By BJ Bjornson
Michael Berube has a few unkind things to say about the left and the debate on Libya, and while I was supportive of that action, I felt I had to respond to at least a couple of his points.
The first is, appropriately, his opening:
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.�
The NATO-led attack on Qaddafi�s forces therefore did much more than prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Libya�though it should be acknowledged that this alone might have been sufficient justification. It helped keep alive the Arab Spring: after rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt had begun to transform the political landscape of North Africa and the Middle East, and after Qaddafi�s repression of the revolt had earned the condemnation of both the Arab League and the African Union, NATO�s preservation of Benghazi in March sustained the rebellion and made it possible for the rebels to prevail in Tripoli five months later.
This is, frankly, bullshit. You don�t have to look any further than Syria to see that the lesson being applied, and even in late March, Qaddafi had already shown that he had figured it out, same as the authorities in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and you could look back a year or two to Iran for more proof of the concept, if it hadn�t been the preferred method of tyrants to deal with those that opposed them since time immemorial.
Thinking that the NATO action in Libya might have far reaching effects beyond its borders regarding the Arab Spring was likely wishful thinking even in late March. To pretend that it still does now after months of inaction over Syria and other Arab authoritarian states� crackdowns is pretty much delusional.
The second point is one I made back in August. It is still way too early to start crowing about whether or not the mission was a good idea or not. At that time, the problm was what was going to happen when the anti-Qaddafi forces entered Sirte and other loyalist strongholds. News on that front hasn�t exactly been comforting, and the news from Tripoli these days doesn�t sound like the issues that led to some of the nastier aspects of revenge-taking have yet to be dealt with.
Abdul Mojan's moment of realisation came when the good guys threw him into the boot of their car, slammed it shut and drove off with him a prisoner inside.
When they finally stopped and hauled him out, he asked them: "What are you doing? I'm a revolutionary just like you! I've never supported Gaddafi.'"
But the former rebels didn't care. They had taken a liking to the new office block in western Tripoli that Mr Mojan managed and they wanted the keys and ownership documents. He tried to reason with them, pointing out that there were plenty of government buildings standing empty.
. . .
More alarming than the looting have been the armed clashes between militias. There have been three big fights in the capital alone in the past week; shoot-outs at a hospital, Martyr's Square, and the military airport, which have left several dead and dozens wounded.
Then there are the detentions. With the fighting over, the revolutionaries have not been idle. They have kept busy rounding up hundreds of suspected Gaddafi supporters in a wide-scale witch-hunt, often on the basis of little more than rumour and accusation.
There are a few points in Berube�s article that ring all too true, and remind me how easy it is for tribalism to get the better of one�s thought processes. Still, given how horrifically incompetent and out of touch with reality the right has been on foreign policy over the last decade and more, I think some pushback on yet another �the left was wrong� meme over Libya is in order.
Berube's article is interesting in that his (and Juan Cole's) arguments supporting western military intervention in Libya are not that different from the right's arguments in other situations. The attempt always is to move away from facts to hypotheticals.
ReplyDeleteYou have already pointed out the fallacy of his first argument - that NATO's attack somehow provided protection for the Arab spring. The rest of his article has a similar self righteous engagement with tropes rather than with what actually happened.
Case in point, Berube uses a variant of the ticking time bomb argument to attack Williams - you know the one that goes "would you torture someone if there was a ticking time bomb ...." In this case it was "whether it was acceptable for the international community to allow Libyans to be massacred". Well, in this case the massacre of BenGhazi is a hypothetical while the massacre in Sirte is not.
I read the Michael Berube piece and was disappointed. It just seemed so Michael Ignatieff to me.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but if the left was wrong then pushing back is counter productive to a sane foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteThe left's foreign policy (such as it has been) has not been any better than that of the right over the last decade. Much of it supported Afghanistan when any sane individual could have seen the decade plus long goat rodeo coming a mile away. The politicians certainly didn't fight the Iraq boondoggle, and while the rank and file did, that same rank and file has pretty well shut its mouth since Obama's been in charge.
Empty makes a good point about the left's arguments for Libya being based on hypotheticals. To my mind, the Libyan revolution has had a foul odor from the beginning, and i think that politicians/foreign policy apparatchiks pretty much played the left and its soft spot for humanitarian intervention.
