Rebels in Libya may finally be achieving the objective. Trouble is that the U.S. will take credit, though the news reports suggest very strongly that this is an indigenous push inside the capitol. The U.S. intervention might have actually prolonged the dictatorship. Someone needs to make the detailed argument before the wrong message is learned from this event.
Addendum: having now read all existing news reports, it strikes me that the situation is too muddy to say precisely whether the final push primarily represents a popular uprising, a coup, or an invasion/overthrow. In some ways, this is the worst aspect of intervention. It muddies the politics to the point that no one knows for sure what is true anymore. As usual, Margolis presents a balanced view.
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We Americans well I guess I should say the political class of Americans love to take credit where credit is not deserved. The political spin is mind blowing and Obama will trot out on the television tomorrow and tell us how great we did helping the Libyans out. It would be really nice if someone came out and said congratulations Libya you did it on your own. We did not help you until we were dragged kicking and screaming into the conflict with a band of weak NATO allies. And even after we entered the conflict albeit a day late and a dollar short all we could do is send up the occasional air strikes on Omar.
Ok. I’ll bite. Go ahead Jeffery, explain why the American intervention actually prolonged the conflict when everything indicates that the poorly armed, poorly trained and poorly equipped rebels where on the brink of defeat before the intervention. You could still be right in one sense though. The conflict would have ended very quickly with the slaughter of rebels and the fall of Benghazi, the most likely course of events absent intervention. An intervention that the Mises Institute officially opposed from the beginning.
Try this thought experiment. Lew Rockwell and Jeffery Tucker are guests at even in post Gaddafi Libya present there to speak about the values of liberty. The person introducing them lets the audience know that they had opposed intervention from the very beginning. Do you expect the Libyan people to clap and cheer or do some shoe throwing? Not that it makes much of a difference. If shoes are thrown, it will just be explained away by the anti-intervention crowd here as the common people being misled by the mainstream media.
probably yes. I’ve read dozens of stories of how the rebels resented the hell out of U.S. efforts. It actually pumped up support for the regime, as would be inevitable.
And I suppose as the events unfolded, you posted those stories here on the blog to show that the mainstream portrayal of events where erroneous. Correct? If that is the case, then you can fall back on them now. A properly linked blog entry in the present to those past entries can clear up things brilliantly.
How about this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/21/libya-endgame-fighting-tripoli
There is no question that Gaddafi is a USDA Grade Prime Creep. The only question is whether the next guy will be creepier or not. But it will be bad for the Libyan people whoever the creep is.
My sentiments exactly. I would not bet on the new regime being any less repressive, particularly with respect to women. Most of the people in the West only care about the oil anyway.
That’s not a question at all. It is a certainty.
The only good thing from the Iraq war was that Kadaffy put an end to his WMD program, out of fear that he would be next. As a reward, Washington stabbed him in the back.
The lesson learned from Libya is that all tin-horn dictators need to ramp up a WMD program, and never ever ever abandon them.
Abhilash Nambiar, there is a controlled experiment under way: Libya and Syria.
There is no dead-hand of Obama and NATO delaying the revolution in Syria. The dictator is free to risk deploying his tanks and air force and retake rebel cities one by one in his own time.
Gordon Tullock’s law articulated in 1974 in The Social Dilemma still holds:
• Autocracies rarely fall to popular revolutions.
• Popular uprisings are far more difficult to organize than are palace coups, because the individual advantages of participating in a popular uprising are very small relative to those obtained by members of a palace coup, although the aggregate benefits may be much larger.
• Being larger enterprises, revolutionary movements are also much easier to discover and to punish participation,
• Preventing overthrow by the common people is, in general, quite easy if the ruler is only willing to repress vigorously and to offer large rewards for information about conspiracies against him.
• Gordon Tullock argues that public good considerations are not an important factor in explaining coups. Coups overcome the problem that it is safer to sit on the sidelines and then back the winning side.
That said, coups are rare after the early days of a new autocrat because it is safer to advance yourself by reporting would be palace coup conspirators to the secret police or to the autocrat that join a conspiracy that may fail.
