On 2011-03-21, at 11:56 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Leftist moralizing does get pretty sickening…
I won't comment. :)
On 2011-03-22, at 1:44 AM, Peter Fay wrote:
> The need for diplomatic cover for an attack on a sovereign nation that has
> not attacked any other nation is patent. So in the rush to launch the
> imperialist onslaught on Libya, the American military knew a simple “no-fly
> zone” would not do as it was too constrictive. A no-fly zone would not
> provide the military with sufficient breadth to accomplish its goal in
> Libya: the overthrow of a sovereign ruler and “full spectrum dominance” of
> the Libyan nation.
FWIW, my own take on the events, part of a lively discussion on Louis Proyect's Marxmail list which has reflected the deep divide within the international left on this issue.
* * *
My impression is that the US military and foreign policy establishment, like everyone else, was taken wholly aback by the consecutive mass eruptions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and it has since been running to catch up. That may explain why it appears to have not thought through the long term implications. To the degree possible, I think it has tried to do so. But it has had to continually assess and reassess its policy because of the speed of events, which is characteristic of revolutionary outbreaks, as Paddy Apling and others have noted.
Imperialists don't only intervene to buttress dictatorships against mass movements; they also intervene to support mass movements against dictatorships when it becomes apparent that the existing regime has lost popular legitimacy and has thus become a liability rather than an asset. Luko, Nestor, Tom and others like to separate the "pro-imperialist" Libyan movement from the "anti-imperialist" ones in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, but they have all been part of a single process and their peoples, crucially, see it that way, even if LN&T don't. These democratic movements have all commonly been aimed at repressive regimes which had been enjoying good commercial and military relations with the US and the EU. The Gadhafi regime is no exception; it has been as tied to Western politicians and ex-politicians, generals, and CEO's as were those of Ben Ali and Mubarak.
The US and EU have intervened in these situations, as we know, not to promote popular democracy, whose radical potential is always feared, but to manage these movements and ensure an orderly transition to a reconstituted friendly regime composed of respectable bourgeois politicians and generals who were sympathetic to the opposition and who were in many cases in its leadership.
The US and its allies have been conscious of the depth of anti-imperialist sentiment in the region, born of long historical experience, and so have tried to tread carefully behind the scenes, using their close ties with the military high command and opposition politicians and diplomats. The same considerations until very recently prevailed in Libya, which is why they dallied up to the last minute before deciding on the use of force to dislodge Gadhafi, a tough old bird with an anti-imperialist past who was not as isolated from his general staff and traditional base of support as were Ben Ali and Mubarak. Many Arab League despots were reluctant to see Gadhafi toppled by the opposition because of the demonstration effect in their own countries, and Washington and Brussels were wary of getting involved in a shooting war with a country to whose oil resources it already had access and whose supply it didn't want disrupted. But when Gadhafi opened fire on rather than surrender to his democratic opposition and took the offensive, it brought into play the Egyptian and Arab masses who were in solidarity with their fellow Libyan demonstrators on the basis of their own recent and ongoing experiences. Such notes of solidarity even reverberated in Europe and America, as Wisconsin demonstrated, and this generated further public pressure on the Western and Arab governments to intervene on behalf of the democratic opposition, whatever their own hesitations.