The scale and horror of what is happening in Libya are a wake up call for anyone who thought revolution was just a day out in the square. There is no doubt that killing unarmed civilians with intent, attempting to orchestrate bombings, hiring mercenaries to make war on Libya’s citizens, and the catalogue of horrors we are seeing constitute crimes against humanity.
It was interesting, in that context, to see Ibrahim Sahid from the National Front for the Salvation of Libya remind Ali Moore on Lateline that there were provisions in international law to deal with these sorts of events, and it wasn’t just about the hand wringing of Western leaders and elites.
Guy Rundle, writing in Crikey, argues that “military humanitarianism is finally dead”:
Now the nightmare scenario has occurred. The Libyan UN delegation has quit the government en masse and asked the international community to intervene and help ordinary Libyans. Goddamit — after all that talk about the West having a mission for international solidarity and the defence of universal values, somebody actually believed it.
Listen to the sound of the pro-war party rushing to demand that their governments respond to the Libyans’ call.
(*Tumbleweeds*).
But the articulation of the consequences of the international law architecture for these sorts of crimes goes on despite the ideological emptiness of neo-cons and governments. At The Interpreter, there’s some salient discussion of how the doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect” might be applied.
In some ways, this horrible sequence of events might be somewhat of a test case for how seriously the Western governments which have signed onto a stack of protocols inspired by liberal interventionism really take that.
NB Previous discussion of the Libyan uprising on LP is here.
Good points, Kim. There seems to be a distinct whiff of being “shocked, shocked to find that believing our past pontifications has been going on here”.
But our governments hold the moral high ground against peoples who just aren’t suited for democracy, never you mind about that.
Indeed, tigtog!
Umm, no, the Bush Doctrine very clearly believed the ME was ready for democracy.
The spark was ignited in Iraq and has now spread hither and yon. This is an extraordinary vindication of neoconservative ideology.
I think it’s more a matter that North African Revolution Fatigue has set in. The Tunisians were smart, getting in first.
Well, seriously, Sam, I think Western elites and the meejah took the relatively non-violent nature of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions as something of a template, and given all the lazy assumptions that “all Arab countries are the same” and metaphors about “contagion” being thrown around, may have assumed that their sole role would be hand-wringing. Then things started happening differently in Bahrain and Libya.
It is early days in Libya yet. Gaddafi may still fall soon. So far it is similar to Egypt. He needs a few days to get his cash and relatives out of the country.
The east has already fallen.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/23/us-libya-protests-tobruk-idUSTRE71M0CF20110223?pageNumber=2
No matter what Gaddafi wants his body may seize up. He may sink into a comatose state as others have before him: http://www.thelantern.com/opinion/leaders-comatose-conditions-should-serve-warning-1.2010856
relatively non-violent nature of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions
More people were murdered by Mubarak during the revolution than have been, to date, by Gaddafi.
Source, please, Sam?
I’d also note that it appears very difficult to confirm what’s occurred in Libya.
However, if you’re suggesting that the said relative non-violence may have been a function of media and elite representations and the application of previous templates (‘velvet’, ‘colour’ revolutions etc), you may well have a good point indeed.
Actually SL, Bush only believed in imposing his form of democracy in the ME by forcibly installing puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unscripted popular uprisings – not so much.
The neo-cons would be alarmed by what’s happened in Egypt, with the possible loss of an ally to Israel, and in Libya, with the loss of a high value business partner.
On the death toll of the Egyptian revolution, here’s one source that claims 365 deaths and 5,500 injured. The characterisation of the uprising as “non-violent” appears to have been an artifact of the reporting, more than anything else.
@Tim – thanks for that.
My source is my memory of news reports that said 350 or so people were killed in Egypt and the number in Libya – so far – is a couple of hundred.
I am all for the Far African Revolutionary Triumph. Though the acronym smells a bit.
Has anyone brought up the domino analogy yet? It’s like a reverse Vietnam!
Nope. The Bush Doctrine was only ever about pre-emptive war in the context of threats to the national security of the United States. I think you’re thinking of Woodrow Wilson.
Bill Easterly has argued that “any military intervention would play into Qaddafi’s hand, especially there really is nobody that can be trusted to do a “neutral humanitarian” intervention.”
Not sure that that means nobody should try, though… Surely some international force would be worthwhile?
He goes on:
http://aidwatchers.com/2011/02/toppling-qaddafi/
Sam: Wikipedia has 519+ dead and 3,980+ injured in Libya. These happened in a smaller time frame (8 days for the protests, as opposed to 18 for Egypt), and for a smaller population (6 million as opposed to 88 million).
Saying “more people were murdered by Mubarak during the revolution than have been, to date, by Gaddafi” is both untrue for absolute and proportionate numbers.
@12 – thanks, Sam, Tim provided a link. I strongly suspect the figure of 200 is a significant understatement in the Libyan case, but I think your (and Tim’s) point about media narratives here has force.
@15 -
dk.au, I’m also very unclear as to what a “neutral humanitarian” intervention means, and I think we do have an egregious case of a sovereign making war on his own people, far more clear than what is usually supposed to trigger the ‘Right to Protect’ stuff.
Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rawanda, Haiti, East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan…all shining examples of successful humanitarian intervention.
When will the ‘Cruise Missile Left’ learn…or at least run out of propellant?
Perhaps its time to have faith in the masses..
Well, I’m no member of the ‘Cruise Missile Left’, Chav, but when the said masses are being bombed, shot at from helicopters, etc. it does make one think.
“Perhaps its time to have faith in the masses..”
Faith based on what? Chechnya?
I don’t want to derail the thread on this side-issue, but I really do question the notion that Egypt’s and Tunisia’s revolutions were ‘relatively non-violent’ when hundreds died and thousands were injured in both cases. If that’s our scale of relativity, Bloody Sunday in Belfast was a union night debate and the Kent State University was a kiddies’ picnic. I doubt whether we’d be talking about ‘relatively non-violent’ if these events had been played out in any white christian-majority country.
Do you mean to tell me there are still people who use phrases like “the masses”?
Chav, what are you talking about?
Rwanda? There was no humanitarian intervention. There was an invasion from Uganda by a Tutsi-led Rwandan army that displaced the Hutu-led genocidalists and ended the genocide there. The cynicism and gutlessness of the French who could have intervened to stop the genocide, at least in part, was a disgrace. Though you, no doubt, would have been appalled if they had done so.
East Timor? That was a UN endorsed humanitarian intervention which brought to an end a rampage and reign of terror by Indonesian army backed thugs. A very successful humanitarian intervention which paved the way for the people of East Timor to establish their own democratic government. I guess if you had your way the East Timorese would still be cowering to those thugs.
Kosovo? Well I guess if you like dictators lording it over oppressed minorities you must be very disappointed by that successful humanitarian intervention.
Ditto for Bosnia when the Americans finally got around to bombing Milosevic to the negotiating table and ended the Bosnian war- with no help from the French again.
I’m not sure at all that the masses would want your faith in them as lots of them would end up dead just to keep you happy.
@Hal9000,
I think there’s some category confusion between “non-violent revolutionaries” and “non-violence” in toto.
In both Tunisia and Egypt the protestors calling for reform/revolution were not, or at least mostly not, violent. There was some public property destruction, but they weren’t waving weapons around or threatening people with force. They were just out there protesting.
The violence in both cases has come from the anti-revolutionary responders.
Not people, j_p_z. Just Chav.
Kim,
Far be it for me to seem to defend capitalism and the neocons, but your comment that “all the lazy assumptions that “all Arab countries are the same” ” may apply to others as well, and just as easily.
So what are we demanding that the West does in the case of Libya, when the people there plead ‘help us, please, help us’ ? If it intervenes, we give it a kick in the nuts. If it doesn’t, it gets one up the backside.
Oh, the luxury of the powerless ! And here’s me thinking that the point was not to observe history, Chardonnay in hand, but to help to change it.
Kim, the masses are always being bombed and shot at somewhere by their own rulers. No doubt someone Somali called for foreign intervention, and didn’t that turn out well…
tigtog @25 – yes, if the term “non-violence” is taken to refer to the revolutionaries relying on mass demonstrations rather than armed insurrection, then the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions were non-violent in that sense, as virtually all the violence seems to have been perpetrated by the respective regimes. Whether or not the Libyan revolution is non-violent in that sense is difficult to tell.
If the term “non-violence” is taken to mean a lack of bloodshed, then none of the revolutions thus far have been “non-violent” in that sense, although it certainly seems possible that the Libyan revolution may turn out to be bloodier than the other two, given the apparent use by the regime of air strikes and gangs of foreign mercenaries. It also seems likely that the revolutionaries themselves will show far fewer scruples in responding to those atrocities.
Saddam had an explicit policy of genocide against the Kurds in Iraq. George Bush ended that campaign of genocide yet many of my comrades on the left called him a war criminal for having done so. Those who are now calling for an intervention in Libya might like to explain why this situation is different.
Chav,
So …… under no circumstances should there ever be foreign intervention, anywhere ? No, I’m not trying to be funny, just looking for your parameters if you have any.
