Reproduced from today’s Crikey by kind permission; previous related discussion at LP can be found here and here.
The 10th anniversary year of 9/11 is proving a signal one in many respects. The Arab uprising began against rulers whose tenure was simply a Cold War hangover — an uprising that the invasion of Iraq helped delay by years. The pro-war party’s routine about extending universal values, down with cultural relativism, boo, yah, etc, was shown to be mere noise, as rebelling Libyans actually pleaded with former colonial masters to help them — only to see Greg Sheridan, Christopher Hitchens, Miranda Devine, Nick Cohen, Alan Howe, et al, desperate to talk about anything else.
I thought the insouciance with which these people treated the mass slaughter and waste they helped create in Iraq was odious, but I really wasn’t prepared to see the fruits of their utter and total hypocrisy. If they believed even a skerrick of what they had said in the past decade, they would be clamouring for a no-fly zone, as a legitimate interim government has requested. As Gaddafi’s forces launch a counter attack, the silence continues. There are umpteen reasons why that may be a bad or difficult idea — politically, morally, logistically — and after this is all over, who knows what we’ll find about the groups who fomented the uprising. They may stretch back to Tehran and Langley.
But that should be of no consideration at the moment. The will of the Libyan people is clear. The government they are rebelling against has no legitimacy. There’s plenty of realpolitik conservatives and very far leftists to argue the non-support case. Where’s the genuine and full-throated advocacy to assist a fighting people from those who made the most noise about applying a universal standard, regardless of ethnicity. Nowhere.
The Libyan revolution is creating that universal standard, rebelling in the name neither of Allah nor pan-Arabism, nor a nostalgic anti-colonialism, nor a poor-me anti-Zionism — in the name of nothing, except “we the people”. The damn revolution that everyone from the Tea Party to umpteen Badiou reading circles looked for is actually here, its success or failure may depend on the prevention of a few bombing runs, and a weird displacement effect is occurring.
No one seems to want to actively consider what our relationship is to the Libyan rebels and the interim government in Benghazi. Instead it’s being treated as a spectator sport, wherein two barely differentiated bands of wogs slug it out, while we invoke a cosmetic two-minute hate against one side, while avoiding the question of whether we have an actual obligation to a people rising up that goes beyond spectatorship. Again, the paradox is obvious. Before the Iraq invasion we were told we had an obligation to the Iraqi people precisely because they weren’t rising up, due to the lethality of Saddam’s regime.
It was their very absence of a revolutionary act that told us that we must do it for them, an argument that pro-war ex-Marxists and “last superpower” Maoists were rather keen on. Once you establish that inaction as, deep down, permission to bomb people in their own name, what the hell do you do with an actual revolution by the people themselves? It becomes less gauchiste, than merely gauche, an excess that causes embarrassment for the spectator.
The great sin of the Libyans is that they have left no role for the West but a supplemental one — to support a people making their own history. To do so would be to make one further acknowledgement that the West’s leadership has passed. It would also expose the contradiction in spruiking Western values as there for everyone. Hey, just because we said freedom, etc, was universal, doesn’t mean you can have it. It’s ours. If we merely support you in creating these universal values by your own collective struggle, will and sacrifice, then what are we? Just a vast expanse of malls, museums, and cable repeats of Friends.
Quite aside from our current account deficit, we have a grievous meaning deficit, a want of purpose. The Iraq war filled it for a while, then its failure reopened the question. A successful Arab uprising would retrospectively reduce it to bloody, meaningless farce, a confirmation of our fatal lack of will, capacity and resolve. A successful Arab revolution in its own name would, in one respect, erase the boundary between the West and the rest, thus leaving the West without an easy, monolithic other to define itself against.
To actively support a revolution there, rather than impose an invasion, would create kinship, collectivity and above all equality between us and rising-up Arabs. That above all, must be avoided. Arabia must be either an enemy, a colony or a petrol station. There are no other choices. Worse still, the spectating populations of both sides would see that we are people in common, unbranded by ethnicity. Universalism’s all very well, but a common humanity is just one step beyond. Solidarity crowds out fear, and then where would be?
