Though Cowards Flinch

This really couldn’t be kept without sharing

Hello,

Having obtained your contact from the Internet; I decided to contact you and solicit for your mutual assistance. I am Barr. Dr. Dahmane Ben Abderrahmane, Attorney to the late Libyan Leader, I am writing to solicit for your partnership. On January 6th 2008, Mr. Saif Al Islam Gaddafi, Son of the late Libyan Leader, Muammar Al Gaddafi, made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit, valued at Thirty-Eight Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars USD ($38,500,000.00) was deposited in a bank account in Phnom penh Cambodia.

Due to the recent events and the death of his father in Libya, he instructed me that I should look for a Foreign Partner, who could handle this fund on his behalf. When the crises began I left Libya to United State, where I currently reside. I am contacting you due to the fact that Countries Government have seized various amounts running into Billions of Dollars in the past few months belonging to the family of the late Muammar Al Gaddafi, funds lodged in many foreign bank accounts.America, Canada, Austria and other countries Governments, have seized funds in bank accounts in their countries. Although, in Phnom Penh Cambodia their fund that was lodged in Mr. Saif Al Islam Gaddafi bank account has not been located. This is why we want the ownership of the said fund, to change into a different name and transferred out of the account to a foreign account.

Upon agreement of this proposal, I will like you to send your full Names, Address, Date of Birth, Occupation, Telephone number and Fax Number if any. This would be used to change the ownership and open an account bearing your name in the bank, before the funds could be transferred out, to your bank account in your country. All documents relating to this transaction have been obtained, so you don’t have to worry about any thing at all.

The money will be shared in this ratio:70% of the funds will be invested in your country on behalf of Mr. Saif Al Islam Gaddafi, and the remaining 30% will be for you. Also he would like you, to help him look for investment opportunities, to invest his seventy percent of the fund, into a business in your country. Please be informed that your utmost confidentiality is required. If this interests you, please reply me immediately and include your private phone number for voice communication.

I await your urgent reply.

Best regards,

Barr. Dr. Dahmane Ben Abderrahmane.

Attorney to Gaddafis Family.

The money would be nice, but I think I’ll probably give this a miss.

A recent Guardian response on comment is free had it: ‘Libyan intervention was a success, despite the aftermath’s atrocities’. To the unforgiving, this sentiment could appear callous and ignorant of the calibre of struggles to come, but is very much consistent with the altruistic justification for intervention indeed.

Take 1930s Spanish history as a judge. If Franco had lost the civil war, a great power grab would have overcome the coaltion of Trotskyites, Stalinists, moderates and social democrats, anarchists and the small cohort of sympathetic Liberals who composed the republican resistance.

Initially, no mandate could or would have allowed office to whoever the victor was, but in a revolution, after the battle the war begins. The intervention to level out the disproportionate amount of power enjoyed by a vengeful Gaddafi and his footsoldiers succeeded where it neutrally facilitated what became the victory to the rebels.

One can only hope the transitional council does the right thing and translates a rainbow coalition of resistance into a post-Gaddafi democratic bloom.

One world leader they know they can not turn to for support is Hugo Chavez – but then this was a long time coming.

In Chavez’ Venezuela, the poor and dispossessed felt they had finally found someone in whom their concerns are listened to. Programmes are catered for, staples are subsidised, more people today are covered by state pensions and disused private land is expropriated to pursue a campaign of quality housing for those most in need.

For everything there is to celebrate, there is something to scould Chavez for.

Even on a domestic front, where Chavez’ strengths are, support is relatively drippy. Roland Denis, a grassroots campaigner close to an emerging coalface organisation called the Great Patriotic Pole, in an interview with Venezuela Analysis, spoke of the decreasing enthusiasm among Chavez’ main base.

In the coming elections the PSUV (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela – a fusion of political and social forces grouped together, led by Hugo Chavez) are going to struggle – that is established. Chavez knows this, too. He leads in the poles now, but when the right wing have decided who to back, they will enjoy a very threatening spike in support.

As Denis admits, the problem of decreasing support for the PSUV is the “erosion of the popular movement”.

He continues, however, by stating that “the very dynamic of the state deepens this erosion [of popular movements in Venezuela] by establishing a corporate state practice within these movements”. 

Not forgetting the failed, but very concerted, attempt by Chavez to be President for life, the increasing move from community oriented politics, where Chavez began, to a saturation of that model with corporate structures and an all encompassing state control, has been noted.

“By ceasing to be reference points”, Denis laments, “for the struggle, [the PSUV] stop existing for the people [and] Hugo Chavez is the son of this people; he is not the father of this people. We gave birth to Hugo Chavez”.

Elsewhere, a right wing opposition leader by the name of Leopoldo Lopez, is to be barred from ever holding political office by the Supreme Court. By decree he has every right to run for office, only in knowledge that in his preferred circumstances, he would still be officially unable to take office – owing to a court decision attesting to his corruption as a former district mayor in Caracas, a matter on which he notes he was never sentenced for in a court.