“… any military intervention would play into Qaddafi’s hand”
By making it possible for him to recast protestors as agents of foreign powers no doubt. This was the line the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt ran and we should not fall into a kind of hindsight bias and think that it could not be an effective means of dividing the people and scuppering pro-democracy movements. I think that is why some are so reticent, even about the no-fly zone proposal, and favour only non-military interventions.
On PM today, one of the protestors in Tripoli was describing how his city is besieged, all passage out of the city blocked, and mercenaries are conducting house to house searches. His view was that they were now all hostages and that no doubt some hostages would die but at the end Gaddafi would lose. As I have seen it described, for example here, it is precisely this attitude, the one that says “they will have to kill each and every one of us to stop us” that was the strength of the movements in Tunisia and Egypt.
All dictatorships ultimately rely on the self-interest of the stakeholders – military, governing elites, etc – to sustain their power and the reluctance of outsiders to intervene in any meaningful way. Gadaffi is banking on the self-interest of his internal stakeholders to hold on and the impotence of outsiders to do anything about it.
He’s prepared to kill as many Libyans as necessary, within the parameters of internal stakeholder self-interest, to survive and is relying on the fact that hand-wringing from the UN and western governments is ultimately, meaningless.
If he’s still there at the end of this, they’ll have to deal with him. And they will.
I don’t see him going unless the internal stakeholder self-interest equation tips against him.
Tunisia and Egypt have large, educated, globally-connected middle class constituencies as well as leaders – and crucially, internal stakeholders – who ultimately had no appetite for murdering thousands of people in order to hang on. Gadaffi is currently without binding constraint, in that respect.
@@@Greg M, the rampage by pro- Indonesian thugs was largely over and the TMI largely withdrawn by the time Howard (thanks to the co-opt ion of the unions and many on the Left) launched his invasion of East Timor. This further cemented the acceptance of the idea that Australian intervention in the South Pacific in pursuit of ‘the national interest’ was legitimate. Was Downer’s hardline on Timor Gap oil and gas an example of humanitarianism?
Nato airstrikes achieved little other than to accelerate Serbia oppression of the Kosovars.
Milosevic was brought down by a mass uprising, not Western airstrikes.
“thanks to the co-opt ion of the unions and many on the Left”
Indeed. The memory of Bill Ludwig storming ashore in Dili is etched inelibly in my memory.
What’s happening in Libya is horrifying from the few images we have.
And I’d just like to point out to SBS and all other news outlets that I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ‘MARKET JITTERS’ associated with these events, so stop insulting the brave people of these countries struggling against tyrant with this almost sociopathically disengaged angle.
Geoff Honnor – army units in the east of the country have declared themselves for the people and against Gaddafi. Some of those stakeholders have already made their choice.
You know what disgusts me, you have to wade through a hundred articles tracking every tiny blip in “the markets” that can be attributed to the democracy movements in the ME to find one article about events in Libya and Egypt. It makes my skin crawl.
Snap Lefty E. Cross-posted.
So, skeptical Leftist – where are these heroic Bush doctrinaires now? Calling for intervention from the floor of Congress, are they?
Nope.
In fact, Dubya and Blair instead rehabilitated Gaddafi, and removed sanctions on his regime. I dont even recall any calls for democracy in te Middle east – rather a series of justification for pre-emptive strikes on the grounds of ‘self-defence’ from WMDs in Iraq, and otherwise 30+ years of staunchly supporting Middle East dictators.
I dunno if youve noticed, but these primarily uprisings are against Western backed dictators, from Mubarak, to Ben Ali, to Bahrain and Yemen. Gaddafi is the first out of that pattern, but even he has become a western darling since in recent years towing the line over WMDs.
Listen to the Egyptian protestors my friends – they’ve been saying ‘thanks for nothing’ to the West for about 3 months.
My share portfolio begs to differ with Lefty E and Su.
Seriously, Libya is a big oil producer (hence the intense rimming of Gaddafi by Western leaders recently) and it does matter what happens there, economy-wise, as distasteful as it may be.
Couldnt give a shit Sam. Its a totally unimportant aspect.
And if the stability of anyone’s portfolio is so reliant on authoritarian oil kleptocracies pumping out gallons to buy weapons to keep their own populace down, well, maybe they deserve to lose a pile.
Chav,
East Timor, Kosovo, a mythical Serbian ‘uprising’: you do write complete rubbish sometimes
Sometimes?
“My share portfolio begs to differ… …distasteful as it may be.”
Says it all, really.
“Gaddafi is the first out of that pattern, but even he has become a western darling since in recent years towing the line over WMDs.”
Thank God for that eh Lefty E? After 40 years of the unmitigated hell – and incredibly poorly-advised fashion choices – he’s unleashed on his people, we can finally safely blame it all on ‘teh west.’
Geoff,
before you unload on the rest of us, I’d be interested to hear you’re response to the claim that Gadaffi’s not insignificant personal fortune is based on Western interest’s in Libya’s oil.
Western countries have been bankrolling this insane b4stard since the 1980s. At times it’s been a hell of a ride, but we clung to him the whole time like dried turd, Geoff. The never-do-wrong-West gave him the “green light” a long time ago.
Speaking of Kleptocracy– The Libyan oil-crisis has got the European markets all jittery. The immaculate recovery of the European economy could be in danger. With international implications.
@44. I’m sorry Yobbo, I don’t recall NATO troops storming the Serbian parliament and ousting Milosevic…but I gather you and Ol Greg do…must be interesting to live in upside down world…
No they haven’t Joe. They’ve been buying his oil off him because they needed it to run their economies. Bankrolling suggests that they have been giving him subsidies (foreign aid) or loans on non-commercial terms to prop him up.
Or perhaps your argument is that the US is bankrolling Chavez because it is the major buyer of Venezuelan oil.
Lefty E:
“So, skeptical Leftist – where are these heroic Bush doctrinaires now? Calling for intervention from the floor of Congress, are they?”
It is generally advisable to get your citizens out of a country before adopting a a belligerent stance. Nonetheless hawkish Dems like Lieberman have already called for a no-fly zone, as you are no doubt well aware.
Anyway, my ideas are obviously not welcome here- I’m on permanent moderation- so I’ll now depart the echo chamber. Cheerio.
Joe, I’m not, “unloading on the rest of you,” because – demonstrably – LP is not a collective hive mind. I’m commenting in response to the post and ensuing comments and I simply don’t accept that Gadaffi is a creation of the west – buying oil from him doesn’t make the purchaser responsible for his actions.
Libya not long ago was elected to head the UN Human Rights High Commission – was ‘the west’ responsible for that? How, through your thesis, is the Reagan’s administration’s bombing of Tripoli to be interpreted? A diabolically cunning political diversion?
And what leads you to assume that I would be dumb enough to assume that the west could never do wrong?
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1194766,00.html#ixzz1EiMSh3nu
Honest to god, it’s only the absence of a Cold War Soviet adversary that stopped Dubya from embracing Gaddafi as another Mubarak. Nineteen eighties Saddam was never feted like the mad colonel was just seven years ago.
(Wait, someone believes we invaded East Timor?! That’s not good anti-Left satire, seriously, cut it out.)
Actually only less than five years ago.
Rummy was still SecDef as well! So there’s one degree of separation from Saddam to Gaddafi via neocon policy.
Chav,
I don’t recall that either, but I vaguely remember that Milosevic was horse-traded (I forget if it was by Zinzic or Kostanice) in the hope of a better deal with the EU, since neither their grandmothers nor his were available.
Meanwhile, back in Libya, the psychopaths have the weaponry, the mercenaries and the desperation to use them against the people who have ….. ? What ? Not a hell of a lot. Is it possible that they could still lose, at a horrifying cost ? Bloody oath it is. Should the world stand by and watch ?
Yes, says Chav, after finishing his strenuous program of somersaults and back-flips. Let it be noted.
You’re a very cold fish, Geoff,
I note the main priority is that you get your oil. The western democracies get to exploit another nation’s resources, while the people of that nation have to live under an insane dictator, who when confronted with a popular uprising has no problem suppressing consent through the use of military aircraft. Shock and awe, huh…?
(I’m going to ignore your question about Ronnie and leave you with an analogy, Why does the mafia beat up on people, who are paying them money? It makes no sense.)
Chav I didn’t make any such claim. I have only addressed your bizarre, but unsurprising, ignorance of history with respect to Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as Rwanda and East Timor.
For Bosnia look up the NATO Operation Deliberate Force and the Dayton Peace Agreement that followed it.
For Kosovo look up NATO Operation Allied Force/Noble Anvil.
Maybe that Ukrainian nurse/bodyguard could ‘smother’ the bastard???
Or is there hope in the son countermanding the mad Dad? Since this sibling was a guest of Kevin Rudd in Australia a couple of years ago. perhaps Kev could appeal to his ‘better nature’. I have no other suggestions, just hope that an assassin will emerge from within.
tigtog@25 I take your point, however in both Tunisia and Egypt protesters defended themselves with whatever weapons (blunt objects, rocks and the occasional Molotov cocktail) that were to hand. I don’t doubt they’d have returned the sniper fire if they’d had the weaponry. Weber’s argument that the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence defines the state is relevant, I think. If you seek to overthrow the existing state, what it’s all about is contesting that monopoly.
