Juan Cole: An Open Letter to the Left on Libya

[BzaDem]

--snip--

"Among reasons given by critics for rejecting the intervention are:

1. Absolute pacifism (the use of force is always wrong)
2. Absolute anti-imperialism (all interventions in world affairs by outsiders are wrong).
3. Anti-military pragmatism: a belief that no social problems can ever usefully be resolved by use of military force.

Absolute pacifists are rare, and I will just acknowledge them and move on. I personally favor an option for peace in world policy-making, where it should be the default initial position. But the peace option is trumped in my mind by the opportunity to stop a major war crime.

Leftists are not always isolationists. In the US, progressive people actually went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, forming the Lincoln Brigade. That was a foreign intervention. Leftists were happy about Churchill’s and then Roosevelt’s intervention against the Axis. To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions. I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by the fringe left adulation for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the grounds that he is ‘anti-imperialist,’ and with an assumption that he is somehow on the Left. As the pillar of a repressive Theocratic order that puts down workers, he is a man of the far Right, and that he doesn’t like the US and Western Europe doesn’t ennoble him.

The proposition that social problems can never be resolved by military force alone may be true. But there are some problems that can’t be solved unless there is a military intervention first, since its absence would allow the destruction of the progressive forces. Those arguing that “Libyans” should settle the issue themselves are willfully ignoring the overwhelming repressive advantage given Qaddafi by his jets, helicopter gunships, and tanks; the ‘Libyans’ were being crushed inexorably. Such crushing can be effective for decades thereafter."

--snip--

http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/an-open-letter-to-the-left-on-libya.html

[Vinnie From Indy]

WIth some minor qualifications, I agree with Juan on this issue

K&R

Cheers!

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. WIth some minor qualifications, I agree with Juan on this issue

K&R

Cheers!

[ixion]

2. We're bombing them so they don't bomb themselves

got it, Juan. :eyes:

[BzaDem]

4. Think we're bombing slightly different people than they are bombing, no? n/t

[ixion]

7. No. That is spin.

Bombs are bombs and do not discriminate. And so-called 'smart' bombs, aren't.

[BzaDem]

8. The contortions you have to go through to attempt to make your point are ridiculous.

Bombs are indeed bombs, and the use of bombs to enforce or prevent an outcome is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. Not only are you wrong in this particular case, but even that general type of black-and-white statement is naive in the extreme.

[ixion]

20. Heh. No, naive is thinking that bombs discriminate

that is naive in the extreme, and it also makes the assumption that military force brings peace, which is also false.

[BzaDem]

22. "and it also makes the assumption that military force brings peace, which is also false"

Doesn't that logic indicate that we should have done nothing militarily to stop Hitler?

Wouldn't that be the very definition of naive?

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

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[joshcryer]

16. Yes, Gaddafi has shown no problem with bombing his own citizens.

[ixion]

21. And apparently, neither do we...

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Turborama]

3. K&R Thanks for sharing n/t

[dkf]

5. Nope, we have no business taking sides in a civil war.

What if the French decided that the South needed help against the North because they should be able to dictate their own destiny?

[BzaDem]

6. Who came up with this idea of "business?" How is that even relevant? If Ghadaffi was about to

slaughter his own people (to make a point no less), who are you to say that it isn't our "business" as a member of the world community (and of the human race)? How is it not very much our business?

Sure, it might not be possible for us to benefit the situation, or the cost might be too high. I'm not claiming it is appropriate to intervene everywhere. But this whole idea that we should base a decision not to intervene based on some wholly-invented idea of "minding one's own business" is one of the silliest analogies I have ever seen.

[Turborama]

9. Without the foreign help with the American revolution things may have turned out a lot differently

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War

[dkf]

29. It is one thing to become independent from another countries rule, and another to mess around with

Internal governance. Yes we have done it for ages, supporting dictators and even Saddam Hussein way back when. But that is the point...we should not be interfere to the point that we become responsible for the outcomes. I am sure many of the dictators in power once had popular support to overthrow the old regimes because people are always hopeful about change. But it doesn't always turn out right and if it doesn't do we really need to be blamed for the outcome?

[BlueMTexpat]

32. Great minds! See below. LOL nt

[BlueMTexpat]

31. The Brits actually helped the Confederacy during the US Civil War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_in_the_American_Civil_War And France would not have been unhappy if the Confederate States had won. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Civil_War

During the first US War for Independence, which could have been considered a civil war by some since those born in the US who did not support separation from the British Empire literally had to flee to Canada, France intervened on the side of the rebels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War

There are always outside interests. Often, they play both sides. But their long-term policy interests are always primordial.