According to Lopez, Chavez has been seeking ways in which to block high profile candidates such as himself, and cites the fact that the Supreme Court is disproportionately represented by pro-Chavez supporters. Chavez does not deny this to be true, but does argue that they are autonomous and adhere to the law.

Criticism and opposition towards Chavez at home was once dominated by the right, but suspicions have been raised on both sides of the political fold. This will not bode well for his fight to lead Venezuela again after the next election.

And this is even before we mention Chavez’ standing, and allies, at an international level (Iranian rogue Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has visited Venezuela 3 times since he took office in 2005, a fourth time denied because of Chavez’ ill health).

When alive, Gaddafi named a baseball stadium after Hugo Chavez just outside Benghazi. The transition council should think about removing that name. Perhaps grassroots movements in Venezuela should think about trying to do the same for the PSUV and for Venezuela.

Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, Sulloway (2003):

Persons having low levels of motivation to process information would be more likely to support conservative ideologies because these rely on tradition, are aimed at (societal stability), and imply the avoidance caused by change.

Thórisdóttir, Jost (2011)

High need for cognitive closure represents a desire for “an answer to a question on a given topic, any answer … compared to confusion and ambiguity” and it often leads to black and white thinking

Peter Hitchens (yesterday):

Just because existing regimes are bad, it does not follow that their replacements will be any better. The world has known this since the French Revolution of 1789, when bliss and joy turned to mass murder and dictatorship in a matter of months.

Point of note: the kind of conservative thinking which Hitchens exemplifies only aims at societal stability, does not guarantee for it. Indeed what kind of world would we live in if we allowed and accepted tyranny on the basis that what waits in the wings could be worse.

But what really gets my goat is not that Hitchens is being true to Burke in invoking 1789 and the French Revolution (which the latter disliked not because he feared change and ambiguity necessarily, but because he saw that Robespierre was forming a half-baked, overly and needlessly violent revolution), but because he neglects to mention how different the contexts are: The rebels in France existed to cause terror (quotes from Robespierre include: ”To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is barbarity”; ”slowness of judgments is equal to impunity”; “uncertainty of punishment encourages all the guilty”) whereas the National Transition Council formed to avert terror being done to them, and as a consequence are recognised as the country’s authority by 50 other nations – enjoying the kind of diplomatic relations rebels of many countries can only dream of.

This is a guest post by Bob From Brockley

I think the two most powerful cases against liberal interventionism I’ve read recently are “The Innocence of the Liberal Hawk” by Gary Younge in the April 11 edition of The Nation, and “Thoughts on Libya and liberal interventionism” by Mike Marqusee at his website. The two pieces have different contexts – one by a British writer transplanted to the US, aiming at mainstream liberal US commentators like Thomas Friedman, the other by an American transplanted to the UK, aiming at more left-wing British opinionists like Jonathan Freedland. But they reach similar conclusions and make overlapping arguments.

Many of their strikes against liberal interventionism hit home. Marqusee correctly argues that liberal interventionism relies on the great powers, who they treat as neutral agents. He argues that liberal interventionism has a technocratic vision of military power, seeing it as a tool like raising taxes, which can be implemented in a time-limited, surgical way. He argues that liberal interventionism is blind to the imbalances in wealth and power between the states that intervene and the regions where they do so. Both Marqusee and Younge point to a logical fallacy in the interventionist position: the imperative to “do something” considers only one “something”, military intervention, dismissing or failing to conceive of other forms of solidarity.

However, a number of their strikes go amiss. Both of them linger on the West’s double standards: why Libya and not Bahrain? John Rentoul has called this the “why should I clean my bedroom when the world is in such a mess” argument, and its misses the fact that many liberal interventionists have been leading critics of the monarchies of the Gulf region and few of them embraced Gaddafi when Blair and Sarkozy did.

Marqusee has a clichéd vulgar materialist explanation for the double standards: oil. But his own examples show the weakness of this explanation. “If liberal interventionists were consistent,” he says, “they would advocate similar Western military action in relation to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Congo, Kashmir, Iran, Israel, Burma, etc. etc. etc.” But a glance at this list shows several oil-producing countries where the West is failing to intervene, as well as places with other resources of huge geopolitical and economic significance to the West – Congo is extremely mineral-rich, and our mobile phones would be useless without the coltan mined there. In fact, the last things the oil industry wants in Libya is war, disruption, or democracy; they were perfectly happy with Gaddafi, no less than they are with the autocratic regime in Bahrain.

On the other hand, Marqusee recognises the limitation of the double standards argument, and persuasively argues that “We cannot cure our governments’ double standards with double standards of our own… We don’t demand the invasion of Burma or the bombing of Tel Aviv and no one called for NFZs over the townships during the apartheid years.”

However, Marqusee misses two crucial features of Libya, which makes it different from such examples. On the one hand is something that Younge recognises: the legitimacy of intervention in Libya is not derived from a legal case dreamt up on Capitol Hill or Whitehall, but from the demands of the rebels in Libya. As Younge puts it, “the invitation to attack did come from a credible resistance movement within Libya.” Marquesee says “we stand in solidarity with democratic struggles”, but what kind of solidarity ignores the cries for help of the masses rising up from under Gaddafi’s heal?