On Timor, Howard did nothing to protect the Timorese until the Indonesians had completed their scorched earth and genocide campaign, and departed. Action was only taken in response to overwhelming public pressure, in which some major unions – not the AWU – played a significant role. Nonetheless, he did in the end deploy the Australian military, and deserves credit for it. However, since there was no intervention to actually stop the occupying power doing its very worst, Timor is not relevant to this thread.
In Kosovo, NATO intervention was confined to a bombing campaign, which inevitably terrorised the Serbian population, but which did not remove Milosevic. Popular disgust with Milosevic’s misrule and trashing of the ancient and noble Serbian brand name brought him down, through popular protest and unwillingness of the security apparatus to defend him. The end result has been to entrench ethnic cleansing of Serb and Roma minorities in Kosovo, and the installation of a gangster regime with NATO protection. Again, of no relevance to Libya. No bombing campaign will do anything to dislodge Gaddafi: it would require an actual invasion and that’s not going to happen – even though Libyan oil is a significant prize. Again, not relevant.
…and another thing on Timor’s irrelevance – Austalia was formally invited by Jakarta to send troops to Timor. Gaddafi is not going to invite foreign peacekeepers in.
On Libya itself, it seems Gaddafi’s regime has been overthrown in 60% of the country. He would only be able to reassert authority by initiating civil war – which is certainly not something he would be squeamish about. However, it seems he’s largely reliant on foreign mercenaries, who are certainly well able to kill civilians, but may not have the motivation to tackle armed resistance. It is resonant from an Australian perspective that the place most likely to be the first major battlefield in a Gaddafi attempt to retake the east of the country is Tobruk.
You are making this up.
The East Timorese voted for independence on 30 August 1999.
The result of their vote was announced on 4 September.
Then the trashing of East Timor by Indonesian army backed “militias” began.
On 12 September, under extreme international pressure (i.e. if you don’t agree you are cactus and they are coming anyway so what can you do about it) Indonesian President B.J. Habibie agreed to the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in East Timor, which is in no way the same as formally inviting Australia to send troops to East Timor.
On 15 September the UN passed UNSC Resolution 1264 authorising deployment of a multinational force to restore peace and security to East Timor. That force, INTERFET, arrived in Dili Harbour and deployed five days later. Any intelligent understanding of the deployment of military forces would tell you that that could not have been organised in the eight days between Habibie accepting their deployment and their arrival in Dili.
The Indonesian backed “militias” who had been terrorising the East Timorese escaped back into West Timor (the technical term for this is “ran away”) rather than face the very capable INTERFET forces. A few were silly enough to take pot-shots at INTERFET forces from across the border and are happliy, but unsurprisingly, dead.
For those interested in how much oil the country produces, here’s the Oil Drum on Libya.
What’s interesting for me is Figure 5 – part way down the page. The bulk of the oil fields are in the east, inland of Benghazi. If the protesters can’t conquer Gaddafi, they could always try secession.
GregM – your point is? The formal ‘agreeing to deployment’ is distinct from a formal invitation in what significant sense? John Howard threatened military intervention at what point? Timor is relevant to Libya how?
The TNI had already decided to depart East Timor prior to Howard commiting troops. The ACTU and sections of the Left supported him in this and sold the idea to the public, thus hekping recusitate the idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’ amd helping legitimate the invasion of Afghanistan. Its okay, admit you were wrong and move on and learn from your mistakes…and don’t call for foteign intervention in Libya
P.s. Why is it that when a mass revolt against tyranny is taking place (East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Prague 1968, Iran 1979, Poland 1981) the US is less keen to intervene…
Hal9000 the distinction, from the Indonesian perspective is that Indonesians would never invite foreign forces,, and especially Australian forces, onto their soil, which at the time, notwithstanding the vote for self-determination, was what East Timor was.
The agreement to the deployment was an acquiesence to the inevitable, not an invitation. Howard didn’t need to threaten military intervention. The threat was implied in the deployment by the US of the USS Belleau Wood, USS Mobile Bay, and the USS Peleliu as part of the deployment.
The relevance to Libya? Well you say yourself:
If those who control the 60% were seriously concerned about the prospect of civil war, as you think they should be, then it would be rational of them to call for foreign intervention on their side (NATO comes to mind, though if that came to pass one would hope for the Libyans that that would not include the Italians or the French) rather than go down to his mercenaries alone, full of high principle about independence but dead.
Easy one. Complete no-brainer.
Obviously, leaving aside Iran, the US is at heart a society with profound communist inclinations and therefore was committed to seeing the realisation of Marx’s vision in the Communist Manifesto and so did not wish to see the coming to pass of the great society he promised denied to the masses just because there were a few petty bourgeois malcontents who did not understand, as you do, the eternal truth and objective reality of historical determinism and Marxist Leninist Theory.
It’s crazy, Chav, but you know it makes sense.
Howard
may have beenwas naive in trusting BJ Habibie to oversee the whole process with any kind of competence, but overall the Australian govt was playing the same kind of internationalist good actor role that Labor had promoted during the years Evans was foreign minister.I don’t know what you think they should have done—should Australia have acted belligerently when everything appeared to be going fine? Send in the paratroops at the first sign of trouble? It doesn’t work like that, certainly not for a minor regional power like this country.
Heh, this is from a ultra hard Leftist bit of agitprop opposed to intevention in East Timor, yet the basic facts seem credible: “But the 10 days of bans on Indonesian cargo imposed by MUA officials, the ban on processing Indonesian crude oil by Australian Workers Union officials, and protests aimed at stopping Garuda, the Indonesian airline, from functioning in Australia, were inevitably carried out in an Australian nationalist—and anti-Indonesian—framework.”
Comrade, The Militant Vol.63/No.36 does have “top CFMEU official John Sutton” being opposed to the intervention. They’re pretty rural based, just like the AWU, right? Though who knows how unreconstructed Stalinists might distort the words of a public speaker (the whole article appears to be the work of an MUA schismatic angry at his union’s role as ‘enablers’ for the Liberals, particularly as it was so soon after the waterfront dispute. It’s obviously inspired by some pretty bad emotional shit in the writer’s head.)
This thread is about how there will be no intervention into Libya to stop the regime doing its very worst—ergo this thread mustn’t be relevant to this thread.
What’s the point of Thursday?
GregM, don’t tell me you’re relying on Andrew Bolt for your assessment of exactly which Eurotrash countries don’t have Libya’s best interests at heart.
Because by his very own metric the United Kingdom is just as ‘bad’ as either Italy or France at pandering to Gadaffi.
Not terribly white of his metric, I dare say.
No, Nickws. I don’t read Anything Andrew Bolt writes. I form my own opinions.
On Italy it would just be too hard an ask given that Berlusconi and Gaddafi are close personal friends.
On France I share the view of former a former US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense that “Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage.” France’s disgraceful conduct in Rwanda and in Bosnia informs my opinion.
Nickws wrote, “It doesn’t work like that, certainly not for a minor regional power like this country.”
We’re not a minor regional power. We’re a major regional power (a minor global power I’d accept). Look at this list. China is the only country in the region that pips us. This is relevant to local discussions, less so regarding Libya.
Sorry, but did I just enter an alternative universe, where there is a discussion about whether to call in a “humanitarian” intervention to deal with Gaddafi? Who would do this? The people who have been supplying him with the guns he’s been busing since he stopped being a rogue/cartoon villain (copywrite Disney/State Department 1986) and became a bulwark against Islamofascism (copywrite Bush administration/LSE, Tony Blair and Prince Andrew circa 2005).
And how what form would this intervention take?
For fuck’s sake the people of Libya are removing him. Within days he’ll either be in Venezuela or (hopefully) doing a Mussolini impersonation in downtown Tripoli. The revolution has two thirds of the country under control and you want to call in the international community – such a nice bunch of revolution-friendly people. You want who to decide the fate of Libya: Merkel, Berlusconi, Obama/Clinton, Cameron, Sarkosy and our own beloved Julia?
The people of Libya need any support and solidarity they can get. If you know how to ship weapons to Benghazi I suspect that would be particularly welcome. But please don’t ask for them to be shipped in the arms of NATO soldiers. It will only end in tears.
What Robert Bollard @ 73 said.
Gaddafi is finished. Libya can build a myth upon unaided deposition of a dictator. Outside help, no matter how speedy and effective, can serve only to deny Libyans of an important part of their own nation-building myth.
And in any case, Gaddafi will be defeated before any power can land a credible force on Libyan territory.
Not sure anybody was suggesting outside military intervention at this stage. I would be though if it got to genocidal proportions of course.
But as pointed out above Gaddafi looking pretty isolated now, so hopefully this thing will come off without many more deaths.
The revolutions now occurring in the region are a direct rebuttal to the neocon argument that the US could force democracy upon those countries at gun-point. If anything the US invasion of Iraq has held back these current moments in history.
Yep – chances are the Libyan army is currently working out who’s taking over next week.
GregM, I’ll grant you Rwanda, but you’ll have to enlighten me as to how Mitterand and Chirac weren’t in line with the other democratic leaders when it came to Bosnia.
