Rundle: Pollyanna rhetoric hiding the truth on helping Libyans
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With Muammar Gaddafi’s forces now beginning to slowly beat back and possibly overwhelm the rebel forces through superior firepower, especially air power, the question of outside support through the means of a no-fly zone and other measures, has become urgent — if it is not already too late. Yet at this point where the actual revolutionary crisis point has occurred, the moment where a revolution marks a break point between the old and the new, where things must be thought afresh, right and left in the West have become paralysed, unable to live up to their own principles, and retreating into consoling narratives, or even into abject silence. The right’s paralysis was encapsulated in an editorial published in The Australian, stung into response by repeated charges that it was willing to start two wars for “the freedom” of peoples that didn’t ask for them, while turning its back on people who are clamouring for a limited and much less involving form of support. How did they respond to the charge that Libya demonstrated that the “Bush doctrine” was a comforting fantasy? By retreating into fantasy about Bush and Reagan “……”. So these sterling examples urge us on to take action? Er, not exactly: “The Australian is heartily encouraged by the overthrow of dictators and the emergence of democratic movements in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere in the region.” That’s it. The cognitive dissonance is total. By celebrating the fantasy notion that Arab people rising up were “inspired by George Bush”, any present obligation to the people themselves can be written off. Large sections of the right, and also significant groups of the left-liberal pro-Iraq war group have retreated from any engagement with the Libyan rebels, under the banner of “no foreign intervention”. But this is to obscure the categorical difference between “intervention” — with its suggestion of a massive and autonomous operation, performed without reference to forces on the ground — and “support”, which involves assisting a group of people who are making their own revolution, and who have requested assistance. That there has been a request for support is without question. It has come from the interim government in Benghazi. Abdel Jilali, Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister, has made this explicit. They want outside forces to “help to protect Libya’s people from Gaddafi’s assault and help put an end to his war”. Once that request has been made by some group with reasonable claim to legitimacy, the situation is categorically different to an act of intervention. It does not have to be honoured, but nor can it be ducked. The right can please themselves on this — hypocrisy is ultimately fatal to a political movement — but, sadly, many on the anti-imperialist left show no recognition that a request for support requires a different political response. Thus, in yesterday’s Guardian, a group letter signed by Tony Benn, John Pilger, the “Stop the War” coalition, an Iraqi anti-occupation group, and a Muslim group, opposes any action — still couched in terms of “intervention” — and notes that “Interference in Libya could strengthen Gaddafi’s hand”, among other arguments, going back into the history of imperialism, oil, etc, in the region. I won’t do the Christopher Hitchens thing (he’s been pretty quiet too) in damning people I’ve hitherto agreed with, but this letter is, at best, badly worded and, at worst, terribly reasoned. “Interference” in Libya may well strengthen Gaddafi’s hand, but that’s a strategic question, and I don’t think the Libyan rebels need us to make those decisions for them. The same goes as to whether the legacy of imperialism should matter here. The signatories of the letter don’t seem to realise that they are making a whole series of imperious judgments as to how the Libyans should think about their situation. None of it is relevant, once a request for support has been made. All that matters is whether the request comes from legitimate leadership, is strategically viable, and can be limited in scope. Those conditions appear to have been met. The anti-imperialist left is in a major jam over Libya. They’re falling back on a firm anti-imperialist line: to quote the UK Socialist Worker, reprinted in Australia’s Socialist Alternative — “We have to let the Libyan people make their own revolution.” The trouble is, in making that revolution the Libyan people are, as free revolutionary subjects, asking for material support. In which case, the refusal to even consider arguing for such amounts not to non-intervention, but to a refusal of solidarity. To “let them make their own revolution …” in such condition is not a guarantee of autonomy, but to treat a people like children. It is to go beyond respect for national self-determination, to a rigid respect for national boundaries more characteristic of realpolitik conservatives than internationalist radicals. Pollyanna rhetoric is being used to hide the truth: “The rebels still have the initiative, and they need to keep it,” says the Socialist Worker, being helpful. The affirmative anti-imperialist position has become its opposite, in a hyper-interconnected world. It’s now a manifesto for passivity and fatalism. A pity really. Quite aside from supporting a brave and honourable uprising, by honouring its requests, a more audacious idea of what should be advocated when, would serve to make the politics clear in the West: the left supports people rising up, the right is indifferent, or hostile to it. Many of them will not be disturbed to see Gaddafi regain full power. It would have been good to challenge them more unequivocally to show their true colours. |
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14 Comments
Guy, last week you failed to note that the rebels who were asking for assistance had previously rejected any suggestion of assistance. Today you do it again. Mustafa Abdul Jalil has indeed requested help and has asked the international community to follow the example of France and recognize his government. But he does so after only a week ago rejecting any suggestion of intervention. Some balance wouldn’t go astray.