Whatever happens, the neocon era is over, as is the glib trumpeting of Western supremacy. Support, don’t support it, the Libyan revolution has bookended it. With us, without us, should it prevail, it resets the agenda. Should it fail, Gaddafi will hang its leaders from the lamp-posts, and we will pass under to buy his oil again. Our economy may survive, our myth and self-conception won’t.
as rebelling Libyans actually pleaded with former colonial masters to help them
…and other rebelling Libyans said that they wanted to do it on their own.
Problem is that Libya is or was a Russian cold war puppet state (check out whose military equipment they use), so naturally, the USA is treading carefully for concern of stirring up cold war enmity.
USAID, is of course first on the scene in Tunisia with aid for the refugess. But you knew that.
The call for a no-fly zone from the rebels has been pretty consistent. What they don’t want is to have their country overrun by US troops or private security firm forces. They know what’s been going on in Iraq, they aren’t stupid.
@1 – PeterTB – well, any Russian concerns surely just show that it’s all about realpolitik, not freedom, etc.
@2 – For sure, Sam. As Rundle notes, it’s a call made by a government in the making which enjoys wide legitimacy. For those who have been making the argument that “the Libyans have to do it themselves”, the thing they need to ponder is that the Gaddafi regime is advantaged by being able to move mercenaries and militias by air, and that the insurgents are at massive risk in making any advance on the ground.
@1 — PeterTB, you do know that USAID is not an “aid organisation”, but “exists to further America’s foreign policy interests…” ?
I’m not sure what Rundle is calling for here.
More concerningly, Rundle doesn’t know what he is calling for here.
Wow, so cynical!
In fairness, there were quite a few foreign nationals in Libya so I think foreign governments wanted to get their citizens out of the country before tackling the Gaddaffi question.
I’ve heard people from various ideologies call for a no-fly zone – David Cameron, John McCain (conservatives), John Kerry, Kevin Rudd (social democrats) and William Kristol (neo-conservative).
Of course I will concede there’s been a few Bush era figures such as John Bolton who supported the Iraq invasion but hypocritically don’t support intervention in Libya…. politics makes for strange bedfellows?
Of course, the elephant in the room – or at least, in the next room – is Pakistan.
Mr Rundle writes: “There’s plenty of realpolitik conservatives and very far leftists to argue the non-support case.”
So how do you tell the difference ?
As for ‘silence’ on some form of intervention, note the following on no-fly zones:
Cameron, UK
John Kerry
Senator McCain
France
Canada
Australia
the Arab League
the African Union
etc.
Question: have the following governments come out on the side of the Libyan people, offering the sorts of support that Mr Rundle expects from the West:
Cuba
Venezuela
Bolivia
Nicaragua
Iran
Zimbabwe
China
Russia
Serbia
etc.
I would fully support Mr Rundle’s observation that, if it became necessary, for the revolution in Libya to prevail, “its success or failure may depend on the prevention of a few bombing runs … ”
Would the enforcement of a no-fly zone be possible without any actual troops on the ground in Libya ? Or very strict control of their placement, at air-fields, for example, and very definite time-frames ?
Vive la revolution !
Yes, you have mentioned both principle and agent in this one sentence, but which is which? There is incredible looting going on in the so-called advanced Western capitalist economies at the moment and public regulation, in the form of government isn’t doing a thing (or anything like enough) to stop it.
In the meantime we have political sideshows, minor issues such as multi-culturalism (or let’s be honest anti-muslim politics), National Broadband Network, gay marriage, misbehaving footballers, taxation and other public spending projects… Well, these things are in their way more or less important (measured by their media footprint), but it is developments in the economy and the governments inability to come to terms with them which is the big issue.
In particular, if we imagine a more efficient economy in terms of its material and energy requirements this is going to mean that the service-based sector is going to have to shrink. The Myth, that after exporting our manufacturing industries we can pick up the slack by expanding the service economy is just that: A myth. In any case the key measure for the economy is going to have to change from being one of employment to (energy) efficiency. We’re going to need a revolution similar to the industrial revolution.