The revolutions in Eastern Europe, Egypt and Tunisia were palace coups against the background of street protests. The role of street protests is to throw in the possibility of mutinies and desertions in the army and police. Previous alliances are thrown into doubt.
It should be always remembered that Qadaffi’s got his main chance to take over when he was a mere Colonel Qadaffi leading a small group of junior officers.
Enough military coups are lead by more junior officers seizing their main chance to make their generals nervous enough about their own survival in a colonels coup to strike first to displace the current autocrat before they are the next to be arrested and share his fate. There is then a post-coup realignment of patronage to buy-off the junior officers.
Generals are often close to the leadership; their appointments are usually somewhat political and come with the benefit of patronage. They have more to lose through a coup than by staying put.
In countries where there is a history of coups, politicians are also equally wary of annoying their military upper ranks for a similar reason.
Colonels control strategic components of the military and as not as well paid as those in the autocrat’s inner circle.
The Libya rebellion started far from the capital and the main fountains of patronage and oil wealth led by regional governors and junior ministers. A colonel’s coup with NATO backing.
Couple of problems. Libya is obviously not Syria. I won’t state the differences between the two here, they are wel-known. They are not controlled experiments. Far from it.
Then of course there is the case of successful popular uprisings. The ones that lead to the fall of the entire Eastern Bloc in Europe, the Domino effect. And of course there is Tunisia and Egypt where there was no outside intervention and regime change was relatively speaking peaceful.
As for the Libyan uprising, it is again a well-known fact that it was a popular uprising. If you say otherwise, be prepared to substantiate it.
I’m an anarcho-capitalist through and through, and I deplore the intervention. However, it would be foolish and borderline petty to claim that the US intervention and bomb cover played no role in this. It is okay to oppose the intervention but recognize its aid in toppling the regime simultaneously. I mean, for heaven’s sake, war is the only thing the US government is good at, aka destroying things.
Abhilash is right. Syria is not a control experiment. You do yourself a disservice by assuming that all Middle Eastern countries are homogeneous. It’s quite obvious that each uprising has taken place under differing circumstances. To say otherwise is assuming too much.
What is legitimate to criticize is the motives of those who intervened. And Jeff is quite right that the victory trumpets will blow a different tune to what really occurred. It will also belittle those who opposed the regime.
Also, I’m not very optimistic that the rebels will prove to be any different than their predecessors.
Considering that some of those attacks hit civilian and not military targets, you can say the US “support” didn’t help. You forget that Lybia isn’t a nation where everyone hates Ghadaffi and everyone supports the opposition. There are still Ghadaffi supporters from all walks of life from the bottom to the top, the honest and dishonest. While the attacks may have softened up the military forces, it also hardened support from otherwise weak or indifferent Lybians.
Further, this activity will only result in greater instability in Lybia and likely more future mayhem and death. The uprising lacked the size and support necessary to topple Ghadaffi on its own, which means it is not a popular uprising and that most people were either content with the status quo or decided that the rebels were no better. The rebels aren’t the shining star of hope in the region and many people will be resentful or outright hostile to the new regime, and violence will be more likely to flare up given the old government channels of control have been destroyed and the new dictator won’t be able to quickly reestablish that chain.
Then there’s the long-term backlash at the US and European powers. People who lost family and friends to bombings, missile strikes, and either side of the internal conflict will quickly and rightly view the US and European powers as the catalyst that lead to their deaths. This is how terrorist organizations form and gain recruits. Considering the new regime will ultimately be no different than the old, this will create a great excuse to attack foreign interests. While the US and European powers played a hand in Ghadaffi’s rise to power, by no means was it an overt or obvious action. The people will rightly view that the rebels would never have taken power, control, or even risked an open coup without international support, and the anger over the inevitable abuses of the new regime will be focused on that international community that made it happen. The USA didn’t experience a terror attack until a few months after we put a brutal dictator in charge of Iran, after all.
What you say is true. However, it is still not possible to say that the US intervention didn’t help the rebels achieve what they wanted. It is irrelevant whether those rebels are supported by the people. We’re talking about pure strategic goals.