The second, related feature is the urgency of the situation in Libya. Younge responds to this, but with cynicism and casuistry. On the liberal interventionists who say that rebels and their civilian supporters are being crushed now, he says “Such sophistry treats “now” as its own abstract point in time: a moment that bears no legacy and carries no consequences. Amnesia and ignorance are the privileges of the powerful. But the powerless, who live with the ramifications, do not have the luxury of forgetting. They do not forget Shatila, Falluja, Abu Ghraib or Jenin—to name but a few horrific war crimes in which the West was complicit.” I find this argument utterly immoral as well as manipulative.

To take Shatila, there was a moment when the horrific massacre was about to happen, and a moment when it did happen. If it could have been stopped by Western action – if Israel had acted to stop the Falange, or if UN peacekeepers had protected the camps – would this not have been desirable? Wouldn’t the “legacy” of such intervention have been the saved lives of the powerless? Is the moral credibility of remembering Shatila a purchase worth the price of the inaction that allowed the massacre to happen?

Or, to take another of Marqusee’s examples, part of the reason the left did not “call for NFZs over the townships during the apartheid years” was that, heinous though the regime was there was not the immediate threat of mass slaughter which could be averted by implementing an NFZ. Similarly, although some leftists do demand the bombing of Tel Aviv (or salute the Palestinian “resistance” when it carries it out), the comparison between Israel and Gaddafi’s regime is absurd and obscene.

Both Marqusee and Younge rightly argue that there are other modes of solidarity, other forms of “doing something”, apart from military intervention. They are right that the left’s starting point should be solidarity with the oppressed rather than the West’s strategic interests. But it is hard to see what effective measures of solidarity we can deploy from here, which will address the urgency of the humanitarian situation.

It is instructive here to examine some of the comparisons and arguments from example the anti-interventionists discuss. In Bosnia, Marqusee places blame on an NFZ and Dutch troops on the ground for failing to stop the Srebrenica massacre. What this ignores is that the passivity rather than the intervention of the Dutch troops enabled the massacre to happen. There was no commitment to liberal interventionism at that point, and the Dutch troops were locked in a Cold War mentality of peace-keeping, when local wars were proxy wars between the superpowers and peacekeeping on the ground was backed up by great power diplomacy behind the scenes.

Similarly, Marqusee says that in Rwanda, “there were French troops on the ground, defending their national interests and nothing else.” This is true, and is a shame on the French. Again, however, it is not an indictment of liberal interventionism, but of the neo-colonial mentality of the French at that time, in reaction to which people like Bernard Kouchner articulated their liberal interventionist vision.

Looking at these examples, it is hard to see what concrete measures of solidarity, what other ways of “doing something”, could have made a difference. Workers Aid to Bosnia was effective in getting humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered anti-Milosevic movement, but it was utterly powerless once the ethnic cleansing began in earnest. The logistics of something comparable are less plausible in Libya. Arming the rebels would be one way forward, but again the practicalities of doing so present severe obstacles. What else do Younge and Marqusee suggest, apart from a gestural memorialising of the massacres once they have occurred?

More fundamentally, Marqusee and Younge both accuse liberal interventionists of an ahistorical analysis, which forgets or erases the whole history of imperialism and the destructive role of the West’s self-interest around the world. This is an accurate criticism in many cases. But Younge and Marqusee also write from an ahistorical analysis, one in which the world is frozen at some point in the Cold War past. Marqusee makes this clear in his last paragraph:

“this debate has reminded me of the gulf that separates my politics (and most of us on the left) from this type of liberalism. For me this gulf first opened when as a youngster I watched liberals launch the Vietnam War on a sea of “good intentions”. The gulf widened when, despite the ensuing nightmare, liberals continued to believe in the benign nature of US (or British or French) world intentions.”

Marqusee’s analysis is stuck in the Vietnam moment. Younge is younger, but his politics too were formed in the Cold War, in the period of Thatcher/Reagan, of the Iran/Contra scandal, the Falklands war, interventions in Grenada and Panama, American support for the crushing of national liberation movements in Africa. Their worldview essentially sees intervention as something only “the West” can do; it sees “the West” as a homogenous entity; it sees “the West” as the ultimate power in the world.

My politics were formed by similar contexts to Younge’s, so I am sympathetic. But the world has significantly changed in a number of ways. Marqusee claims that “In the name of pluralism [liberal interventionists] endorse a uni-polar world, governed perpetually by a few great powers.” But, in fact, we now live in a multipolar world: in which Russia is no longer the evil empire nor a defeated ex-superpower but a rising economic force with its own geopolitical agenda and its own proxy low intensity wars across central Asia, in which huge tracts of the continent on what Libya sits are being bought up by Saudi millionaires and  Chinese investment companies in a new scramble for Africa which makes the age of Cecil Rhodes look petty, in which Saudi military might exceeds that of most European nations, in which non-state actors like Hezbollah have offensive capabilities beyond some European nations, in which the Gulf states are the patrons rather than the clients of American capital.

