When we look at the TV, and see the latest news from the Middle East we can think that there's been accurate reporting on the goings on of the Jasmine Revolution. And yet you should hardly need a reminding that the more you watch TV, the less you know. Right now, that's certainly the case with Libya.
There are a number of major misconceptions that the American public has about Libya and current events. Generally, there might even begin to be a more realistic vision of the goings on over there from 9/11 when the vast majority of all Americans thought that all Arabs were basically terrorists. The reporting on what's been going on since Tunisia appears to have had a positive effect on American public opinion overall, as people are seeing average men and women struggling for democracy and freedom. Thus there is some realization that people over there are yearning for the same kinds of things that we cherish in our country. All of this is to the good.
The American intervention in Libya may have complicated things a bit, as there certainly is a division of opinion as to whether President Obama's actions were right or wrong, and this split in opinion is reflected at every level of society from the bottom to the top. This is refreshing, too, as it demonstrates a breakdown from the usual partisan splits and wars that we see all the time, with the current goings on in Congress as being no exception. And certainly, there's probably some understanding that our previous involvements started by George Bush might have something to do with the situation in Libya now.
HOW AMERICA SEES ITSELF IN THIS, AND WHY THIS IS NOT TRUE
To this, I can only say, " don't get your hopes up too far. " While we can look at these attitudes and see some progress and thoughtful thinking on the part of the American public, there's still plenty of ignorance to go around. First, most people assume that we have the most powerful military in the world, and therefore we should be able to easily control any situation over there. This couldn't be further from the truth. You can see our failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there's absolutely no guarantee that we can automatically achieve our objectives in Libya. And what goes on Libya right now has absolutely nothing to do with our involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Many people are very worried about the possibility of a long term intervention in Libya and its costs to us. There is the fear of another ongoing war. I believe that these fears are overblown as well. First of all, Libya is a desert country with a few cities and huge swaths of vacant desert land. With the intelligence capabilities that the US has, it's very easy to pinpoint where friendly and hostile forces are outside of urban areas. Hopefully, American and other military forces can deploy their weapons in such a way as to easily identify Quadaffi supporters and prevent them from attacking "rebels." And the news that President Obama has deployed CIA support to the anti-Quadaffi supporters strengthens the American position vastly.
Many people are worried about the fact that American involvement in Libya is not in our best interest, and this is a valid question. However, I would say that President Obama acted out of legitimate humanitarian instincts, and he did so after a careful review of the costs and potential benefits of committing our military forces.
The false thinking that affects most Americans in this area ultimately can lead to a misreading of the actual situation over there. And if for some reason the military action in Libya is prolonged, those fears might be justified. However, my thinking leads me to say that our actual military footprint of dropping bombs and waging war over there will actually be very brief.
Most Americans don't have a clue about the real nature of Arab (or Libyan) society. There's some understanding that Quadaffi is a bad man and a dictator. But beyond that, most Americans have no more of an idea as to the way things are in Benghazi or Tripoli than they have of the moon. My understanding is not as great as it should be , but I think I have a better knowledge than most people.
First, unlike America, Arabs and Libyans have a strong tribal identity. This is completely unknown in the USA. To a certain extent, it's based on the concept of family. However, the concept of tribes is much more far reaching than that, going back to prehistoric times. Even the most modern and secular Arabs still identify with their tribes over identifying with their country. This fact alone shows that Americans just don't understand Arabs at all. The American vision of Islam as an all-powerful single minded religion is bunk, in good part because of the numerous tribes that Arabs belong to. In fact, two of the major tribes in the Middle East, Sunni and Shiite base their differences on different interpretations of the Koran, the Muslim holy book. Islam has as many different interpretations of the "true" nature of its religion as Christianity. We should all think of Islam as a diverse collection of different opinions about their religion, not disimilar to Catholicism, and the many branches of Protestantism.
When we look at the competing nature of tribalism and the various factions of Islam, things get even more complicated when we add the concept of 21st Century modern thought into the mix. Most Americans don't differentiate between one Arab and the other. Whatever we see on TV must represent reality, right? So that means that there's no difference between a sheik and a terrorist. WRONG! This misconception is most important, and when Americans don't understand the complexity of the Arab world, they're risking a big disaster if such thinking is carried out by our military, as George Bush did.
The fact of the matter is, that Arab society is a mixture of both religious and non-religious, modern and very traditional (or as some stupid Americans might say, primitive). We all pretty much know what the history of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are. We don't have a clue as to how different Libyan society is from those two countries. One of the things that Americans have completely missed is the role that Al Jazeera has played all over the Middle East with its broadcasts. While you haven't looked at what Donald Rumsfeld called the "Terrorist News Network" I have. And I can tell you that its constant message has been promoting democracy, freedom, and human rights.While secular and traditional elements are fighting the good fight against that madman Quadaffi and other dictators all over the Middle East, they've done so in good part because of their exposure to Al Jazeera.