I actually remember that it was Mitterand who was the first Western leader to threaten to bomb the Bosnian Serbs. That threat actually happened, it wasn’t something I read by a contributor to the American Spectator.
He was the first Atlanticist leader to follow Thatcher’s advice, at least when it came to tough talk.
Alister, I’m not a pacifist, and I’m glad we did what we did with E.Timor, but we did it under the sufferance of the Clinton administration.
Let’s not get carried away with thinking that just because we have very, very good ordnance it therefore follows we can use it as if we’re major, self sustaining power.
If US hegemony means nobody can act unilaterally across borders then that indicates to me there are no true regional major powers, other than, say, countries who act (or want to act) like Putin’s Russia against Georgia. Or India and Pakistan in the Kashmir.
Closer:
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/libya_uprising_20110222/
GregM and Nickws – get a grip!
I’m still awaiting the significance of the distinction, GregM. If someone shows up at your door, you can let them in with a nod and a grunt, or you can say ‘come in’. Alternatively you can deny entry. The nonsense about Indonesian sensibilities is just that – nonsense. No Indonesian sensibilities were assuaged by the distinction you are seeking to draw, as subsequent attacks on Australian targets show.
Your hypothetical about some Libyan revolutionary elements calling for NATO intervention is in my view similarly facile. Ignoring for a moment the well justified century-old loathing of the former colonial powers held dear by Libyans, such a move would immediately confirm Gaddafi’s propaganda and render them illegitimate.
Nickws – I was responding to an earlier comment about Bill Ludwig storming the beaches at Dili. If uncle Bill spoke up about Timor, it must have been in a soundproofed room in the basement of AWU HQ. On the relevance question, various commenters raised Timor as an example of the kind of thing the generic West should consider doing in Libya. I was pointing out that it is not a relevant example. And it isn’t.
Your comment
is mystifying. You refer of course to the solid support for the criminal invasion and genocide (and murder of Australians) obsequiously given to the Suharto regime by said Evans. The images of him toasting the sealing of the deal with Suharto regime officials high over Timor say it all. You might care to take up your view of Evans’s role with Shirley Shackleton.
Hal9000 is correct.
In the eyes of Libyan revolutionaries the No. 1 bete noire, after Gaddafi, is Berlusconi.
Italy has huge investments in Libya, negotiated in the classic Berlusconiesque fashion with Gaddafi at a series of his infamous “bunga-bunga” parties. These deals represent kleptocracy on an heroic scale.*
Italy is a member of NATO. Any NATO intervention in Libya is likely to be launched from Italy.
It would be difficult to convince many Libyans that any NATO intervention had as one of its aims the protection of Berlusconi’s Libyan loot.
______________________
*British PM David Cameron, who impresses me more and more, has just now pointed out Tony Blair’s grubby dealings with Gaddafi.
er…
…NATO intervention DID NOT HAVE as one…
Here you go skeptical leftist: UK PM admits the West was wrong to back Arab dictatorships these past 40 years (not that its stopped his current arms sales tour of despots) http://www.theage.com.au/world/britain-admits-aiding-regimes-20110223-1b5ix.html
And French admit same, more or less, in Tunisia: http://www.theage.com.au/world/french-try-to-save-face-in-tunisia-20110222-1b41n.html
QED, I’d say. The culprits have confessed.
In moderation…
I realise that there’s a lot of competition, but surely Tony Blair has to be one of the most odious individuals to ever assume a position of power anywhere in the world in the last 50 years.
But then again, is Blair really worse than the succession of Australian Prime Ministers between 1965 and 1998 who would have been hospitalised with concussion if anyone had kicked Suharto in the fundament?
Adrian,
Apart from Ghaddafi, you mean ?
What don’t people understand about “Help us, help us, please, please, help us !”
While some quibble about the pros and cons of previous interventions, with the usual apologists opposing any form of intervention whatsoever against dictators and murderers and invaders, people are being slaughtered. Some of you Chardonnay observers, Katz, of course try to find some way of blaming the US in general and the neocons in particular (goodo, go for it) for all of this, but meanwhile people are dying.
Question: should there have been any intervention in spain against Franco and his fascists ? Bit too early for you ?
And the survivors in Libya won’t forget who did, and who did not, come to their aid as internationalists should do.
Remember internationalism ?
It’s going to be a little ironic, COMRADES, when the US helps to liberate Libya, and then withdraws.
Blair has developed unctuous self-engrandisement to an art form as he struts the world stage, daring to imagine for a faint second that he has anything worthwhile to contribute that will improve the lives of one individual beyond him and his immediate family.
In a sane world he would be an international pariah, and probably charged with war crimes along with a couple of others.
Adrian,
Isn’t it fun, barking up the wrong tree for hours on end ? Saves thinking about the issues, making judgments, reflecting, analysing
Wonderful. Someone’s compiled a map of which areas of Libya are under Gaddafi’s control, and which areas are not. (I found this via the Guardian.)
You’d know all about that old man! Speaking from a lifetime’s experience no doubt.
Geoffrey Robertson QC analyses what charges and sanctions could be (and which could not be) sucessfully pursued against Gaddafi and members of the regime. He goes further to analysize what legal obligations third party governments have under the statue that established the Inernational Criminal Court.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/geoffrey-robertson-this-evil-despot-must-be-brought-to-justice-2222908.html
@Old Yobbo,
I really don’t grasp exactly who you think is arguing the points you’re contesting. I don’t see a single person here arguing against humanitarian intervention in Libya.
I do see a few folks pointing out that there are some groups that Libyans are likely to feel more comfortable with receiving that intervention from than others, given past history.
That’s not at all the same as arguing that nobody should intervene at all, and it’s a misrepresentation to argue otherwise.
Some tactic don’t travel well, I’m glad to say. From the Washington Post:
Wow. Even Wilson Tuckey was never this stupid.
tigtog, Chav is, but I suppose tat doesn’t count.
But so is Robert Bollard @74 where he says:
Actually I agree with the thrust of his argument. If the Libyans can get rid of Gadaffi without any foreign intervention at all that is the way that I would want it.
It’s only if they needed help against a counter-attack by Gadaffi that looked like it might succeed that I’d want to see any foreign intervention in their civil war.
I hope things turn out as Robert predicts and not as it did for the Republican forces in Spain in the 1930s.
@93. Well I’m arguing against humanitarian intervention in Libya because, given the organisations being appealed to, NATO, the UN and the US, its not going to be humanitarian, or at least won’t be for very long.
When Libya ends up as another running sore of insurgency you can all pat yourselves on the back. Meanwhile, the masses that are clearly despised here, have almost totally seized power. Why would you possibly want to cut short a successful revolution only days (hours?) and install a pro-Western, pro-neoliberal mercenary army of occupation!?
Old Yobbo, if you can’t tell the difference between leftists volunteering to fight fascism in Spain and the interventions by Hitler and Mussolini I’m not sure how you can label yourself a leftist…
The Invasion of Iraq cost about 150,000 lives, thousands of deformed and sick kids, almost total destruction of the infrastructure such as electricity and water, Abu Grhaib; ongoing killing by sectarian forces and a barely functional and already corrupt “democracy”.
The revolutions in the other countries of the ME have not yet shed even 4% of the blood that is on the hands of the US stormtroopers and mercenaries.
So much for the US claim that we had to destroy Iraq in order to save it.
The people of the Middle East will start again with a more or less clean slate and we should do all in our power to assist.
Huggy
Interesting how circular and historically repetitive these things are, GregM?
One way of looking at the Spanish Republic’s failure to defend itself would be as the result of a humanitarian intervention on behalf of the Republic’s victims (clergy, landowners, right-wing politicians etc.) by the strongest European powers—including an Italian state governed by an egotistical sex-obsessed maniac. Of course you have to factor in the hand-wringing non-intervention by an impotent international body, and grubby arms trading by the oil-obsessed Russian government.
I’m not forgetting the role of the Great Satan here: despite “neutrality”, American corporations and millionaires kept up fundraising for the rebel side of the bloodbath, American rightists fuelled the propaganda war, and American leftists went over as individuals to join the queue for the firing squad.
And General Franco, the eventual victor? He honed his skills as a political operator as well as a General in the 1920s, fighting in wars that were even then being described as liberal interventions in favour of universal European values (against primitive tribes), over the Mediterranean, in North Africa.
Sanctions? They always end up hurting the very people on whose “behalf” they are launched. “Articulation of the consequences of the international law architecture”? What rubbish. It has been an oft-repeated mantra by the Right (and Christopher Hitchens) that even though Saddam Hussein had no WMD, it was still the right thing to do to go into Iraq and remove him by force of arms. The US did this without any articulating of architectures. Listen to Hilary Clinton and Obama now. What are they saying? That mass murder is “unacceptable”? Oh that naughty Mr Gaddafi.
There is talk of no-fly zones. It is not possible to articulate their architecture unless the West has aircraft in the air to enforce that.
The police in NSW and Vic regularly shoot loonies armed with kitchen knives and have got away with it on legal grounds. To articulate the consequences of the international law architecture a bit further, Gaddafi should be shot like a mad dog.
What you can do.