Take again some of the examples Marqusee mentions: Burma is a major location for Chinese investment in oil and gas extraction and exploration, as well as the site of Chinese military installations at Great Coco Island. Similarly, the violence in Darfur is fuelled by Chinese weapons and economic interests, while UN action to stop the violence is blocked by China. As Christopher Hitchens said in a recent interview, “Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, anywhere that the concept of human rights doesn’t exist, it’s always the Chinese at backstop. And always for reasons that you could write down in three words: blood for oil.” In other words, the anti-interventionists vision of US oil-thirsty gunboat diplomacy is a case of selective blindness.

Their unipolar vision also only obscures other examples of liberal interventionism. It ignores the Vietnamese liberation of Cambodia from Pol Pot, for example, in which a non-Western force eventually intervened to stop a genocidal dictator who was slaughtering its own people. (After I wrote this, I saw Anthony Barnett using the same example: “while the Cambodians did not want to be ruled by the Vietnamese, who they usually loathed, they were very pleased indeed, as one of them put it to me, “not to be genocided”. The Cambodian people were liberated from tyranny, their torture and terror was ended. The humanitarian justification for this trumped any form of theory or political schema.”)

The unipolar vision also ignores the times when African Union forces have policed some of the continent’s most horrific war crimes, such as Darfur, where their lack of resources critically undermines their effectiveness. It ignores instances of Western intervention that serve absolutely no geopolitical interest, such as Britain’s involvement in Sierra Leone, where the Indian-led UNAMSIL intervention in 1999 was utterly ineffective and British intervention (Operation Palliser) helped bring an end to the decade of blood-letting (violence, incidentally, which the Gaddafi regime aided and abetted). Most liberal interventionists, rather than simply cheer-leading Western action, have also supported these interventions too, even though they have not served Western interests.

In short, liberal interventionism may be flawed in both theory and practice, but unless Younge and Marqusee can provide a meaningful alternative, how can the left in strong nations help to stop civilians in places like Libya, Sierra Leone, Cambodia or Kosovo from being “genocided”?

Recently, Jim Denham had this to say about me:

Someone called Carl makes Seymour look the fuckin’ eedjit he is over the question of intervention:

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/03/doomed-to-repetition.html

This is why: Richard Seymour recently wrote a blog entry explaining his opposition to any intervention by western forces in Libya (see link above).

In the comments thread, I replied:

You don’t pass UN resolutions by ringing up the rebellion in Libya, Richard. I noticed you haven’t blamed Russia for the weapons they’ve sold Libya, carrying on the old Soviet tradition. It’s more likely that Libya are “supplicants”of them.

But I think you guys, the ones who write off humanitarian intervention out of hand, are just pretending to clear your consciences; this is proven by the fact that nowhere in this post do you mention how the National Transition Council can deal with the disproportionate amount of air power that Gaddafi yields over rebels.

Suggesting the West has a plan, though likely, perhaps including oil, is at this moment in time conjecture. And yet you, the StWC, CND, and the BMI, are relying on this conjecture all too heavily, rather than issuing solutions for those losing power by Gaddafi’s army lackey’s.

You’re not stupid people, so I’m wondering if all this is to save face. By virtue of its near-pacifist name, does the StWC feel it has to oppose everything the West does?

To which he replied:

What a surprise to find you supporting ‘humanitarian intervention’, Carl. No surprise either that you’re reduced to the most pneumatic series of non-sequiturs. You might have mentioned that I didn’t raise the subject of British, American and Italian arms to Libya in this post, carrying on an old capitalist tradition. I didn’t mention either that Cameron was only recently in the region trying to ensure that the revolutions worked to the advantage of British arms dealers by encouraging dictatorships to buy a load of new hardware to crush rebellions.

I should point out that those supporting ‘humanitarian intervention’ are relying on conjecture in a far more dangerous way. They are conjecturing that a no-fly zone will not degenerate into a bloody mess; that the US and EU do not have interests in the situation that would countervail against those of Libyans doing the fighting; and that the majority of Libyans will be tearfully grateful for the ‘liberation’ thus delivered. On the other hand, those of us who are taking a more critical view have a much stronger ground for our analysis. It is, for example, not conjecture but demonstrable reality that the US and EU have kept the Middle East under the thumb of vicious repression for decades, and that this approach derives from identifiable material interests. It is not conjecture but demonstrable reality that this support for repression continues to this day. It is not conjecture but demonstrable reality that their interests and actions in this situation have been counter-revolutionary. It is not conjecture but demonstrable reality that discourses of ‘humanitarian intervention’ have legitimised incredible blood-letting and repression. And it is not conjecture but demonstrable reality that no matter how awful a situation is, ‘the West’ can always make it worse – in fact, with few exceptions, has done so wherever it has intervened militarily. Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti are just the most recent examples. Haiti, being a recent example of a UN-backed mission with an explicit humanitarian remit, is a good instance that – if you gave the slightest shit – you would be looking into right now.

