[P2P-F] Understanding the Libyan Revolution: Aug. 24

Michel Bauwens michel at p2pfoundation.net
Mon Sep 12 11:52:17 CEST 2011


ok, looking forward to that add and to collectivize the input to the blog!!

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Amaia Arcos <amaia.arcos at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Roving correspondent is going to have to become correspondents' overseer
> soon, there is only so much one can follow! (and I appreciate your
> appreciation but, going against myself, I don't think I am doing a very good
> job o.O)
>
> Have been drafting an "ad" to try and get more specialised in their region
> bloggers/curators for the P2P Foundation Blog..
>
>
> On 12 September 2011 11:35, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>wrote:
>
>> he's a bit to prolific for me to follow him, that's why I'm so happy to
>> have a roving correspondent <g>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Amaia Arcos <amaia.arcos at googlemail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I amen-ed Juan's article when he published it and even sent him a message
>>> of appreciation and gratitude. When I was in university studying Middle
>>> Eastern History we (students and lecturers) used to refer to him with
>>> respect. It is not easy being an American inside the US and be critical of
>>> your own country's policies, especially when there is so much censorship and
>>> propaganda going on. At the same time, it is unreal he has got so much flack
>>> for saying it like it is in the case of Libya.
>>>
>>> The man knows his history and knows how to interpret current events. I
>>> would definitely recommend his blog to anyone who is interested in Middle
>>> Eastern affairs and hearing it like is. Ie, no propagandistic agenda
>>> defending either side, just facts, whether we like them or not.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12 September 2011 08:07, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Tikkun <rabbilerner at tikkun.org>
>>>> Date: Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 11:53 PM
>>>> Subject: Understanding the Libyan Revolution: Aug. 24
>>>> To: Michelsub2004 at gmail.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Tikkun<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=rp%2FTUVSJJfHHih1ZuwrckPuwBifuSKB2>
>>>>   to heal, repair and transform the world       *A note from Rabbi
>>>> Michael Lerner** * Join or Donate Now!<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=BhV%2F9sitNBUPkGNYmQAOtcHRxXqZTX4s>
>>>>
>>>> Editor's note: *While Juan Cole's article may be a bit too quick to
>>>> declare that the Libyan revolution has succeeded, it does provide us
>>>> with a very useful analysis as well as a critique of those in the liberal or
>>>> progressive world who dismissed the whole struggle as nothing but another
>>>> example of Western imperialism. Sometimes even the Western powers can do
>>>> good things, and a sophisticated spiritual progressive always seeks to
>>>> understand the complexities rather than embracing one dimensional analyses.
>>>> And this one could be wrong also! That's how we have to approach the
>>>> world--with open heart, genuine caring about the well-being for others, and
>>>> modesty about how much we know about the details of any given situation and
>>>> how best to be helpful. That's why, in calling for the overthrow of another
>>>> dictator, Asad of Syria, I placed that call within the framework of a
>>>> commitment to non-violence, hoping that there could be in Syria a less
>>>> violent resolution to the conflict than has happened so far in Libya, and
>>>> Libya is not over yet!** --Rabbi Michael Lerner*
>>>>
>>>> Top Ten Myths About the Libya War
>>>>
>>>> by Juan Cole
>>>> Posted on 08/22/2011
>>>> http://www.juancole.com/2011/08/top-ten-myths-about-the-libya-war.html
>>>>
>>>> The Libyan Revolution has largely succeeded, and this is
>>>> a moment of celebration, not only for Libyans but for a
>>>> youth generation in the Arab world that has pursued a
>>>> political opening across the region. The secret of the
>>>> uprising's final days of success lay in a popular revolt
>>>> in the working-class districts of the capital, which did
>>>> most of the hard work of throwing off the rule of secret
>>>> police and military cliques. It succeeded so well that
>>>> when revolutionary brigades entered the city from the
>>>> west, many encountered little or no resistance, and they
>>>> walked right into the center of the capital. Muammar
>>>> Qaddafi was in hiding as I went to press, and three of
>>>> his sons were in custody. Saif al-Islam Qaddafi had
>>>> apparently been the de facto ruler of the country in
>>>> recent years, so his capture signaled a checkmate.
