a thread about the civil unrest in egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region' if necessary)

x-post - The NY Times was quoting rebels who do want assistance.

The rebels have rejected any foreign invasion of the country but would welcome a no-fly zone, saying they can handle Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers, tanks and rockets, but not his warplanes and helicopter gunships. On Monday, Britain and France said they would seek United Nations authority for a no-fly zone, but Russia, which holds veto power, has already rejected any form of military intervention.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/world/africa/09libya.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1299592815-wVV3pqUufSBbAAAfvZAF+A

Ha, well there you go - depends which rebels you're speaking to.

Attention, the West: please let these people be self-determining FOR ONCE IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF IMPERIALISM.

― anna sui generis (suzy), Tuesday, March 8, 2011 12:27 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

i'll revert to using 'the_west' to underline the satirical intent

anyone who makes their living exporting to the_west, as libya present and future does, is sort of going to be part of the scene, ditto goes for allowing 'western' corporations in to come in and do the development work, training you experts in the_west, etc. the libyans have good grounds not to want military interference, but i'd imagine some of them are asking for some forms of assistance someplace quiet. even nasser, the og arab independence dude, sought 'advice' from mother russia.

Why don't they ask the Chinese then?

There's plenty of them there too, and all over Africa

well, they might, at some point in the near future. id guess from a libyan pov china and the US both look about equal, 'propping up shitty regimes in africa'-wise.

but at the moment they don't have the military resources to help

Would be fun if the Chinese decided to go ahead with a no-fly zone, perhaps with the Russians helping them out

Arab foreign ministers will meet on Friday at the Arab League in Cairo to discuss the Libya crisis, a League official told Reuters on Tuesday

How about these folks taking their time

They may as well, they have no influence on anything or anyone anywhere anytime

kind of a funny place to hold it. like, 'sooo, about these protests.' 'right?'

Cairo is now a bit calmer than elsewhere I guess

Except the women's day march in Tahrir Square just got bumrushed by the menz.

the case for intervention is pretty simple i guess

http://globlogization.wikistrat.com/globlogization/2011/3/7/the-war-of-attrition-in-libya.html

Watching the news, if this goes down and Qaddafi survives, we will have so much blood on our hands.

At its most basic: very evil leader, people putting it on the line, and we stand by on a very vulnerable regime. This is a 6-7m population, all along the coast. This isn't Iran - not even close.

Don't care about the framework (NATO, UN, whatever), because, in the end, it'll be us that leads the way.

I'm with Ajami on this one: a "moment of reckoning for the Obama administration." Pledging humanitarian aid won't be enough. Obama will regret this like Clinton regretted Rwanda. Time for Mrs. Clinton to earn her spurs.

We let this go down and we'll be hated anyway, and we hate ourselves for letting it happen. So what is the big difference? There will be no working with the guy after this anyway, so what is the downside? The Saudis hate him, because of the hit he tried on Abdullah.

We recognize the rebels. We supply them. We drone and fly aircraft in order to make it impossible for Qaddafi to win. We tell the Russians and Chinese this presents zero precedent for anything involving them.

We simply do what's right.

I realize it's no easy call for Obama, but at some point you need to move away from what you can't live with and toward something you can stand. Qaddafi, if he wins, will go on killing and torturing for a very long time.

Just about everybody needs outside help in these things. We did.

Just about everybody needs outside help in these things. We did.

oh please

I mean that is just a really shitty/sloppy analogy used for cheap effect

We simply do what's right.

"Simply"

yup, moral authority, that's us

The fact that the large majority of the population lives on the coast does affect the logisitics of a no-fly zone.

What is the downside?

It might not work. Potential civilian casualties. Commitment to yet another north African war. Lots of Libyans don't want intervention. No space for even the tiniest miscalculation. And so on. I don't think anyone's scared of upsetting Gaddafi here.

When someone resorts to using words like "evil" and "right" I start to doubt their grasp of detail.