This insistence on doggedly reading current events in light of their historical, structural and institutional context, and arriving at views based on that, more readily explains our position than any cod psychologising.

Still, having denounced ‘conjecture’, you want me to speculate on how “the National Transition Council can deal with the disproportionate amount of air power that Gaddafi yields (sic)”. I will start with what I know. Qadhafi’s current resurgence results from superior tanks, low-flying helicopters, troops and mercenaries far more than that it does air power. Air power is the entry point for intervention, but practically every analysis I have seen – from liberal imperialists like ICG to the realpolitikers of Stratfor, including analysts like Marc Lynch – suggests that even were a no-fly zone unproblematic on other grounds, it would do relatively little to shift the balance of power to the revolutionaries. Only a ground invasion could plausibly secure that, and even the pro-US factions of the leadership in Benghazi do not want that – because, you ignorant buffoon, that would be a catastrophe. What you’re supporting is an act of war which will have an in-built logic of escalation – if you’re bombing air defences, why not also bomb government infrastructure that sustains the repression; if you’re shooting planes out of the sky why not bomb them on the ground; if you’re doing that, why not bomb the infrastructure which sustains the repression; if you’re doing all this to support the rebellion, why not go the whole hog and escalate it into a major aerial war with special forces on the ground? And so on. No matter how tight the ‘rules of engagement’ were, this is the logic of engaging in an act of war. The alternative to intervention by the hardest psychos on the block would be a regional deal worked out with, eg, Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia. It could involve a combination of humanitarian assistance, the supply of weapons and airplanes, and the promise of mediation. Unofficially, it could involve – actually, from what I hear, it already involves – a de facto international brigade from the region of volunteers entering Libya to fight Qadhafi’s forces.

But this ultimately comes down to what ‘we’ as activists in the Anglophone imperial core can do. You want it to be as simple as calling for violence from the big boys who get things done. You don’t want to have to bother with the patient, hard work of building a transnational solidarity campaign, working alongside Libyans in exile, finding out what the revolutionaries really want and need. That’s too much hard work. As a consequence, you’re prepared to take enormous risks with the lives and well-being of others, whom you never contact, know little about and will very shortly care as little – and you have the nerve to be as idiotically thoughtless, self-aggrandising, and morally supercilious about it as you’re being, apparently unaware of how utterly flimsy and risible your position is.

You’re right that we’re not stupid. I can’t honestly say I can return the compliment at this point. You’re behaving every bit as thoughtlessly, hysterically and self-indulgently as those who spent the 1990s calling for ‘the West’ (‘the world’, ‘the international community’, the US, Europe, whoever) to demonstrate its moral probity in various conflicts – with horrendous results. You have learned nothing, so have forgotten nothing.

All that said, would you care to donate to Lenin’s Tomb?

In response to this I wrote:

I’ll take your 900 word reply point by point I think (since it’ll be easier for me):

- “What a surprise to find you supporting ‘humanitarian intervention’, Carl.”

The reason, I gather, you put humanitarian intervention in marks is because the word has often been used to mask the West’s real intentions; oil, regional dominance perhaps. But in principle I am not against real humanitarian intervention to avert crises, such as that occurring in Libya at this moment.

My opinion is very simple: every measure should be taken by willing nations to rectify the fact that rebels in Libya are at a disadvantage against their autocratic leader. No one is more concerned than I that weapons used by Gaddafi have been bought from the UK and other nations now up in arms (my point, incidentally, about Russia is that most of Libya’s weapon exports are from there, and nobody on the left is voicing this; those against a NFZ on the left may well even forgive Russia since it plans to veto moves by the UNSC to enforce a NFZ as quickly as possible), but that in itself is not a reason to shirk away from giving assistance to rebel forces, either through a NFZ or arming them (though the two are not exclusive measures).

So I’m not sure what you mean when you say you’re not surprised, but I don’t see this move as neo-imperialist or racist paternalism, it’s too easy to say this. Further, the fact that the name intervention has been used as a cover for blood-letting in the past should not deter us from using the phrase in a way which chimes with the concept of having a responsibility beyond our own borders.

Such shying away, in principle, is fit only for the petit-bourgeois moralists that we both detest so much.

- “those supporting ‘humanitarian intervention’ are relying on conjecture in a far more dangerous way”

I don’t accept the reasoning here Richard. Those demonstrable examples you give, though correct, pertain previous missions that I’ve opposed. If vested interests outweigh humanitarian reasons to intervene, then that is obviously a perversion of humanitarian intervention, and we can therefore be dubious as to why these words have been used to describe such missions. However, I am not in principle against humanitarian intervention. The real crisis for me is asking whether I’d be against intervention in Libya even if those nations willing to uphold a NFZ did have vested interests, or in other words, if the UK felt they could make a pretty penny on the oil market, but were sounding off about a NFZ to even out the disproportionality issue, I wonder whether I’d oppose it still. I would certainly say that the government’s consciences weren’t clean (indeed this is my opinion already), but if they inadvertently curbed the death toll in the mean time, it’d be tough not to be slightly relieved. I know the rebels would be.