>>>> (Checkmate is a corruption of the Persian "shah maat,"
>>>> the "king is confounded," since chess came west from
>>>> India via Iran). Checkmate.
>>>>
>>>> The end game, wherein the people of Tripoli overthrew
>>>> the Qaddafis and joined the opposition Transitional
>>>> National Council, is the best case scenario that I had
>>>> suggested was the most likely denouement for the
>>>> revolution. I have been making this argument for some
>>>> time, and it evoked a certain amount of incredulity when
>>>> I said it in a lecture in the Netherlands in mid-June,
>>>> but it has all along been my best guess that things
>>>> would end the way they have. I got it right where others
>>>> did not because my premises turned out to be sounder,
>>>> i.e., that Qaddafi had lost popular support across the
>>>> board and was in power only through main force. Once
>>>> enough of his heavy weapons capability was disrupted,
>>>> and his fuel and ammunition supplies blocked, the
>>>> underlying hostility of the common people to the regime
>>>> could again manifest itself, as it had in February. I
>>>> was moreover convinced that the generality of Libyans
>>>> were attracted by the revolution and by the idea of a
>>>> political opening, and that there was no great danger to
>>>> national unity here.
>>>>
>>>> I do not mean to underestimate the challenges that still
>>>> lie ahead- mopping up operations against regime
>>>> loyalists, reestablishing law and order in cities that
>>>> have seen popular revolutions, reconstituting police and
>>>> the national army, moving the Transitional National
>>>> Council to Tripoli, founding political parties, and
>>>> building a new, parliamentary regime. Even in much more
>>>> institutionalized and less clan-based societies such as
>>>> Tunisia and Egypt, these tasks have proved anything but
>>>> easy. But it would be wrong, in this moment of triumph
>>>> for the Libyan Second Republic, to dwell on the
>>>> difficulties to come. Libyans deserve a moment of
>>>> exultation.
>>>>
>>>> I have taken a lot of heat for my support of the
>>>> revolution and of the United Nations-authorized
>>>> intervention by the Arab League and NATO that kept it
>>>> from being crushed. I haven't taken nearly as much heat
>>>> as the youth of Misrata who fought off Qaddafi's tank
>>>> barrages, though, so it is OK. I hate war, having
>>>> actually lived through one in Lebanon, and I hate the
>>>> idea of people being killed. My critics who imagined me
>>>> thrilling at NATO bombing raids were just being cruel.
>>>> But here I agree with President Obama and his citation
>>>> of Reinhold Niebuhr. You can't protect all victims of
>>>> mass murder everywhere all the time. But where you can
>>>> do some good, you should do it, even if you cannot do
>>>> all good. I mourn the deaths of all the people who died
>>>> in this revolution, especially since many of the Qaddafi
>>>> brigades were clearly coerced (they deserted in large
>>>> numbers as soon as they felt it safe). But it was clear
>>>> to me that Qaddafi was not a man to compromise, and that
>>>> his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries
>>>> if it were allowed to.
>>>>
>>>> Moreover, those who question whether there were US
>>>> interests in Libya seem to me a little blind. The US has
>>>> an interest in there not being massacres of people for
>>>> merely exercising their right to free assembly. The US
>>>> has an interest in a lawful world order, and therefore
>>>> in the United Nations Security Council resolution
>>>> demanding that Libyans be protected from their murderous
>>>> government. The US has an interest in its NATO alliance,
>>>> and NATO allies France and Britain felt strongly about
>>>> this intervention. The US has a deep interest in the
>>>> fate of Egypt, and what happened in Libya would have
>>>> affected Egypt (Qaddafi allegedly had high Egyptian
>>>> officials on his payroll).
>>>>
>>>> Given the controversies about the revolution, it is
>>>> worthwhile reviewing the myths about the Libyan
>>>> Revolution that led so many observers to make so many
>>>> fantastic or just mistaken assertions about it.
>>>>
>>>> 1. Qaddafi was a progressive in his domestic policies.
>>>> While back in the 1970s, Qaddafi was probably more
>>>> generous in sharing around the oil wealth with the
>>>> population, buying tractors for farmers, etc., in the
>>>> past couple of decades that policy changed. He became
>>>> vindictive against tribes in the east and in the
>>>> southwest that had crossed him politically, depriving
>>>> them of their fair share in the country's resources. And
>>>> in the past decade and a half, extreme corruption and
>>>> the rise of post-Soviet-style oligarchs, including
>>>> Qaddafi and his sons, have discouraged investment and
>>>> blighted the economy. Workers were strictly controlled
>>>> and unable to collectively bargain for improvements in
>>>> their conditions. There was much more poverty and poor
>>>> infrastructure in Libya than there should have been in
>>>> an oil state.
>>>>
>>>> 2. Qaddafi was a progressive in his foreign policy.
>>>> Again, he traded for decades on positions, or postures,
>>>> he took in the 1970s. In contrast, in recent years he
>>>> played a sinister role in Africa, bankrolling brutal
>>>> dictators and helping foment ruinous wars. In 1996 the
>>>> supposed champion of the Palestinian cause expelled
>>>> 30,000 stateless Palestinians from the country. After he
>>>> came in from the cold, ending European and US sanctions,
>>>> he began buddying around with George W. Bush, Silvio
>>>> Berlusconi and other right wing figures. Berlusconi has
>>>> even said that he considered resigning as Italian prime
>>>> minister once NATO began its intervention, given his
>>>> close personal relationship to Qaddafi. Such a
>>>> progressive.
>>>>
>>>> 3. It was only natural that Qaddafi sent his military
>>>> against the protesters and revolutionaries; any country
>>>> would have done the same. No, it wouldn't, and this is
>>>> the argument of a moral cretin. In fact, the Tunisian
>>>> officer corps refused to fire on Tunisian crowds for
>>>> dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and the Egyptian
>>>> officer corps refused to fire on Egyptian crowds for
>>>> Hosni Mubarak. The willingness of the Libyan officer
>>>> corps to visit macabre violence on protesting crowds
>>>> derived from the centrality of the Qaddafi sons and
>>>> cronies at the top of the military hierarchy and from
>>>> the lack of connection between the people and the
>>>> professional soldiers and mercenaries. Deploying the
>>>> military against non-combatants was a war crime, and
>>>> doing so in a widespread and systematic way was a crime
>>>> against humanity. Qaddafi and his sons will be tried for
>>>> this crime, which is not "perfectly natural."
>>>>
>>>> 4. There was a long stalemate in the fighting between
>>>> the revolutionaries and the Qaddafi military. There was
>>>> not. This idea was fostered by the vantage point of many
>>>> Western observers, in Benghazi. It is true that there
>>>> was a long stalemate at Brega, which ended yesterday
>>>> when the pro-Qaddafi troops there surrendered. But the
>>>> two most active fronts in the war were Misrata and its
>>>> environs, and the Western Mountain region. Misrata
>>>> fought an epic, Stalingrad-style, struggle of self-
>>>> defense against attacking Qaddafi armor and troops,
>>>> finally proving victorious with NATO help, and then they
>>>> gradually fought to the west toward Tripoli. The most
>>>> dramatic battles and advances were in the largely Berber
>>>> Western Mountain region, where, again, Qaddafi armored
>>>> units relentlessly shelled small towns and villages but
>>>> were fought off (with less help from NATO initially,
>>>> which I think did not recognize the importance of this
>>>> theater). It was the revolutionary volunteers from this
>>>> region who eventually took Zawiya, with the help of the
>>>> people of Zawiya, last Friday and who thereby cut
>>>> Tripoli off from fuel and ammunition coming from Tunisia
>>>> and made the fall of the capital possible. Any close
>>>> observer of the war since April has seen constant
>>>> movement, first at Misrata and then in the Western
>>>> Mountains, and there was never an over-all stalemate.
>>>>
>>>> 5. The Libyan Revolution was a civil war. It was not, if
>>>> by that is meant a fight between two big groups within
>>>> the body politic. There was nothing like the vicious
>>>> sectarian civilian-on-civilian fighting in Baghdad in
>>>> 2006. The revolution began as peaceful public protests,
>>>> and only when the urban crowds were subjected to
>>>> artillery, tank, mortar and cluster bomb barrages did
>>>> the revolutionaries begin arming themselves. When
>>>> fighting began, it was volunteer combatants representing
>>>> their city quarters taking on trained regular army
>>>> troops and mercenaries. That is a revolution, not a
>>>> civil war. Only in a few small pockets of territory,
>>>> such as Sirte and its environs, did pro-Qaddafi
>>>> civilians oppose the revolutionaries, but it would be
>>>> wrong to magnify a handful of skirmishes of that sort
>>>> into a civil war. Qaddafi's support was too limited, too
>>>> thin, and too centered in the professional military, to
>>>> allow us to speak of a civil war.
>>>>
>>>> 6. Libya is not a real country and could have been
>>>> partitioned between east and west.
>>>> Alexander Cockburn wrote,
>>>>
>>>>     "It requites no great prescience to see that this
>>>>     will all end up badly. Qaddafi's failure to
>>>>     collapse on schedule is prompting increasing
>>>>     pressure to start a ground war, since the NATO
>>>>     operation is, in terms of prestige, like the banks
>>>>     Obama has bailed out, Too Big to Fail. Libya will
>>>>     probably be balkanized."
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand the propensity of Western analysts to
>>>> keep pronouncing nations in the global south
>>>> "artificial" and on the verge of splitting up. It is a
>>>> kind of Orientalism. All nations are artificial.
>>>> Benedict Anderson dates the nation-state to the late
>>>> 1700s, and even if it were a bit earlier, it is a new
>>>> thing in history. Moreover, most nation-states are
>>>> multi-ethnic, and many long-established ones have sub-
>>>> nationalisms that threaten their unity. Thus, the
>>>> Catalans and Basque are uneasy inside Spain, the
>>>> Scottish may bolt Britain any moment, etc., etc. In
>>>> contrast, Libya does not have any well-organized,
>>>> popular separatist movements. It does have tribal
>>>> divisions, but these are not the basis for nationalist
>>>> separatism, and tribal alliances and fissures are more
>>>> fluid than ethnicity (which is itself less fixed than
>>>> people assume). Everyone speaks Arabic, though for
>>>> Berbers it is the public language; Berbers were among
>>>> the central Libyan heroes of the revolution, and will be
>>>> rewarded with a more pluralist Libya. This generation of
>>>> young Libyans, who waged the revolution, have mostly
>>>> been through state schools and have a strong allegiance
>>>> to the idea of Libya. Throughout the revolution, the
>>>> people of Benghazi insisted that Tripoli was and would
>>>> remain the capital. Westerners looking for break-ups
>>>> after dictatorships are fixated on the Balkan events
>>>> after 1989, but there most often isn't an exact analogue
>>>> to those in the contemporary Arab world.
>>>>
>>>> 7. There had to be NATO infantry brigades on the ground
>>>> for the revolution to succeed. Everyone from Cockburn to
>>>> Max Boot (scary when those two agree) put forward this
>>>> idea. But there are not any foreign infantry brigades in
>>>> Libya, and there are unlikely to be any. Libyans are
>>>> very nationalistic and they made this clear from the
>>>> beginning. Likewise the Arab League. NATO had some
>>>> intelligence assets on the ground, but they were small
>>>> in number, were requested behind the scenes for liaison
>>>> and spotting by the revolutionaries, and did not amount
>>>> to an invasion force. The Libyan people never needed
>>>> foreign ground brigades to succeed in their revolution.
>>>>
>>>> 8. The United States led the charge to war. There is no
>>>> evidence for this allegation whatsoever. When I asked
>>>> Glenn Greenwald whether a US refusal to join France and
>>>> Britain in a NATO united front might not have destroyed
>>>> NATO, he replied that NATO would never have gone forward
>>>> unless the US had plumped for the intervention in the
>>>> first place. I fear that answer was less fact-based and
>>>> more doctrinaire than we are accustomed to hearing from
>>>> Mr. Greenwald, whose research and analysis on domestic
>>>> issues is generally first-rate. As someone not a
>>>> stranger to diplomatic history, and who has actually
>>>> heard briefings in Europe from foreign ministries and
>>>> officers of NATO members, I'm offended at the glibness
>>>> of an answer given with no more substantiation than an
>>>> idee fixe. The excellent McClatchy wire service reported
>>>> on the reasons for which then Secretary of Defense
>>>> Robert Gates, the Pentagon, and Obama himself were
>>>> extremely reluctant to become involved in yet another
>>>> war in the Muslim world. It is obvious that the French
>>>> and the British led the charge on this intervention,
>>>> likely because they believed that a protracted struggle
>>>> over years between the opposition and Qaddafi in Libya
>>>> would radicalize it and give an opening to al-Qaeda and
>>>> so pose various threats to Europe. French President
>>>> Nicolas Sarkozy had been politically mauled, as well, by
>>>> the offer of his defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie,
>>>> to send French troops to assist Ben Ali in Tunisia
>>>> (Alliot-Marie had been Ben Ali's guest on fancy
>>>> vacations), and may have wanted to restore traditional
>>>> French cachet in the Arab world as well as to look
>>>> decisive to his electorate. Whatever Western Europe's
>>>> motivations, they were the decisive ones, and the Obama
>>>> administration clearly came along as a junior partner
>>>> (something Sen. John McCain is complaining bitterly
>>>> about).
>>>>
>>>> 9. Qaddafi would not have killed or imprisoned large
>>>> numbers of dissidents in Benghazi, Derna, al-Bayda and
>>>> Tobruk if he had been allowed to pursue his March
>>>> Blitzkrieg toward the eastern cities that had defied
>>>> him. But we have real-world examples of how he would
>>>> have behaved, in Zawiya, Tawargha, Misrata and
>>>> elsewhere. His indiscriminate shelling of Misrata had
>>>> already killed between 1000 and 2000 by last April,, and
>>>> it continued all summer. At least one Qaddafi mass grave
>>>> with 150 bodies in it has been discovered. And the full
>>>> story of the horrors in Zawiya and elsewhere in the west
>>>> has yet to emerge, but it will not be pretty. The
>>>> opposition claims Qaddafi's forces killed tens of
>>>> thousands. Public health studies may eventually settle
>>>> this issue, but we know definitively what Qaddafi was
>>>> capable of.
>>>>
>>>> 10. This was a war for Libya's oil. That is daft. Libya
>>>> was already integrated into the international oil
>>>> markets, and had done billions of deals with BP, ENI,
>>>> etc., etc. None of those companies would have wanted to
>>>> endanger their contracts by getting rid of the ruler who
>>>> had signed them. They had often already had the trauma
>>>> of having to compete for post-war Iraqi contracts, a
>>>> process in which many did less well than they would have
>>>> liked. ENI's profits were hurt by the Libyan revolution,
>>>> as were those of Total SA. and Repsol. Moreover, taking
>>>> Libyan oil off the market through a NATO military
>>>> intervention could have been foreseen to put up oil
>>>> prices, which no Western elected leader would have
>>>> wanted to see, especially Barack Obama, with the danger
>>>> that a spike in energy prices could prolong the economic
>>>> doldrums. An economic argument for imperialism is fine
>>>> if it makes sense, but this one does not, and there is
>>>> no good evidence for it (that Qaddafi was erratic is not
>>>> enough), and is therefore just a conspiracy theory.
>>>>
>>>> Tikkun is grateful to Portside.org for giving us a sweeping permission
>>>> to reprint the articles it prints.
>>>> Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
>>>> on the left that will help them to interpret the world
>>>> and to change it.
>>>>   ------------------------------
>>>> web: www.tikkun.org<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=XOiqnUmGcRvw5i%2Bidg22T%2FuwBifuSKB2>
>>>> email: info at spiritualprogressives.org
>>>>  Click here to stop receiving future emails<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=rxv9P8lmIFpfCdvbypatyfuwBifuSKB2>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>   Copyright © 2009 Tikkun® / Network of Spiritual Progressives®.
>>>> 2342 Shattuck Avenue, #1200
>>>> Berkeley, CA 94704
>>>>  510-644-1200 Fax 510-644-1255
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>>>> **
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> “We would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if
>>> we moved continuously on foot across the surface of the earth” Bruce Chatwin
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
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>
>
> --
> “We would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if
> we moved continuously on foot across the surface of the earth” Bruce Chatwin
>



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