Lex, I wouldn't confuse the left of Berube's piece with the Democratic Party. They are quite different things, and if you think the former has kept its mouth shut since Obama was elected, then you haven't been reading this blog, let alone a good portion of the leftist blogosphere. In fact, it was that section of the progressive movement that Berube's piece was chastizing for its opposition to the Libyan mission, which I doubt he would have felt the need to do were they the obedient little rank and filers you make them out to be.
ReplyDeleteBJ, i've been reading. Hell, i'm still bummed that Steve gave up because nobody listens to the small section of the left that has been consistently critical. I know what Berube's doing: he's trying to beat down the last of the opposition to idiotic foreign policy that's implemented by both sides of the aisle and generally supported by the majority of American citizens so long as their favored political party implements the policy.
ReplyDeleteEven on the thoughtful, left blogs, it wasn't hard to find people who were all for Libya down in the comment threads. Liberals love a good humanitarian intervention. Berube's just bullying to quiet any opposition to bi-partisan foreign policy; there aren't enough in the group he's talking about/to to make a difference, and most of them will suck it up and vote for the "lesser of two evils" come election time anyhow...so their opposition is moot.
Even on the thoughtful, left blogs, it wasn't hard to find people who were all for Libya down in the comment threads.
ReplyDeleteWhile I won�t pretend that my reading is in any way comprehensive, I do seem to remember the opposite being true as well. That�s just the nature of blogging, particularly on controversial subjects. I do have to object to the characterization of �thoughtful� being applied to only those who opposed the Libyan mission, admittedly due in large part to my own support of said mission.
The mission was always a debatable one, and continues to be. As empty mentions above, the potential for havoc and massacre in Benghazi and Tobruk are now merely hypothetical, while the results of the intervention are there for everyone to see, but they were both hypothetical at the time, and depending on how you weighed them, it was easily possible to come to entirely different conclusions regarding the intervention. Said conclusion may turn out to have been horribly wrong, and I just hope I don�t follow guys like Hitchens in denying the obvious well past the point it is blatantly apparent that the mission you supported was a horrific blunder.
My problem with Berube is that the conventional wisdom set already has a pretty decent track record of dismissing liberal opposition to interventions as being knee-jerk pacifism, they don't need his assistance and it would be nice for a change if someone acknowledged that there were and are quite reasonable and realistic reasons to be wary of the Libyan mission.
My problem with Berube is that the conventional wisdom set already has a pretty decent track record of dismissing liberal opposition to interventions as being knee-jerk pacifism, they don't need his assistance and it would be nice for a change if someone acknowledged that there were and are quite reasonable and realistic reasons to be wary of the Libyan mission.
ReplyDeleteQuite true, and I am duly chastised. If only I had had the presence of mind to write something like
"It was, and still is, possible to oppose American intervention in Libya in various reasonably sensible ways. One can point out that the rebels aren�t a coherent unit, so that it is not clear whom 'we' are supporting or what the endgame might be; one can suggest that any intervention on the part of the Western powers runs the risk of delegitimizing the revolt in the Arab world; one can worry about 'mission creep' and the possibility of getting involved in a bloody, intractable struggle. One can also argue, as Michael Walzer did at the Dissent blog, that the humanitarian crisis in Libya was not so severe as to trigger the 'responsibility to protect' doctrine, so there is no reason to trump the principle of nonintervention, and that should any such intervention become necessary, it should be undertaken by Libya�s immediate neighbors (though Walzer also claimed that a UN resolution authorizing the use of force 'would almost certainly be vetoed in the Security Council' just ten days before resolution 1973 was approved). Certainly, as with any human action of any kind in any realm of endeavor, the Libya intervention could be subjected to cost/benefit analyses and consequentialist objections about the advisability of this particular action at this particular time."
Or if only I had been circumspect enough to write
"It is still too soon to tell what may come of the French Revolution, so it is a fortiori far too soon to tell what may come of the revolutions in North Africa. I hope nothing I have written here will be taken as jejune triumphalism about the fall of Qaddafi�or that of Hosni Mubarak, or Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. It is not inconceivable that a popular uprising against a brutal dictator, some elements of which are supported by Western liberals, could produce an Islamist state whose policies are abhorrent to Western liberals. What is now called the Arab Spring might eventually become known as 'the year 1979 went viral.'"