Capitalism, as good as a market mechanism is for determining price, is failing to price commodities in accordance with their actual function. There are such distortions in the markets now, precisely because of things like over-investment in services, which mean that such important things as food-prices, water, etc are not being distributed where they have to be — ie. where they are needed, in some cases even, to keep people alive.
Or for a more realistic example the bubble in the oil price in the run up to the GFC.
(Market is good, but market is grossly distorted.)
Just to clarify: Surely, it should be taken for granted that there should be no intervention whatsoever unless the people, through the new authorities based in Benghazi, ask for it, and only under such terms as they ask for it.
But if they do ask for some form of intervention, surely they should get that support ? No mealy-mouthed humming and ha-ing ?
I gotta stop calling myself Shirley.
What are you calling for Katz?
Katz @5 Rundle said this:
I get the impression from that that he isn’t actually calling for anything because, apart from a no fly zone, which is a nice thought but hard to actually implement, what can we really do? Nothing, And you know what I don’t care. I think its great actually.
Perhaps we should follow their example.
People in Wisconsin are.
Perhaps Saudi Arabia or Eygpt could enforce No Fly zones.
The US and possibly others in NATO go on about needing to have some authority to implement a no-fly policy and to knock out anti-aircraft positions etcetera. All prevarications. Why not just send a sortie of jets across Tripoli to let Ghadafi know the whole world’s watching and to cheer the populace. I doubt a shot will be fired in anger. The request for a ‘no risk’ policy up front is inhumane and gutless.
Shades of Guernica.
And I would add that the West (even though Jimmy says, it’s the best) doesn’t have to lead, but it has to be sovereign. Western countries need governments which tell the people what the issues are and which are of the people and are not beholden to other interest groups, in particular corporations who are able to influence the government to do things which are not in the interest of the country.
It’s an eternal problem, and the best tactic to good governance thus far means more transparency than what we have now. I see in Abbot’s politics that it’s almost impossible to have a serious political debate in Australia at the moment. Politicians today are either talking to us like they’re our best mates (partisan) or talking down to us because they know something so important that they can’t tell us what it is, or they just don’t want to explain it (in both cases because it’s rubbish).
This thread is about Rundle, not Katz.
In another thread I laid out five options.
I admit I underestimated Gaddafi at the time. At that time I believed he’d be gone in a fortnight. It is now clear that he has reserves of support far superior to those of Mubarak, for example. It now appears evident that Gaddafi does represent the aspirations of a sizable part of the Libyan population.
Rather than a simple “people’s uprising” Libya is beginning to look more like a civil war between at least two powerful social coteries. Libya appears to be more complex than many of us, me included, knew.
Gaddafi probably has little credibility in the rest of the Arab world. Nevertheless, western boots on Arab ground is a very bad look, as the rebels showed when they chucked out those British Special Forces in the aftermath of a particularly bone-headed frolic. The rebels don’t want to be associated with Western militarism. And didn’t Gaddafi make clever use of this incident?
All this leaves the West with very little room for useful manoeuvre. For example, it’s no longer certain that the rebels will win. And it is possible that ensuring their victory may necessitate garrisoning Tripoli. That could be Baghdad II.
And what do we really know about the rebel forces, in any case? I think Rundle’s characterisation of them is simplistic.
Short answer GregM — I don’t know.
Katz,
it might help if you, as a substitute for the West could state what your goals are? Compromise can only be reached if we know what we’re compromising? How important is self government, for example, or human rights? (doesn’t matter at this stage what that means in Libya in particular.)
Terangeree says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:34 pm
@1 — PeterTB, you do know that USAID is not an “aid organisation”, but “exists to further America’s foreign policy interests…” ?
Are you sure you have the right link Terangeree?
Joe:
I’d like Libyans to negotiate their own future. I’d prefer that negotiation to be peaceful, always remembering that most countries have endured civil war at some time in their history.
Here is a parallel.