As the days and weeks go by, we'll see how the military struggle plays out. I'm fairly optimistic about the chances of obtaining victory against Quadaffi. The struggle after that revolves around the way that Libyan society copes with forming a new government. I can tell you that there are significant elements in Libyan society right now that are as worldly (or more so) than you or I. Because of this, I'm an optimist about what I see as being possible over there. The odds are very high that some kind of democracy will occur over there, and Barack Obama made the right move.
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You write "There's some understanding that Quadaffi is a bad man and a dictator." Why do we hate Qadaffi so much all of a sudden. Our government generally loves dictators and Qadaffi was playing ball in our so called war on terror. It was just a few weeks ago that the Obama Admn wanted to sell him $77 million in weapons, now he is a thug that must go? Maybe it's because he advocated nationalization of the oil industry and that would certainly not be in the interests of Western war profiteers and Oil Companies.
The notion that we had to act to avoid a humanitarian crisis is bunk. Yes and we had to act in Iraq before the smoking gun became a mushroom cloud. If it were for humanitarian purposes, we would have acted first in Ivory Coast, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt before 385 Egyptian protestors were killed. But it is, as usual, about oil. If it were about saving civilian lives we would stop the rebels from slaughtering black African immigrant workers in Libya who are being singled out because they are merely suspected of being mercenaries fighting for Qadaffi. If it were about saving civilians, then dropping bombs on women and children is a funny way to save civilians.
The armed rebels co opted the pro democracy non violent protests that started in Libya. Now it is a civil war between armed factions and the flame that was lit by the democracy movement has long since been extinguished.
And those armed rebels are made up of an interesting bunch including elements of Al Qaeda, Islamic fundies, tribal factions, supporters of the previous monarchy, and pro West toadies. Not a lot of pro democracy folks involved.
Your hopefulness in the last paragraph ignores our poor track record of nation building. It also assumes that the Libyan people will have a say in the matter, when in reality, we will make sure our guy gets in, whoever that may be, as long as they give us access to the oil. Read War is a Racket by Smedley Butler. Obama is the latest pitch man for the oil companies and weapons manufacturers.
Ya ain't lived in no South land, pardner. Down dere it's us-uns agin them-uns. And I'm not making that up. I've lived there.
On the whole, however, in my humble opinion, you've got the situation mostly right. The motivations for Obambi's Libyan adventure remain murky, to me. I just don't buy the humanitarian angle. Looks far more like Grenada to me.
That said, I've read through, and I have to agree with Alaska.
Like Ab, I commend your assessment of Al Jazeera. Whenever I get access to my aged mom's dish at her house, I check it out. I have been impressed . . . . when I am not checking out Free Speech TV up there at channel 6475 or whatever it is
It's just that I'm not entirely convinced that those rebelling against his rule will turn out to be any imprivement, should they be successful.
And if they are not, and the Duck o'Death survives all this ... he will be extremely pissed with the US, and the French, British and Italians, all over again.
Here's the deal, whereas violence against citizens also occurred in Egypt and Bahrain, their leadership began making overtures of abdicating power fairly quickly. Qadaffi gave no such sign of doing anything but waging war against his own people. We are talking about a dictator who has locked horns with American presidents dating back to the 60's. I remember our bombing Libya when I was a kid and Reagan was president. We may have become friendlier with Qadaffi over the years but he was in no way an ally.
So from a humanitarian perspective, it seemed someone needed to intervene but we are already engaged in two unpopular wars. The American people have grown tired of war and even lusty Republican warhawks are hesitant to voice support of America exerting her might. Furthermore, our military has no real training or ability for nation building, as Alaska has pointed out. Time and time again we've failed miserably as incompetent occupiers.
Thus, Obama wasn't going to risk further criticism for his choice by putting boots on the ground, especially when economic signs point to a continuing recovery that could be a boon for 2012 elections. His only choice was to join with the world and fire off missiles from afar but put no American troops on the ground.
The peaceful democratic movement has indeed been co-opted by armed rebels and there will be residual chaos until a new power emerges in Libya and it could very well be a hand selected dictator as Alaska has suggested. Our American arrogance, in my opinion, demonstrates itself when we claim that everyone deserves democracy, as if we have created a perfect system ourselves. I find it hard to write this but some areas due to tradition and cultures far removed from our own, seem to thrive under different systems.