Next time around, I will try to do better.
I'm just curious who exactly were all the weighty and influential figures on "the left" who "doubled down on the delusion that Qaddafi is a legitimate and benevolent ruler".
ReplyDeleteOne can certainly have opposed the US intervention in Libya specifically (and/or US imperialism in general) without ever once considering Qaddafi to be "benevolent". And I saw many on the left who did (and who still do after the fact). But those folks aren't the ones Berube just spent massive bandwidth decrying, it's the many influential folks on who considered Qadaffi to be "benevolent". Won't Michael Berube please now cite those weighty, influential figures by name, and quote their damning, damning words? Because, for whatever reason, that's something he forgot to do in his original piece, which is odd.
TIA,
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
Thanks, Patrick. First, let me apologize for spending massive bandwidth writing a 3000-word essay. Its publication online was a surprise to me, since I thought The Point was a small print publication, and I grieve over the virtual rainforests that have died to make my essay possible.
ReplyDeleteSecond, thanks for asking for names! Here's one you might recognize:
Dollar for dollar I doubt Qaddafi has a rival in any assessment of the amount of oil revenues in his domain actually distributed for benign social purposes. Derision is heaped on his Green Book, but in intention it can surely stand favorable comparison with kindred Western texts. Anyone labeled by Ronald Reagan �This mad dog of the Middle East� has an honored place in my personal pantheon.
I didn't include Cockburn in my essay, though, precisely because I considered him to be low-hanging fruit well past its sell-by date. You know, kinda rotten smelling.
Last but not least, when I wrote of people "doubling down in the mode of Hugo Chavez," I meant to name ... Hugo Chavez! As Yogi Berra once said, you could look it up.
My apologies for forgetting to name these people, even when I thought I was naming them. I just wish the left weren't in such deep denial about this nonsense.
Michael, since you were kind enough to respond to my last comment, let me expand that point a bit to make it clearer,
ReplyDelete�it would be nice for a change if someone acknowledged that there were and are quite reasonable and realistic reasons to be wary of the Libyan mission, without first writing a long essay chastising the progressive blogosphere for their opposition.
There is a difference between noting specific examples of people going way too far or making ridiculous arguments in opposition to a mission, and in writing a column about how �the left� went too far and made ridiculous arguments in opposition to a mission with some caveats that, sure, some the arguments coming from them were actually reasonable. Your post strikes me as far more the latter than the former, given that immediately after that little quote of yours, you write:
But from the outset much of the American antiwar left adopted very different lines of argument�lines that had little to do with Libya and Libyans, or indeed with the Arab Spring more broadly. These were tropes that have been forged over the past four decades of antiwar activism, and they were hauled out in 2011 just as they had been over a decade earlier in Kosovo. Ian Williams summarized them in a critical essay for Foreign Policy in Focus: they included �the unconstitutionality of the president ordering military action�; �the invalidity of a UN resolution passed with abstentions�; �the Security Council exceeding its authority by violating Libyan sovereignty�; �the self-interested motives of those intervening�; �the �discovery� of ex-al-Qaeda supporters among the rebels�; and �the failure of the West to intervene in other places where civilians face potential massacres such as Bahrain, Gaza, Ivory Coast, and Yemen.�
And so on from there. It certainly read to me like your argument was with "much of the left" and not just a few fringe wackos. And if that wasn't in fact your intention, then yes, you should try to do better.
BJ, many thanks for clarifying your original comment by adding a qualifying (bolded) clause to your critique of me after the fact, to the effect that there were and are quite reasonable and realistic reasons to be wary of the Libyan mission, and that I should have said so before I said anything bad about the progressive blogosphere. In the future, I will not criticize the opinions of the progressive blogosphere. I apologize for taking the remarks of people who presume to speak for The Left as remarks of people who presume to speak for The Left.
ReplyDeleteMichael Berube,
ReplyDeleteI suggest you re-title your essay "Libya and Alexander Cockburn", if--after two separate bites at the apple--he remains the only "noteworthy" (to put it kinda generously) liberal you're able to quote as vouching for Qaddafi's benevolent bonafides. Writing as a person who I believe resides pretty squarely in the American left, I don't recall casting a vote for Alexander Cockburn as my spokesperson. If you're pissed at stuff Cockburn wrote, take it up with Cockburn.
