Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [GLOBAL-SOUTH] Libya -- strangling national freedom and self-determination

Ken,

For whatever reason (unconscious imperialist impulses, visceral dislike for Gaddafi, sincere repulsion against Gaddafi's tyranny--whatever) you are so profoundly emotionally invested in your point of view on the Libyan crisis as to be incapable of seeing your own illogic and double standards. Every government, including your government, protects itself against life-threatening rebellions with raw violence. Gaddafi did what American leaders did during the Civil War in the 1800s, what the Syrian government is doing right now against its own rebels (which you and NATO don't seem to notice or have a problem with), etc. It is naive, in the final analysis, to expect that any government would sit back and watch with blithe indifference as attempts are made to overthrow it. Every choice has a consequence and the rebels should and probably did know that. No sane person expects to be mollycoddled by the government he or she plans to overthrow.

I have never been a fan of Gaddafi. I have dismissed him as a psychotic but FUNCTIONAL tyrant who birthed modern Libya and made it a better country than most countries in Africa and indeed in the developing world. While I personally chafe at tyranny and would hesitate to be a citizen of Libya under Gaddafi's rule, many (perhaps most) Nigerians, for instance, would probably rather have a Gaddafi rule them (with all his eccentricities and despotism) than all the military and "democratic" rulers they've had since independence. As Alexander Pope famously said, "for forms of government, let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best."

Now, I think it's perfectly legitimate that some Libyans thought Gaddafi deserved to exit power because, although he transformed Libya from a backward, perpetually feuding agglomeration of disparate ethnic identities into a modern prosperous nation, he overstayed his time in power. What isn't legitimate is for a group of rapacious, blood-sucking Western imperialists to interfere in the internal politics of another country and engage in the insensate murders of scores of people in the name of "protecting" the people. If the Libyan rebels fought their battle on their own--with all the consequences that it would necessarily have entailed-- and won a hard victory against Gaddafi, I would be one of the first people to celebrate their valor and determination. But the current victory isn't theirs. Not by a long stretch. It's the victory of imperialism. And imperialism, not the Libyan people, would milk the victory for what it's worth. The rebels may declare sharia as their code of morality to govern the people. That changes nothing.That's not the big price. After all, even NATO admitted that many of the rebels are al Qaeda members or sympathizers.

Gaddafi's murder of his own people was condemnable. But every government would do the same. NATO's murders of innocent Libyans it had no legitimate reason to murder is even more condemnable. Should NATO (which some people now call North Atlantic Terrorist Organization) become the world's police and intervene anywhere rebels take up arms against their governments?

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Journalism & Citizen Media
Department of Communication
Kennesaw State University
1000 Chastain Road, MD 2207 

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell:  (+1) 404-573-969:
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/farooqkperogi

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/farooqkperogi

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 7:23 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

i don't understand the logic of these protests. to be sure the nato bombings caused deaths. it was, after all, a war to which they joined one side. the notion that their intervention was otherwise seems disingenuous on both sides. but it was a war that even the guardian reporter calls one against a despot. it was a war of liberation, one that some opposed because they liked the despot, not because of the deaths caused by nato. if it was because of the deaths caused by nato, then why do we hear nothing about the larger numbers of deaths caused by the despot, the 1000 deaths recorded in the prison that was liberated in tripoli, in addition to the 50 prisoners killed by the ntc in surt?
pablo, farooq, where is your account of the deaths he caused in this attempt to put down the rebellion? would you have preferred a brutal military dictatorship continue with his sons forever? how did you feel about abacha? would you have not sympathized with a rebellion aimed at overthrowning his regime?
ken

On 10/27/11 9:46 AM, Farooq A. Kperogi wrote:

Pablo,

Thanks so much for this, article! In Gaddafi's 42 years of tyranny, he killed far fewer civilians than NATO and its irredeemably racist so-called rebel forces did in just a few months. So much for saving "civilian lives"!

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Journalism & Citizen Media
Department of Communication
Kennesaw State University
1000 Chastain Road, MD 2207 

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell:  (+1) 404-573-969:
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/farooqkperogi

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/farooqkperogi

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 1:57 AM, Pablo Idahosa <pidahosa@yorku.ca> wrote:

The evidence, if more be needed, is here and there, and now everywhere, for those who thought that the Africa Union's efforts to broker a some kind of negotiation  was an impossibility in the face of next to no evidence about mercenaries, and even less about genocide, and  who cheerled a so-called revolution over and to what-- this by NATO and these people?
Well done; you deserve each other

Pablo


-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	[GLOBAL-SOUTH] Libya -- strangling national freedom and self-determination
Date:	Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:42:11 -0700
From:	Felipe Stuart C <fcstuartca@YAHOO.CA>
Reply-To:	Felipe Stuart C <fcstuartca@YAHOO.CA>
To:	GLOBAL-SOUTH@YORKU.CA