Official Britain was quite sanguine about the US Confederacy achieving secession. Indeed, the British allowed the construction of Confederate warships and British troops were despatched to Canada to threaten the Federals. Sensibly, however, the British recognised that the military costs of achieving any ambition in behalf of the Confederacy were too great and too uncertain so they mostly stayed out of the American Civil War.
In the real world, issues of costs and rewards trump empty statements of abstract principles.
Katz,
This one is looking increasingly like a battle between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania – with Fezzan (as has historically been the case) largely irrelevant.
This should not be too much of a surprise (although, like you, I am surprised) as much of the water and oil is in Cyrenaica and Fezzan and Gadaffi and most of the people are in Tripolitania. The history of his government seems to have been the transfer of resources from one to the other.
An honest answer Katz and I thank you for it.
My own view was stated @95 on the Libya and Liberal Interventionism thread where I wrote:
You say however:
What evidence do you have for what you say is evident? There are reports of uprisings and demonstrations against his rule in the areas he still controls but I’ve seen none of mass demonstations for his re-instatement in the areas that have thrown off his control. I would have thought that, given his well developed police apparatus, the very fact that people in the areas he controls, with the risks they must know await them in demonstrating against his rule would be powerful evidence that he does not, if he ever did, represent the aspirations of a sizable part of the Libyan population.
The fact that he can still assemble what appears to be a small part of a large security apparatus he has had a long time to put together to launch a counter-offensive is not evidence of him representing the aspirations of a sizable part of the Libyan population.
It does however beg the question of what the rest of his security appatatus are doing and the answer to that which seems most likely to be being held back in the areas he still controls, where they are needed to suppress the aspirations of a sizable part of the Libyan population he still controls.
On your further point I don’t see any evidence of the two powerful social coteries you refer to. I take the existence of one, Gaddafi’s, for granted. It has had, after all, 42 years to develop. But I can see no evidence for the existence of the other. Perhaps you can point me to links that demonstrate its existence, and not the existence of a large number of people who are, after 42 years of his rule, and that of his coterie, thoroughly p*ssed off and just want to see the last of them.
I agree with you on the British SAS incident. Boneheaded hardly describes it. Still, please point me to where Gaddafi made clever use of it. He is despised in the Arab world. The clever use was probably made by the Opposition leadership who sent them on their way without giving them a hearing.
This is the same argument Geoffrey Roberstson is making, http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/how-the-west-can-end-gaddafis-slaughter-20110306-1bjgs.html , albeit from a more knowledgeable internationalist perspective, and minus the old disillusioned revolutionary Left pablum.
But even Geof barely gets at the crux of the matter: “It [the intervention] must be proportionate – no greater force than necessary to achieve a reasonably obtainable objective.”
Long story short—even sincere anti-neocons like these two refuse to acknowledge the reality that NATO would be going in, destroying Gadaffi’s planes, anti-aircraft weaponry, radar sites, and in the process killing several hundreds or even thousands of people. Depending on how many innocent ‘human shields’ the colonel puts in the way, of course. And that’s not counting the not-so-innocent who’d die in these raids which must take place in order for a ‘no fly zone’ to be of any help to the rebellion.
Minor detail, that.
GregM, we are all groping around here.
1. Gaddafi can assemble large crowds in Tripoli. What does it mean? Perhaps they have been conscripted. I don’t know.
2. Here is what was shown of British Ambassador on Libyan TV. Lies and more lies. For example, the rebels announced that these british goons were carrying fake passports. Huge embarrassment all round.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJFWVoWIumM
Imagine what this looks like in both Tripoli and Benghazi.
Good point Nickws @21.
Jules what do you mean? I am intrigued. Truly.
Should we rise up and take arms to overthrow the Julia Gillard social coterie (as Katz would describe it)in Canberra through the force of our arms?
Where would we begin?
In Tasmania?
Or New South Wales?
That on current polling seems to be the inclination of the New South Welsh population, although most likely they’ll wimp it by replacing their oppressors through the use of their ballots rather than through an armed uprising.
Our lives aren’t put at risk on the changing of our governments, Jules. The Libyan people’s are. They deserve more respect than you are prepared to afford them.