Sorry, posted without checking - I mean another war in the broad region, obv Iraq and Afghanistan aren't in north Africa.

I don't really think we're much worse than China or Russia, Shakey.

My hesitation stems from the fact that, while I am tempted by his argument, w/o UN or African Union authorization, this will be made to look like imperialism even if we never put soldiers on the ground and there are signs that Gaddafi and his regime are willing to see the country split before they'll relinquish power in Tripoli.

My other concern is that a no-fly zone is fine but you need to take out the helicopters more than anything in the air and that requires a lot more patrolling than keeping fixed-wing craft out of the skies. Incidentally, is there any precedent for drones being used against helicopters or planes?

xp to shakey it's not a totally bad analogy! the french crown had 0 moral authority in the 1770s, and splitting off one of the english colonies was too juicy to pass up. i know lafayette was super cool and everything but come on.

not that the world gives a rat's but opinion is changing, a little. i think since 'the global community' has stated that qaddafi should go, more help to the rebellion ought to be forthcoming. recognition and aid at least. if foreign militaries are going to get involved i hope it's regional ones first, then the europeans. still not nuts about a 'no-fly'.

am i right in saying that reticence to 'get invovled' is based sorta on the assumption that the rebels will knock qaddafi out pretty soon now?

all that said i'm not really buying this kind of handwringing

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/08/lind_libya_no_fly

A no-fly zone over Libya would be a gateway drug that leads to all-out American military invasion and occupation

maybe, maybe not

I don't really think we're much worse than China or Russia, Shakey.

would hope that we're a little better, tbh. but if Russia or China started making noises about what's "right" um yeah I'd be a little suspect about them too.

to shakey it's not a totally bad analogy! the french crown had 0 moral authority in the 1770s, and splitting off one of the english colonies was too juicy to pass up. i know lafayette was super cool and everything but come on.

Libya is not a colony of a foreign government.

Some folks in the Pentagon and elsewhere probably just don't want to risk the lives of Americans. With everything that's gone wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan they don't want to get involved anywhere else.

This is forging some strange alliances. Most of the pro-intervention people I know would be horrified to be described as neo-cons, per that Salon article. I don't think it's fair to call that point about escalation "hand-wringing" though - this is just what keeps happening with the myth of the quick in-and-out.

We have leftwing isolationists and Pentagon "realists" both agreeing they don't want to get involved. Lind and Gates are in agreement on this. Lind wants to eventually reduce the size of the Pentagon though and Gates does not, in any kind of a substantive manner.

I hate to be all real-politik but weighing the advatages and disadvantages here and the means available to both us and the French and British, which way do we choose?

I think providing food and medical supplies is a no-brainer. Drop it or deliver it to reliable rebel areas like Benghazi.

Supplying materiel? If we do, why not just go ahead and try for the no-fly zone? We'd end up getting called oil-thirsty imperialists anyway if we give the revolt arms or military supplies.

The problem here is that our record isn't clean on these kinds of issues but the kinds of countries likely to veto any action in the UN or AU aren't exactly bastions of the Enlightenment either and in the interim, Libyans who are striving for freedom are going to be killed. The goodwill we might earn by being very vocally and practically pro-rebel, if they succeed, could be great and useful and a free Libya between a free Egypt and a free Tunisia could be an inspiration beyond even the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Would a no-fly zone be more palatable if it were enforced entirely or in part by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan? They have the planes (we sold them to them) but not the logistics and possibly not the will.