If the Libyan war was about saving lives, it was a catastrophic failure

Nato claimed it would protect civilians in Libya, but delivered far more killing. It's a warning to the Arab world and Africa

• • 
    

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 October 2011 22.20 BST
  • http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/26/libya-war-saving-lives-catastrophic-failure
    

Anti-Gaddafi fighters gesture to the crowds in front of a Kingdom of Libya flag during celebrations in Benghazi on 23 October. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
As the most hopeful offshoot of the "Arab spring" so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That's not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Gaddafi, courtesy of a Nato attack on his convoy.
The grisly killing of the Libyan despot after his captors had sodomised him with a knife, was certainly a war crime. But many inside and outside Libya doubtless also felt it was an understandable act of revenge after years of regime violence. Perhaps that was Hillary Clinton's reaction, when she joked about it on camera, until global revulsion pushed the US to call for an investigation.
As the reality of what western media have hailed as Libya's "liberation" becomes clearer, however, the butchering of Gaddafi has been revealed as only a reflection of a much bigger picture. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Gaddafi's last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed – with their hands tied – by former rebel militia.
Its investigator in Libya, Peter Bouckaert, told me yesterday that more bodies are continuing to be discovered in Sirte, where evidence suggests about 500 people, civilians and fighters, have been killed in the last 10 days alone by shooting, shelling and Nato bombing.
That has followed a two month-long siege and indiscriminate bombardment of a city of 100,000 which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with Nato air and special-forces support.
And these massacre sites are only the latest of many such discoveries. Amnesty International has now produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed for the last eight months – supposedly to stop exactly those kind of crimes being committed by the Gaddafi regime.
Throughout that time African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town's predominantly black population – accused of backing Gaddafi – will be unable to return.
All the while, Nato leaders and cheerleading media have turned a blind eye to such horrors as they boast of a triumph of freedom and murmur about the need for restraint. But it is now absolutely clear that, if the purpose of western intervention in Libya's civil war was to "protect civilians" and save lives, it has been a catastrophic failure.
David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy won the authorisation to use "all necessary means" from the UN security council in March on the basis that Gaddafi's forces were about to commit a Srebrenica-style massacre in Benghazi. Naturally we can never know what would have happened without Nato's intervention. But there is in fact no evidence – including from other rebel-held towns Gaddafi re-captured – to suggest he had either the capability or even the intention to carry out such an atrocity against an armed city of 700,000.
What is now known, however, is that while the death toll in Libya when Nato intervened was perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by UN estimates), eight months later it is probably more than ten times that figure. Estimates of the numbers of dead over the last eight months – as Nato leaders vetoed ceasefires and negotiations – range from 10,000 up to 50,000. The National Transitional Council puts the losses at 30,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.
Of those, uncounted thousands will be civilians, including those killed by Nato bombing and Nato-backed forces on the ground. These figures dwarf the death tolls in this year's other most bloody Arab uprisings, in Syria and Yemen. Nato has not protected civilians in Libya – it has multiplied the number of their deaths, while losing not a single soldier of its own.
For the western powers, of course, the Libyan war has allowed them to regain ground lost in Tunisia and Egypt, put themselves at the heart of the upheaval sweeping the most strategically sensitive region in the world, and secure valuable new commercial advantages in an oil-rich state whose previous leadership was at best unreliable. No wonder the new British defence secretary is telling businessmen to "pack their bags" for Libya, and the US ambassador in Tripoli insists American companies are needed on a "big scale".
But for Libyans, it has meant a loss of ownership of their own future and the effective imposition of a western-picked administration of Gaddafi defectors and US and British intelligence assets. Probably the greatest challenge to that takeover will now come from Islamist military leaders on the ground, such as the Tripoli commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj – kidnapped by MI6 to be tortured in Libya in 2004 – who have already made clear they will not be taking orders from the NTC.
No wonder the council's leaders are now asking Nato to stay on, and Nato officials have let it be known they will "take action" if Libyan factions end up fighting among themselves.
The Libyan precedent is a threat to hopes of genuine change and independence across the Arab world – and beyond. In Syria, where months of bloody repression risk tipping into fullscale civil war, elements of the opposition have started to call for a "no-fly zone" to protect civilians. And in Africa, where Barack Obama has just sent troops to Uganda and France is giving military support to Kenyan intervention in Somalia, the opportunities for dressing up a new scramble for resources as humanitarian intervention are limitless.
The once savagely repressed progressive Islamist party An-Nahda won the Tunisian elections this week on a platform of pluralist democracy, social justice and national independence. Tunisia has faced nothing like the backlash the uprisings in other Arab countries have received, but that spirit is the driving force of the movement for change across a region long manipulated and dominated by foreign powers.
What the Libyan tragedy has brutally hammered home is that foreign intervention doesn't only strangle national freedom and self-determination – it doesn't protect lives either.

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--  kenneth w. harrow  distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu

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