Good that results of evil is, I suppose, still good.

Moreover, on the subject of vested interests, some onus has to be put upon the National Transition Council here; the more they demand (in terms of substantial post-Gaddafi governance), and expect intervening nations to do (since ultimately they are/should be at the beck and call of the rebels), the less opportunity the US will have in setting up their interests in Libya – should that be the case.

- “[even if] a no-fly zone [was] unproblematic on other grounds, it would do relatively little to shift the balance of power to the revolutionaries.”

The beauty of the no-fly zone: it’s acts as a serious warning to Gaddafi, where at the moment he could, and almost certainly will, ignore President Obama’s call to go immediately; also since both the rebels and the Libyan army are comparatively under-trained, the most significant upper hand that Gaddafi has is in the air. Now one of the best articles I’ve read on averting the NFZ and using alternatives is this one about how the US handled themselves with regards to Chad (in brief, the US have not always had to engage in warfare to passify Gaddafi, Chad is one case in point). However, even the author of the piece expressed concern that the rebellion, today, cannot be compared to the Chad army (who had only one pilot; how many does the rebellion have if, say, the US gave them a helicopter instead of calling for a NFZ?).

It’s not certain how effective a NFZ will be (what is certain in advance?) but it will be effective in some measure, even if just to help rectify the disproportionality of air presence (which the Syrians have also been providing). But certainly intervention should not be limited to a NFZ; since I’m opposed to the US using ground troops (as are the rebels) willing nations, with UN backing, should source ex-Soviet weapons from Poland to arm the rebels on the ground (this would save the US military time to train the Libyan rebels up on their military equipment, and ensure the US know their place). Furthermore, nobody supportive of the NFZ is backing jawbreaker tactics, so in the event of escalation most, including rebels, will withdraw their support for the US. Further, this is not what the UN resolution would’ve proposed so it would be illegal. Sure, when has illegality ever stopped the US, but then that’s the reality anyway, whether we support something or sit on our hands and do nothing, so that risk is present at any time, anywhere. The US, theoretically, could blow the Middle East sky high right now, the point is not to oppose intervention on this possibility.

- “you’re prepared to take enormous risks with the lives and well-being of others, whom you never contact, know little about and will very shortly care as little”

I support working with whoever possible in the best interest, and would hope, for simplicity, that the hub of this transnational chat would be located in the National Transition Council. I don’t see my position as risible, I think you’re at pains to imagine my position synonymous with those you find risible.

- “All that said, would you care to donate to Lenin’s Tomb?”

As much as I think you’re an arse, I’ll dig around my pockets next week when I’m paid. You are after all a “keeper” on the blogosphere, but you scare me to shit (and by the end of it, this is now well over a 1000 words, I can’t keep this up…).

I still await a reply.

Naadir Jeewa has written another blog post opposing a No-Fly Zone in Libya, this time partly in reply to my comment yesterday. I want to take up another three points from his argument:

1) The financial implications of an NFZ matter because it’s not the only option available to Western forces

This is true, though obviously support for a NFZ does not limit ones interest in other ideas. I was very interested in reading about how the US handled themselves with regards to Chad. But training up rebels was still an issue for the author. The US/UK/EU or whoever do not have a great deal of time to be limiting their input on training alone. One thing they obviously can do is source soviet weaponary (I read that the US could source it from Ukraine with corruption, from Poland without) and that will bypass a lot of the time training up rebels with arms the US have, but this doesn’t solve the problem of air attacks.

Even the author of the piece expressed concern that the rebellion cannot be compared to the Chad army, and they had only one pilot; how many does the rebellion have if, say, the US gave them a helicopter?

2) Do those who propose a NFZ have an endgame?

As I said regarding your point on the tribes, the onus is upon the rebellion to gather as many supporters as possible, from across the tribal landscape. Additionally, of course, it should be making some statements as to what kind of government it wants in lieu of Gaddafi’s. One reason why Sarkozy has received criticism for pledging support for the National Transition Council is because there has been no diplomatic input, and at the moment the rebels’ demands are uncertain, other than to get rid of the Colonel and promote support for a NFZ (mirrored today by leaders of the Arab League, opposed by Syria who are providing air support for Gaddafi, safe in the knowledge that their country will not rebel).

I’m not sure whether you are calling for intervening nations to have ideas, other than being against humanitarian tragedy, but it seems that much of the criticism levelled at the West intervening is predicated on the fact that in previous wars they’ve had too much of a vested interest. At this stage, the term humanitarian intervention becomes perverted, since if, say, mitigating against oil prices is the real name of the game, then the term is used as smoke and mirrors (see for example Tony Blair and Iraq).

The more the Transition Council demand, and expect intervening nations to do, the less opportunity the US will have in setting up their interests in Libya, which so far is mere conjecture (see for example Richard Seymour).