If Libya were a nation that was not in our economic interest would we have intervened? No, but there were legitimate human considerations that transcended the mere fact that Libya is rich in oil. However, with today's heated political climate, dollars and not virtue justify acts of war. Our options were limited as to how we might approach the situation and Obama doesn't want to squander whatever political capital he may have remaining. This situation will likely turn out better for him than it will for the Libyan people.
I think many years from now, a new world will look back on the time in history in which the United States was the dominant power on the planet and wonder at how little we understood of the role, duties and ability of being a super power.
Thanks very much for giving me some information that I didn´t know before. As I tried to say in my post, this political issue is way different from anything else going on because left and right in the US are both split as to whether our intervention is good or bad.
You´ve obviously been perusing the Libyan government website. I´m sure that Libyan citizens enjoy a very high GNP per capita. However, as to the begign characteristics of Mo, at the very least imagine how it would feel to live in the USA where Richard Nixon was still president. As to the legitimacy of Mo, up until he was challenged by the Jasmine Revolution, he was in total control. Therefore, while some Libyan government spokesmen might be more friendly to us than others, up until recently there was no question that their primary loyalties were to the old regime. And the number of recent defections indicates that a huge percentage of Mo´s government is not behind him now.
As to Mo´s foreign policy adventures, he´s at least as aggressive and imperialistic as any US government with repeated interventions in Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Sierra Leone, and a few other countries. In each case, he funded mercenaries who enjoyed shooting up people and torturing. As to his domestic policy, he´s not the worst person in Africa. But his security apparatus is certainly at least as repressive as Mubarak´s Egypt. And the very mercenaries that he paid for to spill blood are at work for him right now in Libya. By the way, since he´s depending on these mercenaries so much, this is another indicator that he´s extremely weak in his ability to govern right now.
As to everyone who´s worried about the future nature of a Libyan government, I can only tell you that it´s in the future. However, both the US and France are supplying material support, so perhaps things will work out for the best.
As ti the oil, I´m sure it´s a factor. But remember, Obama responded primarily because of his humanitarian impulses.
Any discussion of hypocracy on the part of America regarding either Libya or other countries is valid to some extent. But Libya is a completely different case, as I stated before. I think you have to accept Obama´s statements as to why he intervened at face value. And remember, Obama was prodded into acting because of the British and the French.
I´m up on it already and a true believer in Gore Vidal.
Wittgenstein
TV is government & corporate propaganda...move on already.
The only thing I will suggest to you, ONL – start learning Arabic. What Al Jazeera broadcasts in English is absolutely different from what they say and promote to Arabic countries. You made me laugh so hard when I read that they “have been promoting democracy, freedom and human rights.” Wake up, sir, and understand that Rumsfeld knew what he was talking about!!
Now, I’d like to give you some numbers about Libya:
GDP in Libya is $14.192 per capita – the highest in Africa.
Government pays each family $1000 in donations a year;
Unemployment benefits: $730/month
For each newborn the family gets $7.000;
Newlyweds receive a one-time present of $64.000 to buy a house;
To those who’d like to open a business – one-time help of $20.000;
Education and medical care – free;
High education and education abroad – free;
No payment for the housing;
No payment for electricity;
Low taxes;
Loans to buy cars and housing without interest;
50% of the cost of the car is paid by government; military personnel has a discount of 65%;
One liter of gasoline costs $0.14 (around $.65/gallon)
I’d like to ask you, ONL, who needs this, so called revolution, that’s going on all around the Middle East? I believe that if here we’d have all these benefits – you’ll be the first to cry “Hurray “and think that we finally are in heaven. Who are these people? What humanitarian help? They live better then most of us.
In regard to Obama – again, you are so misinformed, it’s scary. We have nothing to do in Libya. We even don’t buy oil from this country – Europeans need and buy oil from Libya. And they played our president like a boy. Now, we’re doing things for England, France, Italy, etc. It cost us billions of dollars... but they just laugh at us.
It's true about what you say about me.
No speaka da Arabic
However, I have watched Al Jazeera's Arabic programing, and although it has slightly different content with more interviews with prominent Arabs as well as discussions between spokespeople with decidedly different viewpoints within the Arab world, I've also had access to captioned broadcasts of Al Jazeera courtesy of MEMRI.TV.ORG
This outfit is run by a former Israeli intelligence analyst who cherry picks individual broadcasts that he downloads. And I can tell you that Al Jazeera's coverage of the news is substantially different from Al Arabya, which is the Saudi TV channel.