For my part, I’m fed up to the back teeth of the dithering. We are continuing to maybe perhaps consider the idea of possible intervention although then again possibly not.
Make up your mind. You intervene and do good, or you do not. Stop faffing about. If you’re going to say no, then say no. Otherwise get in there and sort this bloody mess out.
But for everyone pushing for intervention - know that once you give your government the authority, indeed the moral imperative, to do this, you cannot take it back - and whatever comes next, comes next.
The US diplomat Peter Galbraith, who knows the region well, was interviewed a few days ago and said a “no fly zone” would be effective if only because declaring it would signal the end of Gaddafi. Pilots would be reluctant to fly and the regime’s supporters would be encouraging him to leave. Even in the south of Iraq, a NFZ was maintained in minimal fashion, a couple of planes cruised the sky, but Saddam did not attempt to challenge it.
The ‘shock and awe’ has gone, not with a bang, but a whimper, and all that’s left in its place is a huge stinking pile of hypocrisy.
While I’m very sympathetic to the Libyan freedom-fighters and hope they prevail, Guy’s analysis is too ideologically-driven and ignores the hard realities. Somewhere along the line we need to listen to some of the hard-heads like Robert Gates, not to mention General Lord Dannatt (former UK Chief of the General Staff), who urges caution and point out that previous ‘interventions’ have all turned into quagmires lasting on average 10 years: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/recent-history-tells-us-a-nofly-zone-is-a-bad-option-in-libya-20110310-1bpnu.html
Arm-chair strategists should avoid the temptation to make gung-ho pronouncements about military affairs. Sometimes the more limited options (Gannatt recommends providing finance and weapons to the ant-Ghadafi forces) can be a wiser course of action.
Meanwhile the Australian press is doing a dance over whether Gillard and Rudd are falling out over a no-fly-zone - do such swine care about the killing?
I agree, Guy. Wait, let me check. OK, brain on.
One issue is that Gaddafi’s upper hand in the military stakes is due partly to Western financial and military largesse. You can argue that countries like the UK have a duty to make good their own past sins. In that way it’s sort of like Afghanistan.
A no-fly zone is a no-brainer. It would probably even get UN support given the way the Security Council has been acting in the last week. Another tactic could be to offer an amnesty from international prosecution to any Gaddafi supporters or mercenaries who surrender, with the implicit hint of punishment of the loyalists.
I fear that <realpolitik of the EU is that they want the oil, so close & handy to them that it’s perfect for ELF and which happens also to be exceptionally sweet crude, low sulphur and easier to refine. There is no up side to intervening.
If they intervene & Gaddafi prevails they will be in deep doo-doo (to quote HWShrub).
If they don’t & Gaddafi falls, they will be no more likely to get access than if they do, since the desperate need for income will mean the new regime will sell as much as can be extracted and will need new equipment as well.
The point of EU intervention is moot since they haven’t the means - the UK is too stretched and the French are… french. The rest are irrelevant.
ha ha ha — had plenty of practice with that sort of terrible dilemma in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the locals didn’t know they needed rescuing, MLF. i.e. didn’t ask for intervention. They got it anyhow from a gung-ho US for some reason.
Sean, so witty!
Apart from the fact that you are wrong - there were calls to end Taliban rule and liberate Afg people, especially their women, well before 9/11; not to mention that the ‘some reason’ was 9/11 and US ‘gung-ho’ had support of UN Security Council Resolution.
Apart from this, yes - if what happened in those two countries happens in Libya, this time you can hold yourself to some account.
um, no, MLF, remember that problem with the failure to get a Security Council Resolution by the US who were champing at the bit to get into Iraq for some reason, so they had to invent a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and defy the UN and effectively become a rogue nation. Then many of the ‘CoTW’ later said they had been deceived with false information.
Remember the frantic search for WMD, when the UN inspection teams said over and over there weren’t any? (Or none worth worrying about, and the US and the French had sold them whatever they had anyway.) Dubya kept insisting there were, somewhere? Just not looking hard enough. Even joked about it in a speech to the party faithful once and that’s on video record.
How soon we forget, MLF, eh? Conveniently short and blurry memory?
You’re saying now people were agitating to invade one country only, Aghanistan, for the reason of liberating their women? Wasn’t that the convenient post-invasion excuse? You’re saying were ‘calls to invade’ a sovereign country to liberate their women? That has never happened in the history of humanity, except as a pretext. Where did these ‘calls’ come from, a strong internal people’s movement as we see in Libya, or geo-strategists inside the Republican Party? By your post hoc reasoning, Pakistan should be invaded also, as it also has a similar cultural record of treatment of women, as do other cultures in the area and elsewhere in the world. Unlike Libya where a large popular movement has already risen up and isn ow asking for assistance. The US govt had to invent the ‘doctrine of pre-emption’ to justify invading who it liked next. This is the hypocrisy Guy is alluding toin his writing.