And, yes, the new leaders will likely resemble the old. Still not the point.
In any case, intervention was a bad idea.
Abhilash Nambiar,
Tunisia and Egypt were palace coups. who is now in charge of those countries? The former trusted deputies of the old rulers?
In both Libya and Syria, both dictators were well willing to use tanks and air force and retake the rebel cities. One of the two is subject to NATO air strikes. He is history.
Many of National Transitional Council of Libya are defectors from the old regime.
Each of the east european revolutions consisted on the leader and his cabal being desposed by a reformist faction within the ruling elite. where there was shooting, such as in Rumania, the defection of army leaders was the key event.
In this regard I recommend, Grossman, Herschel I, 1999. “Kleptocracy and Revolutions,” Oxford Economic Papers, vol. 51(2), pages 267-83, April:
“This paper develops an economic theory of revolutions as manifestations of kleptocratic rivalry.
The theory implies that whether or not a revolution occurs and, if a revolution occurs, the probability that it will be successful depends on the current realizations of the stochastic factors, such as the current potential revolutionary leader’s skill in organizing a revolution, that determine the expected effectiveness of insurgents relative to the ruler’s soldiers.
But, the theory also implies that, given the current realization of the expected effectiveness of insurgents, more is spent on deterring revolutions that do not occur, and revolutions when they occur consume more resources, the larger is the value of being the kleptocratic ruler.
Unsurprisingly, some of those who suffered for the cause, in exile or underground, now feel they deserve their just rewards: good salaries, nice cars, patronage, and perks.”
By the end, the USSR was kleptocracy: The key to understanding Soviet politics was that under the Soviet regime’s surface lay fierce power struggles within the Soviet elite. There were vast patronage networks down to the lowest levels of power.
In this regard I recommend, Dmitriy Gershenson & Herschel I. Grossman, 2001. “Cooption and Repression in the Soviet Union,” Economics and Politics, vol. 13(1), pages 31-47 also available at the independent institute:
“The nomenklatura used cooption and political repression to encourage loyalty to the communist regime.
Loyalty was critical both in defusing internal opposition to the rule of the nomenklatura and in either deterring or defeating foreign enemies of the Soviet Union.
The cost of coopting people into the Communist Party was a decrease in the standard of living of members of the nomenklatura, whereas the cost of political repression was the danger that members of the nomenklatura would themselves be victimized.
We assume that the nomenklatura determined the extent of cooption and the intensity of political repression by equating perceived marginal benefits and marginal costs.
We use this assumption to construct an account of the historical evolution of policies of cooption and political repression in the Soviet Union.
The result was the final episode of growth in membership in the CPSU, which continued until the dismantling of the communist system.”
After russian communism, many state assets end-up in the hands of ex-KGB and other former insiders.
This is not the first time I have seen someone try to hide nonsense by using many words to say next to nothing. Did you learn it from Ben Bernanke or Alan Greenspan?
Tunisia and Egypt were palace coups.
who is now in charge of those countries? The former trusted deputies of the old rulers?
Palace coups indeed. It was popular civil disobedience that forced the strong man out in both instances. A palace coup is engineered by leading member within the existing ruling class against the current leader. In these instances, the current leader buckled under the pressure of the people and resigned, thereby delegating power to his former deputies more weaker than him and more pliable to will of the masses. You are ignoring important detail to draw the wrong conclusions.
How long would have the popular civil disobedience in Egypt lasted if the sick old ruler had been willing to repress vigorously and offer large rewards for information about conspiracies against him?
how are the the popular civil disobedience going in the face of young Syrian ruler willing to repress vigorously and offer large rewards for information about conspiracies against him?
No way to know that.
Once again to state the obvious, Egypt is not Syria.
Abhilash Nambiar, have you ever watched a game of sport?
the outcome of any game of sport is uncertain, but it is possible to describe kinds of patterns which will appear if certain general conditions are satisfied, such as lop-sided matches, but we can rarely if ever derive from this knowledge any predictions of specific phenomena.