Quadaffi ministers flood Tripoli airport for departures
Fighting in exclusive area of Tripoli reserved for govt officials
One eastern Libyan military spokesman says that Al Queda fighters are in his unit supporting the rebels
Barack Obama is reported to have issued an assassination order for Quadaffi
Remember that the chief instigators of military action in Libya were the British and French, both countries having substantially more interest in Libyan oil than we do. Clearly, Barack Obama had legitimate humanitarian instincts in involving our forces there. One only wishes that we could exit from Afghanistan and Iraq, revamp our military with massive downsizing, and restructure it so as to be more accommodative towards UN-style peacekeeping operations.
Some American involvement like Haiti or Sudan (while not snow white) is still legitimately justifiable on humanitarian grounds. Perhaps some day, Rwanda and Congo may be focuses of more intensive American aid.
How does this disprove the fact that oil motivates the war? Oil is an international and fungible commodity. Its international price is determined by international supply and the price Americans and Europeans pay for it is dependent upon tiny fluctuations in global supply and production.
Ergo, the price Americans pay for oil produced in Alaska, Texas or Mexico is DIRECTLY AFFECTED by impacts to global supply caused by unrest in Iraq and/or Libya.
Same goes for French oil, British oil from the North Sea, etc...
International prices are all interconnected. One of the reasons we went into Iraq was to stabilize global oil prices, which Saddam was toying with, through random and strategic dumping of oil into the international supply-chain, during times when oil was doing poorly. He was intentionally waging economic warfare on US oil interests, in retaliation against Bush and the First Gulf War.
We wanted to stabilize oil prices in light of the onset of the 2000 recession and doing so required the elimination of Saddam.
The action in Libya is being done along the same lines.
For example, the West called Yeltsin a democrat and Putin a dictator. Yet, Yeltsin abolished the Constitution, murdered 1/3 of the members of Parliament, abolished the Russian Supreme Court,
suspended all civil liberties, removed the governors of all of Russia's states and removed the Mayors of most of its cities. Naomi Klein discusses this in Shock Doctrine.
Yeltsin was the most brutal leader Russia knew since Stalin.
Yet Bill Clinton called him a FRIEND OF DEMOCRACY, which was total bullshit and he likewise called all of Yeltin's enemies "UNREFORMED COMMUNISTS," which also isn't true. Sure, they were all ex-communists, but so was Yeltsin, which proves nothing.
Putin is now attacked as a dictator, yet Russia is far more democratic and stable today under Putin and Medvedev than it ever was under Yeltsin.
The difference is that Putin removed Western, Anglo-American, U-Chicago influence from Russia and re-captured Russia's commanding heights. He kept them privatized, but in Russian hands, whereas Yeltsin was a total pawn for Western economic interests.
This is why Putin is called a dictator and Yeltsin called a "Champion of Democracy." It has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with who is helping Washington/Paris/Berlin/London/Rome/Brussels at any given time.....
For example, the West called Yeltsin a democrat and Putin a dictator. Yet, Yeltsin abolished the Constitution, murdered 1/3 of the members of Parliament, abolished the Russian Supreme Court,
suspended all civil liberties, removed the governors of all of Russia's states and removed the Mayors of most of its cities. Naomi Klein discusses this in Shock Doctrine.
Yeltsin was the most brutal leader Russia knew since Stalin.
Yet Bill Clinton called him a FRIEND OF DEMOCRACY, which was total bullshit and he likewise called all of Yeltin's enemies "UNREFORMED COMMUNISTS," which also isn't true. Sure, they were all ex-communists, but so was Yeltsin, which proves nothing.
Putin is now attacked as a dictator, yet Russia is far more democratic and stable today under Putin and Medvedev than it ever was under Yeltsin.
The difference is that Putin removed Western, Anglo-American, U-Chicago influence from Russia and re-captured Russia's commanding heights. He kept them privatized, but in Russian hands, whereas Yeltsin was a total pawn for Western economic interests.
This is why Putin is called a dictator and Yeltsin called a "Champion of Democracy." It has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with who is helping Washington/Paris/Berlin/London/Rome/Brussels at any given time.....
Putin has been far less brutal than Yeltsin and has killed far, far fewer people. But he is not a team-player with London-Washington-Paris-Brussels-Berlin and because of this, his warts are publicized. Meanwhile, Yeltsin was a friend and his warts were never shown in the Washington Post and NY Times, but those of his enemies were.
Truth makes the best propaganda. Especially if you only show the truth about the enemy's bad points, remove the truth of your own bad points and only show the truth of your own good points
I agree with a lot you have to say about the hypocracy of foreign affairs, but I have to quibble a little with you. What are the facts behind your assertions about Yeltsin? Putin is certainly no sweetheart, what with bombing apartment buildings to get Russia involved with Chechenya.
