Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

"the Libyan people"

it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. libya has exactly zero experience with the cut and thrust of national democracy. its politics has been defined totally and completely by quetzalcoatal for the last what, 40 years, and before that it was a colony. and before that, a region of scattered tribes. so there is this tremendous opportunity, but also a big possibility of just slipping into whatever the national default mode of informal tribal governance is i.e. bribes, tributes, feudal stuff, with a veneer of elections over the top of it. which wouldn't be the end of the world, of course. but it's amazing to me how strong these cultural modes can be. the soviet union had one of the world's most radical systems of government ever, and after 80 years threw the whole thing overboard in favor of the plain, naked corruption they'd had before. it's as if there really is such a thing as a continuous national character, in some places at least. so i guess my question is, what is libya's?

monarchy between Q and colony

one thing i haven't seen any discussion of is the extent to which there's a post-spring pan-arabism in operation (answer may be none, but the western triumphalists and west-as-monovillain commentators are pretty much parochially as one in not speaking arabic or having any evolving sense of the actually existing generational semi-post-islamist at work here, so i don;t see any very good reason to trust their conflicting commentaries) (which is not to argue that it's at all the most significant element in the dynamic yet: the impression i get with libya is that we're so in the dark about what happened off-camera that no one's guesses are defensible at this stage)

british jets apprently bombing gaddafi's compound right now

which compound? i thought it was full of looting rebels?

in sirte

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14677754

whoops never mind, was last night and they're just announcing it now

i suspect they hoped to gettim and be announcing THAT right now, instead they're saying "this is not and never was about actually killing gaddafi, perish the thought"

xp to mark s. This is why I trust Juan Cole more than any other commentators. He actually knows the arab world. Many others - on both sides, as you say - can only see Libya through western eyes. My experience on places like the Guardian comment threads is that the Libyans and other arabs who comment are overwhelmingly in favour of what has happened. Of course they're not the only voices, but when Seumas Milne says things like a messy transition will be "no liberation at all" I want to say: try asking someone who's lived their whole lives under a dictator.

I think the west-as-monovillain camp has more of a case when it comes to the reconstruction. I don't want to see the shock doctrine in action, but let's wait and see before burying the revolution in advance. Considering most of these people were predicting a disastrous end to the fighting - and haven't once conceded they called it wrong - I don't have much faith in their crystal balls. Cole's point about Iraq and Iran backing Assad for internal reasons to do with Shi'ites vs Sunni shows how complicated responses to the arab spring are even within the arab world. I'm amazed anyone feels equipped to make confident predictions at this stage.

george galloway popped up on the radio this morning claiming that gaddafi is actually jewish and a lot of the rebel chants that the_media aren't translating are anti-semitic slurs. now aside from the fact that concerns over arab anti-semitism aren't something that i'd have thought keep galloway up at night, is he right? a quick google seems to only produce sites with headlines like is gaddafi a rothschild? so i'm wondering if someone needs to tell young george not to believe everything he reads on the internet

juan cole is overrated

(i'm sorry but)

Thanks for your insight.

you're welcome. i have met juan cole personally and i have family/friends who have worked with him. personality wise he is sort of a typical "i am telling truth to power" blowhard.

I can believe that but I'm looking for people who know what they're talking about vis a vis the arab spring. If you can point me in the direction of others then great.

try al jazeera english

Sure, I've been using that since Egypt kicked off at the start of the year.

that's cool. there are lots of good links on the liveblogs and twitter feeds. just saying that if i was pointing you toward info about the arab spring, i wouldn't point in the direction of the university of michigan.

Ha, fair point. He's not my only source.

cole is an american version of hitchens in that he can't help but inject his outsized ego into the topic. at the end of the day, you learn as much or more about hitchens as you do about the middle east.

i mean, sympomatic of juan cole: his wikipedia entry, which lists him as a "kahlil gibran expert" is longer than kahlil gibran's wikipedia entry.

I think Cole's a bit more humble than Hitchens, but that's not saying much. Obviously if one has time, it's best to read a variety of sources. Speaking of which, on the current transition and comparisons to Iraq:

From Reuters:

For months a handful of Western advisers has worked with the NTC, based in the eastern city of Benghazi, on plans for a power transition that would avoid the disasters of Iraq.

Intentions are one thing, implementation another.

From Washington Post:
Among the first waves of rebels to storm Tripoli this week was a small team whose members carried smartphones along with their weapons. Under a well-rehearsed plan, they blasted Arabic text messages that would appear on tens of thousands of cellphones throughout the city.

“Don’t destroy public buildings,” one read. “These are for the future of Libya.”

Libyan novelist Hisham Matar's POV

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/26/libya-revolution-hisham-matar-edinburgh?CMP=twt_fd

this is over a month old but i don't think its being talked about at all?

http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/2011/07/17/lynching-in-benghazi/

The treatment of black Africans is a horrible element of all this - I have seen it mentioned but not much, that's true - but what's with the final paragraph?

We ask our readers to contact news organisations to demand they cover this story and to contact politicians to ensure that the rebels, amongst whom are clearly a significant faction equivalent to Al Qaeda /the Ku Klux Klan, are not supported in taking control of any further population centres.