An example: I could not beat tiger woods at golf unless he was incapacitated during the game and defaulted by not finishing.
Is it your prediction that the dear leader and his cronies in North Korea could be overthrown by popular disobedience? There is plenty of room in the camps for any dissidents and three generations of their families as group punishment.
A successful popular revolt is not impossible, but it is a truly remote prospect in N. Korea.
The same goes for Syria was long as there are no NATO airstikes or a palace coup.
In sport all players know what the rules of the game are and what the game is and where the game is being played, when it begins and when it ends. None of that is true here.
Abhilash Nambiar, have you ever watched an election?
all candidates know what the rules of the election are, what the election is, and where the election is being held, when it begins and when it is election day.
the outcome of any election is uncertain, but it is possible to describe kinds of patterns which will appear if certain general conditions are satisfied, but we can rarely if ever derive from this knowledge any predictions of specific phenomena.
the future is uncertain but It can be predicated that Ron Paul will not win the republican nomination and Obama will win the democratic presidential nomination baring freak events.
the communist party and the green party candidates for president have no chance of winning?
Does it surprise you to know that what is happening in Libya now is not an election?! It is different in more ways than anyone can count. But I will start with one that I find most obvious. In an election, the rules are certain, while the outcome is not very certain. Here both the rules and the outcome is uncertain.
On the rules of elections being certain, remember the 2000 election in Florida?
You are correct about syria and libya being different.
one has a dictator that is free to repress vigorously includiong the use of tanks and air strikes. The other dictator was not free to repress vigorously because of NATO air strikes stopped the use of his tanks and air force. if there are other significant differences, what are they?
Yeah, the Floria 2000 elections, the exception that happened 10 years back that proves the rule.
Check the demographics of Syria and compare it with Libya.
It may be true that each uprising takes place in differing circumstances, but what matters to the outcome is whether or not the dictator has a police and army loyal enough to be willing to shoot to kill. That is Tullock’s pattern prediction.
Popular unrest can provoke a early succession crisis. The chance of a takeover is more likely against older rulers, past their blood-thirsty primes, with divided support and natural successors at hand within the elite.
one reason dictators bring back elections is it allows them to retire and get to the airport alive with their loot.
It is hubris to think that the outcome of these events can be predicted in any shape or fashion. They evolve in ways unique to each scenario and more likely so because those of the future learn from the mistakes and successes of the past.
on predictive hubris, Hayek argued that the predictive aspirations of social science must be qualified: not even economics can ever do more than predict the occurrence of general classes of events.
All science can aim in Hayek view at is an “explanation of the principle,” or the recognition of a pattern—“the explanation not of the individual events but merely of the appearance of certain patterns or orders”.
In “The Theory of Complex Phenomena,” Hayek argued that because social life is made up of complex phenomena, “economic theory is confined to describing kinds of patterns which will appear if certain general conditions are satisfied, but can rarely if ever derive from this knowledge any predictions of specific phenomena.”
There is a pattern to these events. Not the events happening in Libya. But the events happening here. The Libyan people have toppled a brutal and unpopular dictator. A victory of people over the government. Libertarians may have something to cheer about. But Alas! the Libyans had support from the US government. That is a problem to those libertarians who think the US government has no right to exist. How embarrassing it is when the values you cherish are safeguarded by the government you hate.
Having no self-respect, they take the coward’s way out. Since the US government intervened, we will focus on the shortcomings from the intervention and criticize them for it. But the coward’s way is also accessible had the US government not intervened. Then the US government will be guilty of turning a blind eye to the people suffering under a dictator. The coward’s way is always open to the dogmatic anti-statist for whom events do not matter, what matters is that you hatred is properly directed at all times. To the anti-statist it is always the state just like to the anti-semite it is always the Jew.
Sadly, this is true: rather than cheering liberty, this blog seems to first and foremost hate government. Particularly the US government.
An intervention can sometimes be good even if unintentionally – by preventing another intervention, for example. When the bombing began, Gadafhi’s forces were about to take Benghazi and crush the rebellion; of course the rebels MAY have succeded without intervention, but there is no basis whatosever to argue that the intervention made the dictatorship longer.
