Civil War in Libya

[ICantSpellDawg]

Anarchy in Libya. This is about to get real. The President's men are using overwhelming force against protesters and a military unit has defected. Thousands of people are going to die and Gaddafi will be dragged into the street and hung. I can see it now. This will not be as gentle as Egypt and will happen much, much faster if it hasn't already.

Link

[Greyblades]

Do you have a news link or something?

[ICantSpellDawg]

Do you have a news link or something?

Link

Read what's happening there. The Ambassador to China has resigned on live TV and said that the President has fled the country and that his sons have been involved in a gunfight. Armed units are defecting, the protests have spread to Tripoli and are getting so bloody that people are startign to fire back. Tribes are declaring Gaddafi "no longer a brother"

"Online reports claim remaining pro-Gaddafi militia in Benghazi, around the Elfedeel Bu Omar compound, "are being butchered by angry mobs""

[Strike For The South]

THANK GOD THE US WENT IN ALL THESE PLACES TO SPUR DEMOCRACY

[ICantSpellDawg]

C'mon man, doesn't all of this revolution give you a chubby?

[Strike For The South]

C'mon man, doesn't all of this revolution give you a chubby?

Very much so, 0000s of dead Americans and trillions spent does not

[ICantSpellDawg]

What does that have to do with anything? Are you crediting the wars with spuring on this change and then ruing the cost to our lives and treasure? I wasn't talking about that.

[CountArach]

It is always heartening to see a people trying to take their own future into their hands, and with the military defecting it is likely to only be a matter of time before the entire Government is overturned. Now it is just a matter of waiting to see whether what takes the place of Gaddafi is any different.

[CountArach]

I'm reading on twitter from several eyewitness sources that protesters have taken over State TV.

[rory_20_uk]

Further evidence that the best way of overthrowing dictators is to... DO NOTHING.

Trade with the country freely, don't isolate them. Then slowly over time the people themselves will get fed up with things as their standard of living / understanding increases. Whose fault is it? No, not the USA / EU / other bogeyman as they've not done anything. It is the leaders.

Anger is then at their leaders, and being against their own isn't being a pawn of the USA / whoever.

Thankfully the UK is too broke to even think about getting involved in these quagmires.

[aimlesswanderer]

Further evidence that the best way of overthrowing dictators is to... DO NOTHING.

Yep, no invasions, just a better spread of information, and the ordinary people can figure things out and organise themselves.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Further evidence that the best way of overthrowing dictators is to... DO NOTHING.

Trade with the country freely, don't isolate them. Then slowly over time the people themselves will get fed up with things as their standard of living / understanding increases. Whose fault is it? No, not the USA / EU / other bogeyman as they've not done anything. It is the leaders.

Anger is then at their leaders, and being against their own isn't being a pawn of the USA / whoever.

Thankfully the UK is too broke to even think about getting involved in these quagmires.

It's like 'Nam all over again isn't it?

[Rahwana]

I suspect that was another Zionist/Western/American plots to overthrown the righteous Khaddafi. I myself support him, and it was his own right to slaughter those rebellious mob. Sometimes, they need to have some lessons.

PS: I bet Khaddafi will just need to take his Tanks out and crush those western puppets, he don't want bad publications though, and instant rebel defeat ain't a good story to news coverage.

[Idaho]

I suspect that was another Zionist/Western/American plots to overthrown the righteous Khaddafi. I myself support him, and it was his own right to slaughter those rebellious mob. Sometimes, they need to have some lessons.

PS: I bet Khaddafi will just need to take his Tanks out and crush those western puppets, he don't want bad publications though, and instant rebel defeat ain't a good story to news coverage.

What? Are you for real?!?

The lesson of the Arab winter has been that gambling on the self certification of people is perhaps less risky than invading or propping up dictators.

[Rahwana]

What? Are you for real?!?

The lesson of the Arab winter has been that gambling on the self certification of people is perhaps less risky than invading or propping up dictators.

yeah, Khadaffi was widely supported by his people before this sudden rebeliousness, plus the circumstances in middle east recently is very2 suspicious.

[Idaho]

Paranoia and ignorance. Gaddafi has never been popular but while people were making money they were prepared to tolerate the repression.
The west and Israel have had little to do with it. And your comments make me think you are probably young, and probably connected to the regimes whose time has come.

[Rahwana]

Paranoia and ignorance. Gaddafi has never been popular but while people were making money they were prepared to tolerate the repression.

The west and Israel have had little to do with it. And your comments make me think you are probably young, and probably connected to the regimes whose time has come.

darn, you just blow my cover! yes, I am M Khadaffi myself
now I'll just summon the tanks to run over those rebels

[Hax]

darn, you just blow my cover! yes, I am M Khadaffi myself
now I'll just summon the tanks to run over those rebels

Please, in the future, just leave this to the Arabs. We know how to deal with this kind of stuff.

[Lemur]

I've always admired your fashion sense, Colonel.

Meanwhile, a good analysis:

You cannot accept the need for reform and start shooting people in the streets. But unless the army keeps shooting it's hard to see how or why the protestors will return home. Even if they did the respite for the regime would, surely, be only temporary. For that matter, shooting people in the streets is also a sign of weakness, not strength. Increasingly it seems that the Gaddafis options amount to choosing the manner and moment of their defeat and eclipse. Eventually, failure carries a price. Even in authoritarian states. The alternative, as Saif warns, might be full-blown civil war. That's something the regime and only the regime can choose or authorise.

[Beskar]

The Raise of the Neo-Caliph Superpower is upon us?

[LeftEyeNine]

Whatever USA favors, I take it with a pinch of salt.

And, sorry, that's not my fault.

[ICantSpellDawg]

This is incredibly interesting. All over the world, oppressed people are starting to go ballistic. The lesson after Egypt for regimes was; if you are gentle, the opposition will win. After Libya, the lesson will hopefully be; If you are brutal, the opposition will win faster and your bloated corpse will hang in the public square. Those are good lessons, both with the same logical summary: REFORM.

After Iran in 2009 I was completely demoralized. This Revolution will hearten opposition there, in Saudi Arabia and in Syria, IMO, because the opposition is faced with brutality along a similar lines.

Foreign policy is an area where I usually agree with progressives.

[Viking]

The question is what will replace Gaddafi in case this thing "succeeds". Indeed, what are the goals of the protesters - what is accpeted as success? Will any new kids in the lead want to play with the West, or will they try to nick our favourite toys?

[ICantSpellDawg]

Who cares? Free people tend to like one another. I imagine that our relationship with Egypt will get much better after their revolution, in spite of the popular expectations. A free middle east will be an economic powerhouse over time. Freedom to think, get an education and troubleshoot the problems that face humanity is essential to our progress as a species. Currently, too many potentially bright minds are oppressed and left stagnating in squalor all over the world.

Doesn't this stuff make you want to get on a flight and go over there to fight and protest with them? Like Orwell in the Spanish Civil War.

[Banquo's Ghost]

I like your optimism, TuffStuffMcGruff, but one fears it is much too early to say how these revolutions are likely to end. Egypt is currently in the grip of a military government (not much change there then bar Mubarak) Bahrain is facing a sectarian rebellion which may well end with a theocratic satellite of Iran and Libya could indeed dissolve into civil war and tribal conflicts. On the hopeful side, Tunisia appears calm if unfocussed.

None of these countries have any tradition of democracy as the West understands it. The optimistic view is that they will be left alone to develop their own philosophies of representative government - but more cynically, they have too much oil and Islam for us to leave them alone.

[LeftEyeNine]

BG speaks of wisdom.

But this still does not warrant any other country to "export democracy" there.

Mind your own business and we're fine.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

There were supposed to be protests in china too (arranged over internet), but a ton of police/paramilitary turned up and very few protesters they said.

[ICantSpellDawg]

We are their democratic tradition. People pretend that other people from other cultures are from another planet. Our tradition is theirs and theirs is ours. We will see what will happen, but any nation not jumping into the information revolution will be at a debilitating disadvantage in the developing global economy. People are starting to get this fact all over the world. Many arab kids who use the internet have more in common with American kids who use the internet than either of them do with their own parents. Adults don't seem to understand the world in the ways that the youth do. Years ago it was in reverse, but now while the adults have increased their understanding in a linear way, youth has recieved exponential benefits.

Most people want the same things. 'Not having a democratic tradition" is the worst excuse ever, the same a it was in Japan during WW2, Korea, Eastern Europe, Turkey, etc. Libyans can look to Turkey, look to Indonesia, look to Morrocco, look to any number of Arab muslim, non-arab muslim, western, etc for guidance and "alien tradition" for human inspiration.

Western reluctance to support these protests is primarily based on fear of the unknown, greed and an indifference to global events. I have more confidence that we will get over that.

[Idaho]

It's not about western interests or the wests worst fear or regional balances of power. We've been manipulating nation states and their people for years in the name of these things - and usually with disastrous results. Let these people work it out for themselves.

[Banquo's Ghost]

We are their democratic tradition. People pretend that other people from other cultures are from another planet. Our tradition is theirs and theirs is ours. We will see what will happen, but any nation not jumping into the information revolution will be at a debilitating disadvantage in the developing global economy. People are starting to get this fact all over the world. Many arab kids who use the internet have more in common with American kids who use the internet than either of them do with their own parents. Adults don't seem to understand the world in the ways that the youth do. Years ago it was in reverse, but now while the adults have increased their understanding in a linear way, youth has recieved exponential benefits.

Most people want the same things.

I'm fascinated by the assertion that "we are their democratic tradition". Could you expand on the thesis?

Whereas there are some common threads in Western democracies, each is a product of the individual country's history and culture. Even quite closely related cultures such as the UK and the USA have significantly different democracies and traditions.

The internet is merely a form of communication - it does not surmount cultural biases (any review of the Backroom demonstrates that). I would also note that Western democracies are in a state of (perhaps terminal) decline in the face of corporate power expressed through narrowing oligarchies. None of this is a model - in my opinion - for emerging popular movements in nations which have, for too long, been reliant on autocratic central powers rather than the citizenry and its expressed will.

LEN is entirely right - we have no right to attempt an "export" of our flawed version of democracy to cultures that have entirely different histories and economic conditions. That will not stop the Western powers trying to influence and meddle, because we have too much of our own economies tied up in the region (not to mention the thorny problems of Israel's security and how we view any "will of the people" that installs an Islamic theocracy).