1. Write to Gaddafi’s personal pilot, To Odd Birger Johansen on Facebook:
Dear Sir,
I have read reports that indicate that you are the personal pilot of Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi. You are aiding and abetting a genocidal tyrant, who is insane. You have a moral duty to prevent any further material assistance to this man, including flying him out to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Switzerland or indeed any other safe haven. You must leave and leave now, and deny him any access to any resources that could further his abhorrent plans. No doubt this would put you and your family in grave danger, but you have no one but yourself to blame for entering into a commercial agreement with a murderous dictator. I do hope that you can find the courage to choose the correct course of action.
2. Agitate with your federal local member, today, by email or phone, urging them to make a strong and unequivocal statement regarding Gaddafi, perhaps to follow the example of Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi book who enacted a fatwa against Gaddafi, encouraging any Libyan soldier to put a bullet in the mad dictator and mass murderer.
One more thing: the West should begin massive arms drops to the people of Libya (however, the calibre should be obsolete, to prevent the guns being used in the future). The Allies did in it WWII, why not now?
Let me say at the outset that Gaddafi is no Franco. For one, he has no powerful allies prepared to arm him. I remain confident that Gaddafi will be gone very soon. Saigon’s map shows the speed of the degradation of Gaddafi’s grasp on power.
There are many levels and kinds of interventionism against a regime like Gaddafi’s.
1. Outright invasion. Who? How? And most relevantly, when? Highly improbable and highly counterproductive.
2. Arms supplied to revolutionaries. Practical, but few major arms supplying nations have an interest in escalating revolutionary violence. Unlikely.
3. Blockades of ports, borders and airspace. Easy to achieve but with uncertain political consequences. Possible, but risky.
4. Declarations of demands for unconditional surrender and threats of prosecution. Symbolically strong but a provocation of Hitlerian defiance to the last square metre of territory. Politically primitive and expensive of human life.
5. Backchannels negotiation of a bolt-hole for Gaddafi and his most important apparat. Gaddafi could be taken to comfortable sanctuary. Easy enough to arrange. How willing is Gaddafi really to die a martyr on Libyan soil?
I like 5.
Sir Henry C doesn’t.
Nor does Robert Bollard. He prefers the Mussolini solution.
I’m with Robert Bollard on this one. The Libyan people have started their revolution. Let them finish it on their own terms and let them deal with the oppressors whom they have overthrown.
What would be better if the chief malfeasants could be induced to go somewhere that they believed they would be out of reach but who would turn them over to the ICC at The Hague for examination.
The Mussolini solution requires no foreign intervention per se.
As I said upthread, I’d prefer non-intervention too, so long as Gaddafi is quickly hoisted by his heels in some public square or other.
My option 5 is the best of the rest.
I like 5 as well, for a given value of “comfortable”. How about Australia offers Gaddafi a permanent lease on McDonald Island?
Here is a fascinating and scary story related to foreign interventionism in Libya which is also powerful proof of the educative function of Wikileaks.
[ahem] I’m in moderation above. Presumably I’ve been held up by the International Non-Contribution Committee.
Yup, we have our fair share of latent Gaddafis too. Probably the same %.
its just that our majoritarian political systems have a tendency to weed these whackos out before they get within a WA Shadow Treasurer’s sniff of the big chair.
I don’t think your fifth option is a goer Katz, the former Justice Minister is saying he has proof that Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing.
Katz’ discussion of alternatives is helpful, I think.
Just to clarify (again!), the point of the post is not to advocate “humanitarian military intervention” but to discuss the continuing discursive and legal existence of such a frame in a case which perhaps starkly illustrates some of the pitfalls and fractures in these concepts.
Chav,
This Independent article concerning your hero Milosevic is full of interesting detail:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/milosevic-police-chief-jailed-for-27-years-over-kosovo-massacres-2223942.html
So, bearing in mind that Ghaddafi still has the air force, the navy, the mercenaries and probably most ofthe guns, should there be any sort of interventionary action (say, banning Libyan jets from the air) on behalf of the people or not ?
No, not the UN, since China and Russia, the champions of socialist freedom, would block any such attempts. The African Union or the Arab League ? Do they have the backbone ?
Or do we keep hearing about people being butchered in their own homes, Chav ?
Oh, and a Libyan minister has admitted that Ghaddafi personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing. Gosh, that came as a shock. That mongrel al-Megrahi better wish he’s got pancreatic cancer now.
What next ?
So how would any intervening force go about enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya ? They would have to have access either to airports or to aircraft carriers. What if the people’s committees, whatever they may be termed and however they may be constituted, approve the use of the airfields in, say, Benghazi and Misurata ? Intervene, enforce, clear the skies and then withdraw ?
Sorry for sounding incredibly naive about the ‘withdraw’ bit
Re Katz’s 5. I rather favour the Musso or Ceaușescu solution. People like that should be discouraged, in an emphatic, public way. It concentrated Hitler’s mind wonderfully.
Your lordship,
Yes, it’s great to daydream. But the question is, if the situation is at A, and stringing Ghaddafi up trouserless by his heels is at Z: how do the people get from A to Z ? Without the armed forces at their disposal: how ? Will intervention become necessary ?
Old Yobbo, just because someone criticizes US intervention in Kosovo doesn’t mean Milosevic is their hero. If you can’t understand something that simple, maybe you should toddle off and be stupid somewhere else.
sg,
Hit a nerve, did we ?
Meanwhile, back in 2011, in Libya, things get curiouser and curiouser. Reuters has reported that
‘ … on Thursday, al Qaeda’s North African wing threw its weight behind their cause, urging protesters to “continue their struggle and revolution and to escalate it to oust the criminal tyrant,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group.’
That might give the Binary Left (the either/or Left, the 0/1 Left – you know, the Manichaeans) some encouragement to think of siding with the people in Libya.
But I thought that al Qaida didn’t exist, it was all a CIA fabrication. Another illusion dashed
Henry the Facebook Soothsayer @99:
Hot off Aljazzera live blog:
“The pilot of Gaddafi’s private jet, 57-year-old Norwegian Odd Birger Johannsen, has fled with his wife and family to Vienna, reports Norwegian TV2. He reportedly told them:
Right now, things are burning around me … I am not a hero, I will go home.”
@Yobbo,
* the anti-Gaddafi forces are holding the east and moving further west mainly through Gaddafi’s forces pulling back, not through pitched conflict.
* when Gaddafi called for his supporters to come out and take back the streets of Tripoli, they stayed home.
* troops, cabinet ministers and diplomats are deserting Gaddafi in droves.
Gaddafi’s being squeezed off into a zone where he can be starved out. Do you think the mercenaries will stay if he can’t access the funds to pay them, or alternatively cannot manage to deliver the funds to them? Especially if the economic sanctions being suggested by Egypt come into play and foreign nations simply refuse to sail into any ports still under his control?
The Libyans are doing a damn good job of helping themselves so far as I can see. In a perfect world Gaddafi would be gone with a bloodless coup, but that would normally only end up with another warlord in his place. The Libyans seem to be working towards something better. It’s costing them some sacrifice, but if they are willing to pay it?
Opps, mod. pls close top quote off. Ta.
Watch it there, Yobbo. Pitchforking that many strawmen so quickly might strain something.
While Old Yobbo drones on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on with his irrelevant posturing and shadow-boxing of straw-leftists, history will be written over his verbiage by the agents of history.
And it looks as though the Libyan people are the agents, this time.
Tigtog @ # 117: I hope like hell that you are right. But it’s the next few days, not weeks and months, that will count, as far as massacres of the people are concerned, and it may well be touch and go who comes out on top. Sheer brutality has won through before: look at Chile 1973 and Tian Anmen Square 1989. Sometimes power does come out of the barrel of a gun.
@ # 119: I apologise for touching on a sensitive issue, Tigtog. You’re not suggesting that al Qaida actually does exist – and (surely not) that it might have had something to do with 9/11, are you ?
@ # 120: Sorry, Mercurius, I wasn’t aware the issue was so personal to you. I’ll keep away from it in future, if possible
No more attacks on erstwhile heroes, I promise.
There’s more than one meaning to ‘fabrication’, Mr Troll. Seriously do you see this as anything except an opportunity for pointscoring, first off Pilger and now everyone you don’t like.
Hal, I don’t care what Big Bill Ludwig was saying about East Timor, what I was doing was showing that you are factually incorrect to say the AWU wasn’t part of the pro-Intervention activism and lobbying.
And I’m not going to follow you down the rabbit hole RE your confusing argument about the Indonesian govt not caving into US pressure to allow the Interfet landings to go ahead.
I was referencing Evan’s role in crafting the Cambodian peace process, though I should have explicitly stated that. My uni lecturer, an expert on Indonesia, cited that as one of the things that inspired Howard to ask Habibie to allow the independence vote.
I really don’t want to get into a holier-than-thou-pissing match with you over the Australian political establishment’s support for Jakarta’s ugly occupation of Timor Leste, 1975 to 1999, particularly if you hold that subject to be The Only Foreign Policy Issue Evah So Just Shut Up. That’s not a debate I’m interested in.
Katz, you realise Cameron hosted a visit from a Gaddafi chief lieutenant in 2010, and that said regime figure was making similar admiring statements about Dave, to the point of saying nice Mr Cameron mustn’t have meant it when he criticised the Scottish prisoner release, he was obviously only responding to US pressure?
Don’t let you hatred for Labor PMs disguise you to the realities of both parties either doing or benefitting from this stuff.
@Old Yobbo, you’re rapidly moving beyond a joke. Stick to positions that people have argued actually in this thread instead of bringing up any old thing that Bolt and Blair etc told you once that some left-leaning figure somewhere said sometime, eh?
You’ve been dancing right on the line of breaching the comments policy since you started. That much dancing right on the edge becomes vexatious in itself. Knock it off.
This is barmy. There just is no significant number of Leftwingers in the western world opposed to supporting Gadaffi’s victims/would-be victims.
I think you’ve conned yourself into believing there’s some kind of progressive analogue to that large group of American(centric) anti-Islam paranoiacs who disapprove of Mubarak’s removal by the savage horde.
A crazy raving Maoist voicing anti-anti-Gaddafi sentiments on the net somewhere doesn’t an ideological movement make.
I don’t hate Labour MPs. That’s a ridiculous notion.
There’s nothing wrong with meeting someone. The thing to avoid is giving them something they ought not have. So far as I can see Cameron did not do that for the Gaddafi regime.
However, he has prefigured a major and beneficial reform of British foreign policy. I won’t cheer until British policy actually does change for the better, however.
I’m not quite seeing how Cameron avoiding having to make the same mistakes as Labour while continuing that ex-government’s international development policies (as a sop to the Lib Dems) is a major reform.
And his government have hardly cut off the Blair/Brown era UK commercial push into Gadaffi’s Libya, though I guess that’s because it’s all in the hands of the City now, and a Tory govt is hardly going to turn off that spigot. Excluding short term sanctions until Gadaffi is offed, of course. Then’s it’s back to Libya being BP’s sandbox.
Every Labor MP a PM, eh Katz? Seriously though, me saying you dislike Labor Prime Ministers is a claim I’m willing to stand by. You’ve devoted so many thousands of words to the subjects of Blair & Brown & Rudd & Gillard here, it’s a veritable goldmine of unkind feelings clouding your analysis.
Getting back to the Mussolini option for Gaddafi… I mentioned upthread that if the Americans had left Hussein in power and not killed a million Iraqis, he would now be watching regime change and unrest spreading from Tunisia to Iran. Having watched Mubarak flee he might then see Gaddafi hanging from a lamp post… what are the chances he would stick around after that? We’ve already seen the Sudanese president announce he won’t stand for re-election, and the Yemeni chap too.
Furthermore, if Gaddafi is lynched… in the long run (when we’re all dead) history would judge that his execution contained more justice and was more honest than the fate that eventually befell Hussein, who was ultimately convicted of and executed for the most minor of all his crimes – all to protect his old Western backers from embarrassment.
So call me difficult to please.
Howard and Bush and Turnbull and Abbott copped much more from me than the persons you named.
Where did you say that upthread. I can’t find it.
could be confusing threads gregm, but my pronouncements are so profound that you should just… know!
I hang out for your pronouncements on Japan and things Japanese, sg. They are at the same time profound, insightful, illuminating and entertaining. I shared your pain only the last week at the prospect of spending a sake soaked night with your Japanese colleague discussing the respective positions of Australia and Japan on the curly question of cetaceanicide.
But on Iraq? Huggybunny @97 claims 150,000 Iraqis having died as a result of the US and its allies’ invasion. Not the million that you have seem to have plucked from the air or from the discredited 2006 Lancet report -though it only claimed 600,000 deaths.
If Huggy is correct then given Saddam’s annual kill rate and the eight years since the invasion then the Iraqis are streets ahead with his deposal by the US and its allies.
Have George Galloway or the UK Respect Party issued a statement on the situation in Libya yet?
Since my intemperate outburst last night, I have returned to find that the discussion has revolved to some extent around the “Mussolini option”, of which I am apparently the advocate. And fair enough, I would love that to happen.
However, this misses the point somewhat. Personally I don’t care at one level what happens to Gaddafi. He is a social construct, albeit a particularly revolting one, but he is, ultimately, a construct of historical and social forces more significant than whatever nasty things he saw behind the woodshed in his youth, or in the negotiations with Tony Blair or wherever he was made into the particularly nasty thing that he is.
My point in hoping that he goes the way of Mussolini was less to do with justice than with consequence.
If Libya is freed from Gaddafi by western intervention, even if the intervention is handled with an uncharacteristic light hand, even if the it doesn’t involve bombing the crap out of the place (the ever-preferred option of the US military) then the consequence will be the proverbial pig with lipstick.
Some general will be put in charge who will do the will of the oil companies. There will be a bit of spin about democracy, and even a little bit of space for expression, for a little while.
Yes, the killings will end more quickly. But the poverty and oppression will continue, and killings will resume, in all probability within minutes of the celebration of the new regime.
I don’t know what will come out of the process that is now taking place. But I read of cities like Benghazi under the control of “popular committees” and I see the celebrations as well as the grisly residue of the violence of a defeated regime.
We are witnessing in Libya, as we witnessed in Egypt, a revolution, not a revolt or a disturbance, but a springtime of the Arab peoples.
The only forces that could “intervene” to deliver the final blow to Gaddafi are the people of Libya,Nato or the US. Which do you think will lead Libya and the Arab world (and the rest of us for that matter) in the right direction?
So, whether Gaddafi is hung up in Tripoli’s main square, goes into exile in Venezuela, or gets a gig on SEN comparing tanning techniques with Terry Wallace matters not. The point is that the chains are broken by those who wear them. Because it’s what happens after the old boss flees that matters. And the means by which he is forced to flee are central to that.
Well said Robert. You have covered all the important points.
What matters first is that the
IraqiLibyan people, and not others, get rid of Gaddafi.What matters then is what they do with their freedom. And that is for them to decide, whatever we might wish they would do.
[fixed the typing-too-fast error above ~ tt]
Precisely, GregM, once Ghaddafi is swept off the stage of history, it will be up to the people of Libya to decide which direction their revolution will take. I certainly hope that – as seems likely – both foreign and Islamist influence can be limited and that a secular, democratic revolution can be given a chance.
What is so exciting is that the people can learn from each other, from one country to the other, from Morocco to Algeria to Libya to Egypt and beyond, Bahrain and Kuwait. Perhaps the people of Iran will be encouraged and supported by successful struggles to push forward with a revolution of their own against their theocratic oppressors as well.
What is remarkable so far is how small a role the Islamists seem to have played, which gives one hope that the secular forces can keep the upper hand.
Terry Wallace has copped his share for sure, now.
Ideally the UN would at least protect Benghazi, say, from aerial attack if it were necessary.
Oil purchases by the West have bank-rolled Gaddafi over the term. That’s a simple fact. Whether or not that has been decisive in keeping him in control is unknown.
We place regimes under economic boycotts for a reason. They don’t always work as intended however. But seeing the rush to rid themselves of him one does wonder why we have otherwise ignored Libyans for 4 decades.
How many other dictatorships are we completely inured to? It might not be “our” fault – but we can probably all be doing a hell of a lot more in many places.
Goodness gracious, as my old Premier used to say. I agree with you, GregM, without qualification.
GregM, huggybunny is wrong but it didn’t seem the right time to be arguing about numbers. The epidemiology is in, and it’s somewhere between 650,000 and a million – three decent studies confirm this. Huggybunny is siting what has become (due to the attacks of the far right) considered the “conservative” figure due to Iraq Body Count, a figure that is thoroughly wrong.
I’m an epidemiologist. I’m comfortable with the lancet figures. But even if you want to “accept” that 150,000, is Libya’s political upheaval going to cost them anywhere near that? (An equivalent figure for Libya would be about 40,000). No. And they will mostly retain their infrastructure, plus there won’t be a displaced population of 4 million (as there is in Iraq).
So it’s impossible to claim that the Libyan upheaval compares to any estimate of the effects in Iraq, even the conservative (but wrong) underestimate.
Battle Hymn of the Rebulic of Liberal Interventionism:
“From the halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli
We’re coming and we will not rest
Until your country is free”
Feb23:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/pat-oliphant
Why the wish for secular forces to maintain the “upper” hand?
If the people of the middle east decide to have a sharia-law based social organisation and defer to the ulema( the body of religious leaders) why would outsiders feel they should not support these decisions?
In a related development The House of Saud flashes the cheque book to try and buy some stability.
http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article281253.ece
Yes murph the surf, yet another variation of that tired old tune: “Democracy’s fine so long as it’s our sort of democracy”
And well said Robert Bollard @ 135.
Murph and Adrian,
I’m confident that the North African people will devise their own forms of democracy, and guard their hard-fought indepdence pretty fiercely. They are not going to be anybody else’s puppets.
And hopefully, they will not pay much attention to the reactionary forces represented by the Islamists. But it’s their call, as you say
“If the people of the middle east decide to have a sharia-law based social organisation and defer to the ulema( the body of religious leaders) why would outsiders feel they should not support these decisions?”
Possibly because the abrogation of basic human rights inherent in such systems – young men being hung for being homosexual, women being denied equal rights with men and being stoned to death for ‘adultery’ – does give pause for thought?