Look, the Vietnamese dictatorship is a bad regime and used to be even worse. Still, I think nobody will doubt that their invasion of Cambodia was a bless to the inhabitants of that country – by destroying their genocidal regime. Sure their intention was not to improve the lot of the average Cambodian, but that’s what happened anyway.
I’m not justifying government and coercion. I’m just saying that the world is very complex and cannot be explained in three-line blog posts, as this author tries to.
As for those who say that the rebels are no better than Gadhafi, they’re not paying attention: large areas of the country have enjoyed rebel rule for months, and although things are not perfect, there is far, far greater freedom than anything thinkable under Gadhafi. Same for Tunisia and Egypt, and for the ex-Soviet Bloc countries by the way.
On the other hand, this blog seems perfectly happy to accept coercion (such as Amy Chua’s parentage model) if it doesn’t come from the Government. They call it “decentralized social mechanisms for vice prevention” or something like that.
A couple of decades ago the US government has assisted Taliban rebels who were then fighting the Soviet army. The assistance was seen as helpful but not particularly welcome given the light of events that happened after, as the United States escalated its aggressive interventionist policy in the Middle East. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups arose amidst corrupt dictators and regimes being backed in power by the United States in order to safeguard or advance its own financial and geopolitical interests. In the next decade, the region was target to several military interventions from the Western powers, coupled with unwillingness or inability of regional states to deal with domestic and foreign problems, it’s not surprising then that radical Islamism thrived like a malignant tumor. Looking back, providing them with material support for an erstwhile allegiance was a huge mistake.
Muammar Gaddafi may not have been popular in Libya. But he was a secular ruler who kept the more radical elements of society in check, and complied with western disarmament demands. He posed no threat to the US. Second, across Africa he is seen in a positive light as a strong ruler who maintained his country’s political independence. The toppling of his regime will be no doubt viewed as another attempt plant a foot of bygone colonialism in Africa. Moreover, given past history the rebels themselves can’t be relied on returning their gratitude for our “assistance” . For it was not provided out of heartfelt humanitarianism, and at any rate it isn’t seen as such by any rational Libyan, rebel or not. On the contrary, Libyans will only see the US more warily in the aftermath of these events especially once they witness the independence movement of their country subverted to suit the interests of foreign powers that backed it. Moreover, amongst the anti-Gaddafi factions are radical Islamists of a hardly different flavor from the ones that populate the rest of the Muslim world. Their reason for fighting Gaddafi was that he was secular and that he complied too much with the demands of Western powers in the first place.
Libertarian commentators and posters on mises.org have every reason to be suspicious of the US government’s intervention in another Middle Eastern conflict. Opposition to such policy is not borne out of dogmatism or bigotry, but out of a consistent historical observation that wars of the state created cause nothing but misery and destruction. Unless one wants to join the likes of Paul Krugman in lauding the wars of the state as bringing economic and social health to the nation and the world at large, he could find no rational defense of initiating military strikes which kill hundreds of civilians out of allegedly humanitarian reasons.
I am sure dogmatic anti-statism has nothing to do with what so ever. It is rightful suspicition of the US government. Government officials should have looked into their crystal balls and seen that if you help the Afghans free their nation from the Soviets, then we would end up with 9/11 here in the US. The connection is pretty obvious come to think of it. I am surprised why I did not notice it before.
9/11 was done by the us government. I mean, come on, however inept government may be, I will never believe government could be that stupid to allow a plane crash into its heart – the pentagon. As for afganistan – the subversion of soviet union was the goal, and any means necessary were deemed allowed.
Or put it another way – us in afganistan never wanted to help people. If you believe it you are pathetic daydreamer. U.S. used afganistan as a pawn against S.U. and then threw it away when it was needed no more.
I thought the Libyan narrative went something like this: the Arab Spring foments a small, youthful uprising in the East of the country. Sarkozy, far down in the polls in France and facing re-election next year with heavy opposition from DSK (now taken care of) and the distaff Le Pen, decides that France must “help”. Several reports suggest that Sarkozy begins to arm the young, Toyota driving upstarts from the south in Chad (French army/Foreign Legion based there). Lots of speculation in the non-MSM begins about how many “rebels” have been part of Al Quaeda in Iraq or part of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypyt.