Oh, shit, wait, I just looked at your suckass post again and I've just noticed that you're also outraged at (seriously, now) *anonymous comments* "that began popping up in almost every liberal/progressive blog�s comment threads". That's awesome, Michael. Is it worth pointing out that I, as a member of the American left, wasn't ever asked as to whether or not "blaqbloq666" (or someone) was authorized to carry a banner on my behalf? Do I need to tell you that "anarkeeboy88" (or whoever else) was a dumbass if he (or she) (or it) wrote something in some comment section claiming Qadaffi to've been benevolent? Cause he or she or it was indeed an idiot, if he or she or it wrote that someplace, at some time, somewhere. Shame on him or her or it for writing that, if he or she or it did.
Tip for the future, Michael: when you insist that you're not attacking straw men, and then as evidence you cite (and not even actually cite, but just vaguely refer to) anonymous comments appended to blog posts, you are, in fact, attacking straw men.
Look, Michael, here's an *actual* challenge that I bet you won't accept: I'll count up the number of noteworthy liberal critics of America's imperial intercession in Libya that I can find who also (within the past 6 months) have referred to Qadaffi as a murderous dictator, and you count up the number of actual noteworthy liberal critics of America's imperial intercession in Libya who have decidedly *not* referred to Qadaffi as a murderous dictator but instead (within the past 6 months) have referred to Qadaffi a "legitimate" and "benevolent". And then we'll see whose list is longer, and just how deep and insidious all this Qadaffi apologia really goes (or doesn't go) on the actual American left. 'Kay? Up for it? Just remember though, Michael, that for the purpose of this exercise you don't get to count the anonymous, misspelled, meth-fueled key-mashings of anyone claiming to call themselves "MolotovMaryJane69" and pretend that he or she or it is in any way representative of any actual vein of analyzable political thought. We got a deal, Michael?
"I apologize for taking the remarks of people who presume to speak for The Left as remarks of people who presume to speak for The Left."
Oh, there'd be nothing to apologize for, if that's what you'd done. However, what you actually *should* apologize for, dumbass, is taking the remarks of people who presume to speak for The Left as remarks of people who speak for The Left. Understand the difference? Grasp that there *is* one?
Best to you and to your very unfortunately-named-at-the-moment Paterno Family Professorship at Pennsylvania State University,
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
The snark-fest is fun, but I'm more interested in the critique made in BJ's first few paragraphs -- viz., Michael says that NATO intervention had effects beyond Libya's borders, and BJ says no, it didn't.
ReplyDeleteJust looking at a map, one is inclined to agree with BJ. The fall of Qaddafi appears to have had zero effect in Yemen, in Algeria, in Bahrein, or in any of the Gulf States. It has perhaps had some influence in Syria -- but the only effect there has been to encourage the rebels away from relatively nonviolent tactics and towards taking up arms. Since NATO is never going to intervene in Syria, this is not likely to do anything but run up the (already depressingly large) body count.
We might perhaps have seen a little more flexibility from the monarchies in Jordan and Morocco -- but those regimes were cautiously relaxing already, so if there's any change it's pretty marginal.
So, I'm really not seeing "it helped keep alive the Arab Spring". In terms of regime change, Tunisia and Egypt were already done deals by late March. In terms of reform, there isn't a single dictatorial regime in the region that has significantly loosened up. (Unless you take Assad's vague promises of "reform" seriously. Which I kinda doubt you do.)
Michael, upon consideration, would you agree that the intervention -- whatever its other merits -- wasn't particularly relevant to the success or failure of the Arab Spring outside of Libya? Or if not, then could you flesh out your argument as to how it was relevant?
Doug M.
Thank you Patrick! Professor Berube confuses sneering with wit, substituting self-regard for thought. Let's see if he takes up your challenge. I have my doubts.
