Sunday, August 21, 2011

When Despots Fall - Libya Edition

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We appear to have reached the endgame in Libya.  With Tripoli cut off, much of the loyalist forces have stopped fighting, allowing the residents of Tripoli to take to the streets, supported by clandestine weapons shipments and reinforcements from the rebels outside the city.  It's really only a matter of time, and blood, before the fight is over and we can begin to see the shape the new Libyan government will take.

I readily confess that I take a certain pleasure in watching the end of the Gadhafi regime.  He was one of the great megalomaniacal autocrats of the twentieth century, a thorn in the side of the West going back beyond Reagan, a leader who took the seat of power at the point of a gun, and will only relinquish it the same way.  From the bombing of the La Belle in Berlin and the resultant US air strikes to that icon of tragedy, to the crumpled cockpit of PanAm 103 lying broken in the verdant fields of Lockerbie, he has always been dangerously willing to translate rhetoric and oil wealth into action in a long, incoherent asymmetric war with the US and her allies.  And despite the bombings, the sanctions and the decisive losses in occasional air battles over the Gulf of Sirte, he relentlessly demanded a position on the world stage all out of proportion to his actual status - and more often than not he received it.  But ultimately, the actions taken by the leader of a single-party police state to suppress dissent and hold onto power erode his support among the people, creating a cycle of increasingly brutal suppression and a more radicalized population.  The ultimate result is very often rebellion or civil war.

Of course, we cannot know at this point how this will all play out.  Libya is another one of those artificial constructs, a nation with borders drawn by arrogant colonialists without regard to Tribal realities.  It remains to be seen whether the competing demands of Tribal politics, ethnic antipathy and religious intolerance can be set aside to allow the establishment of some sort of national identity without the coercive control of a traditional "strongman".  But one fact is, even now, hard to overlook.  For perhaps the first time, the international community came together to provide the appropriate level of military intervention to prevent a wholesale slaughter of innocents and level the playing field just enough for the people to have a fighting chance to win their freedom.  This was done with extremely limited military force, with no ground troops, no occupation and no coalition casualties.  The fact that the world can now have confidence that it can honestly, fairly and decisively intervene to prevent a humanitarian disaster should give pause to any despot considering massacres as a method to hold onto power.

Well, why not Syria, you ask.  How can this formula apply to Gadhafi and not Bashar al Assad?  The answer is simple - sadly so.  International intervention can be compared to a medical procedure, and "First do no harm" is a critical guiding principle.  If intervention has the likelihood of starting a regional war, a scenario where it would create far more suffering than it might alleviate, that is a situation in which it cannot be used.  One of the necessary keys to international military intervention, then, is it can really only be used against the more isolated of regimes - those with powerful or local allies (or both) are mostly inoculated against the world community acting against them.

But we should remember Rwanda, and Srebrenica, and we should point to Libya and resolve that we never need let it happen again...
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9 comments:

  1. For perhaps the first time, the international community came together to provide the appropriate level of military intervention to prevent a wholesale slaughter of innocents and level the playing field just enough for the people to have a fighting chance to win their freedom.

    Pardon my cynicism.

    We've seen this movie many times before. I will wait to see (for the first time) when it wasn't all about oil contracts.

    So I don't ask, "Why not Syria?"

    Why not Bahrain, not to mention, Saudi Arabia (the nation that has done the most to spread terrorism, using the money we buy its oil with)?

    It wouldn't be good for corporate profits is the apparent answer.
    ~

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  2. Your opinion is certainly legitimate, but to refuse to consider the value of the tens of thousands of innocent lives saved by keeping the armor and artillery out of Benghazi is cheating. If you want to hold the opinion you hold, you have to factor a willingness to just let them die hard and slow in, or you're being dishonest.

    If you think that letting Gadhafi slaughter his people in order to stay in power is somehow better than "Oil Contracts", I for one would like to hear you expand on that theory...

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  3. If you want to hold the opinion you hold, you have to factor a willingness to just let them die hard and slow in, or you're being dishonest.

    mikey, my opinion is based on a history more than five decades long.

    I'll be happy to cheer for the people of Libya when and if this all works out for them.

    I will not take the word of our politicians, media, or military for anything now. (See the before mentioned 5 decades of history, starting with Operation Ajax.)
    ~

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  4. Thank you. That's EXACTLY my point. If the post rebellion outcome is part of the international intervention, then yeah, you're doing it wrong. That's why Libya has a chance to be a success. No occupation, no ground troops. As part of the global community we got together and decided we were NOT going to stand aside and allow Gadhafi to slaughter thousands of innocent people.