The rebels apparently can’t do anything but race around in their Toyotas. They’re impassioned but not trained. The CIA steps in to train them. (Uh-oh! – Like they weren’t there already!)
Blah, blah, blah. Banghazi goes back and forth. Meantime, NATO is bombing the hell out of everything – killing civilians right and left. Obama’s magic 90 days expire before he has to “inform” Congress that, ‘hey, guys we’re sort of having a little, itty bitty war over here now’. (Republicans jump up and down that Obama is trampling the Constitution. (uber sic!)
Frequent reports from Hillary and her buds at the Pentagon that, ‘Qaddafi is goin’ down…..Real soon. Okay, in the next couple of weeks/months. But he’s finished, we promise’
More back and forth in different coastal cities. Reports come out of Qaddafi’s human rights atrocities. Human shields, or that Q is passing out Viagra to his mercenaries from the south for rape purposes! Evidence never really surfaces.
Finally, last night, after months of Land Cruiser fighting, the rebels invade Tripoli from the sea – yep, from the sea. They control most of the city as of today.
Not sure how this carnival of death and destruction would have happened (on both sides) without US government intervention. Qaddafi, our tyrant for a while, then our mortal enemy, then, after buying some nuclear junk and handing it over to us (post 9/11), our friend again, is now our enemy. And if one thinks that the little rag-tag bunch of “rebels” could have overthrown our once buddy without help…
our interventionist foreign policy is a joke. it’s no secret a portion of these rebels are known members of terrorist organizations. terror groups we at war with on one side of the border we support and are allies with on the other. does this make sense to anyone? This whole conflict is just begging for blowback. If it was a ‘popular’ and ‘necessary’ rebellion they would have removed qhaddafi without the support of American air raids, just like several other countries did at the same time. Or maybe qhaddafi just saw the al qaida rebels for what they were and that’s why he nearly crushed them before our intervention began. At the time he was specifically targeting rebel ‘terrorist’ forces, no civilians. for fear of civilians being ‘slaughtered’ we intervene, and end up killing many civilians.
So at the end of the conflict we’ve allied with known terrorist groups, destroyed cities and towns, killed many more innocent Libyan civilians than qhaddafi and we have no way of knowing who is going to gain power? I’m sure we’ll make sure it’s someone very U.S. Friendly just like we did with Iran, and then guess what? The whole thing happens again!
we need to stay out of these civil wars. Who knows how many people even supported our intervention and removal of qhaddafi. Of 6.5 million only roughly 50,000 at most rebeled.
Yep, our international interventions are pretty absurd – and no more absurd than the domestic ones.
In many places overseas we’re now intervening for the third or fourth consecutive time – or more! I’m sure there’s a mathematical function or a philosophical term used to describe idiocy heaped upon idiocy, but I can’t put my finger on it at the moment.
Of course, we rely upon a conspiracy of ignorance along with a memory hole, the depth of one Presidential term, to make us all feel better!
Happy days are here again (at least until tomorrow).
U.S. can’t stay out of wars. The us wages these wars for the sake of the wars. It is apparently a confluence of keynsianism with governmental self-interest and with military industrial complex special interest. It is a self-perpetuating process that can’t be reversed, it can only be forcibly stopped. But even then it is too lat – the us has already earned itself reputation of world bully.
People are surprisingly ungrateful to outside liberators once the initial parties are over.
At graduate school in Japan, I remember sensible, well-educated Cambodian friends referring to the 1980s as when they were a Vietnamese colony.
My Vietnamese friends, when sick of a particular unpleasant Cambodian classmate of ours, would say to him “Remember 1979!”
This would send him bat-crazy with nationalism: objecting to the 1979 Vietnamese invasion that deposed Pol Pot in 12 days with little resistance.
Cambodia would have benefited from an invasion from Hell in 1979. At least, Satan waits patiently for you to die before tormenting you.