Of course, Iraq never had anything to do with 9/11, GW Bush himself said so under questioning, and Hussein apparently disliked Usama bin Laden intensively and had nothing to do with him. The US had happened to train UBL in Afghanistan against the Russians many years earlier, so apparently that was enough of a reason to invade the entire country later and overturn its sovereign government. You know, the ones who had refused a pipeline to Unocal a little earlier in a meeting in Texas where they’d flown them in and everything. Note that UBL for many years denied staging the events of 9/11 and indeed was visited in hospital by US agents and cared for under US aegis just prior to the events. Some interesting connections there.
I’d say the US were far more interested in the trillion dollars worth of lithium for EPV batteries in the Afghanistan soil and its use as a pipeline for increasingly scarce hydrocarbon resources from the Caspian Sea region against China and Russia, in line with the PNAC. And it’s strategic location as a pincer in the Middle East and against the Russians, just like in the 19th century Great Game. Clearly ditto for Iraq. Empires invading places on a pretext is as old as the Romans.
Blah blah blah. God, I tuned out half way through.
The fatal flaw in your argument is Iraq and Afghanistan are different countries and different wars and you can see quite plainly from my post that I was referring to Afg only. So your rant is misguided.
Another flaw is that I didn’t say there were calls to invade. YOU said ‘the locals didn’t know they needed rescuing’, I said in the case of Afg women that was not true. And the calls came from humanitarian groups and womens groups and I lived in London at the time and I remember very very clearly the contempt by which the US was held for doing nothing to help these women. Some of that contempt came directly from me.
For all your mouthing off I hope you have not failed to note my main point which is that - when our governments intervene in Libya, we, the citizens calling for that intervention, must be prepared to accept responsibility for what comes next.
Of course you tuned out halfway thourgh, MLF, that would be the story of your life, of course. It’s convenient that way to protect your discourses, and short-circuits meaningful thinking.
There are concerns about the plight of women in Pakistan and Afghanistan too, but funnily enough not ‘calls’ to invade those countries by humanitarian groups. Because it appears the result of such invasions by the US is treating all locals as second-class citizens, firing on civilians willy-nilly, killing and murdering innocent families ex-judicially as we have seen, including relatives of the proposed new ruler (sometimes with his blessing), and selecting new puppet leaders from a pretty motley bunch of tribesmen who have had a meaningless nationhood thrust upon them by a post-colonial west some decades ago. The story of the first invasion of Afghanistan in the early 19th century was the same.
So what responsibility will ‘we’ accept for what comes next? What are the west’s motives in general really? Is there really a moral high ground in realpolitik? There certainly wasn’t in Afganistan or Iraq. Funny that your ‘different wars’ have been waged by the same country in quick succession.
I think the usually astute readers of Crikey will be judging your comments generally as silly, shallow and unthoughtful and give them the thrift they deserve.
Meaningful thinking doesn’t come from aimless rants that do not address the topic at hand, Sean. If you want to have a real in-depth about the US, Iraq, Afg, let’s go, I am quite capable. But that is not what this topic is about and it was not what my post was about.
What interests me is why, if you hold the US in such blatant contempt, do you want them to intervene in Libya. If they are so crap at everything and just treat people as second-class citizens etc as you say above, are the Libyans not far better off without us?
This goes to the heart of the hypocrisy that I am talking about. All those ‘the west sucks’ types now calling for the west to intervene. Thats fine, I believe we should and I believe, as stated before, we are best placed to help. But if the sh — it hits the fan in Libya and it dissolves into civil war, I am prepared to put my hand up and say - I gave our government authority to do this, I am in part responsible for the deaths here.
Are you?
Who said I was asking the US singly and solely to intervene in Libya? Where have I supported any intervention in my writing at all? Surely the Europeans are closer? It would be a UN decision, not a US one.
All the above are examples of your muddy thinking and flying to extreme conclusions. I’ve answered a couple of obvious idiotic posts, but I’m not going to continue with the waste of bandwidth.
You clearly haven’t read any of the press on the ongoing Iraq occupation by the US and its treatment of citizens by the armed forces, often written by soldiers on the ground. You like to tune in to the state-written propaganda, apparently. As I said, shallow, vacuous, meaningless, thoughtless, light years from any reality or understanding. Not even worth debating the substance with you.
I couldn’t agree more Sean.
Before signing off, a final note on two things.
1. You have absolutely no idea about my position on Iraq. You have fabricated it on the basis of what you think I might think. Its not the first time today you have been wrong.
2. You remain incapable of saying you will accept part responsibility for the consequences of any intervention in Libya. Foreign policy is much easier from the armchair, isn’t it.