    At that point, it was clear that if he were to remain in power, he would eventually extract his revenge by murdering thousands of his people - so the international community assisted the rebels in deposing him - again, an outcome I find it hard to believe you'd be against.

    Now it's on the people of Libya. The coalition is done as soon as the Libyan civilians are no longer at risk of being massacred. There will not be a residual NATO combat force - the limited nature of the intervention was a feature, not a bug.

    I honestly do not understand what part of this you are against. Will the new government be corrupt? Probably. But is that an argument against intervention? I sure don't think so. Is the new government going to sell Libyan oil? They most certainly are. Is that an argument against intervention?

    My whole point is that this time they got it right. I still can't understand what you're arguing against. If you're against any intervention all the time, then your position needs to accept a willingness to allow any level of brutality against innocents. I don't know why anyone would accept that.

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  5. My whole point is that this time they got it right.

    I don't see sufficient evidence for this premature celebration. At this point, we've done what we always do...remove our former friend and dictator when corporate interests dictate doing so.

    There will not be a residual NATO combat force - the limited nature of the intervention was a feature, not a bug.

    I call that technological advancement.

    We use drone strikes now, and not boots on the ground. The message has been sent (yet again)...kill your people and keep our oil companies happy, and you don't have a problem. Otherwise...

    Again, how can you declare victory...moral victory, no less! At this point? Do you remember when the freedom fighters of Afghanistan ousted the Soviets?

    Decades later, we've rebranded those same people as warlords, militants, and/or terrorists. And we're killing their children and wives with...

    Drone strikes.

    "For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant," he said. "I don't go to count how many Taliban are killed. I go to count how many children, women, innocent people, are killed."

    We don't hear that from our corporate press, do we? So why should I celebrate this alleged great win for democracy now?

    Thanks, but I'll wait.
    ~

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  6. Meh. At this point we're just talking past one another. I can't figure out what it is you're in favor of - you don't trust anyone to do the right thing, ever. OK.

    I don't want to put words in your mouth, but your position seems to indicate that you don't believe that the world community should lift a finger to protect innocent lives from industrial-scale murder, and you don't think saving tens of thousands of lives in Libya amounts to any sort of accomplishment at all.

    I deeply and wholeheartedly disagree with and reject both of these positions...

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  7. The world community? It was the U.S. military and its handpuppet, NATO.

    We're always told it's a humanitarian mission. Eventually we learn it was all about the about the oil, yet again.

    I've got good reason to be suspicious about our humanitarian intentions whenever we're overturning the government of a country with substantial oil reserves. I'm sure you don't need me to summarize our history.
    ~

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  8. Well, you DO know that Gadhafi was already selling Libya's oil to BP and the usual suspects, right? Every drop they could produce. So how the oppressed Libyan youth demanding their freedom and an armored column advancing on Benghazi can be translated into a 'war for oil' is going to require some further explanation.

    Besides, let me say it again, as clearly as I can, because you keep missing it. This intervention can be successful precisely because it doesn't speak to the outcome. It was about saving the people the Rebel east from Gadhafi's revenge, and preventing his future revenge.

    So if you really want to address this point, you need to leave aside anything that happens after the end of hostilities. That's not what I'm addressing - if you want to address the post-civil war conditions in Libya, alas, you'll have to write your own post...

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  9. Let me be clear that I'm glad Gadaffi's gone. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but I honestly believe that we've evolved to teh point where his type of regime could not be re-established. So whatever the shape of the new Libyan government, I honestly don't believe it can be as bad or worse than what it was. Added, Gadaffi's regional impact - all that oil money going to his pan-African League of Dictators. Maybe this will end up being a corporate cash grab, but money to already fat and rich stockholders is preferable to money for greater opression of sub-Saharan Africa.

    That said, I'm still of the opinion that the intervention was wrong. The claim of tens of thousands of lives in Benghazi? I don't think Gadaffi had that capability. He couldn't keep Zawiyah pacified and that was in his own backyard. He opened up on Misurata with both barrels for a span of weeks before the NFZ and consistently throughout the summer, and still Misurata resisted.

    I honestly don't know if international intervention helped to save lives. Skirmishing for five months as opposed to attempting a few impossible pushes into rebel territory probably allowed Gadaffi to fight for much longer than he otherwise could have. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing my position. I concede that possibility.

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