Let us not forget that we once supported Saddam Hussein before we opposed him. Ironically, when asked why he was so sure that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Donald Rumsfeld replied “Because we gave them to him!”
Same with Manuel Noriega.
where did Donald Rumsfeld reply “Because we gave them to him”?
saddam destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon.
he then played a fine game of bluff to make everyone think he had them so he looked more dangerous than he really was.
I am of course no fan of Gaddhafi but you all might wanna know the possible real reason why the NATO and US government attacked Gaddhafi viz., his proposal for a Gold dinar replacing US dollar! See here – http://www.thedailybell.com/2228/Gaddafi-Planned-Gold-Dinar-Now-Under-Attack.html
Also a British mission to Libya found no evidence of Gaddhafi violence against its people. NATO and US attacked Libya to save Libyans from Gaddhafi violence! See here – http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24441
Gaddhafi was not listening to US government so they removed him just like Saddam. Rebels are just another puppet government who will exploit Libyans and cooperate with US and NATO.
“Follow the money”. (In this case the money is oil.)
Europe did not want China or Russia bidding on the new oil facilities.
Do you believe liberal media ‘news’ reports? That’s pathetic. The problem is that U.S. went there in the first place. Another problem is that socialists are about to be replaced by islamists. It is really hard to tell what is worse.
Sharia Law – Even Stevie Wonder could have seen this coming:
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/08/22/libyan-draft-constitution-sharia-is-principal-source-of-legislation/
Also, I think everyone will benefit immensely if they know the long history of Middle east. For a very short introduction read Richard Maybury’s uncle Eric series book, Thousand Year War in Mideast (http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Year-War-Mideast-Affects/dp/0942617320/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314066180&sr=8-1)
Knowing the history will throw a lot of light on the current events because this wars are not new. Christian crusaders are attacking Muslim countries since last 1000 years!
The Islamic world has been attacking everyone else since the seventh century. The Crusades were defensive.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/220747/crusade-propaganda/thomas-f-madden
OK, how many people in this discussion have a) ever been to Libya (I was in 2005), or b) investigated the Libyan situation enough to attempt to understand it beyond either macro-conspiracy theories or lazy acceptance of tribal or Islamist explanations? From a Hayekian perspective, Libya was ripe for revolution: government was arbitrary and personalistic without any room for private association outside the strictures of Gadhafi’s “Great Jamahariya”; there were few evolving institutions or rules to allow for effective market development; education opportunities were summarily repressed, and entrepreneurialism was either informal or tied to existing statist/Gadhafi patrimonialism; etc., etc. If you look back at the initial uprisings just prior to Feb. 17th, they were not just in the East, they were everywhere including Tripoli. This was a broad based opposition to an entrenched tyrant. People power overcomes regular military forces…sounds strangely familar.
That all said, and particularly given the location of this board, please take this into account: 1) Humanitarian intervention as a last ditch response to perhaps pry open the door to liberty may not be anathema to the fundamental thinking here (i.e., Gadhafi had no compunction NOT to slaughter opponents, in Benghazi or elsewhere, and the Libyan rebels belatedly requested outside involvement to forestall that); 2) A focus on what leader comes next in Libya is exactly the WRONG response that we (the West) keeps making. Rather, the focus must be on nurturing the constitutional and institutional arrangements Libya puts in place to deal with the post-Gadhafi cleavages that could still ripe the country apart without imposing a particular structure (i.e., don’t follow the Afghanistan mistake of selecting both the constitutional arrangements and the leadership); 3) Libya’s evolution over the next few months and years is completely open at this critical juncture: Libya could devolve into Somalia, or, and this is a real possibility, more quickly consolidate democracy than either Tunisia or Egypt. There are few legacy institutions and a real desire for a constitutional, non-personalistic order. But my fear is our simplistic views of the nature of Libyan society are going to color our policy responses rather than leverage the goodwill the West/NATO (and even Qatar) developed by taking the lead on UNSC1973 in support of, not leading, the revolution of the vast majority of the Libyan people.
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