ReplyDeleteThe enthusiastic intervention of NATO in Libya has been disastrous in a number of different ways. The immediate one is of course the number of people dead as a result of the intervention. As BJ points out there were arguments at that time, generally advanced by the political classes eager to make NATO relevant, that non-intervention would lead to massacres and R2P required intervention. That argument would seem more reasonable if NATO under R2P had protected the people in Sirte as well. Another result, and this goes to Doug's point, is that the intervention has resulted, contra what NATO wanted, in a decrease in leverage for the international community. This is evident in the case of Syria where the threat of foreign intervention might have dampened the Assad regime's violent tendencies. The Libyan affair guaranteed that the Russians and the Chinese will block any efforts at armed intervention. Furthermore, efforts of countries in the neighborhood like Turkey look less legitimate and carry less weight than they did before. Finally, a more ideological point - in the current situation the power that overthrew Qaddafi's regime was NATO power. That makes NATO a major player in what comes next in Libya. Something that I find a negative. YMMV
Anyway, my two cents.
No way to embed a cartoon in a comment thread so this link will have to suffice.
ReplyDeletehttp://t.co/nmdHG9Qk
(And the comment is good, too)
I'm just curious who exactly were all the weighty and influential figures on "the left" who "doubled down on the delusion that Qaddafi is a legitimate and benevolent ruler".
ReplyDeleteOne can certainly have opposed the US intervention in Libya specifically (and/or US imperialism in general) without ever once considering Qaddafi to be "benevolent".
Yeah, basically this.
The tendency in every one of these debates is for hawks to define the issue as "you either support whatever murderous and imperialistic military action the US government proposes to do or you must support the enemy that the US government has defined".
Sorry, that's not how things work.
Gaddafi was awful. So is Hu Jintao. Indeed, Hu Jintao's dictatorship oppresses more people than any other dictatorship on earth.
And so is Kim Jong Il. Indeed, Kim Jong Il's government is almost certainly the most tyrannical government on the planet.
Nonetheless, no sane person is proposing war with China or North Korea. Nor does any sane person think that opposing war with China or North Korea is any sort of support for the evil and murderous tyrants who rule those countries.
If you support a military action that some on the left oppose, you might think about the following:
1. Some on the left are either pacifists or near-pacifists who don't believe that murdering civilians with aerial bombardment is an ethical method of advancing US foreign policy interests.
2. Others on the left may not be opposed to warmaking in principle but believe that it would greatly benefit the US, and/or the rest of the world, if the US engaged in less imperialistic military adventures abroad.
3. Others on the left may not be opposed to warmaking in principle and would further be willing to support US military imperialism in particular situations where it was shown to meet a cost-benefit analysis, but believe that history has shown that the costs of such adventures are almost always understated, the benefits are almost always overstated, and extreme blowback is common.
Now, maybe you disagree with these propositions. If so, argue them. But don't fall back on the hoary lie that anyone on the left who opposes dropping bombs on Libyan cities where civilians live and are sure to be killed as a result must be a Gaddafi supporter. Come on.
I suspect none will see this reference as it's a day pass most of the comment traffic but there is a long piece in the latest edition of the LRB which seems to me to be generally neutral but very questioning of the intervention. Least it exposes the motivation re the West's opportunistic humanitarianism BS. Link to article is here: http://j.mp/vRCtM1
ReplyDeleteThat's one hell of a long read, geoff, but thanks for the link. I suspect I won't make it all the way through until the weekend, but I have marked the page.
ReplyDeleteIt's a long read, but parts of it are basically a protracted sulk. Hugh Roberts shows a remarkably high level of trust in Qaddafi -- he could have been trusted to hold a ceasefire, he would have negotiated in good faith with the rebels.
ReplyDeleteOnce the rebels had control of Benghazi and Misrata, the options were victory, defeat or partition of the country. Partition wasn't a realistic option, if only because the rebels were split into three geographic regions (Benghazi, Misrata and the western mountains). That left victory or defeat. Yeah, that sounds simplistic, but show me the counterfactual. Was Qaddafi really going to accept the NTC into a coalition government? Allow free elections? Really?
Dilan Esper mentions the "hoary lie that anyone on the left who opposes dropping bombs on Libyan [civilians]... must be a Gaddafi supporter." Maybe it's a hoary lie, but there are a lot of folks on the left who seem to suddenly get blurry vision when looking at Qaddafi and his legacy. The Roberts article is an excellent example. He mentions that Qaddafi dramatically raised Libya's standard of living, while failing to mention that, given Libya's level of per capita oil production, he should have raised it much more. He briefly discusses Qaddafi's foreign policy, but neglects to describe how erratic, violent and stupid it was. ("Gaddafi�s African policy gave Libya a firm geopolitical position and consolidated its strategic hinterland while also benefiting Africa." Really? I've been to Tanzania and Uganda, Hugh. People there have somewhat different memories of Qaddafi's African policy.) And he manages to spend a couple of thousand words describing political life in Libya without once using the phrase "cult of personality" or anything like it.
