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Agreeing With Pfaff’s Thoughts on Libya
Old timer William Pfaff on the issue of Libya:
The insurgents want to be free from Colonel Qadaffi’s loathsome, fantasy-laden and brutal rule. We wish them success. However overt military intervention would transform a civil conflict into a war between the existing Libyan government and the West – the U.S., NATO, Europe.
The essence of the general Arab uprising is that it has been popular, authentic, spontaneous, democratic, and (with respect to established international political and economic interests) disinterested. This has been its marvel, and the source of its strength. It has been unique. An overt foreign military intervention threatens to discredit all that, undermining the essential quality of the Arab Revolution.
The last sentence in that quote is important to keep in mind. Any intervention in Libya would likely stop the wave of democratic revolutions in the Middle East.
But that is probably not the bug but the feature and the very reason why the U.S. senator for Israel, Joe Lieberman, and other zionists are calling for war on Libya.
More from Pfaff:
The civil struggle in Libya is not merely Qadaffi versus the people, but an affair of the tribal attachments of an Arab and Berber population, whose separate regions (in modern times Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan), were under Ottoman domination from the sixteenth century forward, and were not united until the twentieth century, and separatism undoubtedly persists even now. Western policy planners, military men, and even humanitarian enthusiasts, do well not to blunder into things they know nothing about.
[…]
Moreover, military intervention is highly destructive. A “No-Fly” zone sounds sensible and prudent, but the United States (as Robert Gates has warned Washington) does not intervene anywhere without first suppressing all possible defensive threats to American forces. Hence a NATO or U.S no-fly zone would be preceded by days if not weeks of systematic bombardment of Libyan defensive sites, inevitably located near cities and oil installations, with much “collateral damage” and many civilian casualties. It is not a humanitarian policy.
I agree.
I am 95% against intervention – good piece by Pfaff.
A larger question, is what is the nature of the interventions, why are they framed as they are, etc.
A first level might be called diplomatic, of which we see none or little in this situation. Diplomacy naturally has some aim(s) which may go beyond negotiation for peace-keeping and saving lives. Nevertheless, it takes off on a base of non-violence and accords equal legitimacy to the different interlocutors. When it breaks down, not much is lost. Well, that is the spirit of it.
A second level is pressure through ostensibly non-military institutions, such as an arms embargo, seizing of financial assets, and virtually ‘arresting’ ppl to bring them to an International Court. These have been used against Lybia, mistakenly I believe. It inflames, leads to going for broke, and closes off diplomatic avenues. Measures of that type can be used as cards to play, as threats or offers. Implementing them as pre-emptive pressure when one does not measure the effects is blind stupidity.
A third level is aid. A slippery terrain. I suppose one should make an exception of purely humanitarian aid in the shape of food, water, med care, refugee tents, etc. However, it is hard to deliver, and inevitably helps one group more than another, and is of course either instrumentalized or not neutral to begin with. Other aid – logistics, vehicles, peace-keepers, etc. skates on thin ice, even in situations where civil strife doesn’t exist (e.g. Haiti, a total disaster.) The tradition of disinterested aid I reckon is dead.
Fourth, direct help for fighting – arms, etc. Military matters are not my forte. However, it means taking sides, and entering the fray. A big step. And the West doesn’t seem to have many options here, as they close them off themselves, and can only use major force to protect their own – bombs, shock and awe, etc. (e.g. Iraq.) In short, the use of military force is now inherently incredibly destructive, leads to a ‘razed earth’ result. Not good, not moral, not smart.
Maybe some of the West’s contradictions are beginning to be examined? That is the optimistic view. On the negative pole, the ridiculous hesitations and contradictory discourse and hapless use of various measures (which will no doubt continue) is a symptom of indecision facing the semi-certain loss of an accepted dictator.
Posted by: Noirette | Mar 11 2011 17:29 utc | 12
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