Interesting video from Misurata: a crowd of people liberating an anti-aircraft gun, and one guy repeatedly calling out “Allah akbar !”
….. and nobody else joining in. Nobody. Given Ghaddafi’s attempt to inject al Qa’ida into the struggle, could he be one of Ghaddafi’s agents provocateurs ?
Nobody joining in: it gives one hope for a genuinely progressive, even left-wing, democratic revolution, relatively free of reactionary influences.
Sunni political Islamism behaves quite differently from Shiite political Islam.
Don’t waste your time looking for a Khomenei figure in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, or Saudi Arabia. In Sunni Islam such a figure simply does not exist.
If the protestors in Wisconsin fell to their knees and said “Praise God” or “Hallelujah” because the governor gives in, it would make this atheist wince a little at the overt religiosity, but I wouldn’t be leaping from that to assuming that they were all Christianist insurrectionists with a theocratic agenda. They live in an overtly religious society, that’s all. Why are you giving the simple praise to one’s divine lord that sort of rhetorical weight just because Muslims calls their divinity “Allah” rather than “Jehovah”?
I imagine that any Gaddafi agent provocateur attempting to make it appear that al Qaeda is running the show would be being a little more blatant than simply saying “God is great”.
Katz,
That’s all right then.
Tigtog,
I hope you’re right. Even more so then, ” … it gives one hope for a genuinely progressive, even left-wing, democratic revolution, relatively free of reactionary influences.”
Al-Jazeera has just reported:
5:01am: Venezuela’s top diplomat on Thursday echoed Fidel Castro’s accusation that Washington is fomenting unrest in Libya to justify an invasion to seize North African nation’s oil reserves.
Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister said:
‘They are creating conditions to justify an invasion of Libya.’
[I guess we'll soon see evidence of this - OY]
’4:27am: Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has backed Muammar Gaddafi on Twitter.
Chavez twitted:
Gaddafi is facing a civil war.’
Long live Libya. Long live the independence of Libya.’
This is very confusing. If Chavez and Castro are supporting Ghaddafi, who is there to support the Libyan people ?
It certainly looks like they will have to do it all on their own.
Geoff Honnor – Not wanting to condemn before the fact the balance of doubt should let us support the decisions made by the local populations about the type of scociety they want to develop.
Many features of sharia appear repulsive.It may not come to pass that they are all enforced as looks to be the case in Iran.Islam is the basis of so many conventions in the middle east but not the only one – tribal links and sense also fashion relationships.
There is also a marked youth population buldge occurring in North Africa and the Middle East so what effect this possible modernisation in popular thinking may produce is hard to predict but hope is that tolerance and sympathy will be more widespread than now.
Tigtog,
Just reflecting on your comment above @ 148: my point wasn’t about a crowd fallingto its knees, but about this strange fact that, in a suppoasedly devout country, one guy trying to start a sort of Mexican wave of ‘Allah akbar,’ gets nobody to join in. Nobody joined him. Maybe he was caught in the midst of a secret cell of atheists, but don’t you think that might be a very rough pointer to a secular future ? That we don’t have to resign ourselves to an imagined domination by reactionary Islamists ?
‘Reactionary ?’ Yes, indeed. How do you want to define the term ? Back-date it a few hundred years and ask the question again. Now you’re getting warm
Isn’t that grounds for hoping that a genuinely politically-left, progressive, however you define it, set of ideologies may be more prevalent, more popular, more pervasive ? There is no need to suck up to a bunch of religious fundamentalists ?
Al-Jazeera has an interesting video about Libya’s relations with Latin American countries:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-HvdqjsqXM&feature=player_embedded
So ……. Peru, El Salvador, Mexico and Colombia are on the side of the Libyan people?
And Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba are on the side of Ghaddafi ? The same side that the US and the UK are on, Bush and Blair cosying up to Ghaddafi ? All of them after the oil ?
It’s all so confusing
Al-Jazeera has an article about the use of the Independence flag, from pre-Ghaddafi days, when Libya had an elected parliament of sorts (yes, I was surprised too !):
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/libya/2011/02/2011224123588553.html
The article includes a fascinating map of the parts of Libya which are liberated and those still under pro-Ghaddafi (and presumably pro-US?, pro-Blair?) control. It appears from the map as if Ghaddafi forces could be driven out into the desert, to remote towns where most of the mercenaries seem to be based (or flown to and trained).
A very valid point Murph and a caution to us all not to be too ready to make our values a prism for passing judgment on the values of others. Appearances can be deceptive.
On closer inspection it is sometimes the case that that which appears repulsive may not be so at all.
However Geoff Honnor has pointed out three things from sharia
young men being hung for being homosexual,
women being denied equal rights with men, and
women being stoned to death for ‘adultery’
which leads him to disagree with your opinion that if the people of the middle east decide to have a sharia-law based social organisation and defer to the ulema (the body of religious leaders) why would outsiders feel they should not support these decisions.
On which of these things are appearances deceptive and those things not repulsive such that we should not support the decisions of the people of the middle east to apply them in their societies?
And if they are not repulsive what arguments could there possibly be against applying them, or allowing those who live in our society who wish to adhere to sharia applying them, in our own society?
Meanwhile, the protests spread to Iraq – mass demonstrationsn and five dead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/feb/25/libya-turmoil-gaddafi-live
But who carees about five dead when hundreds od thousands have been killed to make Iraq the shining democracy that these demonstrators are marching against.
http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/2/24/if-the-tide-turns-some-pros-and-cons-of-military-interventio.html
“The West has known about crimes against humanity and terrorist plots committed by Col Gaddafi’s regime for decades now, most notably the June 1996 Abu Selim massacre in which more than 1,200 political prisoners were gunned down after protesting against prison conditions.
Still there was no international inquiry, mainly due to oil interests. ”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12577484
Nanu Levu’s link suggests the thought that it is now the point when European powers will decide they cannot afford for Gaddafi to remain dictator.
For that would mean loss of access to the oil given that embargo would be morally unavoidable in the period of post-uprising oppression.
No wonder we are now hearing official murmurings of what an intervention might look like. Might might now be really on the side of right.
GregM,
Three pretty good reasons, to start with, why sharia law should not be tolerated in a modern democratic society would be:
young men being hung for being homosexual,
women being denied equal rights with men, and
women being stoned to death for ‘adultery’
Many others could be added, such as condoning of genital mutilation, extermination of non-believers – where does it begin and end ?
This is slightly insane, that we should be discussing the good and bad points of a backward, reactionary religion on what is supposed to be a progressive website.
There are alternatives to tyranny and phony socialism on the one hand and religious conservatism on the other. The people of Libya may show us the way.
Obviously, many people, who may even think they are progressive, might need that guidance.
Very interesting quote by Steve Negus in The Arabist blog: ‘Reports from liberated east Libyan cities suggest an impressive level of organization on the part of the populace, with most basic urban functions up and running. One wonders if Qaddafi’s ideosyncratic jamahiriyan ideology, roping people into participating in rubber-stamp “Basic People’s Congresses” to create a facade of direct democracy, has in fact formed the provided the institutional template for a countrywide insurrection against him.’ http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/2/23/lejan-fi-kul-makan.html
This article from The indpendent
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-the-west-must-act-quickly-to-save-libya-from-gaddafi-2226099.html
is very illuminating, as is this quote in The Age,
” … I say to the United Nations, please, no more talk. No sanctions, which hurt the people and not Gaddafi. What we need is strong action. And we need it now, urgently, as soon as possible, please.’ ”
The full aticle is at
http://www.theage.com.au/world/libyans-call-on-the-world-to-act-20110225-1b8mh.html
First up Robert Fisk -
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-destiny-of-this-pageant-lies-in-the-kingdom-of-oil-2226109.html
.
Then a reflection of the risk inherent to exuberence by Howard Jacobsen. A little bit crusty in tone and slightly technophobic perhaps.
You have to admire the poms – they are the best english language arabists.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-save-us-from-the-opinions-of-the-young-2226105.html
I’m gratified to see that the nature of LP comments threads has improved out of sight since I ceased to participate; calm, respectful and evidence-based.
In order not to interfere with this tendency, I will refrain from visiting for another 3 months.
Birds of a feather ……
This item on al-Jazeera’s Libya Blog:
“9:00am According to this Global Voices piece, which cites Malta.cc, a Maltese blog, Serbian military pilots reportedly took part in the bombing of anti-government protesters in the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi.
Two Libyan pilots made the claim upon fleeing to Malta, the blog said. Al Jazeera can’t confirm the authenticity of the report – but you can read it for yourself here.”
If it quacks like a duck, ……
Provocative article on al-Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201122518445333563.html
Let’s face it, almost every government and leader sucked up to Ghaddafi, from the left and right. The question is: who is still opposed to the people and supporting Ghaddafi?
* Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, perhaps Argentina, Zimbabwe, Serbia, perhaps Chad and many prostitute-countries in sub-Saharan Africa who Ghaddafi was bailing out.
And who is supporting the people ? As the old Wobbly somg asks, ‘Which side are you on ?’
We certainly live in interesting times.
