On 2011-03-24, at 2:01 PM, Lenin's Tomb wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Dennis Redmond <metalslorg at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
>> What imperialist intervention? The world is helping a pro-democracy
>> movement
>> take their country back from a murderous tyrant. This is a UN mission
>> approved by the UN Security Council, including all of the BRICs (they
>> abstained from the resolution, allowing it to pass, mostly as a diplomatic
>> maneuver to try to talk the Qaddafi regime into leaving voluntarily).
>> Ethically, it's the equivalent of saving Republican Spain in the 1930s.
>>
>
> Sorry, but this is trite and displays a complete lack of the concreteness
> that Achcar is at pains to enjoin in his piece. "The world" isn't doing
> anything. The UN Security Council isn't the world. The driving forces
> behind this intervention were the US, UK and France, so the US military
> under Africom direction is leading a mission, with the participation or
> assent of other strategically significant ruling classes, to enforce a
> stalemate in Libya, probably leading to partition. Stalemate is implied in
> the language of the resolution itself, and politicians such as the UK armed
> forces minister are openly speaking of a de facto partition. This isn't the
> equivalent of saving Republican Spain - if it were, I wonder why you're not
> part of an Abraham Lincoln Brigade? - it is a quite conscious attempt to put
> the counter-revolutionary forces right in the heart of a regional
> revolutionary process, and to bolster the position of former regime elements
> in the Libyan revolt who will now continue be dependents of the 'West'.
Of course I agree with the thrust of your analysis, but am less certain that the aim is partition. My impression is that the cleavages in Libya do not as much run on sectarian or geographic lines as they did in Iraq, and even there partititon was rejected by the Shia and Sunni parties, set aside by the Kurds, and opposed by US planners who saw the Biden plan as a perscription for continued conflict about borders and resources. Unless I'm mistaken, the kind of de facto segregation which would have made partition more feasible in Iraq is absent in Libya.
My own take is that the US and its British and French allies are bent on regime change, or at least the removal of Gadhafi, and are providing close air support for an opposition advance to accomplish this, whereas the Arab League, Russians, Chinese, Indians, and even Germany (!) have interpreted the UN resolution as only providing for a defensive no-fly zone around opposition-held cities, to be followed by a ceasefire and negotiations aimed at broadening the base of the regime with the inclusion of opposition leaders. They appear to have real qualms about how the US has widened the war, and have been wrestling with it for control of the NATO forces since the bombing campaign began. Was the UK armed forces minister speculating about partition, or does it reflect the official position of the government? In which case it's hard to imagine the British wouldn't have consulted with the Americans about it, and that partition does deserve to be taken more seriously.