Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - President Museveni Discusses Libya &Gaddafi: A Must Read

Thanks, Edward Mensah, for succinctly capturing my thoughts on Rosemary's cheap tactic of resorting to the labeling game. It is indeed emotional blackmail designed to close shut down rational debate. When logic and facts are not on their side, they resort to the canard of who is "Western" or not Western in their thinking---whatever that means. Bode has eloquently addressed the philosophical peril of always and mechanically opposing all things Western. Why, for goodness sake, can't we examine what the West does and does not do on a case by case basis. Pointing out hypocrisies and inconsistencies is okay. But using that to critique what was clearly an intervention to save the population of a city from imminent, declared, no-mercy genocide (an intervention that was actively solicited by the audacious but outgunned rebels and their non-combatant supporters, by the way) then it ceases to be a mere critique of the well known Western double standards and morphs into something else. Why do we have to overcomplicate matters? When does complication become complicity? We have to be skeptical and vigilant. If the intervention exceeds its mandate and transitions into familiar imperial territories, we should pounce. But for now, we should all be happy that a genocidal dictator was prevented from decimating the people of Benghazi, whom he vowed not to show mercy to. Ghadafi's many crimes against Africa--the Africa he claims to love-- should strip him of any Pan-African sympathies. But if pan-AfriKans (note the uppercase "K") want to cheerlead him into continental heroism, it is their prerogative.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 11:16 PM, Mensah, Edward K. <dehasnem@uic.edu> wrote:

Rosemary the Decider of Africanness

Broadly classifying  certain people as Western  thinkers is your attempt
to derail all rational debates. In essence, your 'western thinkers' are at
least cognitively non-African. In your way of thinking, which to me is
quite non-African, only Western thinkers  see Ghaddafi, a guy who has
funded more wars and rebellions  in Africa than any leader in modern
African history--from Iddi Amin's Uganda to Sierra leone, Chad, Liberia,
Northern Nigeria, Southern Sudan, etc,.--as a murderer, opportunist,
megalomaniac, and a supreme dictator. And to real African thinkers he does
no wrong. Is that what you are saying? Or, inspite of all the problems he
has been causing in Africa over the past 4 decades, he will always be a
saint to real African thinkers,right?. Some of us will disagree with this
line of thinking. I do not respect or honor your credentials to decide on
who are the real African thinkers.

Best Regards

Kwaku Mensah
Chicago

, March 24, 2011 5:13 pm, ROSEMARY MWENJA wrote:
> Who is the oppressor and who is not? You are allowing yourself to be drawn
> into the Western way of thinking, The fact of the matter is that this is
> an internal matter and very suspect at how it started. Who are these

> rebels? What is their agenda? How different what they want from what

> Qaddafi is offering? Where does the West get the moral authority to
> support one group against another in a domesticated matter unless they are
> behind the insurgence in the first place?
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> --- On Thu, 3/24/11, Olabode Ibironke <ibironke@msu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: Olabode Ibironke <ibironke@msu.edu>
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - President Museveni Discusses
> Libya &Gaddafi: A Must Read
> To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com"
> <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
> Date: Thursday, March 24, 2011, 2:11 PM
>
>
>
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>  "I wonder how the US would react if the KKK were to rise up against the
> 'White House because a black man is the president', as noted by Louis
> Farrakhan?" Steve Nwabuzor
> This is the typical clannish mentality that is destroying progressive
> politics in Africa. All you need to do is invoke neocolonialism [or
> otherness etc] and suddenly comrades Mugabe and Museveni become heroes and
> spiritual masters that intellectuals begin to recite. Is the above not the
> exact content of Gaddafi's letter to Obama when he said 'if Al-Qaida [read
> KKK] were to challenge your authority tell me what you would do and I
> would follow your example.' It is thus on the record that in the desperate
> struggle of people in North Africa to throw off the yoke of oppression,
> certain AfriKan intellectuals were solidly on the side of their
> oppressors!!!
>
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