Supplying materiel? If we do, why not just go ahead and try for the no-fly zone? We'd end up getting called oil-thirsty imperialists anyway if we give the revolt arms or military supplies.

you know i'm not convinced of this either. sure, if we landed a bunch of troops. there have been so many interviews, from the beginning, with libyans saying, please do something, don't stand back. could be cherrypicking by the media? i dunno if people under fire worry, in that moment, about our record. qaddafi's is worse, in libya, after all...

lol at the suggestion of any Arab country having the resources/resolve to do anything constructive here. bunch of feckless losers and assholes.

xp

i feel like i have seen just as many (maybe more!) intvws with libyans saying DON'T interfere! xp

really? yeah well could be. i think a lot of them are batting around what kind of help they'd want and what would be over the line. plus it's like, chaotic over there right now.

i dont think theres much in the way of consensus in these matters yet among the rebels

the refugee crisis is still ongoing. It's not like illegal immigrant Nigerians and Ghanaians who came to Libya to work can get home easily even if they want to

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/world/middleeast/08refugees.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

The outbreak of violence in Tripoli around Feb. 20 sent migrants of all kinds fleeing for the airport. Until recently, desperate hordes of all nationalities were sleeping packed together on the floors of the terminals or in the fields and parking lots outside. Guards with whips and clubs beat them back to clear the entrance.

Despite Colonel Qaddafi’s brotherly pan-African rhetoric, racial xenophobia is common here. Many Libyans, ethnically Arab, look down on Chinese, Bangladeshis and darker-skinned Africans, in that order. Many African refugees here and in the camps on the Tunisian border say Libyans often addressed them as “abd,” or slave

I am seriously concerned that Cyrenaica and Tripolitania may split.

human rights org avaaz has come out in favor of the no-fly zone

http://www.avaaz.org/en/libya_no_fly_zone_1/

Tripoli is a company town. And the company is Qaddafi and sons. You are either with the company plan or -- at enormous risk -- you are against it.

CBS News

Would a no-fly zone be more palatable if it were enforced entirely or in part by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan? They have the planes (we sold them to them) but not the logistics and possibly not the will.

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Tuesday, March 8, 2011 6:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

possibly not the will... i guess as a quid pro quo the future libyan air force can help the jordanian and saudi rebels as and when

The future Libyan air force may be still run by Gaddaffi. The above Arab countries have as little interest in doing a no-fly zone as well, the US.

Folks in favor of getting involved cite preventing another Rwanda or assert we can learn positive things from recent failures and successes in the Balkans and mideast and North Africa; opponents seem to simply ignore prior successes and just point to Afghanistan and Iraq or Somalia as a reason to stay out. Gates seems to argue that 2 wars at once is the US limit (and in the future none in the mideast or Africa).

Kind of crazy watching on live Al Jazeera webcam as rebels mill in the open at an intersection at R'as Lanuf. There's about 400 or so waiting to go back to the commuter war, 2 towed quad 12.7mm and 2 technicals with bed mounted 12.7s firing at a circling jet, and if anyone in Tripoli was watching on Al Jazeera he could target from Google Earth satellite imagery and knock 300+ rebels out of the fight.

Just really, really bad leadership on the rebel side, and bad judgement on the part of Al Jazeera.

Saif's Gaddafi's London mansion is now being occupied by squatters. Go squatters!

I was just coming over to post that. Go squatters!

It's probably the best place to squat in the whole of London, you know he won't notice or be able to do anything about it for months, possibly forever.

I bet it's a nice gaff too, no tower block in Feltham for the likes of him

A group calling themselves "Topple The Tyrants" occupied the £10m house in Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London on Wednesday morning.

They said they would remain in place until confident the property's assets would be returned to the Libyan people.

The UK government froze assets owned by Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his family last week.

The group's spokesman, Montgomery Jones told the BBC: "We will stay here until we can be sure the property will be returned to its rightful owners."

He said: "The police came to look around, then went away. The house isn't occupied at the moment but there are things to sit on."

The group said the property was managed by the Gaddafi family through a holding company registered in the British Virgin Islands.

In a statement it added: "We didn't trust the British government to properly seize the Gaddafi regime's corrupt assets, so we took matters into our own hands.

"In the meantime we want to welcome refugees from the conflict in Libya and those fleeing tyranny and oppression across the world."

"We stand in solidarity with the Libyan people."

Waiting for an update from Miss LP; as a former squatter it always brings a smile to my face when industrious young'uns inconvenience a rich asshole dictator's son.