3) Surely, the NFZ is a declaration of war*

This may be a pedantic point, but if entering a country in any way equates to a declaration of war, then so be it. But since there are conditions under which a NFZ could passify Gaddafi without the aid of an all out war effort, then I’m convinced that the only grounds for war would be on the head of the Libyan leader, therefore in itself I don’t think a NFZ is a declaration of war. And certainly no more than Gaddafi’s successful efforts to engage his people in a civil war.

*Correction: The question put to me inside Naadir’s piece was: “if I make an NFZ sound too much like a war, that’s because it is an explicit declaration of war.” A NFZ is an act of war, this is accepted. But my other points stand, that the NFZ is a warning, or a gearing up militarily, to counter Gaddafi’s moves towards humanitarian crisis. Therefore I still believe that the grounds for action to be taken against Gaddafi’s air presence will be on his head. Disproportionality is unjust and this is his capital over the rebels, intervention should seek only to ratify this problem.

I want to address three points made by Naadir Jeewa in his thoughtful piece on Liberal Conspiracy today:

1) “Proponents of an NFZ must answer the basic question: what exactly we’re trying to achieve?”

Gaddafi has almost exlcusive use of the air, and though it’s disputed by Russia there have been reasonable claims that air operations have resulted in many of the +1000 death toll. To cite finances (“would anyone be satisfied with maintaining a decade-long, open-ended engagement at a cost of at least £9.5m, and maybe up to £185m per week.”) as a reason why the West shouldn’t back a NFZ seems to miss the point.

Further, if Gaddafi defeats rebels, which is likely without an intervention of sorts, this will send a rather optimistic message out to other despots in the region. Of course, a NFZ runs the risk of failing, as does any operation one engages in, but such a defeatist attitude when the rebels have disproportionate use of strategic manoeuvring is inappropriate.

One reason given to oppose all western-backed intervention is that if a NFZ helps secure victory, Arab patriots will forever pour scorn on the National Transition Council for using imperialism as a way of settling differences. Perversely, if a western-backed NFZ fails then at least that will apease those patriots, but the death toll would almost certainly have risen quite considerably by then.

2) “…there’s the internal legitimacy problem. Historian Dirk Vandewalle warns that the Libyan National Council is representative only of Cyrenaica tribal leaders.”

This may well be true, but then did you see from the reuters article the amount of support Gaddafi receives from large tribes?

Though even if you’re assessment holds true, this simply requires pressure from inside the council to reach out to those tribes which are broadly and unambigiously against Gaddafi. The Warfalla tribe for example, the largest in Libya, announced early on they were turning against Gaddafi, not to mention the Magarha and Zuwayyah tribes. Further, despite having military personnel among their numbers, the Tarhuna and Zentan tribes in the west of the country declared early support for protests.

3) “An NFZ will not be an invisible, skies-only operation. Sec. Gates has stated that the presence of large stocks of Surface-to-Air-Missiles dictates the need to bomb Libya’s air defences, in contrast to Iraq, where most of the air defences had already been destroyed as a consequence of the Gulf War.”

This is akin to the argument that it looks too much like war. There are rules attached to the NFZ and if Gaddafi breaks those rules then we know what will happen (though we don’t want another Downing of Scott O’ Grady). Gaddafi’s army will only be made culpable if they break the resolution (should the block by Russia or China be overturned) and thus the onus is upon them.

The extent to which I would hope the NFZ is not skies-only, is in equipping the rebel forces with amunition, basic accessories should they be needed, and at a push strategic assistance. No ground troops! The rebels have been clear and foreign intervention should recognise who is in charge here.

Naadir has produced a thoughtful rebuttal of the NFZ which, unlike many attempts by others, does not appeal to absurd logic, or mere epithets. Though in spite of his efforts, I disagree with his conclusions and look forward to his response.

In a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann on December 13, 1870, on the subject of the combination of civil war with revolutionary wars, Karl Marx opined that socialists should embrace giving “the proletariat practice in arms.”

141 years later, capitalist governments such as the US have been given permission by the UN to arm rebels in Libya.

Today, also, Tory backbencher Mark Pritchard said the “international community should allow rebels access to arms”.

And what have the UK’s Marxist representatives said? Simon Assaf for the Socialist Worker has said:

It may seem callous to oppose intervention in the face of such harrowing repression. But any Western intervention will come at a heavy price.

Since arming the revolution would count as “Western intervention” I guess that’s out of the question.

The world has turned upside down.

(H/T @libyansunite cf here and here)

Gaddafi has always been something of a challenge for socialists. While it was his charisma and strong rhetoric that suited those keenly supportive of Pan-Arabism and socialism in the seventies, later it would be his malleability and weakness that allowed the West to turn a blind eye to him, or even conduct deals with him in the supposed interest of both parties.

A British source once said of Gaddafi: “We thought he was a bit left-wing, but not too bad, and that we could deal with him.”