Well, here’s a parable:
Everyone knows that markets are never transparent and never truly open and yet market transparency and openness are crucial for the very concept of a market. It’s a paradox: praxis and idea it seems are in conflict. But praxis says that the optimum market in general is the most transparent and open market.
If practitioners get too obsessed with exploiting the market the market is destroyed or practically the market becomes inefficient is no longer a good pricing technique.
The easiest way to resolve the bad relationship that exists between Gadaffi and the West is to stop buying his oil. It would cost the West, but the price for this long-term bad relationship with Gadaffi is due. But then the mind turns to China and Saudi Arabia etc. In so much chaos, the West (whatever that is) has to reaffirm its basic principles.
Ok sure, this is a bit polemic, but if the West is anything it must be some kind of empire and it has lost itself in the periphery and it can’t change until it sures up the center. At the moment the West is paralysed.
This is Rundle’s most sophomoric effort in a long time, the kind of palava one might have heard in the junior common room in 1977.
Someone help me, please: what is he actually saying?
Goodness Joe, you must have nodded off in your Marxism 101 class. Theory says that the optimum market in general is the most transparent and open market.
Praxis, the application of theory, finds that it’s a whole lot more complicated and difficult than that. It runs into practical problems like natural monopolies and such things.
GregM,
I’m no Marxist.
What is meant is the maximisation of openness and transparency improves the ability of the market to set prices.
Theory says that markets are open and transparent. If the ‘market’ isn’t open and transparent it’s not a market. Not in the classical sense.
Sure, if you want to go and live in a feudal system. Be my guest. Afghanistan is waiting for realists like you!
Sam, he’s saying the Western governments are a bunch of hypocrites. Anyway, you’ve heard something similar before, what did you say in 1977 in the junior common room?
Some are groping more than others Katz.
But I don’t think you are just groping. I think you are clutching at straws.
Including about what is apparently evident to you about Gaddafi representing the aspirations of a sizable part of the Libyan population, without having any evidence to support that proposition.
And about what, and how many, powerful social coteries exist in Libya at this time.
Your dilemma is that you recognise that the Libyan uprising is an authentic one. The problem is though that it is of a population weak against a ruthless oppressor made powerful through years in power and through years of accumulating vast oil wealth.
He is counterattacking and may, with his vast accumulated resources, crush this authenic uprising. If he does we may expect that those who rose up in defiance will be crushed and slaughtered and those who survive cruelly suppressed.
For them to survive they may need foreign help and that, realistically, can come from only one quarter.
But that, for you, would mean an intervention, and if effective as you must fear it would be, a success for the hated West.
Don’t worry. You’ll see your way through this dilemma. On your track record you’ll have it both ways.
You’ll back the dictator and if he wins you’ll excoriate the West for the fact that they did not intervene, while finding that the true reasons why they did not was that he was their creature all along (It’s all about oil etc).
If he loses then you’ll downplay their intervention as being insufficient and unnecessary (the People would have won anyway) and/or argue that the insurrectionists have sold out their authentic revolution and/or if there is perfectly understandable turmoil in Libya as it tries to construct a new social order you’ll blame the West for each and every bit of that turmoil.
What you are groping with is your failure at this uncertain time of finding a way to blame the West for whatever happens. You have form. And you will not disappoint.
I take issue with one of the central theses of the original post.
I believe the engagement with the brutal repression in Libya is ringing a heartfelt rejection both by the world’s dispossed and by liberal and progressive elements in governments. Governments in general (and certainly blocs) are lagging behind public involvement (lots of investment in maintaining the status quo). For example if we look at the Arab League members, there are a few states transitioning, but none where a popular uprising has completed the revolution. Surprisngly the chair of the League sounds progressive, there may be a generational/sucessional shift starting to occur?
There is a lot of static/noise in the blogosphere about western designs on Libyan oil, but the reality is that no western gov’t wants another Iraq, or Afghanistan opening up, the PR and logistics would be a nightmare and where’s the exit strategy.