Doesn't seem like an impartial human rights group to me. Other stories on that site include one claiming that not buying oil from Syria will amount to infanticide: "The move has been supported by Human Rights Watch, who seem to have forgotten the lessons of the Iraqi sanctions, or perhaps are so wedded to US foreign policy that they don’t care." Weirdly they don't seem to care at all about the human rights of demonstrators murdered by Assad.

Obviously there is a horrifying and dangerous and racist propaganda and violence campaign against sub-saharans happening as part of this. Otherizing the enemy is a sad and awful and predictable part of a war.

That said, I do find it interesting that HRI came into existence on 4/21, a month after Odyssey Dawn started. HRI has reported almost exclusively on Libya, and has fielded accusations of being Gaddhafi-funded. Things that make me go hmm, to say the least.

Interesting piece from a pro-intervention Marxist:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/27/1010769/-Who-really-beat-Qaddafi?via=blog_511082

Gist: "Much of the anti-war movement, short on analysis and driven by reflex, came out opposed to NATO. They took a counter-revolutionary stand with regards to the Libyan revolution."

cf hitch

"your analysis is lacking" was always my fave marxist-to-marxist zing

I love Marxist v Marxist beef. I like "counter-revolutionary" as an unashamedly old school put-down.

Hell, I'm a 'pro-intervention Marxist' - I hope we're not so rare that it's a gimmick. And I hope that other Marxists write better articles than that one - it's kind of repetitive.

marxists were the o.g. interventionists

Man, this is just awful:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/28/libya.gadhafi.nanny/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

And I hope that other Marxists write better articles than that one - it's kind of repetitive.

haha

On a lighter note:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-72187.html

Beginning of one strange porn sequence, surely.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/a-qaddafi-family-photo-album/

The Algerian foreign ministry said Gaddafi's wife Safiya, daughter Aisha and sons Hannibal and Mohammed and their children had entered Algeria at 8.45am on Monday, according to the state-run APS news agency.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/29/gaddafi-family-escape-libya-algeria

Algerian authorities earlier this year crushed an attempt to create a Tunisian-style uprising in Algiers

There's lots of blad blood in Algeria; brutal war for independence, election results in '91 that would have put Islamists into power were nullified and subsequent civil war...

kind of bummed this didnt result in an interview:

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqrbf4ALy81qk7pano1_500.png

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/2011831151258728747.html

I managed to smuggle away some documents, among them some that indicate the Gaddafi regime, despite its constant anti-American rhetoric – maintained direct communications with influential figures in the US.

I found what appeared to be the minutes of a meeting between senior Libyan officials – Abubakr Alzleitny and Mohammed Ahmed Ismail – and David Welch, former assistant secretary of state under George W Bush. Welch was the man who brokered the deal to restore diplomatic relations between the US and Libya in 2008.
Papers and files were strewn about the offices of Libya's intelligence agency [Evan Hill/Al Jazeera]

Welch now works for Bechtel, a multinational American company with billion-dollar construction deals across the Middle East. The documents record that, on August 2, 2011, David Welch met with Gaddafi's officials at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, just a few blocks from the US embassy.

...

On the floor of the intelligence chief's office lay an envelope addressed to Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam. Inside, I found what appears to be a summary of a conversation between US congressman Denis Kucinich, who publicly opposed US policy on Libya, and an intermediary for the Libyan leader's son.

It details a request by the congressman for information he needed to lobby US lawmakers to suspend their support for the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) and to put an end to NATO airstrikes.

According to the document, Kucinich wanted evidence of corruption within the NTC and, like Welch, any possible links within rebel ranks to al-Qaeda.

holy shit

kooch fights dirty, yo.

When you want grits, you go to the grocery. When you want dirt on somebody, you go to their enemy. This is how a practical pol thinks.

never would i have called kooch practical.

and yet!!!!!!!!!!!

gr8080, your wish is granted. LA road-trip dude interviewed:

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/road-trip-american-student-joins-rebels-in-fight-for-muammar-qaddafis-hometown

The tent glowed with morning. A scuffle of noise approached. I got up and pulled on my cargo shorts. The men entered, the tall one first. Three excitable akhii were behind him.

"We found your phone charger, Chris Jeon," he said. "It was behind the latrine."

"Gross," I said.

On the floor of the intelligence chief's office lay an envelope addressed to Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam. Inside, I found what appears to be a summary of a conversation between US congressman Denis Kucinich, who publicly opposed US policy on Libya, and an intermediary for the Libyan leader's son.

Worth taking with a pinch of salt. There was a similar situation with 'conveniently accessible' documents found by Telegraph reporters in the Iraqi intelligence ministry linking George Galloway with all sorts of dodgy stuff. It's widely accepted that they were false and put there deliberately to discredit him. Not sure who by, though.

the when and the what of this so-called conversation would seem to be pertinent also, since the gadaffis were persona NON non grata with the "international community" until early this year...

"It is the end of my summer vacation, so I thought it would be cool to join the rebels," said Chris Jeon, a 21-year-old university student from Los Angeles, shrugging cooly.

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu216/le_bateau_ivre/zi7hd.gif