From al-Jazeera,
6:15am [i.e. 3.15 pm, EST] Hana Elgallal, a legal and human rights expert in Benghazi, said some in Libya will be disappointed that the UN did not impose a no-fly zone. “I’m one person who was hoping that we’d get that,” she told Al Jazeera.
We will not be able to move and help Tripoli because of the fear that he will use his planes. But whatever we get now we will look at it positively and consider it a victory and success.
“Hopefully things will escalate in our benefit soon to defuse the massacres in Tripoli.”
.
This from The Guardian today:
“Tony Blair asked Gaddafi to stop killing Libyan protesters
“Former prime minister, who has faced criticism over relationship with dictator, telephoned him twice to urge him to ‘step back’ … ”
Now we wait for Castro, Chavez, Morales and Ortega to do something similar ….
So confusing !
What a joke, the man has no shame.
A report yesterday evening seemed to be saying that the suicide bombing of Gaddafi’s seat in BenGhazi was decisive there. An inconvenient fact for all of those WOT theorists. Narcissistic Rage, anyone?
But, Su, perhaps there is a difference between sacrificing one’s life in order to stop soldiers killing ordinary people like himself and for the liberation of one’s people, and blowing up a market-place of shoppers for a fascist cause ? Or a pre-school ? Or a hospital ? Nice easy targets for scum like al Qai’da ?
I don’t think that poor guy was thinking of either al Qai’da or of the US, but that would be presuming
This from al-Jazeera:
“5:25am Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez proposed an international mediation effort to seek a peaceful solution to the uprising against Gaddafi, his friend and political ally.
I hope we can create a commission that goes to Libya to talk with the government and the opposition leaders. We want a peaceful solution … We support peace in the Arab world and in the whole world.”
Chavez wants a peaceful solution ? Well, that’s all right then.
But some in Libya may prefer the Mussolini solution ……
Al-Jazeera reports today:
“8:50pm Amnesty International has demanded the release of a Vietnamese human rights activist arrested for allegedly calling for a Middle East-style uprising in the south-east Asian country.
“Dr Nguyen Dan Que, a prominent government critic, was detained on Saturday after authorities said he was caught “red-handed keeping and distributing documents” calling for the overthrow of the government.”
That caught me by surprise ……
“We are against any foreign intervention or military intervention in our internal affairs,” said Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga in Libya’s second city Benghazi last Sunday.
“This revolution will be completed by our people with the liberation of the rest of Libyan territory.”
He was speaking at a press conference to explain how the national revolutionary council is attempting to co-ordinate the rebel cities and administrate daily life.
The revolution looks close to defeating a dictatorship that had until recently appeared unstoppable. Colonel Gaddafi’s 41-year old regime now only controls the area around the capital Tripoli.
OY@171
What, invade the place and kill over half the population in order to incorporate Libya into the New Roman Empire? With historical and people skills like yours, Old Yobbo, you’d be in line for a designer job at Christian Dior.
The Islamist Turkish former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan has just been held in Istanbul. He visited Libya on one occasion, as The Age reports:
“His meeting with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, now besieged by rebels, turned into a diplomatic disaster when Gaddafi criticised Turkey for cracking down on autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels and having close ties with the West.
“A shocked Erbakan said: “We don’t have a Kurdish problem, we have a terrorism problem,” to save face in front of dozens of Turkish journalists accompanying him to Libya.”
Christ, I never thought I would ever have anything good to say about Ghaddafi, but …..
Isn’t it strange, we rightly defend the rights of the ten million Palestinians but so often foget about the thirty million Kurds ?
So Hal9000,
Others can propose the Mussolini solution, i.e. to what to do with a dictator, (although his girlfriend has now gone back to the Ukraine, it seems, so he may look a bit lonely, trouserless and upside-down) but I can’t ? Sorry, I didn’t realise there was some sort of pecking order at LM. I’ll try to bear that in mind and make more respectful, brainless contributions in future.
@ 39, Lefty E writes:
“So, skeptical Leftist – where are these heroic Bush doctrinaires now? Calling for intervention from the floor of Congress, are they?
Nope.”
Actually, Lefty, yep.
So, do the Yanks get a kick up the arse for not intervening (you @ 39), or one in the nuts for (at least in Congress) talking about intervening ?
Of course, it’s not our call, so you don’t have to make up your mind straight away – maybe wait until it all pans out, then get stuck in, one way or the other. When it’s safe and you’re with your mates.
This may help to make up our minds about military intervention:
“Discussion about a possible Nato-led move to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya was eagerly monitored on Tuesday all over the east of the country. “[ghaddafi's] pilots won’t bomb us anyway,” said [one local commander], hopefully. However, the spectre of jet bombers still looms large.
“Benghazi locals have taken to choosing the nationality of an intervention force that many here increasingly view as necessary. “There is a lot of talk about the Turks,” said one local. “They would be acceptable to all of us. Turkey is a Muslim country and they have good relations with us. But if the Americans came, the people would fight them in the streets, just like Iraq.”
Carte blanche ! Now we can be on the side of the people !
Hal900 @ 174: I think you are thinking of Abyssinia/Ethiopia, rather than Libya ? I could be wrong – there were revolts in Libya from 1911 through to 1931 and beyond (some Australian troops enlisted in the Camel Corps which were used in 1916-1917 against the Libyan people). Professor/Duce Mussolini would have obviously been responsible for any massacres in the later part of the 1911-1931 wars.
Italy used poison gas against Haile Selassie’s forces in Abyssinia – I hope that Ghaddafi doesn’t do the same against his own people – would that be a first, Katz ?
Calls for and against intervention are coming thick and fast. This on al-Jazeera:
4:14pm Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley was just on the phone with us – 10km away from the oil-rich town of [Mellahet el]Brega. As we spoke, he was watching a Libyan airforce jet bombing the area.
It’s now an air attack. We just watched an air force jet from the Libyan air force fly over Brega and drop at least one bomb – and huge plumes of smoke are now coming out over Brega. Another bombed near our position, where anti-Gaddafi forces have gathered.
All the fighters here are massing. We understand that something like 250-300 pro-Gaddafi fighters inside Brega and they are being surrounded.
Gaddafi is still a force to be reckoned with, he is not giving up.
The population here want an air exclusion zone to prevent this sort of attack – but they don’t want foreign troops on the ground.
All major oil and gas installations in the town are in thehands of the opposition. We believe this is the main reason for the attack.”
But this report on al-Jazeera:
“.Timestamp:
7:46pm We’ve been told that the newly formed “National Council” in Benghazi has gone a step further than the many calls for an internationally enforced no-fly zone. Spokesman Abdel Hafiz Khoga tells Al Jazeera’s correspondent:
We call on the international community to carry out pinpointed airstrikes on the mercenaries.”
So, a no-fly zone PLUS air attacks on Ghaddafi’s mercenaries ?
Is that what the people want ?
OY@178 No, it was Libya, where the legions of the New Roman Empire forced the rebellious population into concentration camps where most perished 1926-31.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Libya
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Mukhtar
Thanks, Hal9000, it’s good to learn something new every day
Ghaddafi has had interesting friends: this from The Guardian – note the motley collection of names in the last paragraph:
“A consultancy firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has admitted it had made serious mistakes in entering into a multimillion dollar contract with the Libyan regime to portray Muammar Gaddafi to the west in a positive light.
The Monitor Group, which has 30 offices around the world, has become the focal point of a billowing controversy over the engagement of western individuals and institutions with the discredited Gaddafi regime.
Over the space of three years, between 2006 and 2008, the firm entered into a contract with the regime that was worth, according to confidential documents obtained by the Libyan opposition, at least $3m (£1.8m).
An undisclosed portion of that money was passed on by Monitor to leading academics and policy makers in the US in the form of honorariums, consultancy fees and travel expenses.
Experts were encouraged to travel to Tripoli to meet a range of senior regime figures, including Gaddafi himself and his son Saif al-Islam, both of whom are now on the UN’s sanctions list designed to prevent Gaddafi’s assault on his own people.
The individuals who were engaged in the Monitor project included Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History; Richard Perle, a prominent neocon who advised President George W Bush in the buildup to the Iraq invasion; and American academics such as Benjamin Barber, Joseph Nye and Robert Putnam.”
[snide insinuation deleted ~ moderator] what is happening in Libya, this item from al-Jazeera may be useful:
“.Timestamp:
4:52am The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) bloc of Latin American countries says it will back a proposal by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, to mediate the crisis in Libya.
“Alba supports (Chavez’s) peace and unity initiative to create an international humanitarian commission for peace and the integrity of Libya,” said a statement, read out by Chavez after a meeting with foreign ministers.
It said the commission would aim to “avoid military aggression from NATO as part of th efforts the international community should make to help the Libyan people”.
The members of the bloc are: Antigua & Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, St Vincent & the Grenadines and Venezuela.
4:59am Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s foreign minister, says he has received a message from his Libyan counterpart authorising Venezuela to “take all measures necessary to select the members and coordinate their participation” in a mediation effort to be led by the country.”
Professor Peter Singer has an interesting take on intervention in Libya, on al-Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113394537843279.html
And al-Jazeera also is running an article about ‘a Middle East without borders’:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/201134154351741689.html
Wouldn’t be dead for quids !