Juan Cole is an expert in ME affairs and I have no small experience and expertise myself. Although I am always wary of the use of military force and only as a last option (I am, for example, one of those who did not favor it in the first War with Iraq and definitely not in the second, nor with Afghanistan), this is one time where intervention as has been authorized by the UN is by far the better course.

[JCMach1]

10. Constitutionalist- I am against how it was done...

The Congress has ceded way to much power to the President over these matters. They need to 'own' this just as much as the President does.

[leveymg]

13. If these were rational men, that's as it should be. But, the GOP now attack the Admin. for not

being aggressive enough after he intervened. If he had sought their permission to intervene on "humanitarian grounds" earlier, they would have by reflex opposed it, or tied it to some promise to take the costs out of social programs.

American politics are broken on several levels.

[sendero]

11. This is mere opportunism..

... our leaders, and I agree with them, have wanted to do something about Gaddafi since Lockerbie. An opportunity presented itself and they pounced.

I don't LIKE this, but it is 10 times more justifiable than Iraq, and I nominally support it.

[soryang]

15. There is no evidence that Libya was behind Lockerbie

The CIA interfered with the trial, obtained false testimony, and planted phony evidence. The conviction was reversed on appeal and no one wanted another trial. So the guy falsely accused was returned to Libya on bs humanitarian concerns. BP had nothing to do with it.

It is more likely that a terrorist group from Lebanon with Iranian backing did the dirty work.

[canetoad]

12. k&r

for shades of grey

[soryang]

14. Why Juan Cole is dead wrong

The problem with Juan Cole's view is that he totally misses the fact that the violent attempts to overthrow Kadafi's government have been coming from this group and the western intelligence agenices for decades. They are not revolutionaries, they are thugs, murderers and bombers. Their civilian leadership are a bunch of racist monarchists. The LIFG and other proxy militia elements funded and supported by the US, UK and Saudi Arabia, is the enforcement arm of the so called Provisional Government. It doesn't resemble the Egyptian revolutionary movement in any way. They are a fighting force and came to fight.

There is a reason the US and UK went with a no fly zone. If air attack was a legimate concern, they could have simply issued shoulder mounted infra red missiles to the "revolutionaries." If tanks were a problem they could have furnished anti armor missiles. That would have solved the problem. But they won't do that because their objective isn't "protecting the people of Libya." Their objective is to make it a dependent vassal state with no capability to defend itself against western military forces. This is why the "no fly operation" involves destruction of all Libyan defense institutions. The nation will never be sovereign again. And the western oil companies, from all the "altruistic" western nations, will have succeeded in using violence, to renogiate their oil contracts on more imperial terms after the destroying the Libyan National Oil Corporation and the Libyan state.

[joshcryer]

18. Nonsense, the US normalized relations.

[ReggieVeggie]

17. This is the third posting in GD of this article

I thought dupe threads were locked.

[old mark]

19. K&R. Mr. Cole is correct....nt

[SidDithers]

25. K&R...nt

Sid

[ellenrr]

26. he leaves out the reason of OIL, which was not a factor in

progressives going to fight in Spain.

[WilliamPitt]

30. I think you stopped reading too soon.

From the article:

===

Another argument is that the no-fly zone (and the no-drive zone) aimed at overthrowing Qaddafi not to protect his people from him but to open the way for US, British and French dominance of Libya’s oil wealth. This argument is bizarre. The US declined to do oil business with Libya in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, when it could have, because it had placed the country under boycott. It didn’t want access to that oil market, which was repeatedly proffered to Washington by Qaddafi then. After Qaddafi came back in from the cold in the late 1990s (for the European Union) and after 2003 (for the US), sanctions were lifted and Western oil companies flocked into the country. US companies were well represented, along with BP and the Italian firm ENI. BP signed an expensive exploration contract with Qaddafi and cannot possibly have wanted its validity put into doubt by a revolution. There is no advantage to the oil sector of removing Qaddafi. Indeed, a new government may be more difficult to deal with and may not honor Qaddafi’s commitments. There is no prospect of Western companies being allowed to own Libyan petroleum fields, which were nationalized long ago. Finally, it is not always in the interests of Big Oil to have more petroleum on the market, since that reduces the price and, potentially, company profits. A war on Libya to get more and better contracts so as to lower the world price of petroleum makes no sense in a world where the bids were already being freely let, and where high prices were producing record profits. I haven’t seen the war-for-oil argument made for Libya in a manner that makes any sense at all.

[highplainsdem]

27. K&R

[Doctor_J]

28. I tend to cede to Cole on ME matters, but

The last 30 years have made be extremely wary of these little adventures.

[U4ikLefty]

33. Heard his BS on KPFK & he has nothing.

He called Congressional Authority to be "unimportant".

nuff said.