Any visitor to Libya before this year would quickly notice that Qaddafi's picture was ubiquitous, his speeches were played constantly, the Green Book was in most houses and every office, and that the TV, radio and newspapers constantly carried stories about him. A significant element of the rebellion was that people were, after 42 years of this, heartily sick of Qaddafi. But you'd never guess this from reading Roberts.
Let's not even discuss Roberts on Qaddafi _fils_. "The prospect of a reformist path under Saif was ruled out by this spring�s events." Yes, because the available evidence -- from Syria, North Korea and Azerbaijan -- definitely supports the proposition that the dictator's kid will embark on a process of liberalization and reform.
Overall, Roberts treats Qaddafi as a reasonable fellow who made a few mistakes but basically had his country's best interests at heart. So while I don't think that everyone who opposed the intervention was a Qaddafi supporter, I do think a lot of the opposers are way too easy on Qaddafi. He sucked. He had very few redeeming qualities, and it's a good thing he's gone. You can acknowledge that he sucked and still make strong and meaningful arguments against the intervention. (For the record, I opposed the intervention myself.) But treating Qaddafi as a thoughtful, respectable leader who foolishly maneuvered himself into a corner is not only wrong but foolish.
Doug M.
Doug, I think your chances of Michael returning to answer any pointed questions are pretty slim. Personally, I will note one regional effect from the Libyan intervention, which I posted about here a couple of weeks ago.� A lot of the the Tuareg mercenaries that fought for Qaddafi have returned to their home nations to start, bolster, and/or radicalize rebel groups, particularly in Mali and some in Niger. Of course, that falls on the �con� side of the balance sheet for intervention. They haven�t caused much real trouble yet that I�ve heard, but it is something I�m trying to keep an eye on. And there are some reports I�m reading now that Libya has become something of an arms bazaar for both those rebel groups and the North African al Qaeda affiliate, again something one needs to keep an eye on, and again something that argues against the intervention being a good idea.
ReplyDeleteI do share your impression of the article linked but was waiting until I had a chance to do more than read a few paragraphs before responding/posting my thoughts.
On the Syria situation, I think the biggest obstacle in one you touched on in your post but not your summary, the fact that Syria is right in the middle of a number of volatile regional powers with ongoing struggles with at least a couple of them. Any intervention there mucks up the balance in ways nobody really wants to be responsible for.
Thanks for your comments.
BJ, it's just one question. And it's more of a "wait, did you really mean that?"
ReplyDeleteMichael has a full life. I'd be interested to see his response, but he's under no obligation to come back and reply to random commenters.
Tuaregs: yeah, that's a concern. Note that Qaddafi loved the Tuaregs -- they played into his whole romanticize-the-Bedouin thing.
Syria: I lumped the issue of regional complications under "serious diplomatic obstacles". Mind, you could have said the same thing about Iraq. One key difference is that Israel really wanted Saddam Hussein gone. That's very unlike the current situation, where Israeli government is quietly rooting for Assad's regime.
I note in passing that I can -- just barely -- imagine a scenario where Turkey might intervene, alone. But Syria would probably have to be in a full-blown civil war first.
Doug M.
"Michael has a full life. I'd be interested to see his response, but he's under no obligation to come back and reply to random commenters."
ReplyDeleteThat's absolutely the case, I'm sure, and the molestation scandal and public disgrace enveloping the person for whom his faculty chair is endowed is, I'm sure, significantly adding to the fullness of his life at present. All I personally wish for is that he'd find the time to support (with citations) the primary thrust of his original post: that in opposing the U.S.'s imperial intervention, there was/is a meaningful/noteworthy push on "The Left" claiming Qaddafi to've been "benevolent".
Alexander Cockburn plus anonymous posts in blog comment sections don't cut it.