The reality is that if the US and or the UK impose a no-fly zone, or they don’t impose a no fly zone, they could be seen to be on the wrong side of history. By contrast I can’t ever see a no-fly zone ever being imposed on the Sauds, or Iranian regimes, so maybe the Military Industrial Complex will see Libya as a relatively easy target to appear to be on the right side of history?
Any thoughts?
Joe I must have paid too much for that pricy Business School I went to, because they didn’t teach me that.
They taught me that a perfect market, a theoretical construct of classical economic theory, is open and transparent(and a whole lot more) but they also taught me that markets in the real world we live in are far from being like that.
Nothing to do with feudalism Joe. Just about the real capitalist world we live in.
Where though, if you are not a Marxist, did you pick up the term praxis, even though you obviously don’t understand it?
Outside Marxism and some fairly obscure bits of Greek philosophy it doesn’t have much currency.
Katz @ 15
Ok totally agree with the second part of the statement Libyan patriots don’t want to aid colonialism, but that isn’t news.
But I have to disagree with you about the success/ unsuccess of the mission. Before the mission communication lines between the revolutionaries and the UK government did not exist, now they do.
Agreed it is nasty for the secret services to have one of their ‘secrets’, foreign passports out in the open but any spook watcher already knew about those tricks.
GregM @ 32
I know we’re getting off track. (The original post is about Libya afterall)
But you’re engageing in an Angels on a pinhead distraction argueing about a perfect market vs is a market/isn’t a market.
Then laying into Joe on the use of praxis rather than policy or theory.
I tell you this very loud! It’s not only marxists who f*ck up praxis and theory. Capitalists do it all the time. Next time you have a job interview ask the company representative, what is your EEO pratice? What are your OH&S practices?
None of them ever have an answer. They all have policies, but different practices on the ground. Ask for full disclosure at the stock exchange while you are at it.
GregM @24 Don’t you do context? Read the whole comment, not just one line of it.
Note this is among the commenting behaviours considered unacceptable in the comments policy:
This bitter little diatribe:
is a perfect example of this:
For the record, I supported the First Gulf War. It was a winnable war conducted in the proper way when it began. I opposed Bush Senior’s betrayal of the Iraqi Shiites. I wanted Bush Senior to go further.
For the record, I believe that it would now be very dangerous to put boots on the ground in Libya because of the toxic memories of all that Bush Senior didn’t do and all that Bush Junior did do.
To assume that Arabs have no historical memory is to insult Arab people. As I just heard on the BBC “to a man” the citizens of Benghazi oppose any, repeat ANY Western boots on the ground. They have skin in this game. Their wishes must be given the greatest respect.
It is the height of arrogance for us outsiders to think that we know better.
But bitterness is often really just frustrated arrogance, isn’t it?
“ANY Western boots on the ground”
What about an Italian/French/Russian enforcement of a no-fly zone? The Italians need to make up for being too close to the Gadaffi regime, and the French and Russians armed him.
Your point being…
I do respect the desire of the Libyan insurgents not to invite the West into a direct attack on Gaddhafi positions their struggle on a military level. Win or lose, this accords them legitimacy.
The best way that the west can help would be to provide material aid (food, water, communications and logistics and the weapons needed to defend captured ground) and have an open offer to evacuate anyone who wants to leave or who needs to for any reason.
Simultaneously, the West adopts a “no assistance to Gaddhafi-held territory position”. I understand that supplies of Libyan currency have been held up. You basically force Tripoli to live on its own resources of oil and weapons and supply them food only in exchange for cash.
You can’t keep aircraft in the air without fuel and parts and if they run out of cash they are going to have trouble paying their mercenaries and bands of supporters. Sooner or later, the regime’s ability to resist will vanish and then the matter can be resolved by the Libyans themselves.
Peter TB @ 17:
Yes, USAID is an acronym for “United States Agency for International Development” — it is not an aid agency in the common understanding of the term.
And @ 38:
To send the Italians in would most likely unite the Libyan people, who must surely recall Italy’s last excursion into North Africa.
The French military would not particularly be welcome, either, considering the history of the district.
