by Michael Berube In late March of 2011, a massacre was averted-not just any ordinary massacre, mind you. For had Qaddafi and his forces managed to crush the Libyan rebellion in what was then its stronghold, Benghazi, the aftershocks would have reverberated well beyond eastern Libya. As Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch wrote, "Qaddafi's victory-alongside Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's fall-would have signaled to other authoritarian governments from Syria to Saudi Arabia to China that if you negotiate with protesters you lose, but if you kill them you win." Qaddafi's defeat seemed to send a message to American politicians and media instead. Contrasting Obama's handling of Libya with Clinton's handling of the Balkans, Malinowski observed that "Presidents get more credit for stopping atrocities after they begin than for preventing them before they get out of hand."
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The stakes in Benghazi were exceptionally high.
http://www.thepointmag.com/2011/politics/libya-and-the-left
This is a repost from Pen-L by Eugene Coyle. Early in the Libyian revolution, I got very conflicting impressions and decided the best policy was to wait and see. If anybody wants to read this article, they need to go through the whole piece.
I am thinking patience is probably a good policy for Oakland too. Let's see how things develop. Remember we are also in a disinformation war with the generalized US media. We are also subjected to a sophisticated national police state apparatus that is pretty good at manipulating public perception to protect itself.
(Also from EC posted on Pen-l) There's an announcement about teachers, nurses, and UC, Cal State Univerities students and faculty joining in a walk out, or at least a march with locations in UC Davis and Sacramento for November 17(?).
CG