Carrol:
> We really don't know what the issues are in Libya...leftists SHOULD NOT THINK about the complexities.
There is nothing tortured or complex about not countenancing the destruction of a democratic movement by a repressive regime - moreover one like Gadhafi's which, whatever its anti-imperialist past, has since 2004 cultivated close relations with Western oil firms, arms suppliers, and hedge funds. Virtually every social struggle of the modern era has been a struggle for democratic rights, and the left has never as a matter of principle abstained from, much less opposed, them. But while the issue is not complicated, politics is, and reformers and revolutionaries have sometimes had to enter into messy Faustian pacts in order to accomplish their ends. Lenin invited German imperialism to provide him with safe passage to Russia to allow his participation in the democratic revolution against the Tsarist autocracy. The Libyan democratic revolutionaries, alas, are led by secular liberals and moderate Islamists rather than a party of Bolshevik calibre, but they are no more deserving of condemnation or of withholding of support for having entering into a devil's bargain of their own with American imperialism as the regime's forces closed in.
The destruction of the opposition has been averted, and the demand should now be for an immediate ceasefire and halt to the bombing and negotiations leading to the drafting by a constituent assembly of a new constitution followed by elections.
> How many Iraqis have died since
> the U.S. intervened. How many have been driven into exile? How many continue
> to live in misery? The U.S. got rid of that "bad guy" who ruled Iraq. Big
> deal.
Libya is not Iraq. The proper parallel is to Egypt and Tunisia and other parts of the Mideast where a related process of democratic change has been unfolding. Some important distinctions:
In Iraq, there was no comparable democratic movement supported by the international left which was being bloodily suppressed by the regime. The Baathists were the Palestinians' most important Arab patron and were seen as an impediment to a US/Israel-imposed peace settlement. Access to Iraqi oil was an incentive for the invasion and occupation of the country by American land forces.
In Libya, the regime is attempting to crush a democratic movement widely supported by the Arab masses and international left. The US already enjoys ready access to the country's oil. The Libyans through Saif Gadhafi have reportedly sought closer ties to the Israelis. The US has given no indication of any plan to invade and occupy Libya.
Wojtek:
> Gaddafi is a bloody tyrant, but the 'revolutionaries' are not
> any better - they are basically former elites who want back they
> former power….In sum - this is a story in which all characters are villains - so the
> only reasonable option is to watch and withhold judgment.
I would say we do have a dog in this fight - not the ruling regime nor the bourgeois leadership of the democratic opposition, but the workers, students, small propertyholders, mutinous soldiers, and unemployed who constitute its rank and file and who have an interest in social rights as well as political ones. The bulk of the democratic movement is drawn from outside the rising bourgeoisie and other elite circles, and the establishment of a parliamentary democratic regime would afford more scope for independent political action aimed at satisfying the economic and social concerns of the masses.
In this sense, the composition and leadership of the democratic movement in Libya is not fundamentally different from the kind of movements we're accustomed to supporting in the advanced capitalist countries.