Only the totally cynical would suggest that because the affected oil companies are minnows like Total and Repsol (rather than Exxon) that western military intervention will be both reluctant and ineffective. Gazprom remains unaffected too, hence Russias reluctance to get involved.
“the spectating populations of both sides would see that we are people in common, unbranded by ethnicity.”
Whatever the views of outsiders, I think its rather difficult to know what the concept of ‘the people’ and a revolution of ‘the people’ might mean in the Libyan context. The reality seems to be a country constituted by a collective of tribal groups which have been cynically played off against each other by Gaddafi in the interests of maintaining his overall authority. Whether the overthrow of the tyrant will bring with it a new sense of unity transcending tribal divisions and animosities is difficult to predict?
Terangeree:
I’m highly amused that you think that events of 50+ years ago must always impact on current events. Colonialism has been used to justify the crimes of most post-colonial African regimes. It’s time that that stopped.
Nicely nuanced, Adamite @43.
As such, your comment deflates the fantasies of some folk on this thread and therefore will not be welcome.
it is not an aid agency in the common understanding of the term
You’re going to have to spell that out for me T. What I see is an aid agency that is usually first on the scene with massive assistance to both friends and not-so-friends. Two examples that come to mind are the Aceh tsunami, and the current crisis in Tunisia.
Or are you simply concerned that the US might have selfish as well as humanitarian motives? Like, for instance, Australia does with its aid to Timor, PNG and Indonesia?
45. Thanks Katz. For someone from the left Rundle’s comments on this issue seem surprisingly similar to Kantian Liberal idealism.
Pabs @44:
Not always, but as Italy was a ruthless and bloodthirsty colonial power early last century — a history which resulted in the Italian Government agreeing in 2008 to provide Libya with $5,000,000,000 in compensation — it would be perhaps unsurprising if the average Libyan were to view a unilateral Italian military incursion into Libya with distrust.
Sure, those events were over 50 years ago. WW2 was 66 years ago this year, too, but do you think the Israeli Government would accept willingly a NATO / UN peacekeeping force in Palestine that was predominantly sourced from (and commanded by) the Bundeswehr (even allowing for the fact that Germany has changed its basic political structure three times since May 1945)? And, even now, many in SE Asia greet with alarm any mention that Japan be allowed to send its Self Defence Forces anywhere outside Japan.
Decades might pass, but memories remain…
Oh bugger. I forgot an tag.
Help me, moderator!
Pabs, do you understand the difference between “explain” and “justify”.
What is Rundle on about? Everyone of the usual suspects at Strange Times / Lastsuperpower is calling for military action and pointing out that people like Rundle are now utterly snookered.
http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/?p=1250&cpage=2#comment-9212
example
In a previous thread Steve said he was wrong about the issue of a no fly zone with respect to Iraq. http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/?p=926 Steve now thinks he ought to have advocated that the U.S. engage in all the required acts of war that this NFZ policy required. Good.
Well now he supports a NFZ with respect to Libya. Very good! He has now found the leaders of Libya that he is apparently obliged to listen to in order to defend the Libyan people’s revolution against the Gaddafi dictatorship. I am glad he finally found them.
The enemy for now is the Gaddafi forces and Steve is involved to the extent of advocating that the U.S. make limited war on behalf of the people on the other side. Steve is disregarding the civil war aspect of this fighting and has backed taking sides and uniting with the ‘great Satan’. Well done.
Katz:
Africans are becoming a little more aware that anarchy tends to spread. But, on the other hand, most African leaders are still reluctant to intervene in a “sovereign” state, especially when their own hands are none too clean.
And they still share the (very common, and not specifically African) view that a right bastard who can maintain order is preferable to any government that can’t. If his neighbors ever go beyond “tsk tsk” with regard to Gaddafi (and
they haven’t, much, yet), it won’t be because he was a thug, but because he turned out to be an incompetent thug who let his country dissolve into chaos.
But, even if we accept the figures of admittedly biased orgs… this doesn’t begin to put him in the running for “most vicious African dictator”. Amin killed more people in a week than Gaddafi has in 40 years.
It’s *bad*, yes, sure, but lots and lots of African leaders have done stuff like this. How’s Gaddafi that much worse than, say, Daniel Arap Moi or Kamuzu Banda or Robert Mugabe or Jerry Rawlings?
Do you have any evidence for what I have bolded as the core premise of what you have written?
Bear in mind that if you can’t you are in direct violation of LP’s Comments Policy which states that it is unacceptable to impute ideas or motives to others or to stereotype them because of perceived group membership or ideological affiliation.
Your comment has done that to the whole people of Libya.
Maybe they just aspire to that universal value of freedom. But you have put their motives down to simple tribalism.
The onus is on you to produce the evidence that their motives are simple tribalism (perceived group membership) and not an authentic aspiration for freedom from a dictator who denies them that freedom.
Otherwise you will be guilty of a breach of LPs Comments Policy and a great deal more.
GregM,
no need to behave like you’re authorised to educate people on LP.
Google is your friend > libya tribal tension
Oh well, maybe this link will help you further, considering the other one is dough-nutted: lmgtfy
Joe, thanks. Neither of your links worked.
Nothing in LP’s Comments Policy says that I’m not authorised to educate people. And if you read the comments on LP all the time and on just about every topic that is what happens all the time and that is the purpose for which LP exists.
I think maybe though that the word you meant to use was not “authorise” but “patronise”. I have been accused of that before and I plead guilty to it and am proud of it.
Where peoples’ freedom is involved I will go with the people rising up against a tyrant for that is them expressing a universal human value.
Where someone comes along with an explanation of what they have done is
I will call them on it. Let them produce the evidence for what is, beyond being as I have kindly pointed out as being a breach of LP’s Comments Policy, a racist attack on Libyan people as being driven by tribal motives rather than aspirations for the universal human value of freedom.
If that is patronising to that person then I am not troubled that they feel that way.
I feel infinitely more concerned for the Libyan people who are struggling for their freedom than I do for them as they sit in the cocoon of our law abiding democracy passing ignorant judgment on the Libyan people.
But let’s be fair, I have asked Amortiser to come up withthe evidence for his/her post that
rather than it being an authentic uprising of people wishing to be free.
Then let us look at his/her evidence and examine it and debate it.
And if Amortiser cannot or will not produce that evidence let us draw the necessary conclusion about the worthlessness of his/her comment.
GregM,
sorry that the second link didn’t take you directly to where you wanted to go.
In particular I was thinking of this article, which I read a week or so ago in the Guardian: Muammar Gaddafi: method in his ‘madness’
Who authorized you to teach people here on LP? I just think, to borrow a page from JPZ’s book, it’s not all that becoming to talk down to another commenter on an internet forum, unless you’re a mod or whatever. You might very well be proud of being patronising, but I don’t appreciate it.
But, I mean, it’s just a style tip, I guess
gregm, you really are showing a fantastic inability to understand what Katz is writing. Perhaps your personal animosity towards him is interfering with your reasoning skills? You seem to think he wants Gaddafi to “win” this, which is really a ludicrous misinterpretation. I think you should remove the red rag.
Joe, the Mods at LP did that very on when I first joined it. When I complained about some other commenter’s highly offensive and objectionable comment they explained to me that they would not intervene and that my recourse was to rejoin the debate where the judgment of my views and those of my interlocuter would be resolved in the rough and tumble of the debate.
They gave me my lesson. I have never looked back.
53. As a starter look at the following: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-25/libya-s-tribal-revolt-may-mean-last-nail-in-coffin-for-qaddafi.html
and http://english.aljazeera.net/video/africa/2011/02/201122352025494387.html
For more in-depth historical evidence see Faraj Najem’s observations in “Tribe, Islam and State in Libya” that Libya is a tribalistic society of a multitude of races and backgrounds overlaid by Islam and Arabism.
Israelis are claiming Gaddafi as one of their own.
http://israelinsider.net/profiles/blogs/with-a-jewish-grandma-and-a?xg_source=activity
What a propaganda coup that would be for Israel.