Re: U.S. Ambassador and three others killed in Libya.
Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny
I'll take both of these together, just because all I can say is that they are both fair points.
This, however, is more of the complacency evidenced by Frags and PJ, among others. The key assumption is that this strife is necessary and that it is all part of the "growing pains" the Arab world has to go through. This is based on several fallacious assumptions.
1. A succession of Civil wars are necessary for a nation to mature and "grow out of" violence.
2. The people in the Arab world are generally immature.
3. The situation in the Arab world is a natural state of affairs, and it just needs to progress to the next level.
4. This particular current cycle of strife is necessary, and if we just let it go on then it will eventually wear itself out.
This is all WRONG WRONG WRONG.
1. Much of the Arab world has been a pawn in someone else's game for the last couple of centuries, this isn't Europe where nation-states formed when people broke away or banded together, this is a completely different world.
2. The people in the Arab world are generally quite politically mature, most aren't raving loons and the ones in the cities are generally quite well educated to boot. The tribal peoples are the result of a lack of Urbanisation, which itself results from the poor state of the economy, which is down to bad management in a lot of cases.
3. There's nothing "natural" about the Arab dictators, all of them from Iran to Libya were propped up by the West until they were bedded in. There has been a policy for at least five decades of Western Powers overthrowing monarchies and democracies in favour of "friends" - the worst example is Iran, where a Constitutional Monarchy with a democratic government was overthrown by the West and the Shah was made an autocrat - Iran is our fault.
4. The idea that, having overthrown one dictator, the various Arab peoples will install another one is only surpassed in stupidity by the belief that they'll overthrow the next dictator "in a few decades". If we ever thought this was true the USSR and more recently Iran should disabuse us of the notion. If another dictator takes control of Libya it will be with outside help, and there is no telling how long he will stay. More to the point, we cannot simply shrug our shoulders and say the Arabs need to solve their own problems when many of those problems are of our making.
So, what to do?
For one thing, learn from Afghanistan. There the US backed a minor Warlord who was seen as "friendly" to the US over the Afghan King, the only man who might have been able to build a consensus. The mistake here was for the US to think it knew best who should be in charge, and that it could create an administration that was friendly by default.
The US has a poor history in how it treats its allies, the abysmal situation in the Falklands is a good example of the US trying to woo naturally hostile governments with dubious records rather than protecting vulnerable communities under the care of its long-term partners.
With Arab world the US, and the US is the only country that matters really, needs to realise that supporting dictators hasn't worked and is never going to. It burns up political capital in the region and generates ill feeling, to the extent that the US as a nation is blamed for any perceived insult visited upon Arabs by Americans. Basically, the Arabs think the Americans don't respect them as a people - they're right.
Despite this, the US has generated positive feeling in Libya, as demonstrated by the vote of sympathy for the Ambassador in the wake of his killing; Drone strikes would destroy that good feeling which exists at ground-level. The US government should capitalise of the good feeling it has in the country by helping Libya and the other newly-democratic Arab countries, and continuing to help them so long as they main democratic. Instead of waiting for democracy to break out in the Middle East like a rash we should support the democrats and the democratic governments. The freer a country is, the better its judiciary and the more transparent a government it has the more help it should get.
It's simple really, make it in the interests of the Libyan politicians to help the Libyan people, if they don't you can withdraw support, offer asylum to the political dissidents who do want something better for their fellow countryman. During the Cold War there was Polish Government in Exile in London, and it remained there until the exiles could return to a free Poland.
I've said it before - you can't kill an idea - but you can help it to take root and flourish.
Reply With Quote
heads.
Bookmarks