In 1950s Libya, King Idriss failed to tip his hat to the winds of change sweeping the Arab world. While the sound of Pan-Arabism played out, Libya was still at the behest of the US and UK, that was until 1 September 1969, when Idriss was receiving medical treatment in Turkey, that a successful coup plot installed into office a group Libyan army officers led by Gaddafi, overthrowing the Monarchy and pre-empting Idris’ abdication.

42 years later and Gaddafi is still leader of the country, and is himself now irresponsive to the winds of change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, like the leader before him. But moreover, Gaddafi’s defensive is set to be far more heavy-handed than most of the regions, to the extent that he may face a war criminal indictment over the way in which he has responded to protests.

He has been explicit: “when I [order use of force] everything will burn […] I’ll die here as a martyr”.

Gaddafi’s socialist supporters

His authoritarian dictatorship of the last forty years should spell out everything the left needs to know that support for him is misguided, but in spite of the fact he has incited a major civil war against protesters left wing leaders in Latin America have been positively supportive.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez enjoys good relations with Gaddafi, awarding the dictator the Orden del Libertador Simón Bolívar – something usually reserved for people offering outstanding services to the country. Recently he sent a tweet from his official twitter account saying: “Long live Libya and its independence! Kadhafi faces a civil war!”

Fidel Castro, too, has stated publicly that: “NATO is planning to take over Libya and its oil”, while President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua said he has phoned Libyan Gaddafi to express his solidarity.

Is Gaddafi socialist or a lackey of imperialism?

Chavez’ uncritical support for Gaddafi has once again caused embarrassment for the Venezuelan leader’s UK supporters. The closest tie is between Chavez and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), who in 2009 made efforts to distance themselves from the support he gave to Ahmadinejad during the latter’s reelection. Alan Woods, one of the leading members of the Tendency, has written a piece for the IMT website condemning the use of force by Gaddafi, while explaining that rather than being a socialist he is actually responsible for “privatizations [which] encouraged foreign companies to open up shops in Benghazi and Tripoli”. He goes on to say: “As recently as last November The Economist published a glowing report about Libya, which it compared with Dubai.”

Andy Newman at Socialist Unity has noted that events taking place in the Middle East in 2003 made it wholly undesirable for regimes to present themselves as avowedly anti-American and Gaddafi’s Libya was one case in point. Gadaffi has always described himself as anti-imperialist, however he has never posed too much of a threat to the US (that is until the Lockerbie bombing – context and debates of which are too long to discuss in any detail here).

Even in spite of the well-documented meetings between Gadaffi, Berlusconi, Blair and others, the former should not be looked at primarily as a lackey of imperialism. However nor can he be viewed as a socialist. His ideology is not based upon the concerns of the people (which explains the large contingent rising up against him in Benghazi and other places) but upon a Nationalism that seeks to safeguard a ruling elite through whatever means possible. It’s durability is questionable; when Benghazi was lost Gaddafi ordered naval ships to attack it, however reports suggest there was major deliberation by the crew on what to do. As Woods, mentioned above, suggests, this shows early signs of a military in doubt over their leader.

The violent force planning to be used by Gaddafi is proof – if any more were needed – that he is in trouble. His regime is weakening, marred by resignations; he is flogging a dead horse. But if his last ditch attempt to flatten dissent works, some serious discussion needs to take place over what the rest of the world watching those scenes can do about it.

Conclusion

Unlike the South American leftist leaders, I don’t think Washington as a whole will be rubbing their hands together hoping for another war. If anything, Gadaffi himself by waging civil war and threatening to blow up oil terminals is rubbing the US up the wrong way. There is no doubt of his seriousness when he evokes crimes to humanity. Many hard right Neo-conservatives and left-leaning Liberals in the US senate have agreed that sanctions are the appropriate use of power for now, but they are not a long-term solution, and can often have undesirable effects to the people they are meant to help.

A no fly zone is only an option if there’s a foreign military presence in the country anyway, and an all-out military intervention like the one in Iraq ought to be avoided at all costs. This leaves options slim on the ground for the UN, whose only other option is to do nothing.

Debates on arms sales are tricky; of course small countries have the right to be armed against neighbouring oppressive nations, but the sort of monitoring which David Cameron spoke of recently on countries like Libya arming themselves against dissenters is pure fantasy, nor is it in the profit-driven interests of arms dealers anyway.

The Libyan situation poses many difficult questions, but let’s be clear: Gadaffi’s anti-imperialism doesn’t necessarily make him a friend of the left (this is what confuses Chavez et al); his desire to kill people on a large scale will force us all to think long and hard about the possible use of interventions – which may include forces and nations dubbed imperialist.

Activists have said: “We don’t need foreign forces to oust Gaddafi“. Let’s hope they’re correct.

Gaddafi tonight is obviously on the edge; his son has recently made an address warning protesters that if ill-feeling toward his Father continues the bloodshed in Libya would be worse than that of Iraq.

But while the counterrevolution is being drawn up by Gaddafi and his stooges, we ought not to forget what the Mail tonight are calling “Blair’s sordid Faustian pact?“

Here are the pictures that symoblised that event: