Libya and just war
Mar. 23rd, 2011 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI'll be offline for a day, and I haven't posted about Libya since NATO started bombing, so in my absence, feel free to discuss.
I have very mixed opinions. Gaddafi needs to go; that's not in question. He's a vile dictator who deserves the Mussolini treatment, and the people of Libya are fighting like hell for their freedom. They're outgunned. They have asked for help.
One would have to be terribly naïve, of course, to assume that Western powers are responding to this call with a genuine interest in democracy and freedom. One must assume that they have ulterior motives. Furthermore, one is obliged to consider the inevitability of civilian casualties.
Slacktivist, as usual, has a post that more or less describes my thoughts on the matter. He hasn't come to any sort of conclusion either.
You folks wanna talk this out?
I have very mixed opinions. Gaddafi needs to go; that's not in question. He's a vile dictator who deserves the Mussolini treatment, and the people of Libya are fighting like hell for their freedom. They're outgunned. They have asked for help.
One would have to be terribly naïve, of course, to assume that Western powers are responding to this call with a genuine interest in democracy and freedom. One must assume that they have ulterior motives. Furthermore, one is obliged to consider the inevitability of civilian casualties.
Slacktivist, as usual, has a post that more or less describes my thoughts on the matter. He hasn't come to any sort of conclusion either.
You folks wanna talk this out?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:37 am (UTC)And really, I probably owe the survival of some of my family to the fact that Canada (among other countries) intervened in another war, about 70 years ago or so. It seems kind of hypocritical for me to celebrate Liberation Day with my stepmother while at the same time firmly believing that it's never been OK to intervene in any other conflict since and never will be...
And yet, a lot of my activist friends seem to have no problem with that contradiction. I found it kind of sadly ironic that some of the same people who were excitedly posting links to news stories on the rebels' progress, as soon as the UN got involved, started posting rants about "imperialist attacks on Libya". WTF? What exactly did they want people who supported the rebels to do when the tide turned against them and they asked for help - say "Gee, sorry, sucks to be you!"?
But as you say, the fact that there are good reasons to intervene doesn't mean that all the countries that are doing so are doing it for those reasons, or at least not for those reasons alone. And it's not going to be easy or painless, no matter what happens.
On the balance, I'd have to say that overall I'm more in favour of intervention in this case than against it, though I do certainly have concerns. I guess the bottom line for me is - yes, it's a "just war" in the sense that there are just reasons for being part of it, but that doesn't mean it's going to be a "just war" in the sense of happening in a fully just way. :-/
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 07:22 am (UTC)Indeed. Enough with the kneejerk reactions...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 06:18 am (UTC)What worries me isn't so much Western military involvement, but the West's and the rebels' final goal. Assuming they win (and while not a certainty, it sure as hell is more likely when you've got cruise missiles and total air superiority on your side), who gets to be in charge? Egypt's example isn't exactly encouraging, and Libya seems to be far more divided, along both political and tribal lines. I'm not certain whether that makes a democratic replacement for Gaddafi more or less likely though.
There's also the concern about what the rebels will do to pro-Gaddafi people (whether militia or civilians) if/when they win. And whether the West would do anything about it, or claim this is now an internal matter and take too long to convince itself otherwise.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 06:19 am (UTC)should be
"Even if they made some quiet deals with France or one of the other NATO countries in exchange for military support, at least they have to be around to be able to pay that debt -- not an option to which Gaddafi was particularly amenable."
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:09 pm (UTC)[1] I'd also argue that in the short term, freedom need not equate with democracy. Just because people are fed up with old tyrants doesn't mean they're going to head straight toward a constitutional republic or a parliamentary democracy.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 04:59 am (UTC)And I think most of what the sophistication that frandroid is tactical, while I think your trepidations about the long run is a concern, I think we really have seen a "game changer" here where traditional dictatorships, especially of a military nature, simply don't have the hold on people like they had before. It's one thing for one dictator to be deposed by another (or to be assassinated, like Sadat), but after a dictator has been taken down by a genuine populist movement born out of years of oppression, then the emperor has no clothes to say, even though other dictatorial power my appear, its ability to rule unchallenged won't be anything like Mubarak's because a certain element of fear, the seemingly impossibility of revolution, has been overcome.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 10:58 am (UTC)They have done so fairly consistently in the past; Darfur, Zimbabwe, Western Sahara, China, Burma, East Timor even Peru and Argentina. I could go on. What's different this time? The only answer I can come up with is "proximity to Europe".
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 03:57 pm (UTC)Because the U.S. does not intervene where it has a geopolitical interest doesn't mean that it's a bad thing when it intervenes where they don't have as much of an interest.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 04:27 am (UTC)I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but so far I haven't been to my satisfaction... Not that I'd be disappointed to see Gaddafi go, I just wonder what will go with him.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 03:54 pm (UTC)One of the major differences is that the Whole World is Watching (which is related to your "proximity to Europe"). The one example you didn't mention is Rwanda, which is what has been invoked in arguments to support this intervention. I don't think slaughter here would have reached that proportion, but the argument has been that we can't sit on our hands every damn time. I think Clinton felt the pressure, in particular that applied quite sharply by Sarkozy (who himself was trying to uplift, unsuccessfully, his lagging electoral prospects).
Regarding China (and thus by extension Burma), slaughters are regularly condemned when they happen, but being done by the other superpower, there's little our superpower can do about it without either damaging trade or escalating violence drastically, with unforeseen and potentially crippling consequences.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 05:21 am (UTC)Despite the hilarity of such claims and that progressive absolutely have no love for Gadaffi, I think it's illustrative of the mess to where knee-jerk reactions and black and white, "everything x does is bad" thinking can lead people.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 09:41 pm (UTC)So, yes, the west are imperialist pigdogs, yes they are hypocrites, yes they have all sorts of ulterior motives, and yes there will be civilians killed by their bombing (especially as they insist in taking out any conceivable threat to their pilots, therefore involving more bombing nearer to civilian areas). Though having said that, the Libyan govt. hasn't been able to produce much by way of dead civilians. Al Jaz's Anita McNaught has reported a couple of times of being promised them and not getting any. I think it's almost certain that the toll from western bombing is orders of magnitude less than what Ghadaffi's forces would have perpetrated. (Are perpetrating where they can).
But, the situation that was unfolding was so utterly dire that the people of Benghazi and other rebel areas needed to be rescued from it, even if it is by lying hypocritical imperialist pigdogs with ulterior motives. If you're drowning and a LHIPD throws you a rope, you take it. Then you deal with their ulterior motives as best you can later.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 05:19 pm (UTC)Yes, it's unacceptable. Yes, it should have been pursued. Yes, Gaddafi should have been held to account for it. But perhaps 22 years is a tad too much of a delay to suddenly get all righteous about the whole thing? Justice might not have an expiry date, but public outrage certainly does.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 10:41 pm (UTC)Is Lybia more ripe for a middle-class-led regime than Afghanistan or Iraq? Probably. Is it ripe enough? Who knows.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 10:54 pm (UTC)The people haven't asked for imperialist help. A self-appointed, widely mistrusted leadership, composed in large part of former Gaddafi stooges, has asked for help. There's more to the rebellion in Libya than the Transitional National Council in Benghazi, and thank goodness for that, because right now the civil war looks like Quisling v. Mussolini.
Also, let's note that the Western powers have been quite selective in the help they have offered in response to that request. Bombing the hell out of any anti-aircraft installation or heavy weaponry that might be used to defend Libya in the event that whoever comes out of this mess ruling the country should displease the West--sure thing! Arms and tactical military training for scruffy, bearded rebels--well, we're not so sure, we wouldn't want to have another set of Mujahedeen, now would we?
One need not assume that. They have been quite explicit about their motives. Consider Obama's statement in Chile:
So when a humanitarian crisis is taking place and a government is using military force against its people (as in Bahrain or Yemen), that by itself is not a casus belli, but when the "international community" (i.e., the rulers of the countries powerful enough to throw their weight around) see fit to say that there's a humanitarian crisis and that the leader is doing bad things, well, we can't just sit around and have him laugh at us, can we?
In other words, the U.S., Britain and France, with a U.N. figleaf and some Qatari window-dressing, are going to war to defend the idea that they can go to war whenever they damn well feel like it, thank you very much, even in the Middle East. If the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were unsuccessful attempts to get over the "Vietnam syndrome," the attack on Libya seems to be an attempt at early treatment of the "Iraq syndrome."
And not only in Libya, but of every country they decide to attack thereafter.
We also need to consider the political impact on events in every Arab country where the masses either are rebelling, or are considering it. Even in Egypt and Tunisia, where the question of how far they will go in attacking and uprooting the remains of the old regimes is still open. Between the Saudi-led invasion of Bahrain, and the U.S. attack on Libya, it seems like a dismal set of options. Either the West and its clients decide that they like your dictator, and they set upon you with all available force, or they decide that they don't, and they hijack your revolution to make your country the next Iraq.
I'm glad to see that the people in Syria seem not to be succumbing to that blackmail, and are rebelling anyway. It puts to shame the Western left, which either cheers on the cruise missiles, prettifies the dictator, or sits around twiddling its thumbs.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 10:59 pm (UTC)What do you propose as a solution?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 11:23 pm (UTC)Among the things to do would be to protest the war, while vociferously arguing against or mercilessly mocking every jackass who claims that Qaddafi's really some great, progressive, anti-imperialist, socialist leader of the people, or that the Libyan rebellion is nothing more than a bunch of Islamists/tribalists/CIA stooges. But I must confess I'm dreading that, and all the spittle flecks that go with it.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 08:24 am (UTC)By now it should be obvious to anyone that NATO bombs do not bring anything but plunder and colonial dependence.
The feelings within the capitalist periphery (left or right) are well summed up by Yoweri Museveni: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/28/ugandas-president-on-the-gadhafi-he-knows/?hpt=Sbin
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 12:16 pm (UTC)1. It is obvious that Qaddafi's regime is corrupt, that Qaddafi has betrayed the ideals declared during the 1969 revolution. It is also known that Qaddafi has been integrating Libya into the neoliberal world system. In 2010 Qaddafi was planning to privatize half Libya's economy over the next few years. Qaddafi's clan would be the primary beneficiary of this privatization.
2. Despite the close financial ties with Europe's neoliberal leaders, Berlusconi, Blair, Prince Andrew, Sarcozy himself, Qaddafi was not a fully a puppet of the West. And despite the privatization, Libya has retained much of the welfare state. It is a much richer, much healthier country than Egypt, for instance. It is also a country with a wide access to education, including higher education.
3. What is not obvious is the social base of the rebellion, their organization, and the way the struggle between the rebels and the qaddhafists was really evolving. The demands of the rebels are less known even than their leaders. It is clear that the rebels are well armed. This is a stark contrast with Bahrain or Egypt.
It is a fact that at least some of the information on civilian deaths, on Qaddafi's airstrikes on civilian targets has not been confirmed either by video or by any convincing evidence. There have been too many demonization campaigns in the last 40 years to accept this one uncritically as well.
4. The future envisioned for the liberated Libya can be read in Catherine Ashton's article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/opinion/19iht-edashton19.html?_r=4). There is no mention of developing an independent industry, not a word about education, science, healthcare. The liberated people of Libya must sell products to the rich countries of Europe and supply "those with professional skills" - workforce.
The future enacted by the rebels is described here: http://www.afrol.com/articles/37465.
5. You can see how cinical this war is by the way the NATO countries are reacting to massive peaceful protests against neoliberal policies in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has not only gunned down its own protests, it invaded Bahrain, where the largest US naval base in the whole Middle East is located. Not a word of disapproval from NATO. Of course not, for Bahrain is already supplying the West with "quality products": gas and oil.
There is no compassion for Cote d'Ivoire, where a civil war is being waged with the participation of France. If foreign intervention was beneficial, then Africa would be the most prosperous and democratic place on earth, for it has experienced the largest dose of intervention in the whole world.
6. The most important process in the world is the accumulation of capital. This accumulation is only then efficient, when the centres of accumulation are few. Neoliberal politics serves the interests of capital as such, reducing the waste of capital to social services everywhere, but especially on the capitalist periphery. When the governments on the periphery are not sufficiently active in dismantling the social state, they are taken down by a foreign invasion. Such invasions are the modern version of a colonial war. And this is what Libyan invasion will be. You know subcomandante Marcos' "Fourth World War": he writes precisely about wars like the Libyan one.
7. If you, or anyone on the left, thinks that what is happening in Libya is a revolution that you support, then you have to be prepared to fight for it as if it was your own revolution, the way members of the international brigades fought in Spain. You will see that such decision is much more difficult than whether to support the NATO bombing, which started, curiously, on the same date as the invasion of Iraq.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 12:29 pm (UTC)I guess I think some sort of intervention was necessary to prevent a massacre. I haven't seen any other alternatives (again, short of a Spain scenario, and the situation in Libya developed much more quickly). I also think it was opportunistic as all hell—apparently, the UN gave the go-ahead to crush Bahrain's rebellion in exchange for the no-fly zone in Libya. So I have no doubt about the NATO countries' goals in all of this.
It may be a case of me looking for solutions where, short of, as
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 12:53 pm (UTC)There are very few places where the proletariat actually can be a revolutionary force (though it currently nowhere is one).
What the XXth century has shown is that reforms in the most developed countries are only possible when some of the periphery delinks from the world economic system. This delinking, whatever the slogans, does not bring the independent periphery closer to socialism. But it is the only way to develop the periphery as well as to reform the capitalist centre. The independent periphery was first broken up, and now it has been liquidated, more or less. Belarus is next, I suppose. (That is one country on the independent periphery that I have actually visited.)
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As for the rebels in Libya, well - I would not support just any rebels. Before I support the uprising, I would want to know its demands and its social base. Nobody is starving in Libya. This is not Egypt. It is the country with the strongest social state in Africa. That, of course, does not mean that one shouldn't rebel or that one should be content with everything. But you have to look at the situation in each country separately. Egypt is one thing, Yemen, another, Bahrein different again.
I have not heard anything about the reforms that the rebels were demanding. There is internet in Libya. Why do I not see thousands of youtube videos of peaceful protests, why do I not see any videos of bombed protests, videos of bombed civilian targets? Egypt had its internet completely cut. And yet there was a huge mass of information from the participants.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 01:11 pm (UTC)What is happening in Belarus?
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 01:17 pm (UTC)But though Lukashenko is by no means a loveable figure, I would not support the rebellion that would invite NATO planes to bomb Belarus. And there is no leftist political opposition (though I do know some marxists there).
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 01:25 pm (UTC)It remains a question in my mind as to what we, in the capitalist centre, are really supposed to do when this sort of thing happens. Particularly when there is no clear opposition to support.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 01:09 pm (UTC)Those who support the rebels, must think that Qaddafi's regime was bad in every respect, save for two - the courts and the police. That leaves exactly what Libya will not have after the military operation: education and health care.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 11:12 pm (UTC)Mostly I haven't been happy with public positions the left has been taking against intervention, even if I'm not a fan of the intervention myself.
Some leftists, notably Workers World Party (weird stalinists who somehow control much of the mainstream anti-war movement in the U.S.), Chavez, and a bunch of old Sandinistas have been solidly pro-gaddafi from before day-one. They were cheering when nonviolent protesters were being gunned down. It's no surprise that that these folks and people under their influence are now denouncing imperialist intervention in Libya.
Other leftists, however, aren't crazy stalinists or dupes of stalinists, but seem unable to take a nuanced political position that can be easily differentiated from the above pro-gaddafi folks. The fact that Gaddafi claims dozens of civilians have been killed in Nato airstrikes and some leftists are claiming hundreds of civilians have been killed is telling.
As for why the U.S. intervened in Libya but not other countries, I think most leftist claims are off base. Sure, oil is a big part of it. And sure, they don't like Gaddafi anyway. But I think a bigger reason is that western governments respect power more than anything else. And in Libya, the rebels had achieved enough power to make it clear that Gaddafi would be unable to govern. Maybe they couldn't take and hold the country without help, but no help would let Gaddafi continue his rule. And even if he could hang in there for a while, he's old and would need to hand it off to someone, but nobody around him can get the same following as Gaddafi.
So they were left with the choice of a drawn out civil war with the rebels likely eventually winning but emerging angry at the west for standing by and letting them be slaughtered. Or they could assist and shorten the civil war, with the rebels emerging grateful and indebted to the western powers.
As for the argument about this intervention leading to future interventions, I'm not sure I buy that. Most likely this will be more expensive and messier than Obama had hoped. And other interventions can be held up to this - if the people haven't already risen up and seized half the country, then the proposed intervention is an Iraq rerun rather than a new Libya. On the flip side, if there was no intervention, pro-democracy people would be slaughtered and Libya would be held up as a botched non-intervention, justifying future wars so we don't repeat the non-intervention mistake.
I don't think taking a firm pro or anti intervention stance makes sense. It's like we're pretending we have the power to cause intervention or to stop it. If we actually had that power, the world would be an entirely different place and the question of what to do would be entirely different. But we don't have that power. So why take a "pure" and "principled" stand against imperialism, knowing that if we were taken seriously it would result in horrific slaughter?
It's like whipping out your anti police-brutality pamphlets when police beat down a man that was trying to kill his wife and kids. You don't try to stop the police and unarrest him, but you don't cheer them on, either.
Personally, I think the more interesting question is how can we take inspiration from the regional pro-democracy wave and build our own movement at home.
Something else that I haven't heard raised is how Libya is significant in that we can see solid evidence of the U.S. superpower status slipping away to be taken up slowly by Europe. For all the Republican's talk about hating Europe and Iran, it's funny that Bush's wars have primarily had the effect of strengthening both at the expense of the U.S. empire. If the 20th century was about the fall of European empires and the rise of the U.S., the 21st century is going to be about the fall of the U.S. empire and the rise of Europe and China. That's not to say that I'm taking sides or anything, but that it's something very significant that's happening, albeit slow enough that nobody seems to be talking about it yet.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 12:02 am (UTC)Yeah. I mean, ultimately, there's nothing we can do. I keep thinking of Spain—IMO the last "just war"—and how ordinary people just went over there and took up arms. I don't think we live in that world anymore.