As to my commentaries on foreign affairs, I feel pretty much like the piano player in the whore house.
Just got back from getting the dogs a bag of kibble, and was listening to NPR. James Fallows, a Mainstream Pundit, made the Grenada connection. But, then you read it here first.
Yeltsin started the Chechyn War to distract folks in the mid 1990s with his anti-democracy actions. Most of the political reforms of Gorbechev were done away with under Yeltsin. What remained were the "economic reforms," which were "open," but the social safety net (Gorby made the Russian economy mixed, like Sweden) was totally undone by Yeltsin, who was in the pocket of laissez-faire U-Chicago boys.
Putin is brutal, but by Russian standards, he is much less so than Yeltsin.
Western interps of Yeltsin and his time are laden with Propaganda. The American movie, "Air Force One," with Harrison Ford, is total propaganda.
Yeltsin was the enemy of democracy, not his foes. He abolished the Constitution, the Supreme Court, stopped all elections and the like and justified this by saying he was "fighting unrepentant communists and right-wing neofascist nationalists" like Zhironovsky.
The reality of the situation was far, far different.
Yeltsin looted Russia with a Pinochet-style dictatorship and this angered the left socialists, moderates and right-nationalists as well as the entire pro-democracy front in Russia.
The only folks who gained were pro-Western, Laissez-Faire authoritarians, like the Oligarchs.
We don't know how long cia has already been in Libya.
I think there was cia hands involved already long times to start the civil war inside Libya; they helped rebels to organize and start the war against Qaddafi.
I think that all this is going on because usa will need oil from Libya, when the war against Iran will be started.
Qaddafi is a dangerous man, too. He has got weapons and he and his people are quite rich. So he must go, not to be in the position to help Iran during the war against Iran.
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/home-mainmenu-289/7055-dont-be-confused-us-intervention-in-libya-is-immoral-and-illegitimate-too
great post - I feel like I really learned something here...
than anything the media has to say about it.
rated with love
If you can think back to when you were a child and a major new piece of technology was introduced into your life and the society as a whole. My formative piece of technology was the television. As a matter of fact, one of my first memories is looking at my father wheel in a TV set into our house in 1949. As a baby and young boy, I watched TV which was completely different then than it is now. Much of the coverage in the early 1950s was political. For example, the TV cameras covered the entire proceedings of the Republican and Democratic conventions during the times that the stations broadcasted in their limited hours of operation.
By around 1960, TV had matured to the point where it had saturated every part of American society, but it was still operating on the principle of providing public service just as much as entertainment. The coverage of the 1960 presidential campaign was a first for America as a whole, and TV was largely responsible for the election of JFK. Similarly, the Cuban Missle Crisis, the JFK assassination, and coverage of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s went a long way towards shaping the American consciousness. The direct result of this TV coverage was in good part responsible for the passage of the civil rights acts under LBJ.
I'm telling you this, as this phenomenon is more or less happening right now in the Arab world. If you've been watching the TV news you can see the Libyan freedom fighters with their guns, and their mothers and fathers are driving cars. Al Jazeera served the function of broadcasting objective news without ideologically slanting it either for or against the authoritarian regimes in the Arab world. As I've said before, this has been a huge catalyst for the Jasmine Revolution all over the Middle East.
What I failed to mention was the fact that unlike the role that television played in shaping the events of the 1960s, Al Jazeera's broadcasting of objective news was made even more powerful by the fact that the internet and cell phone technology allowed the man on the street in Cairo or Benghazi to communicate directly with Al Jazeera's headquarters.
The net effect of all of this feedback was that Al Jazeera responded to the information that they got from the streets of Cairo, for example. The people of Tahrir Square called Al Jazeera to tell them to keep their TV cameras on all night broadcasting the goings on in Cairo, as the Egyptian people believed that the cameras would prevent a massacre.
The worldwide connectivity of the internet is one of the reasons why I can post to you on the most significant goings on in the Middle East while I'm sitting in a Mexican fishing village in the middle of nowhere. My connection to the net is your connection to the net, and ultimately, this is what makes a democracy.
This connectivity between the Arab citizen of Libya or Egypt and Al Jazeera is a phenomenon that is taking place all over the world. We've already seen that the events in Madison, Wisconsin were influenced by the events of Cairo and vice versa. While the majority of us on OS are probably citizens of the United States, we are all citizens of the world. The quicker that we realize that as individuals and as a species, that we are more closely bound to each other than ever in the history of mankind, the quicker we'll realize what needs to be done that is not only best for the society we live in, but best for the planet as a whole.