dr_Tad, what is to be done?
It seems to me that an objective reading of the current situation would be that the EU, NATO and the USA don’t want to do anything, and that the left agrees.
Elsewhere: An Onymous Lefty.
AndrewC,
This is nothing like the situation before the second Iraq War: the people in eastern Libya will be butchered if Gahddafi prevails, so there is some urgency in enforcing a no-fly zone across the country, and whatever other measures are needed to ensure that the people prevail.
Come to think of it, yes, the situation isn’t that different from Saddam’s Iraq, just on a more compressed time-frame. Which, if anything, makes me a bit more disposed towards the US invasion of Iraq (Christ, I never thought I would ever think that) – thanks AndrewC ….. I guess …..
This could be one of those traumatic or transformational events for the Left, like Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Tienanmen Square 1989, Bosnia 1995, Kosovo 1999, East Timor 1999, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, Georgia ……..
But some people will never learn from history. The power of religious devoutness is certainly enormous and horrifying.
And here’s a helpful suggestion from the British far left:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/102155
And the anti-imperialist argument summed up:
It goes on to take the sort of patronising line Rundle is criticising – viz. these people are unwitting dupes of Western imperialism when they call for military intervention:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=24127
Kim @72: Er, we can keep trying to build a stronger Left in Australia from the fragments we have currently, one that isn’t obsessed with getting imperial powers to attack Arab dictators as the way forward.
Then we might be in a position to provide more serious support to revolutions O/S.
But on “what is to be done” about Libya? There seems a big presumption in that about who should be doing it, and the supporters of intervention have provided little alternative to the very same powers that have backed almost every undemocratic regime in the region.
What should we do? Call on our government to NOT intervene and demand it drop its support for a Western-backed no-fly zone is a good start. That’s a pretty positive demand, IMO.
@Dr_Tad – circling back to Rundle’s point:
I propose a No-Moral-Posturing Zone.
And I’m surprised that a Stalinist/Maoist like Old Yobbo is calling for the overthrow of a dictator.
Kim @76: There is a long history of resistance forces welcoming imperialist intervention in their struggles. That doesn’t mean that it’s the best option, especially given the role imperialism has played in MENA and elsewhere.
The arrival of British troops in Derry in the late 1960s was greeted by Catholics with relief, but it wasn’t long before the troops were brutalising those they had allegedly come to protect.
The UK Socialist Worker article quite rightly points to how Western intervention is likely to bolster Gaddafi’s anti-imperialist credentials. That was certainly what happened with Milosevic in 1999, with the anti-regime popular movement forced onto the back foot. And for many years Saddam Hussein was able to maintain a level of support because of Western sanctions. Leaving such dynamics out of one’s calculations just whitewashes imperialism.
Importantly, who makes social change is much more important than having it made RIGHT NOW no matter what.
Oh really, Dr_Tad? Important for whom?
…well then, I look forward to the apologies to Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush. It seems that Bush really was a genius beset by small people who couldn’t share his vision. Or that you are wrong for exactly the same reasons that they were wrong. You should look at what it is about this situation that makes you forget 8 years of disaster.
It isn’t that not doing anything is a good thing, it is that doing something is very,very likely to be disastrous for the people of Libya, most of whom, I would wager, would rather live than die for a revolution that may just end up delivering another same-old-same-old dictator, only with a million deaths along the way.
Kim @81: For entire social groups, not just individuals whose lives are under threat right now. You’re just being silly here, repeating the tired tropes of liberal interventionism, that it doesn’t matter what the eventual outcome of Western meddling will be because of the imperative to act now.
Well, here’s Dr_Tad writing on 16 February:
http://left-flank.blogspot.com/2011/02/so-you-think-you-want-revolution.html#more
And here we have Andrew C on 12 March:
@Dr_Tad:
I am not saying that there are no issues to be resolved before the imposition of a NFZ, or that there are easy options. What I am saying is that dire warnings to the Libyan revolutionaries that they risk being complicit in Western Imperialism are actually interventions effectively in support of the status quo and are patronising. It seems to me, looking back at what you were writing when the revolution against Mubarak was in full swing, that you were quite excited by the whole thing. Now, because what is occurring in Libya gets complex and the revolutionary council itself asks for something to occur, you don’t want to know, and we really should be expending our energy on trying to change Kevin Rudd’s position. Or something.
No.
Rundle made the appropriate distinction. The discourse of liberal interventionism presumes that the field of play for such an intervention is a passive object – ie in Iraq – “we need to save these people from themselves; he is an evil dictator and they can’t overthrow him”. It does not take into account the active entry of popular subjects into history.
You cited this, approvingly, on 14 February:
http://left-flank.blogspot.com/2011/02/egyptian-revolution-only-beginning.html
Now, you say:
Which is it?
You’re right. This is more like the USSR’s fraternal intervention in Afghanistan. They’re begging for it–really!
Eight years is a long time, isn’t it? You can forget a lot in eight years. Here’s David Hirst in The Nation, February 2003:
“Kim @76: There is a long history of resistance forces welcoming imperialist intervention in their struggles. That doesn’t mean that it’s the best option, especially given the role imperialism has played in MENA and elsewhere.”
Aren’t you just being trifle colonialist here? The resistance forces request something, but the Great White Imperialists decide it’s not in the best interests of the little sillys. They couldn’t know what’s best for them but apparently you do, because you can give it a Marxist-Leninist analysis.
Building solidarity in Australia is going to help the Libyan people how exactly? And who gets to build this solidarity? Ten Resistance members in a shabby room? That’s your answer to Kim’s question?
I’m not sure what I think should occur for many of the reasons people have outlined above. But this sanctimoniousness is a little stomach turning, I find.
Get in there, destroy Gaddafi, leave. What’s difficult about that?
Kim @84, I’m not sure I follow. Is it that being reluctant to be gung-ho about “limited military intervention” is not being freedom-loving enough? How is what you say that different from what the Liberal Hawks said pre-Iraq? Why is it that your solution is so obviously correct, even though there is a very strong history of Sh!t Going Wrong when foreign militaries get involved?
Trying to solve somebody else’s political crisis with military tools is like sorting your best crystal with the aid of a back-hoe. You will not like the results, and claiming “nobody could have foreseen it” in a year’s time won’t make it better.
Fine, of course Dr_Tad’s marxist-leninist analysis is going to argue against imperialist intervention – the instructions from the central committee are that this uprising is not sufficiently marxist, and a successful western intervention would lead to the creation of a popularly-supported nationalist democracy, probably with a strong islamic flavour.
Clearly the Libyans aren’t in the correct objective historical position to receive Enlightenment, so they just need to be left to be tortured and imprisoned and oppressed, until they move forward to the correct stage of class consciousness.
The fact that that consciousness is never going to happen is irrelevant; and if it doesn’t, then they probably weren’t worth saving anyway.
That’s how it played out in Spain, and so long as one is wedded to an ideology as vacant and uninformative as Marxist-Leninism, that’s how it will always be.
Andrew C, there are lots of historical situations where solving somebody else’s political crisis did happen successfully at the end of a gun (or an atomic bomb). Cambodia, the USA, Germany, East Timor and Japan spring to mind for starters. Just because Vietnam and Iraq were wrong doesn’t mean that every intervention has to be.
What on Earth are you talking about? Dr_Tad, and the overwhelming majority of the Marxist left internationally, have been completely supportive of the recent Arab uprisings.
Nabakov,
You’re impugning my motives
It’s been many decades since I was either: if anything, I’ve been in favour of overthrowing dictators rather than protecting them on the pretext that, since they were anti-imperialist, they were thereby Good. Regardless of pro- or anti-imperialist opportunism, the question has been:
* is this guy (plus a couple of women) a total bastard, a thug, a mass-murderer ?
and if the answer was ‘yes’, then he should be overthrown, regardless of the consequences. Ghaddafi meets those criteria. QED. What might the consequences be ? That would be up to the people and it is cynical and opportunist for the Chamberlains to propose otherwise.
What Fine said.
And note also the shift in rhetoric I identified @85.
@86 –
Well, yes, actually, without the flippancy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/12/libya-benghazi-gaddafi-revolution
What did Fine say? That it is “colonialist” to oppose a NATO intervention? Can someone provide some kind of definition of “colonialism” where this statement isn’t completely nonsensical?
@96 – Dr_Tad’s rhetoric resolves to a position where the request for military intervention from the Libyan Revolutionary Council can be dismissed because fulfilling such a request would somehow involve them too much with “Western imperialism”. In other words, Western Marxists know better than they do what they want – there’s your colonialism and imperialism.
Political crisis?
This isn’t Belgium where they can’t form a government but no-one is killing anyone because of it. That is a political crisis.
People are dying in Libya and a lot more will before it is over.
But you describe it as “political crisis”.
Your callousness is astounding.
Without wanting to appear a pedant, “colonialism” and “imperialism” don’t refer to the practice of disagreeing with people in developing countries, but to systems of immense unprovoked military aggression and economic exploitation that caused the deaths of millions and endured for centuries, almost always justified by appeals to the human rights of those who would later become their victims. Frankly I think it’s rather flip to compare opposition to a no-fly-zone with the creation of the Belgian Congo and the Bengal Famine.
But then these exact arguments were rehearsed, and rehearsed, and rehearsed again eight years ago, when we were told, as we are being told now, that the anti-war position was in fact the imperialist position, that the Left were in fact fascists, that the U.S. Air Force was a tried and true method of liberating needy populations from the yoke of the oppressor…
Yeah skip, provided support involves writing blog posts about how any day soon the revolution will take a marxist turn. But not so supportive that they’re willing to bend their cherished marxist principles so far as to accept asking the imperialist states they live in to do something that might help someone for a change.
Skip, I’ve already pointed out the parallel with Iraq is non-existent. What we are talking about now is a revolutionary uprising which is about to be crushed by the might of the Gaddafi regime.
I note on some left sites, the talk is along the lines of “what if the revolutionaries are (a) CIA inspired; (b) Islamist; (c) not really democratic/committed to nationalisation of oil wealth etc” and the implication is that they’re insufficiently ideologically pure to be supported.
All I can say is that if people want to wait for some sort of socialist revolution with a correct understanding, according to Western Marxist websites, of anti-imperialism, then they will be waiting for a very long time indeed.
I referred earlier to Dr_Tad’s excitement about the Egyptian revolution. He would recognise that there are a large range of currents involved therein. You can’t pick and choose, really, if you’re going to offer solidarity. But now solidarity is apparently being redefined as condemnation of Kevin Rudd. Or something.
I’d go back to that quote from Trotsky that Dr_Tad cited so approvingly. If you accept that revolutionary subjects are making history, then you also have to accept that you must recognise their agency, and what they actually say. All this – “oh noes! but they will end up bolstering imperialist powers” stuff is patronising and ridiculous in equal measure. And tragic, because the default position appears to me to be that no one in the West – Marxists included – really gives a toss unless things can be fitted into one or other set of neat ideological boxes, as Rundle says.
It’s either fatalism or just a chance to run around accusing others of being “liberal interventionists” or such like, which amounts to the same thing. It’s actually very far from either an intelligent politics, accommodating principles to what is actually occurring, and from any form of solidarity.
Skip @ 100,
‘…. “colonialism” and “imperialism” …. [are] …. almost always justified by appeals to the human rights of those who would later become their victims.’
Says who ? Whose appeals in this case ? The people themselves ? Or imperialist interests ? The provisional authorities in Benghazi seem to have popular support in appealing for a no-fly zome, and other interventions as required.
Currently, the Left is enjoying itself booting Obama up the freckle for NOT getting involved. You’re having nearly as much fun pre-emptively sinking the boot in for FUTURE intervention. Isn’t it fun, being on the Left ?
A bit like being a blow-fly, ay ?
Pure fantasy on your part.
Yes, wouldn’t it be nice if the West bombed an Arab country, all in the name of human rights, “for a change”?
I think we’ve now had the full run of 2003-vintage arguments:
1. Opposition groups want to be bombed
2. Anti-war voices are obsessed with past mistakes (like repeated murderous bombing campaigns that ended in the intensification of civil conflict, the eradication of local popular political movements, and the eventual installation of corrupt dictatorships–get over it!)
3. This is a chance for the West to redeem itself (for #2)
4. This time it will be easy
5. What’s wrong with a bit of mission creep?
6. Anti-war voices are only opposing it because they have been instructed to do so by a shadowy Communist conspiracy
7. To oppose a Western bombing campaign is the worst kind of imperialism
I thought we were missing:
8. This is just like WWII, and you’re just like Neville Chamberlain
But no, at #22, I discover that those against military intervention are “fascist-appeasers”.
Kim @84 & 85: I’m actually super-excited about the Libyan revolution, as anyone following my Twitter stream or Facebook page would be able to tell you (the fact I haven’t written a specific blog post is a function of work and other writing commitments).
I actually think you haven’t grasped the consistent thread in my argument, which is why you see contradiction where there isn’t any.
What I wrote about liberal discourse stands — I have consistently argued for action from below as the way forward. Indeed, I was critical of (liberal) Western leaders for their unwillingness to move away from backing Arab elites as against supporting the self-activity of the masses. I was certainly not calling for them to intervene in Tahrir Square on 2 February by bombing Mubarak’s thugs or engage in some other form of substitution for their activity. But demanding they pull support from dictators is something they should do.
In that regard I’m sure you’ll find it very tiresome that I believe that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself”.
Therefore it is entirely consistent for me to cite that “the most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historical events” and to argue against the view of those sections of the Libyan masses seeking intervention by the military machine of the Western elites as a way forward for their struggle. It seems pretty clear there is an active debate within the Libyan revolution about this — i.e. whether to call for Western intervention — and I would not want to stand on the side of those asking for a no-fly zone because I think it’s a lousy, counter-productive position (even if it did save lives in the short-term, which I haven’t even bothered debating here). For the Left to not take sides in such debates, especially when our rulers are rattling sabres, is an abrogation of responsibility.
Finally, I think Rundle has grossly simplified the twists and turns of liberal interventionism to suit his argument. Sure in some cases it spoke to the passivity of the victimised groups it was seeking to save. But in Kosovo, perhaps the paradigmatic example of humanitarian intervention, the KLA was portrayed as very active and heroic but just in need of Western assistance. So NATO bombed the shit out of the Serbian people and the US got to be a bigger player in European politics as its reward. The approach stunk in 1999 and it stinks now — hence why I think we should call on our govt to back off.
Kim @98: You must be kidding.
No, not necessarily, at all, Dr_Tad, because it seems to me that’s what your position comes down to – in effect.
On a separate topic raised a few times above, the appalling position of some on the Left has been to back Gaddafi or at least refuse to condemn him. For some Gaddafi’s past anti-US positioning saw him given communist colouration by various groups on the Stalinist and Trotskyist Left, and they’ve had problems breaking with that (see, for example, the usually very good Monthly Review blog, which has similarly been hesitant to support popular movements in Iran).
I’ve been attacked a few times for criticising Chavez, Castro and Ortega for their active or passive support for Gaddafi. There’s a lot of confusion on the Left about this stuff, so it’s dangerous to presume everyone is arguing from the same starting point.
Dr_Tad, no action from below is going to prevail against tanks. You’re showing almost magical thinking if you think these people won’t be paste by the end of next week. To think otherwise is just ahistorical nonsense. If we decide that we shouldn’t intervene in this little contratemps, then there will be no revolutionary forces in a weeks time.
You don’t get that, do you?
Skip @ 69, I have proposed in many posts that we should not just sit idly by, and of course an intervention has to be violent if it’s to be more than just finger-wagging. Of course I would want the violence to be as limited as possible under these very difficult circumstances. A NATO-imposed NFZ seems the best option at present, together with negotiations with the Libyans to promote and recognise a form of alternative government acceptable to them. None of this is easy, and it would be much easier to do nothing and let the Libyans struggle for freedom and quite possibly fail, at enormous cost, at least in the short term.
Your characterization, or caricaturization, of my position, that it is ‘irresponsibly wishy-washy to consider, prior to fully endorsing a military attack, whether it may cause more harm than good’, is ridiculous. Presumably you misrepresent me in this way to allow yourself to feel smugly superior. First, I’ve never endorsed a boots and all military approach of the kind you suggest, and second, of course it is important to consider the consequences of acting – but beware of being paralysed by such consideration. After all, the number of possible consequences of acting are well-nigh infinite. Hamlet would be in his element.
sg @107: Do I have to spell this out? When a regime retains the support of a significant section of the military, the revolutionary forces need to marshall military power of their own (by splitting the armed forces and/or capturing their firepower).
That’s still “from below”, which refers to the self-activity of the masses, i.e. not under the direction of the state/regime.
BTW, you can go nuts with your moralism about the killings, but if that’s the only basis for your argument then you entirely miss what this debate is about.
Or you don’t want to engage with the bigger picture of what imperialism really is and really does. Maybe like Kim @98 & 105 you’ve robbed the term of all meaningful content.
Ok, Dr_Tad, maybe I was too quick to judge there, but when you patronise me and tell me I’m being “silly”, and claim that all I’m doing is singing from a “humanitarian intervention” song sheet, perhaps you can understand that.
Dr_Tad I can’t fault your analysis of previous examples of liberal interventionism. I think however you’ve misinterpreted the present situation in Libya. Unlike previous examples, we have an actual revolutionary situation, and an actual revolutionary leadership calling for intervention. In Kosovo, the KLA was an armed insurgency, and as we now know one with criminal underpinning. The French have now recognised the revolutionary government. Having armed Gaddafi, it would seem the least they could do would be to even up the contest by arming the revolutionaires. As should the rest of the soi-disant democratic west. A no-fly zone does nothing more than negate the advantages Gaddafi enjoys by virtue of his arming by the west. The aircraft currently bombing the revolutionary forces are French, not Chinese.
and what, Dr_Tad, if they can’t split the military they don’t deserve the win, which to you might be just red flags on a map but to them turns out to be something a little more realistic?
And thank you for allowing me to “go nuts” with “moralism about the killings.” There I was thinking marxist-leninists were supposed to be about making a better world, but apparently not in a way that would be consistent with moralizing about killing.
I’m perfectly aware of what imperialism is; bombing a few airports so that an uprising can complete the job it started is not imperialism, and if you think that every act of the western military is inherently imperialist then it’s you who has “robbed the term of all meaningful content.”
Marxist analysis always fails. Until you work that out, chances are you’ll always be wrong.
I’m not even sure if it’s physically possible to jam Libyan radar and radio without violating Libyan airspace. Libya is a pretty big country, and electromagnetic waves lose strength in proportion to the inverse square of the distance from their source. The only military purpose that “jamming” might serve is to disrupt the coordination of the government’s attacks.
Plus, I think someone else already said that Gaddafi doesn’t need air power to beat the rebels; his ground strength is more than sufficient.
Hal9000 makes a good point – I think it’s quite open to us to make an argument that what is being called for is not “humanitarian intervention” in the Kosovo sense. Perhaps concepts like R2P are a necessary legal fig leaf to legitimise action, but it seems to me to be a very distinct and unique situation, where there is a political call from the revolutionary leadership for limited military support, and to advocate answering that call affirmatively is a political act – and one of solidarity. As I said in the post, Sarkozy and crew do not come to all of this with clean hands, far from it, but the claim that nothing should occur (or silly suggestions that Gaddafi, the revolutionary leaders and Chavez should sit down for a confab – maybe they could invite Anthony Giddens?) has an objective result. What will most likely occur is that within a short period of time, Gaddafi will be back in control and the revolutionaries will be dead.
That’s right Kim. We have a chance here to avoid repeating the West’s behaviour in Spain in 1936, or in Yugoslavia when earlier and more effective and humane actions might have prevented that war from reaching the stage of ethnic cleansing.
Or Israel immediately during and after its creation.
The fact that this may leave us with a grubby situation not entirely consistent with our purest ideals is something that needs to be put aside.
Of course Dr_Tad’s leninist mates are going to be just a tad embarrassed if the Imperialist powers manage to bring about a peaceful conclusion now, when we all know that they left the Spanish republicans swinging in the wind in 1939. Wrong then, wrong now…
One other thought. I don’t believe much actual intervention would be required: the NATO aerial fleets are so overwhelmingly powerful that a firm statement that no military flights would be allowed would probably be sufficient. We already know that the regime’s air force pilots are unhappy – some have already defected. A couple of patrols should be sufficient to keep them all grounded. No-one wants to die for Gaddafi.
Nothing that LBJ and General William Westmoreland couldn’t fix!
well if it gets to LBJ territory then we can always pull out and leave the revolutionary forces to their fate. Not every mission creeps; and it could be perfectly possible to do a Gulf war 1-style attack, rolling back Gaddafi’s army and destroying their hardware until the rebels can catch up on an even footing.
You thought Gulf War 1 was a success, didn’t you?
Not tiresome but patronising. The working class have never been real people to Marxists but ciphers for their historical determinism fantasies. You are not a friend of the working class and your are deluded if you think you are.
GWI was a success, but not in the way that you described. The destruction of Saddam’s forces did not enable or encourage a local uprising.
In fact, after being shellacked on the battlefield in Kuwait, Saddam turned round and annihilated the Shiite uprising.
And don’t forget that the Shiite population comprised about 70% of the population of Iraq in 1991.
I know Katz, but that was the opposite situatoin – invading for reasons unrelated to an uprising and hoping one would happen later. In this case it’s the opposite.
Let’s cut to the chase here SG.
Would you support US troops garrisoning Tripoli? That is the logical consequence of mission creep to the worst-case scenario.
And that is what the US may have to do to retrieve the situation as each level of intervention, starting with an NFZ, fails.
Wow, so many shades of Left since I was in the EYL. And so sophisticated !
Dr_Tad’s comment, for example: ” I would not want to stand on the side of those asking for a no-fly zone because I think it’s a lousy, counter-productive position (even if it did save lives in the short-term, which I haven’t even bothered debating here).”
So Left ! So ANTI-imperialist and PRO-people that it should be in UPPER CASE ! So confident in the people’s revolutionary abilities that he/she is totally opposed to any unnecessary support for them from outside. Gosh, how pro-people.
Opportunism often demonstrates unlimited potential, usually from the Right, but lo ! from the Left as well !
I’m sure that, in a few weeks’ time, if there is no intervention, as he recommends, that we will see if the people will have met the exciting challenge of defeating Ghaddafi’s army and air force with hunting rifles, and if they have, whether they will thank the Doctor for his revolutionary non-support.
I wonder where you would have stood on the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact ? What would you have advised ?
Katz, I would probably not support that, and if it were a realistic expectation that that would happen (at least, for more than a few weeks, such as one might expect while emergency infrastructure was repaired) then I would be arguing strongly against any plan that could lead to mission creep. It didn’t happen in 1991; it doesn’t have to happen here.
We’re looking at a bloodbath here; if it’s going to happen later rather than sooner, what’s the difference?
Katz, I think you’re making an inference here that there would be a large number of Gaddafi supporters post any crumbling of his regime. I don’t know that we know that – we probably can’t know that unless the regime actually does fall.
Skip @ 33: armed to the teeth as he is with western weapons
Actually Skip, the majority of his weapons seem to be of Russian origin, and his best mates seem to be of the Lefist persuasion. He seems to one of yours, in fact.
This is why the west is treading carefully – for fear of stirring up cold war enmities.
Oops – hit Enter too soon!
My point is that until Russia gives its support to an intervention, I doubt that anything constructive will happen.
Katz, I don’t see much chance of US troops being deployed on the ground in Libya. I don’t see that as a logical consequence of anything. I don’t see many countries, including France, being prepared to deploy ground troops.
Targeted air strikes [I know, I know they're not perfect], a strong show of resolve, and perhaps the provision of weapons to the freedom fighters [this I presume would be difficult to clear with the UN, but I don't think it should be done in a clandestine fashion - after all, the UN is pretty well unanimous in declaring Gaddafi's regime illegitimate] – these are the next options, aren’t they?
I don’t see the mission creeping beyond doing what can be done to level the playing field – only fair if it’s true that Gaddafi is using French arms. The US, in particular, doesn’t want to get involved in another ground war, and certainly won’t if Obama wins the next election.
It’s true that we can’t be absolutely sure of the amount of support Gaddafi has within Libya, but since he’s hiring mercenaries, even to stage pro-Gaddafi demonstrations, according to ABC reporters, doesn’t that tell us a great deal? It’s true though that we could do with more info on that.
What is Russia’s current position on all this?
PeterRB
I see no evidence of that. What I see is aversion to military action driven by experience of the disastrous Iraq adventure. Plus, of course, absence of any obvious profit motive. Gaddafi has been a good mate of the petro-oligarchs who successfully pressed for intervention in Iraq. Nothing to be gained there.
“What is Russia’s current position on all this?”
Strong historical relationship with Gaddafi from Soviet times and a major arms supplier. Medvedev announced a ban on any further sales last month but Russia has also indicated opposition to any form of military intervention in the current situation – including NFZ.
I love it when even old Reds start to red-bait.
Kim:
I plead guilty to this. Indeed, the enemy here is uncertainty. Sometimes uncertainty is unavoidable. But uncertainty caused be laziness, ignorance or arrogance is avoidable, if we choose to be prudent.
The rosy scenario is the bait that lures folks on to failure.
Hal: I see no evidence of that
What kind of evidence would you expect to see?
The people of Tripoli are suffering a kidnapping campaign waged by the Gaddafi regime so as to keep the population compliant. Some families have had the bodies of their loved ones returned to them, while in other cases the kidnapped return home having only been beaten – standard intermittent-reinforcement terror tactics. The apparent support for Gaddafi in Tripoli is coerced to an unknown extent.
And therefore uncoerced to an unknown extent.
What do you think politics is? Who is sleeping with whom at the Party national conference? This is what we have politics for – or do you think there was no political aspect to the Civil War?
Further, I am not being callous. I have said quite clearly that a military intervention is likely to lead to many, many more deaths than not intervening militarily. This is the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan and there are very, very few examples where it has worked. If you are unable to think beyond the next week, then you need to grow up.
As skip says at 104 – these are exactly the same arguments used by the Liberal Hawks in 2003 – including the “you are a callous bastard if you don’t agree with us using the military”.
Why won’t you tell us all why it is different now and why it was wrong then?
Dr_Tad: I agree with the others, let Marxism rest in peace.
Well, the ban on arms sales is surely a good thing and maybe the beginning of a turnaround.
I still think of the Serbia intervention, very different in many ways no doubt but still much more relevant to the present situation than Iraq. That was NATO, and no doubt Russia was strongly opposed, but it was effective.
Rosy scenario? Do you really imagine that a dictator seen the world over as brutal and ruthless isn’t seen to be so by the very people he’s brutalizing and exploiting?
I think a lot of people commenting here are driven to over-cautiousness by the disastrous recent examples of Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s understandable from a human consequences perspective, but this situation is so different. Those bad excuses for intervention shouldn’t lead us to making bad excuses for non-intervention.
For a while I have thought that the best response might be a no fly zone over the eastern part of the country (not sure of the exact boundary). I was surprised no one seemed to have suggested it and thought there must be some flaw as a result, so I’m pleased to see Robert Merkel suggested something similar.
This would presumably avoid the need for bombing raids, let alone ground forces – and would also allow the rest of the world to arm the revolutionaries safe from Gadaffi’s planes if that was decided to be appropriate.
Of course this wouldn’t guarantee the revolutionaries victory, but it would probably be enough to ensure they held onto the East. In the short term that would liberate two million people – better than nothing. In the longer term, the establishment of a successful democracy in the East would apply pressure to Gaddafi, possibly encouraging more of his supporters to defect. It might also limit how safe he felt to conduct revenge attacks.
It’s not ideal, and I can see a danger of mission creep, but it seems to take us forward. However, those who always oppose any intervention by governments presumably will oppose it on principle, saying that such interventions never work and East Timor left to the militia’s, Cambodia to Pol Pot and so on.
Yes, won’t they look silly, if one of these days, that happens? I’m sure it’s going to happen any day now. We just need to keep trying, and trying, and trying, and trying. And forget all the previous attempts. And one of those days, it’s going to get a good result. And then they’ll all be so embarrassed!
PeterTB I’d have expected to see even one comment to that effect from any of the players. The insertion of anti-missile stations in Poland did indeed enliven cold war sensibilities, but that didn’t stop the US for a second. Let’s face it, your argument is dead in the water. Time to abandon ship.
I think Karl Marx himself warned more than once about what happens when you try to re-interpret new events according to old categories. No revolution is pure, or unambiguous politically. Nor has there ever been a revolution which could unequivocally be characterised as “working class”. Certainly not Russia in October 1917, or Spain in 1936 for that matter. None of those events, or Kosovo in 1989, are particularly good guides to what is occurring right now in Libya, or provide much political guidance.
Marx’ own motto was “ruthless criticism of all that exists” and some of his latter day epigones might ponder that.
This sort of thing:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=24127
… just doesn’t signify. It is literally non-sense.
Guy Rundle is right that what we can see here is a mad scramble of all sorts of ideological actors to reinscribe history as it is made into all sorts of comforting, pre-given categories. I would also imagine that when this becomes impossible, looking away will become the preferred option.
The fatalism we are seeing is dangerous and disturbing.
For mine, Adam said it best @36 -
So much of the rhetoric being bandied around has no real connection to what is occurring in Libya, and there’s little truth to claims about international solidarity, when the response from many quarters is to revert back to lecturing the Libyan people and infantalising them.
..and since we are dissing old communists here, let us remember that it was the nasty old Stalinist Vietnamese that actually saved Cambodia from Pol Pot and they did it by putting blood into it, not by sending cruise missiles from a hundred miles away.
Anyway, since we have a country very very close to the Middle East and we have two very recent examples of Things Going Wrong and killing Many Hundreds of Thousands of People who Did Not Want to Be Killed in countries either in or very close to the Middle East, why don’t we just look at successful examples of military interventions from completely different continents and completely different situations.
No matter how warmly you feel about Facebook and Twitter revolutions, there is no guarantee of Democracy!Whiskey!Sexy! happening here and you should never plan for everything to go right.
And again..if you are right now, why were Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush wrong in 2003?
The amazing thing about this debate more generally is how much past resort to tortured justifications from international law and legal precedent have been skipped over and there’s just the TERRIBLE NEED TO ACT RIGHT NOW. After all, a no-fly zone is, under international law, really an invasion of a sovereign nation. Obama has now welcomed the Arab League call for a no-fly zone and expects it to hit the UNSC soon.
This just a week after the Obama Administration backgrounded the Wall Street Journal that its MENA strategy is to “help keep longtime allies who are willing to reform in power, even if that means the full democratic demands of their newly emboldened citizens might have to wait.” Their intentions seem clear:
Again, are these the people we expect to do the right thing by Libya’s rebels? Sounds like they have other priorities on their minds.
More evidence of the crazy contortions on offer:
Apparently the choice is “between workers’ revolution and dictatorship”.
So there you go.
http://enpassant.com.au/?p=9617
@147 –
As Rundle said, Dr_Tad:
CNN just said on one of their interview shows that the revolution will be defeated in weeks if nothing is done to help them.
Mark @145: We hardly need to employ very old categories here.
Liberal imperialist interventionism has been our planet’s experience for the last decade and a half. It has taken many forms, but has invariably (despite the protestations of its supporters on the Left) been done in the interests of great powers.
It strikes me, therefore, that the supporters of a Western military backed no-fly zone to help the Libyan revolution defeat Gaddafi can have their arguments appropriately embodied in a much less high-falutin’ proposition:
And FWIW, I think Hal9000 is spot on here:
The Obama administration is showing no signs whatsoever of wanting to get involved, which makes all the stuff about “US Imperialism” rather bizarre. The most likely reasons why the US is reluctant is blowback from Iraq – in the sense that it would really complicate Obama’s re-election bid.
Dr_Tad. There is a difference here. There is a genuine popular revolution, which is being suppressed with the weapons supplied to the regime by western powers. I fully accept your analysis of previous interventions. And I don’t doubt that the decision makers would want to see the replacement regime as compliant with commercial interests as the current one. However, as the eventual East Timor intervention showed, public opinion cannot be ignored if it is strong enough. The coming siege of Benghazi will I’d reckon be such a moment.
@150 – Well, Dr_Tad, I’ve always been rather attracted to the Gramscian argument that you can take liberalism at its word, even when it doesn’t want to be so taken.
I’ve never had much time for the concept of sovereign nationhood. I just can’t take seriously anybody who invokes it, against the aspirations of people.
Mark, I don’t know the Gramsci quote, but I’d suggest it should be re-worded thus
Much can be gained by calling liberalism on its own promises. Just look at the US civil rights movement.
Dr_Tad,
So what was so terrible about intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor ? I would support those interventions 100 %, in that they were what the great majority of the people wanted. Sure, they weren’t perfect, they did not eventuate in perfect outcomes – what outcomes ever are perfect ? But to my mind, they were great advertisements for the possibilities of multinational intervention and the defeat of fascisms.
And ask yourself, what would have been the consequences of no intervention, in each of those cases: can you deny that there would have been massacres on a scale unprecedented in those countries ? As it was, in Kosovo and East Timor, barely a building was left standing by the oppressors, Serbs in the one case, Indonesians and their stooges in the other. Would you have advised the people to keep organising, rise up and repel the armed oppressors with no arms of their own ? What advice do you think they would have given you in return ?
I just don’t think such a concept makes much sense in this instance – what we actually have is a nation (state) turning its illegimitate force on its people. Claims that national sovereignty would be infringed were there to be a no fly zone or air strikes make no sense in this context. The fight within Libya is actually one over sovereignty – and one where sovereignty of the people is at issue, not national borders and their supposed inviolability.
In any case, it’s a rather odd argument for purported internationalists to deploy, I’d have thought.
Again, I want to express my`complete agreement with Hal9000 – @152.
@155 – Indeed, Hal9000. I don’t know the exact quote either, but I’m relying on the work of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau on reviving socialism through radical democracy. But you don’t need Gramsci to make this argument – it’s already there in Marx. The Communist Manifesto is itself an argument that there is much to be gained by holding liberalism to its rhetoric, even against the will of actually existing liberals!
But national sovereignty may be a powerful motivating force.
Napoleon invaded Europe in the name of universal values. He stirred up a nationalist backlash in Russia and Spain that consumed his troops to the bone.
What guarantee is there that
a. The west will not act like Bonapartes in Libya? After all, not a decade ago, that is exactly how Bush behaved in Iraq.
b. Western intrusion will not stir up the kind of regressive cultural chauvinism that Napoleon stirred up throughout Europe, and especially in Spain and Russia. Need I remind you that Spain and Russia remained the most retrogressive polities in Europe during the 19th century? A powerful sense of Hispanic and Slavic particularism arose from the Bonapartist episode.
Perhaps the forces of production are insufficiently developed in Libya to warrant a Marxist revolution?
Well, again, Katz, I doubt history is that useful a guide here. There was no social basis in Spain or Russia for Bonapartist invasion, in that the polities concerned didn’t really have any social forces who wanted the version of liberal modernity on offer from Bonaparte. In some instances in Germany, things were a tad different, if you think about the tensions leading from the Bonapartist sweeping away of the old regimes, their restoration and what led up to the 1848 revolutions. Marx, again, I think, saw Napoleon as embodying progressive social transformation in the German statelets.
But, what we have here is a revolution which has been articulating its demands in terms of freedom and democracy. Most scenarios (Gaddafi fleeing) would have entailed a fair amount of intervention by “the international community” to establish the groundwork for constitutionalisation, etc. I think there is a certain level of fantasy in thinking that there’s any space – in what Rundle rightly calls a hyperconnected world – for some sort of pure revolution to defeat Gaddafi and then impose a new order unilaterally. If the sort of workerism John Passant’s writing is suffused by is emblematic, some people would never be satisfied, and Kim’s not the only one who’s seen left blogs darkly warning that the Libyans aren’t really the sort of revolutionaries Western lefties should be encouraging. The people who are saying “the Libyans must nationalise oil or their revolution is complicit with imperialism” are not living in the world we live in, or the Libyans live in. It’s more non-sense, in that there’s a bizarre false opposition resting on weird post-colonial projections which turn in on themselves and express (sometimes racialised) disdain very quickly.
Fundamentally, there needs to be a political choice made here, which always involves some degree of uncertainty and risk. But, if sides aren’t taken, I’m sure what will happen is going to be horrendous beyond contemplation.
I remember also, prior to Iraq, people saying that it was silly to interpret this exciting new venture in terms of past failures of American policy, and that the world needed to move past the “Vietnam syndrome” that made it so hesitant to act. I can kind of understand that, because Vietnam was a long time ago, but really, guys, the Iraq war is still going on. So eager are you for an attack on Libya, you are urging us to get over (and refuse to learn from) an event that hasn’t even finished occurring!
Great article. Great discussion.
All I want to add is that any one thinking that Ghadafi is an anti-imperialist, or that western business interests really want him gone should read the IMF reports on his country. He’s balls deep in the neo-liberal project. That’s why there is mass unemployment and, as a result, revolution.
Actually, skip, I don’t see anyone arguing for “an attack on Libya”. I see people arguing for a no fly zone and possibly air strikes in response to a call for that to occur from the Libyan Revolutionary Council.
It may well be different in Britain (I don’t know, and I’m not in the habit of reading Nick Cohen and the Euston pro-war left crew), but on this blog, right now, it seems that the only people invoking those sort of tropes and talking about “liberal intervention” are those who are arguing along your lines. You’re arguing against a position made of straw.
Right, right–not an attack, just a few air strikes, maybe. Or, in the formulation of Tyro Rex earlier, “a no-fly zone involves bombing, yes… but it’s not a ‘bombing campaign’”. I confess the distinction evades even me, versed as I am in the dialectic.
Not true. In fact, when French troops marched into Spain they were welcomed by the locals, despite the unease of Spanish ruling elites.
Only the brutality and arrogance of the French occupiers threw ordinary Spaniards into the arms of the Spanish government.
Sound familiar?
Katz, for reasons which are still unclear to me, I spent a little while reading an enormous amount about Napoleon’s Spanish wars, and while I don’t want to start a thread derail, I think it would be reasonable to say that any initial welcome to the French forces was very shallow and short lived, for reasons that go beyond the rapacity or otherwise of the Napoleonic armies.
But I still think it’s worth bugger all as an analogy to what’s happening in Libya right now, though.
Mark, if you “doubt history is that useful a guide here” then what signposts are you following? You seem to reject both analyses of imperialism’s historically reactionary role and also the recent history of disasters in the name of humanitarian intervention. There seems to be no historical analogy of invasions being supported by rebellions that satisfies you either.
So is it just your moral compass? Or your near-clairvoyant certainty that without external intervention the Libyan rebels will be slaughtered in a way that will be “horrendous beyond contemplation” (nice phrase)? Or your conviction that liberal imperialists with massive war machines can be held to the nicer end of liberal ideology if we just demand it?
You’re right about taking sides, however. Problem is you’re choosing the side that will strengthen the hands of the most destructive nation states on the planet (which is a description I wish was hyperbolic but sadly isn’t).
Well, the Spanish welcome was short-lived, for reasons that I have alluded to.
Do you have any information on how “deep” the welcome for the West may be in Libya?
I remind you that even the Libyan revolutionaries want no western boots on Libyan ground. As you acknowledge, Napoleon’s boots received some welcome initially in Spain.
There was some american military guy on ABC radio a few days ago explaining that a pre-requisite for enforcing a no fly zone would be a bombing campaign to destroy all the anti aircraft facilities that Gaddafi controls. Otherwise they simply can’t send in their planes to enforce the no fly zone.
Its hard to interpret that as anything but an attack on Libya, especially as there will inevitably be civilian casualties as some targets are based in populated regions.
Skip,
In your somersaults to oppose intervention in the bailiwick of an erstwhile left-supported dictator, you forget that most suggestions on this thread have been predicated on what the local people want, not what some Machiavellian imperialist might want. Try to understand the difference betwee nwhat the people might desperately want, and say so, and what imperialists may want.
Not that we’ve seen much enthusiasm from imperialists for outright invasion, so you can set fire to that straw man. But get orders from your handler first
Mark @ 162:
Even if the revolution is won by the most ra-ra-red revolutionaries, wouldn’t their economy still be based pretty solidly on oil, for the foreseeable future ? Certainly, they should diversify as soon as possible, something the Castros in Cuba didn’t do in the sixties (i.e. away from sugar) when they had the chance, but oil will be the No. 1 product for the Libyan people, No. 1 and export, and No. 1 revenue-earner, for a long time yet.
And isn’t the oil industry already nationalised ? In fact, wasn’t that part of the problem – that Ghaddafi, as supreme ruler, had untrammeled access to the entire oil revenue, as his patrimony, and could buy what (and buy off whom) he liked with it ? He could finance all the patron-client networks and systems that he needed ? Until the people’s revolt, that is ? In other words, in a patrimonial society like Libya, nationalisation does not exactly have revolutionary force. A bit like Mugabe’s ‘nationalisation’, i.e. his patrimonial control, of Zimbabwe’s diamond industry.
The doco on the Egyptian protests was interesting in that they spoke to people who clung to the Mubarek regime, and you had to wonder how things may have turned out differently had the regime’s message that the protestors were captive to foreign interests had tangible “proof” in the form of foreign jets or foreign soldiers. Admittedly, Gadaffi would have to perform a tricky backflip from Al Quaeda n’ drugs to US imperialism and oil but such backflips have historical precedents quite close to home. I can certainly see scenarios where direct military intervention prolongs and complicates rather than shortens and expedites a home-grown revolution. On the other hand refusing a direct request for support seems immoral.
Are there logistical barriers to providing arms and training because that seems to me preferable? Even if a NFZ was enforced, it seems that the Gaddafi regime has great ground superiority and that the NFZ would not be decisive.
Gaddafi’s not going to give the rebels the year and a half it would take to train their own army to the level needed.
You really think that this will be resolved quickly now, regardless of US/Nato intervention? Unless Gaddafi decides or is persuaded to flee, I can’t see it, but that is probably the strongest argument for the NFZ- it may persuade Gaddafi to give in and take the wealthy exile route, in Venezuela perhaps?
Katz, did “the West” behave like Bonaparte in East Timor? No, I don’t think anyone can claim that we engaged in much imperialist brutality there. Sure, we grabbed the booty from the gas fields but 10% of lots is better than 0% of fuck all, which is what East Timor was getting before. Now they’re free and they have gas revenue. And no oppressive Indonesian police state.
I mean really, is there a single outcome of the East Timor situation that you can point to that is anything except an improvement on what they had before?
Sure you can talk about the possible risks realistically, as you have done. But let’s not pretend that an intervention Libya will necessarily assume the qualities of our behaviour in Iraq rather than in East Timor. You’re assuming the conclusion.
Dr_tad, you also are refusing to engage with the recent history of humanitarian successes – East Timor, to some extent Serbia, the USA, Germany and Japan. If you can’t tell the difference between an insane war of choice, an imperialist intervention and a humanitarian intervention you probably aren’t looking very hard.
Skip @ 166 re: “bombing campaigns” vs “no fly zone”. The difference is clear.
A bombing campaign involves targeting infrastructure such as transport and communications, port facilities, security apparatus, general military formations, utilities such as power and water, and even hospitals if you’re a total prick*, the general aim of which is to cripple a state and force its people into surrender or prevent organised opposition to an invasion. In pursuit of the former is the policy applied to Serbia by NATO during the Kosovo campaign.
* like gadaffi, who is bombing rebel medical facilities.
A “no fly zone” is generally restricted to specific military formations such as military airbases, anti-aircraft defences and the like in order to establish your own military air superiority and prevent the target from deploying its own air power in the battle space thus defined. It doesn’t actually require that you destroy the opposition’s airforce, just stop them from using it. The aim, however, rather than to force surrender is usually to prevent the application of opposition airpower, usually in order to enable some other goal, such as the operation of a humanitarian or relief mission, the insertion of a special operations unit, or as in this case, to allow an armed insurrection protection from unscrupulous and illegitimate attack from otherwise indefensible airpower.
I’ve never used the language of certainty. I’m realistically surveying possibilities and probabilities. I’ve never said anything will “necessarily” happen.
My main object is to point out the shallowness of the thinking that several suggested courses of action will be a walk in the park.
My main objection to the East Timor parallel is that the East Timorese had no historical issue with Australians, who were the pointy end of that engagement, whereas as Muslims and Arabs, Libyans carry plenty of baggage about the West, and especially the US.
Moreover, Gaddafi is much more likely to use maximal force than Habibie ever was.
From al-Jazeera:
12:47pm Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reports from Benghazi that, ” There is a lot of concern here, a lot going on, a lot of misinformation, a lot of rumours, a lot of speculation, and a lot of worried people at the moment.
“As far as the national transitional council is concerned, they are saying that they are still fighting and they they are still in control.
“However, they say that they need international help. I think they admit openly that this is the only way out for them – international intervention of some kind, is the only way that they are going to win.
“Ten days ago, they were on the advance but now they are on the retreat.”
2:51pm Al Jazeera’s Birtley says that people here have welcomed the fact that the no-fly zone option has been supported by the Arab League.
“The air exclusion zone is essential to the people here (in Libya), they know that at the end of the day they have to fight this themselves but if the international community did not help, they are talking about means of arming themselves.
“There are a lot of brave words going around but on the ground different things are happening.
“We have to remember that this is not an organised army, this is a group of teachers, engineers, street cleaners, people who have had no association with weapons, whatsoever.
“And now they are coming up against very strong, well-equipped forces. And we are seeing a lot of casualties, basically if it is not sorted out soon then those casualty figures are going to go up and up and up.
“It’s not a very good situation at the moment, it is not looking very positive, quite the reverse.”
So all some of you people’s heroes, Katz and Su and Andrew and Dr Tad, have to do is stay quiet, sit it out and then, at your leisure, pontificate about the evils of imperialism.
It seems we all agree that the proposed intervention would constitute a military Campaign wherein there would be a great amount of Bombing. Whether this can be described as a “bombing campaign” or an “attack” I leave to philologists.
sg, this…
?
is a textbook example of incoherent raving. You are doing your best to lose this argument. Please desist.
Formatting issues. Sorry.
No skip, we don’t “all agree” whether there will be a “great amount” of bombing.
Hal9000, are you saying that the assistance the US received from France in freeing themselves from their colonial oppressor was unwanted? That they resisted it, and it ended badly for them? Do you think Germany’s postwar reconstruction and return to liberal democracy was somehow unrelated to its defeat by the allies? That if left to themselves, the working classes of Germany would have risen up and overthrown their oppressive government? Similarly the Japanese, whose long slow decline into military dictatorship and imperialism was only reversed by military defeat…
There are examples of military intervention resulting in improved governments and social order. It’s circumstantial, and we shouldn’t be arguing about this situation with only Iraq in our minds. Iraq in any case wasn’t done for humanitarian reasons – so it’s not very relevant to the discussion, is it?
@169 – Maybe there was some ambiguity in that sentence, Dr_Tad: what I meant to convey was that I am not at all sure that the supposed lessons of Napoleonic invasions of Spain and Russia (two different things – the first being justified much more plainly in terms of Bonapartist ideology, but anyway…) have much to teach us about Libya in 2011.
My point, though, is not that there can be no historical parallels worth invoking, but to reiterate what I said about Marx’ view of history: that to unproblematically transpose past configurations onto present events is likely to be worse than misleading. It actually goes to what he was saying about ideology, and there’s also, I think, there a warning about positing some sort of inevitability – ie some form of historical Geist.
Therefore I would be very reluctant to affirm this sort of thing with certainty, as determinative of what might happen in the Libyan conflict:
… in that, as has been said, the conjuncture of opposing forces is quite different from those which may have been present in previous conflicts which were justified under those auspices. I, myself, would not want to lend any heartfelt support to the rhetoric of “humanitarian intervention”, but I think what is happening here and what may transpire can be distinguished – in its actuality – from those instances. And needs to be. In other words, the question of how to act with solidarity and to act in a way that maximises the potential for justice in a situation like this has to be a question that is decided on the specificity of what choices can be made now, not with reference to a bunch of default ideological assumptions.
Any turning point like this does, I think, require a choice, not an equivocation. And I think Rundle has posed the issues in a way that enhances the making of that choice, and we need to be aware that when events are moving as quickly as they are, and when so much material and deadly force is lined up on one side, such choices cannot be either pure or clear cut.
That’s really what I am trying to say.
@172 – I think the point, here, Old Yobbo, is that there’s a feeling in some quarters that “imperialist intervention” may result in a change in the ownership or control of oil, but here there’s some weird fetishisation of state ownership, regardless of the nature of the state in question or what it does with that control. That the Libyan regime controls oil fields, in effect, has nothing to do with whether the exploitation of that resource is in any way in the interests of the people, any more so than, say, the Saudi control over its oil resources. So, in this instance, I think I’m agreeing with you on that point.
I think Dr_Tad was right to highlight, in this context, the strange view among some lefties that Gaddafi himself had some warrant for claiming to be anti-imperialist or socialist.
It’s another instance, I think, of some pretty lazy and sloppy analysis of political and economic realities.
Mark, your problem is that you have adopted the rhetoric ethical absolutism to analyse an issue of military capability. You appear to assume that because the cause is good (which I agree it is) success is not problematic. This is magical thinking.
And then this:
is a misrepresentation of the point I was making. Clearly Bonapartist ideology refers to the motives of the invaders. On the contrary, my argument was about the ideas and behaviour of the populations of the invaded/occupied regions. The point is that the host populations inscribe motives upon the invading forces which may have little to do with the actual motives of the invading forces.
It has already been well recorded that Libyans, even those under dire threat from Gaddafi, have inscribed motives on the West and are already ill-disposed to having western boots on the ground. The bad reputation of the west in the eyes of many Libyans ought to exercise planners’ military and strategic options. To ignore this factor could lead the west into disaster.
This has been an interesting discussion, with thoughtful points made on many sides. I don’t personally have a clear idea of what the best thing to do is, but here are some things to consider…
1) Libya has a pretty small population (I think only 5 or 6 mil) concentrated in a handful of coastal cities, right in the Mediterranean, close to hand. So logistically, an air campaign to create a NFZ, if that was strictly all that was on the table, ought not to be a hugely difficult thing to do. Those fearing a quagmire I think are off base so long as a NFZ was the only thing considered within bounds (of course that would be hard to guarantee, etc etc)
2) I don’t know the strength of the opposition forces or their institutional depth, but it’s possible that even with a NFZ denying Kaddafi air superiority, they might not win regardless. Military analysts for all I know may have already reached this conclusion. In which case, having committed basically an act of war against Kaddafi, if he remains in place in spite of them, what are the air-war participants supposed to do or say to him afterwards? He’s a long-time terror sponsor, his certain revenge will be slow and hidden and weird. Does the West need that headache?
3) The rebels say they don’t want any Western military land presence. So let’s say they get the air support they ask for and they still lose. The Western powers now have to try and make an uneasy peace with K., which could prove very unhealthy; or else they have to go all-in to make sure the rebels win — breaking their promises and committing ground forces, which could have all sorts of weird consequences.
4) As far as the West is concerned (and Western powers, despite all the preachiness, do in fact have to consider their own material interests as a matter of course), Kaddafi is the Devil You Know. If the West interferes in order to topple him, only to see the Islamic Murder Party take control of the country in a coalition with the Death To Israel Party, that doesn’t seem like such a good deal all of a sudden.
All of these things could be reasons why NATO et al are dragging their feet.
By the way, where’s Egypt in all this? They’re right next door and they have superior numbers and a large military, as we just saw. It seems to me that a couple of local Arab military powers ought to be able to handle this, with greater political legitimacy.
Hal9000 says:
March 13, 2011 at 7:22 pm
PeterTB I’d have expected to see even one comment to that effect from any of the players.
The fact that both China and Russia are opposing intervention in the Security Council doesn’t even give you pause for thought?
….but that didn’t stop the US for a second
So the US could just go ahead and intervene anyway?
Let me restate: “My point is that until Russia gives its support to an intervention, I doubt that anything constructive will happen.”
Now do you actually disagree with that statement, or are you just being silly?
Japerz, apart from your alarmism about Libyan islamism and your tender-hearted solicitude for the interests of Israel, I agree with your analysis.
Well from a cynical, realpolitik point of view then the rest of the World’s interest is in a fast solution, so the oil and gas can flow again. That means one side or the other winning quickly.
The worst scenario, from that point of view, is a long drawn out civil war.
From the rebel’s point of view things are a bit different, since they are fighting for their (and probably their families) lives. Gaddafi, if he wins will almost certainly slaughter huge numbers. Maybe not quite a ‘killing fields’ level, but large enough to make people talk for years after wards about “why didn’t we do something”.
And there is the quandary in a nutshell. Do nothing and a long civil war and/or a Gaddafi win with a subsequent mass slaughtering that will probably end up with sanctions anyway, perhaps some sort of ‘oil for food’ deal ah lah Iraq.
Do something and risk making things worse (both from humanitarian and realpolitik points of view).
Me? I’d ship the rebels weapons. Prior to Gaddafi pulling out all stops (which means a significant portion of the army and air force picking his side) he was losing and his regime could have been counted in months (or less). Even up the field again and neutralise his tanks/APCs, choppers and planes and the rebels would probably win fairly quickly.
The tanks (and choppers to a lesser extent) are probably the key, standard airpower being, as usual, far less effective than most people think. A few hundred anti-tank and anti aircraft hand held missiles would pretty much take care of them. And if the portion of the army that supports him even wavers a little (after taking some losses) then it would be pretty much game over for him.
Note that a NFZ is not enough, we have to neutralise his tanks/APC’s etc to make a real difference. So that means bombing. Even just a NFZ itself means bombing by taking out the air defences, you can’t have our planes being shot down.
Amazed we haven’t done it yet. Whoever got into power afterwords would be in gratitude to us and there would be no odium from any bombing campaigns we’d have to do (and from history probably stuff up).
I’m afraid this and similar discussions are increasingly beside the point. Gaddafi is moving increasingly swiftly to reassert control in Libya and when he does so the message will be unmistakable: brutal repression works effectively to stifle popular revolt and the international community is unable to exert meaningful agency to prevent it.
The Egyptians (or an Arab military coalition) could announce that, while they’re not backing either side, they’re prepared to send in tank columns to prevent a massacre if the rebels lose. Failing an outright victory the next best thing is a peace with a credible guarantee of no reprisals.
Or the Egyptians could just throw their considerable weight in favor of the rebels, in exchange for a slice of the oil money.
Libya just isn’t a vast intimidating military power, I don’t see why an Arab coalition can’t take care of this.
On the ethics of foreign intervention in Libya, let’s see:
* Algeria, Syria and Serbia have reportedly sent planes and crew to support their friend Gaddafi;
* troops have been sent from Algeria, and mercenaries have been flown in from Chad, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, Zimbabwe and perhaps Ghana as well.
So, while Russia and China resolutely block any Security Council action, and Gaddafi’s friends Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia provide moral support – wow, Gaddafi has quite a bit of international support, doesn’t he ? – we demand that the West, particularly the US, walk an extremely fine line between non-intervention and strictly humanitarian intervention, on condition that in any bombing assault, no civilians are harmed, that no NATO soldiers ever step onto Libyan soil.
Of course, regardless of what we, you and I, demand, it’s up to the people in Libya: what they call for, increasingly desperately, should be considered, isn’t that so ?
If the people are eventually defeated by Gaddafi, what might be their attitude to both brutal dictatorship AND to Western democracy ? Out of sheer desperation, isn’t it likely that they will turn as a last resort towards reactionary Islamism ? While we fiddle and prevaricate, does this worst option become more plausible down the track ?
And of course, it’s not over yet in Egypt or Tunisia – let’s say they have won Round One on points, but only just. The push for democracy across the Middle East could be still totally defeated. What will people turn to then ? Wouldn’t that be exactly what reactionary groups like al Qa’ida and AQAP and AQIM, would want ?
Surely not: in answer to my last couple of questions @ 194 (and any fool can pose questions), the answer from some on this thread and perhaps whispered amongst themselves, may be that the people will inevitably turn Left – that after the defeat of democracy, and once the monsters of repression have had their fill, the people who are left will resolutely flock to Marxism-Leninism to lead them out of darkness into the light of revolution, as the only logical alternative to failed democracy (a Western illusion, after all).
Tell me it isn’t so ! Surely nobody could be that stupid ?
1970s’ Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, anyone ? I think Marx might have been sometimes right about history repeating itself, only he might have got it the wrong way around: the first time as farce, the second (and interminably later times, it seems) as terrible tragedy.
“I don’t see why an Arab coalition can’t take care of this.”
Arab politics, basically.
sg@184
So, in your view the French intervention in the American War of Independence was a recent event? And that it and the almost equally recent Second World War were basically humanitarian interventions? Right, then. That’s all cleared up.
Er, can someone explain why, all of a sudden, “the left” is at fault here? There’s been a number of screamingly strident comments decrying the hypocrisy of “the left” for not supporting military intervention in Libya. I for one don’t think that military intervention in any country’s internal conflict is prima facie justifiable and you need to have a better argument that “viva l’revolution” if you are going to do it.
In the case of Libya in particular the fight is between the recognised government and the opposition to that government. Beyond not liking Gadaffi, what justification id there for intervention. I mean where are the precedents or the legal defenses (even manufactured ones, see Iraq)?
@73
” EU, NATO and the USA don’t want to do anything, and that the left agrees”
Again with the throwaway lines. Perhaps if you stopped and thought about some of the logistics of doing “anything”, perhaps if you thought about the myriad undesirable outcomes (quagmire, widening conflict, great power disagreements) you might be a little less trite. How exactly (or even generally) do you see “anything” proceeding?
PatrickB,
Thank you for your request.
1. Justification for external intervention IF the people ask for it:
* reliance by Gaddafi on mercenaries from other countries, i.e. reliance on foreign intervention;
* Gaddafi’s use of the air force; and on foreign planes and pilots (i.e. foreign intervention), to bomb his own people;
* Gaddafi’s use of anti-aircraft weaponry against his own people;
* Gaddafi’s use of terror and assassination squads against his own people.
2. Precedents:
* support of French royal forces during the US war of independence to throw off the colonial British yoke;
* support of the Allies for the Soviets during the ‘Patriotic War’ against fascism;
* intervention by the Indian Army against Paksitani forces oppressing the people of Bangla Desh;
* African intervention in Uganda, mainly Tanzanian forces, to oust Idi Amin and protect the Ugandan people;
* Cuban involvement in the war in Angola against south African and UNITA fascist troops;
* Vietnamese response to Khmer Rouge provocation to intervene in and liberate Cambodia;
* NATO bombing campaign against Serb fascists to protect the Bosnian people and their right to self-determination;
* NATO bombing campaign against Serb fascists to protect Kosovars’ lives and right to self-determination;
* Australian/NZ/etc/ intervention into East Timor to protect the rights of the East Timorese people to self-determination;
* African Union intervention in Sudan to protect the lives of South Sudanese and people in Darfur.
I would support every one of these ‘interventions’ 100 %. In fact, intervention, on balance, ON BALANCE, has a good record, don’t you think ?
Just kidding.
@188 – I’m not sure I’m at all assuming success is unproblematic, Katz, but fair points, nevertheless.
“So, in your view the French intervention in the American War of Independence was a recent event?”
Well as Chou Enlai famously said, “It’s too early to tell.”
Perhaps the thing to do would be for NATO to agree to provide the air power to suppress Kaddafi’s planes, on the condition that Egypt or an Arab coalition provide the army ground support and/or invasion force if things go to hell and the rebels lose. That way the rebel forces get their main request, the West isn’t seen as deciding the outcome of an Arab civil war, and the Arabs themselves provide the guarantee that no matter how it shakes out, Kaddafi will not remain a player.
Now if only there were some powerful gasbag politician who’s always banging on about the peoples of the world standing together, and how much street cred he has in the Muslim world, who could mastermind such a coalition.
Nah, I’m drawing a blank here.
It seems to me the underlying moral principle for any intervention, if it’s arguable to have one, should not actually be “yay rebels! Kaddafi bad, rebels good!” but rather “reprisal massacres and mass atrocities are a thing which the Arab peoples will no longer tolerate on Arab soil.”
I wasn’t a close observer of the Serbian intervention in the 90s but my assumption was that the main principle was not “we like or don’t like the Serbs/Kosovars/whoever” but rather “ethnic cleansing and mass killing can’t be allowed to happen again in the heart of Europe.” But I could be wrong.
So Hal9000, you accept that military action can lead to political improvements, freedom even? Perhaps then you can explain why what happened after world war 2 could never again be repeated anywhere? Or why East Timor was somehow a special aberration?
Has anyone on the pro-interventionist side thought about how this would play out? I mean the Libyan govt. forces would have plenty of time to see it coming and may take the opportunity to create mayhem and dig in. I really think there’s a focus on the plight of the rebel forces which si blinding people to the significant difficulties in mounting a meaningful attack upon a well armed, well trained and apparently motivated army of a sovereign govt. Like Katz said, cut to the chase and give us you battle scenario.
How long do the pro-interventionists think it will take to roll back the govt forces. Is it clear who leads the rebels and what form a post Gaddaffi govt would take. What knowledge do the pro-interventionists here have about the solidarity or otherwise of the opposition?
“So much of the rhetoric being bandied around has no real connection to what is occurring in Libya, and there’s little truth to claims about international solidarity, when the response from many quarters is to revert back to lecturing the Libyan people and infantalising them.”
I agree, but characterising anyone who is sceptical about some sort of ill defined “Western” intervention as a traitorous Marxist (or something) is over the odds.
This whole discussion is so devoid of any sense of the practicalities of any sort of intervention that it all amounts to posing (with Katz an exception). How for instance would you supply the rebels with arms: by sea, by air drops by the land border? Come interventionists lets have your plan.
PatrickB — I think the only serious option that most of the “pro-interventionist” side here are really discussing is strictly the No-Fly Zone that the rebel leadership (and now I guess the Arab League) has requested. While the implications of going ahead and imposing a No Fly Zone are unknown and certainly carry risks, from a technical military standpoint it would be a comparatively easy thing to do, and so your questions about its “practicality” are not as worrying on closer examination as you’d suppose.
Libya is not heavily populated, its centers are mostly coastal and it’s sitting right near the heart of NATO power projection. Its army may be fearsome to lightly-armed rebels but certainly not to the USAF. It doesn’t possess the geographical difficulties of Afghanistan or the internal baffling social complexities of Iraq. Even weapons/supply drops, if it came to that, probably wouldn’t be all that daunting for sophisticated NATO forces.
Whether it’s actually a good idea or not is of course a different question, and that’s where your instinct for caution is a reasonable position that can be argued. The repercussions and crazy ricochet effects might make it a bad idea, it’s very hard to know what’s the right choice.
@201
Ah, a bullet point summary of history, did you do all G.W. Bush’s work? Honestly all those listed events had more complicated motivations that “do the right thing”.
@207,
Someone did posit arming the rebels kind of French resistance WW2 style. Anyway, as far as I can tell G has overwhelming force on his side. It’s a lost cause unless there is assistance on the ground by someone. The pro-interventionists have to face up to this and come up with a plan. I’d say that London, Washington etc know this and that they can’t come up with a satisfactory scheme. No exit strategy you see, gotta have that exit strategy …
Actually the press probably have some responsibility for raising expectations here. Early on it was all “gung-ho Tripoli or bust” kind of talk. Where were the sober reminders that G had a large, well equipped, well trained standing army?
Well, I’m certainly not hostile to that line of questioning, PatrickB. It is quite distinct – as is Katz’s, generally – from the sort of thinking I wanted to take issue with up-thread. There is a qualitative difference between asking whether something is politically feasible, and asserting that all forms of action are legible only within a predetermined set of ideological coordinates.
As for the situation itself, it is looking more and more likely that the moment may have passed when some sort of relatively modest action could have been undertaken that addressed the needs of the rebels without carrying with it all of the problems that you, Katz and j_p_z have alluded to.
Adam @ 210: the moment may have passed
Sadly yes. Sam @ 32 may have hit on the only viable course remaining.
@210
I presume you mean the questions re: Gs capabilities? I listen lot to News Radio which carries a lot of BBC world and CNN. Most of the reportage during the early stages playing catch up with the rebels, any analysis seemed to focus on when G would capitulate and bail out. Then we had the exodus of the expats. Then, well then there was uncertainty followed by, surprise, a huge retaliation by the govt.
Surely some of the reporters on the ground must have had some clue about Gs intent? There was a great deal of time spent on the exciting bits but, as usual, we were given a serial view of events. It wouldn’t have been hard to jump ahead and look over the horizon. It’s something that’s really missing in todays journalism. Sure we need to hear what the participants are saying but at the same time these people are supposed to be using their eyes ears and brains on our behalf.
Further, I reckon this longer view would have been prevalent in the centres of western power and thus they have been circumspect about going beyond some jolly encouraging words. They could have done themselves a favour and been more open about the inherent difficulties of mounting a limited campaign against the Libyan army on that army’s home soil. But then we’d have to stop believing our own myths.
I hadn’t thought through that no-fly zones have only been used by the US quite rarely, with the following results:
But then I guess the pro-intervention voices here seem pretty comfortable with that logic.
The other issue if this goes ahead, as looks a bit more likely now, is which factions inside the Libyan rebellion the US and its friends will be looking to back… the most radical ones who have consistently opposed intervention, or the ones who welcomed them in? And if conflict breaks out between those sides?
It really goes to the point of whether intervention is going to strengthen the revolution or simply act as a lever by which the US can install a new pro-West regime in a key region.
Is that not an outcome (which, based on US behaviour up to, say, 3 minutes ago, it would seem weird not to expect) that worries the pro-intervention Left on this blog?
Libya has been discussing handing control of oil exports to China, Russia and India.
The chance of a UN Security Council backed no-fly zone is pretty well nil.
An interesting analysis of the military situation by Jon Leyne of the BBC.
I have a reply to some of these points, at
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2011/03/15/revolution-intervention-and-solidarity-libya-and-the-anti-imperialist-left-part-1/
for true masochists….
Now there appears to be some Saudi Arabian military intervention in Bahrain. While the west dithers, the arab dictators are securing their prizes, without particular regard to the human cost. But I suppose a Saudi invasion of Bahrain is not imperialism, right?
So, let’s take stock:
* [sorry, Patrick] Gaddafi has invited foreign troops and planes and pilots from a dozen sub-Saharan African countries, and from Serbia, Algeria and Syria;
* The provisional authorities in liberated Libya have called for a no-fly zone to be imposed over Libya, almost all of whose populated areas lie within fifty km of the coast-line;
* Gaddafi and his foreign forces appear to be defeating the liberation forces militarily, and terrorising the people under his control, with arbitrary arrests and shootings;
* The status-quo Left struggle to find excuses why Gaddafi should have free rein to re-establish control over the whole country.
As Guy Rundle says, this all
” …. goes to the heart of the ‘anti-imperialist’ left’s dilemma – their collapse into a doctrinaire position so rigid and austere that any radical audacity has long since been leached out of it. The result is a bizarre passivity, which has effectively turned the far-left groups into conservatives, thinking out politics in terms of decades and centuries, making prudent and incremental changes, and utterly unable to deal with contradictory situations as they arise….. ”
If the revolution is defeated in Libya, what might become of the struggle in other countries ? Will autocratic regimes feel free – thanks to the non-intervention policies of ‘imperialists’ [and by inference and at a great distance, of the doctrinaire Left as well] to crush the revolutionary spirit out of their people ?
And will the people across the entire region thenceforward, curse the ‘imperialists’ [and if they ever find out, the armchair Left as well] for their inaction ? Will they come to the bitter conclusion that democracy, and anything Left of it, is worthless, futile, just a Western disease ?
And who will they turn to then ? Will the ‘imperialists’ and the do-nothing Left deliver the people into the hands of the Islamists ?
@217
I heard this report on New Radio this morning and it does seem that the situation is very unpredictable. I think the best hope for the rebels is that the govt forces fracture as was alluded to in the article. If G is able to maintain control over the military then he will win in the end. One think that I hadn’t fully understood was the divide between the east and the west of the country. That’s a complicating factor for G as any delay in taking full control of the country again gives dissident elements within his own forces time to foment trouble..
@219. “But I suppose a Saudi invasion of Bahrain is not imperialism, right?”
And the US or NATO would intervene in Bahrain on the side of the insurgent masses and overthrow the royal clique they have been in partnership with for decades…thus endangering their 5th Fleet naval base…?
Like I said upthread:
But I’m not holding my breath.
@146. “Nor has there ever been a revolution which could unequivocally be characterised as “working class”. Certainly not Russia in October 1917, or Spain in 1936 for that matter.”
“Understand please,” “What we have before us after all is a victorious uprising of the proletariat–almost the entire proletariat supports Lenin and expects its social liberation from the uprising”-Martov, leader of the Menshevik Party in 1917.
I really am going to have to have this quote saved on my desktop for easy reference.
As for Spain 1936 not being about working class revolution…honestly…
Sorry Katz, I must have missed that news item about the Saudis using their jet fighters to strafe their own people, and their bombers to bomb the crap out of their own people.
You forgot to mention the use of mercenaries from a dozen countries, to machine-gun and terrorise the Saudi people.
When that all happens, then perhaps we can discuss it
So Chav ….. because the Libyan revolution is not a strictly working-class revolution they can all go and …… ?
So whatever happened to internationalism ?
Chav,
Here’s another quote from 1917 that you could save on your desktop: in order to bring the soldiers and peasants over to the revolution -which like all revolutions, had a very mixed class following – Lenin had to use the slogan ‘Land to the tillers !’
Until it was no longer ‘historically’ or ‘strategically’ necessary, and it was possible for his successors to junk the soldiers and peasants, and impose collectivisation.
Trouble is, you can only do that once.
Yes, indeed, socialism seems to be the longest, most unnecessary and most painful way to make the transition from capitalism to capitalism. It has to BUILD ON, not DESTROY, its democratic foundations – it has to DO BETTER than democracy. Otherwise, why should anybody lift a finger for it ? Can it ? I believe so, but I don’t think anybody has found out how yet
PatrickB, I am certainly taking on your points about the events being mediated, and the possibility of that feeding back into the view on the ground to engender unrealistic expectations.
That perceptive shift would not have escaped Gaddafi, though, and I’ll hazard that that was the kernel of truth in his pronouncements about foreign agents. And also why he was quickly flooding state TV with images of supporters in Tripoli. With questions of sovereignty, perception can be reality.
It’s now (ie earlier today when I was last able to listen) being suggested in reports that rebels are being hammered by artillery and that is part of the reason for loyalist forces gaining ground these last few days. A no fly zone may be beside the point in a few days, if not already. The question may soon be: how do we respond to the starving and shelling of Benghazi? In such a situation, I don’t think there is any question of a no fly zone being particularly useful.
@226. Wha..?
Er yes, the Lenin probably did say ‘Land to the tillers !’. By which I assume you mean that since the numerically superior peasantry were revolting against the war and the landlords it was somehow not a working class revolution, even though workers in the cities and towns were driving the process and providing the most effective leadership.
Aside from that, I’m really not sure what else you are trying to say (please don’t repeat it).
@225. Yobbo, what makes you say the Libyan revolution isn’t significantly or even primarily working class in character? I may be wrong in assuming they are a key component, but I don’t see platoons of senior civil servants, oil magnates and other well-off characters dashing across the desert wielding AK47s…
@227
I’d expect G to be pumping out ludicrous propaganda ATM, lets face it he doesn’t need an excuse he’s always been a ranter. My point is that the media, in typical fashion, have privileged the dominant narrative (ME revolution, world changingly important events spanning national borders being witnessed by important people) over a rational analysis of the situation with regard to the conditions particular to that situation. For instance clearly reporting the disposition of both sides would put the feasibility of an intervention in context.
Because the events on the ground are obscured by the media’s framing we get the types of arguments we see here over intervention or not. The fact is it should have been made quite clear that an intervention in Libya was always an remote possibility.
You appear to miss quite a lot Old Yobbo, including the fact that I am not opposed to an NFZ being imposed on Gaddafi’s Air Force.
Perhaps I’m not the only participant at LP who would appreciate that you take a brief leave of absence while you brush up on your skills of comprehension.
Chav,
Sorry, I didn’t make my point clear enough: it referred to saying one thing at one time, and more or less the opposite later, when it suited the ‘strategic’ situation.
And of course there is a working-class in Libya, along with a whole range of classes, although I suspect that patron-client politics has cut across all classes for the past forty years, compromising class analysis, or political activity as class per se.
My apologies also to Katz – so you do support a NFZ over Libya ? Great, and when the situation in Saudi Arabia reaches a similar stage (as it may well do), you will support a NFZ over Saudi Arabia and the Gulf ? Good-o, but it might well be a much more complicated political situation than that posed by Libya. I hope that whichever nations, or groupings of nations, will be required to impose a NFZ there, is already thinking through the permutations.
My basic point, obviously badly made, is that the democratic revolutions across the region have to be supported by all progressive people, because their general failure would be disastrous for progressive activity for a very long time to come, as people turn away from democratic and progressive movements, not towards the Left, but to Islamism, out of sheer desperation.
PatrickB @ 229 – I guess I’m carrying that analysis further, and suggesting that, yes, you’re right about the media being a player, but we shouldn’t stop with the idea that media just obscures events on the ground. It may also be true that while the narrative of the swift march to Tripoli was dominant, G’s control of the situation was very much in question because of the perceptions of all parties involved (including his own military). It’s not necessarily just in constative terms that we should talk about the situation on the ground, as though it was always the case that Gaddafi would push back, and we’re only just now becoming aware of it. There is a real performative dimension to these sorts of situations.
I’d like to know who would actually do the work of imposing this marvelous NFZ in Saudi Arabia, and what’s in it for them.
The Americans? The Israelis? The… French? Maybe Hugo Chavez can put a couple of crop dusters up there.
Or maybe the wizards back at The Hague will do it. As all good LPers know, that’s where justice and goodness flows from.
Mise en bouteille a la source!
j_p_z,
well, that’s what the Romans and the English began asking themselves, but by that stage it was too late.
It sure as hell ain’t gonna be Australians flying around in Libyan airspace — not that it’s a particularly courageous thing to be doing. And even though, like the US, we’re largely owned by foreign investers, Australia may still be able to pay up on that foreign debt, unlike the U.S. But who cares? We’ll just hit the reset button! Everything’ll be fine… Just who’s dreaming here, j_p_z? You’ll do whatever the Saudis tell you to do. And say “thank you,” afterwards. “Thank you, Sheik Abdull-Aziz.”
And anyway, what have you got this big army for if you don’t use it, right? I can think of better monuments.
The Romans and the English asked themselves who was going to bomb Saudi radar and AAA installations so that they could fly unimpeded over a vast desert, n’importe pourquoi?
In order to ground an air force that the Saudis didn’t build themselves, and which they couldn’t begin to build on their own?
To fly across a desert largely populated by idle youngsters who depend on foreign help even to repair their telephone lines?
And you think we’ll do “whatever the Saudis tell us to do”?
Bartender! joe’s next one is on me! (or maybe it’s reeeally on the Sheik, cue spooky organ music…)
I’m drinking Cranberry Juice!
The Romans? I think you’ll find that the demise of their empire somewhat predates the invention of aeroplanes, a prerequisite for NFZs. By about 1500 years.
I’ve been trying to follow the position of those who oppose action by Western Governments in every case (as opposed to those who see specific circumstances here). It seems to me to come down to depend on one of two logical paths, and either way, madness lies.
Either you have to say that in East Timor (to pick just the most obvious example) there actually was more death and destruction as a result of Australia and other nations acting than if the Timorese had been left to the tender mercies of the militias. In this case you’re pretty much with the tea partiers in your hold on reality.
The alternative is to argue; yes in some cases there is a benefit to the people concerned through action, but western governments only ever act for malign reasons, and motivations matter so much that it’s better for the population to be raped and slaughtered than to let the western governments have their way.
Now the second path offends my largely utilitarian approach to things, but there is something even more disturbing to it. If states are always bad in their motivations when acting externally, why are they any different when they act internally? Shouldn’t we then oppose all actions of the state – Medicare for example? A public schooling system? We’re back to the tea party again.
Ok there is a third path, where you hold to a third path where there is something sacred about state boundaries. States can act acceptably within them, but not externally. Not quite the tea party, but a pretty odd position for people claim to be internationalists.
Sorry about the italics above – should have only been the word “every” included.
GregM said:
Well, you know what though though, GregM…
But true enough, I get the drift! Well, what about if I just said the
EnglishBritish Empire? They’ve got, like, the Harriet Jump jet an’all?! It can go up and down and it doesn’t even need a runway! What about them, huh?Joe. Not even them. The British Empire was a casualty of WW2, although it took them about fifteen years after it to realise that. I don’t think that they’ve got any Harriers flying anymore. Someone should have a quiet word to David Cameron, pointing out that the sun set on the British Empire about fifft years ago.
You and I and j_p_z know who would have to do the heavy lifting to put an NFZ over Libya. It’s not France. And after the sh*t they had to put up with from France (their supposed NATO ally) when they put a NFZ over Bosnia, which brought the war there to an end with the Dayton Peace Agreement ,the US would have to ask themselves why they’d bother again given all the sh*t they had to put up with, having the French as their “ally”.
Dear StephenL,
yours is a very sub-standard analysis, unfortunately. In any analysis you need to understand inputs and outputs.
Now, even a very cursory appraisal of the weaponry of the Indonesian Army will show that they are being armed by the US. Now, you will, I hope, admit that there is something distasteful about arming a dictatorship and then sitting by, while it uses
. You have to excuse me, if my use of the passive is confusing, but I do mean the U.S. and not Australia. The U.S gave the nod and we went in there with our 5 helicopters and 3 tinnies and saved the East Timorese. We are, indeed, magnificent.
yourit’s weapns to massacre it’s citizens, even if they’re only a minority groupYou do know what currency the East Timorese use, I suppose?
As for the difference between the internal and external responsibilities of a state. It’s part of the definition, really.
What do you mean by tea-partyer, other than somebody with ‘a poor hold on reality?’ International relations is a complex and heavily researched subject, there are more than just 2.5 explainations about how it functions. Unfortunately.
Joe, I think I have a moderate grip on inputs and outputs. I don’t however, have much of an understanding of your logic.
Of course it is (more than) distasteful to arm a dictatorship and then watch it masacre it’s civilians. Indeed I was beaten up protesting exactly this in regard to East Timor.
But the fact that the US and Australia behaved in a shocking manner for 24 years is not the point. The point is that come 1999 they had a choice: to stand back and let their past actions come to fruition, or to change tack and act to stop the slaughter.
Some people seem to think that because they had acted badly for so long the best thing they could have done was to disengage. That wasn’t the view of most of the left at the time, and the voice we gave to the general horror at what was occuring forced the government to act, preventing more bloodloss.
I’m at a loss to know how the currency the East Timorese use is significant to whether they’re better off alive or dead.
GregM,
that isn’t the issue for me. The issue is that U.S. foreign policy in recent history will respond militarily to two situations:
1. to defend it’s economic interest through access to resources, in particular oil.
2. when a vassal state doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. A kind of post cold-war mop up exercise.
Libya doesn’t meet these criteria. Access to oil is not restricted. Gadaffi is a lunatic but the US didn’t substantively make him and more importantly, there is no dependency relationship between the two states. They are, like East Timor, not primarily significant to the U.S. I’m not even sure that the U.S. would support France, for example, if it wanted to invade Libya. What would be the correct U.S. response in that situation: diplomatic support? It could become very confusing, very quicky.
Or Sheik Abdull says he can’t sleep at night what with all the serfs protesting, maybe they’d shut up, if Gadaffi was “removed” (cue sinister music, track 2.) But that would be counter intuitive, as you seen in Bahrain.
Joe, even the most cursory examination of the list you have linked to shows that the US is not a significant arms supplier to Indonesia. Russia, other European countries, especially France (why is that not surprising?) and South Korea and Israel are.
Stephen L’s analysis did not mention the US at all. He mentioned Western Govermnents, a collective which includes France, which from your list is one of Indonesia’s principal arms suppliers. You have not a single bad word for France. But you singled the US out for criticism.
It is obvious to all whose analysis is substandard and it is not Stephen L’s. No-one is surprised.
One finds oneself indeed rather r’aghast at the prospect of such a long-winded dissertation about such commonplacencies, dare’ai say, colloquial representation. But one must regrettably abscond. Toodle-pip!
Joe, Your slagging off about US arms sales to Indonesia in response to Stephen L’s post, which did not mention the US at all, was substandard but your last post was simply pathetic.
Nothing in the link you provide gives any reason for anyone to criticise the US’s engagement with what is now the democratic government of Indonesia.
@232
“G’s control of the situation was very much in question because of the perceptions of all parties involved (including his own military).”
Well that’s my point. The real story here is about how G managed to come back with such force. Was there a struggle to maintain control, was G caught off guard and took sometime to marshall his forces? The answer to the question is quite important as it influences the direction that the situation moves in. I would like to have had more information about this rather than a moment by moment description of the battle.
It’s fairly clear that the media took a punt on G packing up and going quietly. Whoops that didn’t happen and now he’s pushed the rebels to the brink. Ah well, best forget about that exile angle and go with “desperate struggle in the desert”. Those who are interested in outcomes are fairly poorly served by this mode of reporting.
Luc MICHEL@25 offers up some very strange truthiness in ideological defence of the Gaddaffi Regime.
1) The mutiny is carried out [a] under the monarchist flag, [b] has a reactionary character, [c] is carried out in the name of an abolished monarchy
1 [a] The ‘monarchist flag’ also happens to be the first post colonial flag and the only flag of an independent Libya that is not gaddaffiist.
1 [b] has a reactionary character – where’s the supporting facts and analysis?
1 [c] no evidence offered apart from the flag, there are no calls to reinstitude the monarcy.
2) The mutiny has religious character (in Spain – orthodox Catholic, in Libya – wahhabite Muslim)
Again, no evidence provided that this is a religious mutiny. On a side note, the Wahhab are a clan in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism is not a religious doctrine.
3) In both cases the mutiny is led by conservative militaries, who rejected their obedience to the republic
No evidence is presented that these are conservative elements, no evidence is provided that the military has lead this movement.
4) The mutiny is backed by the most reactionary forces in the world (Legion Condor, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy – in Spain, US and British advisors and navies – in Libya)
No evidence of support from the US or British navies. Also under the logic of US and GB support proving that an entity is reactionary then the British and US support for Gaddaffi over the past few years renders his regime on the side of reaction. This rhetoric can be used by both sides.
5) The mutiny has started on the periphery of the state (Canary Islands – 1936, Cyrenaica – 2011)
I love this periphery of the state nonsense it always gives me a good laugh. The supporters of Gaddaffi claim there is NO Libyan state.
So lets get down to the nitty gritty of periphery/centre reaction/progressive. Under this analysis Wave Hill landrights (periphery) is reactionary and US Republican Party (central) must be revolutionary. Alternative analyses might look at inclusion/ exclusion, wealth/ inequality. Why was it that it was that poorer neighbourhoods in Tripoli showed high levels of resistance to the regime.
6) The “International Brigades” are formed to defend the Spanish Republic, Libyan Jamahiriya receive international support (Pan-African brigades and forces, Arab volunteers, Pan-European revolutionary militants organising the battle of the media in all Europe)
There are volunteers on both sides both in the current conflict and in the Spanish Civil War, this is no evidence one way or the other.
7) Rebels have established a parallel government and are trying to topple down the republican authorities using the brute force, under conservative slogans…
What conservative slogans? How is there a parallel government if Libya has no government (this is one of the central claims of the gadaffiists). And why is the ‘non-government’ using brute force, does this not de-legitimise them? Why isn’t Luc talking about the massacres of mourners at funerals, arbitrary extra judicial mass murders in Libyan prisons, or the firing on of demonstrators in Zawiyah? Why is Luc not talking about Said Al Gaddafis threats to “cleanse” the population?
A military coup is not a revolution.
9) The legend of 1936 war lives on in revolutionaries circles – the situation in Libya resembles it very, very much!
Luc has tried 8 times to demonstrate a similarity between the Gadaffiists and the Spanish Republic, and the Libyan opposition and the Francoists and has failed 8 times.
I am curious as to whether Luc MICHEL recieves funding for this rubbish. All the leftists that I know who read the green book circa 1980 rejected it fast.
Adam Bandt supports the imposition of a no-fly zone.
Good on Adam Bandt, and a good editorial, too, in The Age today.
But the tsunami put paid to the slim hopes of the Libyans being protected by the outside world. Gaddafi will be left alone now to torture thousands to death. It will be horrendous. And we won’t hear about it for many years if ever.
Rudd did well, too. Not many others.
The left aren’t supporting the uprisings in northern Africa/Middle East because they don’t tick all the leftist boxes. People want the opportunities that capitalism offers and aren’t convinced that a dictatorship is the price you have to pay for that.
Muhammad Bouazizi was running a small business and struggling against the stifling state – the sort of thing that @chrisberg goes on about, with with much less cant and bullshit. He was not organising a strike, he was not leaking government secrets, he wasn’t posting on LP.
Yes, Bouazizi was bourgeois – not that there’s anything wrong with that, some of my best friends etc. The revolutions show millions of people don’t see mass passivity (the necessary condition for socialism) or his equally despairing death as their only two options.
The left are waiting for Libya, Yemen, Palestine, anywhere really, to tick off all the socialist boxes. None of them are. If that happened, socialism would really be the avant-garde, it would really be the only legitimate route to government that it claims for itself. Western socialism is ready for its close-up, but none of those pesky bedraggled masses want anything to do with ‘em.
They’ve learnt nothing since 1989: aren’t all who struggle against socialist regimes reactionary? In 2011 the question is: aren’t all who struggle against Western-backed dictators socialist? The answers then and now are: no, and no.
I don’t think the ‘anti-imperialist’ positions under scrutiny here are necessarily reducible to a commitment to socialism in the sense you mean, Andrew. No doubt many socialists are on board, but I think it goes further than that into anarchistic and global justice movement territory, as well as disillusioned modern liberal territory. US foreign policy and/or neoliberalism has, for some, put the west into a fallen state from which it can never be considered in properly political terms.
And none of them ever will. Nobody, after the history of the Soviet Union under its Great Leader Lenin and his successors would for a minute consider doing that.
But the rentier class who comprise the modern Left demand that of the people of Libya. Otherwise they will sabotage those people who simply seek freedom on their own terms for not submitting to the ideological purity of class struggle that they would never dream of risking themselves in and they will gladly condemn those freedom speaking people to unspeakable dictatorship in order to maintain their own hypocritical stance.
But then hypocrisy is the very calling card of the modern Left.
Wbb I don’t think that is what is about to unfold at all. I think that the Obama administration has now been dragged to the point of doing what must be done in order to support the revolutionary demands that are common to the entire region. The demands are for free and fair elections and the revolutionaries in Bengazi are as entitled to support as are the Iraqi masses who Obama supports every day of every week since he came to power. The demands that have been met in Iraq have now become a joke in Bahrain. Obama will have to defend the Libyan revolutionaries with or without the international law that the Saudi’s are reliant on in sending their troops to stop the revolutionary demands in Bahrain.
Gaddafi is strategically stuffed despite the support of the Chinese Russian and Indians. The lawless revolutionaries will be creating some new laws.
Anyway we are all on the same side now. Even Guy Rundle!
There are some pretty horrendously stupid things are being asserted here. Let’s begin with Andrew E. #251. Apparently “the left” haven’t supported the revolutions in the Middle East because “Muhammad Bouazizi was running a small business and struggling against the stifling state” and then, perhaps after reading Atlas Shrugged (Atlas was another North African after all)he self-immolated in defence of free trade and “the left” have been wary of the revolutions that ensued because they were inspired by a member of the petit bourgeoisie.
What is the basis of this assertion? Where has “the left” been campaigning for a victory to Mubarak, Ghaddafi etc? Where are the quotes/links to justify this assertion?
Then he goes on to assert that “the left” are “waiting for Libya, Yemen, Palestine, anywhere really, to tick off all the socialist boxes”.
Greg M #253 then approvingly quotes this and has a go at poor old Lenin (the bloke who defended the Easter Uprising against socialist critics who thought Connolly had been mad to team up with a reactionary nationalist like Pearse and who famously argued that the socialist ideal whould be,”not a trade unionist but the tribune of the people”) and has a swipe at the left for being “the rentier class”.
That’s right of course. That’s why all the bond-holders around the world have always voted Trot. They know that the left are rentiers just like them.
I hope you’re right patrickm. But it just doesn’t feel like it to me. Vacillation seems to be the mood.
Most people on the left support a UNSC authorised no-fly zone.
Most people on the right too, I bet.
If fascist Russia doesn’t want a precedent set then the Arab League and any able COW should go ahead despite a lack of any UNSC resolution.
patrickm what glue have you been sniffing?
The people of Libya will be going down in a big way. Crows will feed on their carcasses.
And we in the West will look away in our shame and find something else to talk about rather than that small interlude when we could have done something for their freedom to build for themselves the society they wanted and the government that would support it.
And on LP,in his own special way, Katz will make an obscene spectacle of himself in sanctomonious gloating over the tragedy of the Libyans and their deaths in their thousands and find that their deaths and tortures are nothing to do with his mendacious but vehement opposition to any effort to prevent them occuring but rather further proof of the evils of the United States of America.
If you point out this well worn track you will be promptly pointed towards LPs Comments policy.
His usual trope. And much of LPs.
That is the paradigm of LP.
Saif claims it’ll all be over in 48 hours.
Thank you for ascribing so much potency to my modest words, GregM. You clearly believe in magic.
Nevertheless I, and I am reasonably confident, all other sane persons, would question whether they were as powerful as you seem to think.
But please feel free to continue to express your opinions on this interesting and unusual subject. I hope you derive some therapeutic benefit from the exercise.
Saif reminds me of Uday.
If I was in Benghazi I’d be hoping a bomb lands on my head rather than end up in one of Saif’s torture cells.
I’ve posted reply to Rundle’s latest Crikey offerings, and the Greens’ position on this at Left Flank.
And if you were in Benghazi, Wbb, you would soon get your wish, thanks to the inaction of a gutless world, Left and Right, imperialists and anti-imperialists alike.
But live in hope …..
I’m sure your dispute with Rundle over the definition of imperialism and colonialism will be well-received by the citizens of Benghazi as Gaddafi’s army rolls over them. Perhaps you could organize a leaflet drop? Not until you’ve held your Town Hall Steps rally to “deepen solidarity in the Australian left,” though, I’ve no doubt.
The faintest hope:
From the Guardian:
“The United Nations security council is planning to vote later on Thursday on a draft resolution that would not only introduce a no-fly zone over Libya but would authorise the use of air strikes to stop the advance of forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
“The draft, supported by the US, Britain, France and Germany, reflects a shift by Washington, alarmed by the speed at which the uprising is collapsing and concerned at the possibility of a massacre in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
“The US until this week had been totally opposed to becoming involved militarily in Libya.
“The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told reporters on Wednesday night after a day of intensive negotiation: “We need to be prepared to contemplate steps that include, but perhaps go beyond, a no-fly zone at this point, as the situation on the ground has evolved, and as a no-fly zone has inherent limitations in terms of protection of civilians at immediate risk.”
“Although a vote has been pencilled in for Thursday afternoon, schedules have a tendency to slip at the UN. Russia and China, which both have a veto on the the 15-member security council, could yet block it.
“A UN resolution would pave the way for military action that could involve the US, and other members of Nato such as Britain and France, as well as Arab states. The US remains opposed to putting troops on the ground to create ‘safe havens’ and instead sees planes being used to stop tanks advancing towards Benghazi or ships loyal to Gaddafi bombarding the city.”
So …… does the US or doesn’t the US seek to meddle in other countries’ affairs ? Is it trying to dictate to other countries and to dominate any imperialist intervention ?
Call me naive but it doesn’t seem so (of course, it may well turn out to be so).
Obviously, as time has passed [it's more than three weeks now since there was an LP thread about a no-fly zone], the need for any intervention to turn around the fortunes of the revolutionaries in Libya has deepened, from not just a no-fly zone but air support against Ghaddafi’s tanks and artillery as well.
In other words, the longer it has taken to do anything, the more that will have to be done, and the more substantial and long-term any intervention may have to be: the price of dithering
Cynicism suggests the USA is belatedly supporting the no-fly zone knowing it won’t get thru the UNSC. A clean conscience with no risks!
Even if this is sincere can it pass Russia and China’s votes – and even if it does how long would the UK, France and the US take to deploy the necessary equipment? Italy ought to help too – they’ll cop the refugees and the persecuted.
Still, Old Yobbo, it is a glimmer. Living in hope ..
If those countries still got their ambassadors sipping tea in Gaddafi’s compound – then the no-fly ain’t going to fly.
part two of my notes on this thang is at:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2011/03/17/libya-and-the-anti-imperialist-left-2-ideology-audacity-and-revolution/
phun.
First, Adam@253 doesn’t know what he means so you can’t either.
Then there’s the bollard@256. I don’t think “the left” have been “campaigning” or doing much else really. You can’t quote/link to a nothing, though if you go hunting for ideological left sites they are chock-full of mealy-mouthed, hand-wringing, fuck all.
Guy Rundle’s piece concludes that the Libyan revolutionaries are goners. And that to sit this out is to actively refuse to help when requested. The rest of it is an analysis of how the various obscure relics of C20 hard to soft-hard left have fallen into disarray on the issue of foreign intervention.
What’s interest me is why political entities with actual power such as the US Congress, the Whitehouse, Berlin, Beijing, the Oz Cabinet outside of Kevin Rudd, have all fallen into disarray on the issue of foreign intervention.
The UNSC talks about areas of concern it has re no-fly: what are they?
Blood on our hands.
International Crisis Group against NFZ.
ICG wants to send in local diplomats to ask Gaddafi, nicely, if he’d mind settling his differences with this people at a round-table.
Fairly clear that there is 40 years of history that predicts what his answer might be.
Wbb,
“ICG wants to send in local diplomats to ask Gaddafi, nicely, if he’d mind settling his differences with this people at a round-table.
“Fairly clear that there is 40 years of history that predicts what his answer might be.”
And they know it. They can’t pretend that they don’t.
Are they refusing any form of internationalist support because they are pissed off that a ‘bunch of wogs’ have had the courage and opportunity to launch a revolutionary struggle while they are still out to afternoon tea ? Is it as racist as that ? What a worthless bunch: a revolution comes along, messy as hell, and they wet themselves.
Sorry if this is imputing motives ……
@wbb – So speaks the ‘realist’ foreign policy establishment, oddly lined up with the radical left on this.
Let’s see,
A Libyan movement opposed to ‘pro-rebel’ Western military intervention.
PLUS
A people who supplied twice as many foreign fighters to battle the US and allies in Iraq as any other Arabic speaking nation.
PLUS
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates explaining that to enforce a No Fly Zone would necessitate the bombing of targets on the ground.
PLUS
The examples of Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan.
EQUALS
…surely the Cruise Missile Left can ‘do the math’ on this one?
As a footnote, surely writing an article in the bourgeois press that in essence is entitled, ‘The Left are bickering, divided and wrong’, is more or less a form of ideological strike breaking?
The first duty of any nation engaging in bellicosity is that it has a reasonable prospect of achieving its goals.
Therefore the questions:
1. What immediate goals have been enunciated by those nations urging bellicosity?
2. What conditions of victory have been enunciated by the nations urging bellicosity. On the face of it, there is a disturbing contradiction between the two major proponents of bellicosity. France has already recognised the rebel leadership as the legitimate government of Libya. Have the British or any other potentially bellicose nation made any similar statement? This being the case, what might victory look like?
3. What exit strategy, if any, has been enunciated by the nations urging bellicosity?
These are questions of the utmost importance. Some folks on the Left appear to be unable to discuss them intelligently.
Well the UN has passed the NFZ resolution, and raids are expected to start on Sunday or Monday according to The Guardian.
Probably too late for the poor Libyans, however.
Katz, if positive answers to those questions were going to be able to be made, the NFZ needed to be imposed when Libya was pinned down in Tripoli, not poised to enter Benghazi. It’s too late, and so now the western powers will look exactly like the belligerent imperialists Dr_Tad thinks they are – unless some behind the scenes diplomacy convinces Gaddafi to use the NFZ to save face – which I doubt he’ll be interested in doing.
New post: http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/03/18/libya-the-left-and-a-no-fly-zone-ii/