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
Actually, Michael name-checked Dennis Kucinich, Robert Naiman, my old professor Francis Boyle, Steve Lendman, James Petras, Robert Fisk, and John Pilger. And it's pretty clear in context that he's referring to those last four when he mentions "doughty soi-disant anti-imperialists" who "doubled down on the delusion that Qaddafi is a legitimate and benevolent ruler".
ReplyDeleteWhich, you know, they did. So I'm not sure where all this bile is coming from.
-- Incidentally, the Hugh Roberts article discussed above sits right on the border of this. It doesn't call Qaddafi a benevolent ruler, quite, but it's not particularly critical of him either. There's some finger wagging, one "dark" incident, head-shaking regret at his refusal to build civil society and real political participation... balanced by a fair amount of praise: Qaddafi developed the economy! was a real nationalist! was good for Africa! Along with the usual silly tu quoques: sure, Qaddafi supported the regime of genocidal monster Idi Amin in Uganda -- up to and including sending Libyan troops so that Amin could invade neighboring Tanzania -- but the *West* supported Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire!
If Roberts isn't calling Qaddafi a legitimate and benevolent ruler, he's definitely calling him a legitimate and really-not-all-that-bad one, with many positive and perhaps even admirable characteristics. And for this he got 12,000 words in the LRB. So it's not like a certain level of Qaddafi apologetics is exactly beyond the pale.
Doug M.
Thanks Geoff, that was an interesting article. It jives with what I remember of Libya from the days when I was much younger and (almost) as sure of myself as Doug.
ReplyDelete"Actually, Michael name-checked Dennis Kucinich, Robert Naiman, my old professor Francis Boyle, Steve Lendman, James Petras, Robert Fisk, and John Pilger. And it's pretty clear in context that he's referring to those last four when he mentions "doughty soi-disant anti-imperialists" who "doubled down on the delusion that Qaddafi is a legitimate and benevolent ruler".
ReplyDeleteWhich, you know, they did. So I'm not sure where all this bile is coming from."
Cites, please. I'd like to see specifically where each of the above folks (only 2 of whom, by the way, I've ever personally heard of in my life) referred to Qaddafi as legitimate and benevolent.
TIA,
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
Empty, you made a number of points in your first comment. I disagreed with one of them, gave my reasons why, and provided a link to a longer discussion of the relevant point. Your response is, "well aren't YOU sure of yourself!"
ReplyDeleteAs the kids say, whatevs.
Doug M.
Hi Doug
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether you will see this but my poke at you (and believe it or not it was an affectionate poke) was not because of your response to me but because of your comments about the Hugh Roberts article. Not that I don't disagree with your response to me but the proximate cause was not that.
You see Qaddafi as a murderous buffoon, a characterization I have no problems with at all, and you seem to object to the article because it does not use this characterization and instead treats Qaddafi as the ruler of Libya. You agree that Roberts does not call Qaddafi a benevolent leader but in the absence of a condemnation you feel the whiff of a positive evaluation. Let me posit to you a different situation, a different leader, say George W. Bush. This is someone I would consider a buffoon, with his rapidly changing accent, his brush clearing on his faux ranch, his crotch hugging flight suit, and his tough guy act. Maybe not in the class of the sartorial comedy that was Qaddafi but a buffoon nonetheless. As far as responsibility for blood was concerned I think that Bush bears the responsibility for many many more deaths than Qaddafi. Not, I hasten to add, because Qaddafi was more benevolent than Bush - more for the lack of opportunity. But, be that as it may, the reality is that Bush "achieved" more in the bloodletting department. Now if I was to write a piece about the years of the Bush presidency I doubt I would talk about his bufoonry or focus on his personal responsibility for the blood spilled. I would probably talk about the militarization of US foreign policy (or the increase thereof) and the ideology of non-regulation, treating Bush as the president of the United States. Qaddafi, for all that he was a murderous thug, was the ruler of Libya for four decades, and during the time he was the ruler of Libya he took actions which had an impact on the people of Libya and on the people of the region and some of that impact may well have been positive. The fact that he was a murderous thug and the fact that some of his policies had a positive impact can both exist at the same time. The Roberts article I think does a fair job of trying to present the history of Libya. That in the process he does not do a ritual denunciation of Qaddafi does not, in my opinion, detract from the article. In your opinion it clearly does. There was a time I would have felt more like you. Hence the poke.