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I'd say at this point that, barring the improbable, the counterrevolution
has triumphed in Libya, no matter which "leaderships" win. Any intervention
will be used as a lever against the Tunisian and Egyptian mass movements, as
it is now being used against the mass movement in Bahrain. Regardless of
how the tactical situation changes - the strategic situation has not yet
been reversed, that ultimately depends on the final resolution of the
Egyptian situation - the principal perspective remains the same: Libya was
a genuine extension of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Proof:
1) the obvious timing of the Libyan revolt, coming close on the heels of
Egypt;
2) The spontaneous pan-Libyan character of the mass uprising - this was not
"just Benghazi", and anyone who claims otherwise is depending on some
American-style shortness of memory and is rewriting history already, CNN
style.
The spontaneous character of the Libyan uprising was its chief weakness -
compare this especially to Egypt - exposing a nearly complete political
vacuum, into which rushed a motley collection of ex-Gadhaffists, emigres
with ties to imperialism and other assorted opportunistic riffraff. This
is, btw, the key problem we face in this new era, the general absence of
revolutionary leadership. But as against the simplistic cookie-cutter view
of the world of our opponents, this is not reason to condemn and oppose the
right of the Libyan masses to overthrow Gadaffi, imperialism's previous
favorite, no more than it would require us to condemn and oppose the Kosovar
peoples right to self-determination, even as the KLA "leaderships" were a
bunch of rotten gangsters backed by imperialism.
There is nothing much more repulsive in this world than to condemn an entire
mass movement by their illusions in their mis-leaderships, even to the point
of demonizing entire peoples. This is exactly the divide and conquer
method of imperialism. One cannot, in the name of "realism", "socialist"
or otherwise (allusion intended) copy and adopt the methods of our enemies
at no cost: such methods are invariably an extended expression of the class
and social essence of imperialism. This is the difference in principle
between actual and make-pretend anti-imperialists. It can be reduced to one
of those pat formulas our opponents love so much: "Anti-imperialist in
form, Pro-imperialist in essence".
Lenin's Tomb has generally had a good take on this - Note that Wallerstein
was overoptimistic here concerning Russia and China:
"As if I didn't see this coming a mile off:
10 in favour, zero against, five abstentions. So the vote went exactly
as predicted. "The resolution 1973/2011 is adopted.," says the chairman.
"This could get very ugly. The resolution authorizes a whole series of
military measures short of ground invasion, including air strikes. The worst
case scenarios? Not that air strikes will kill civilians - that is
absolutely guaranteed, and thus constitutes an aspect of even the best case.
Not that the war will escalate - that is not a dead cert, but a strong
probability. However, it's also unlikely to involve a ground invasion, which
I need hardly say would be catastrophic. The worst case scenario seems to be
that this will fuel the centrifugal forces tending toward partition between
a 'Western' allied statelet in the east, and a rump dictatorship in the
west. Qadhafi has spent years deliberately 'underdeveloping' the east to
punish these regions and tribal federations for their tendency toward
rebelliousness, leaving towns and cities that should be as rich as those in
the Gulf states desperately poor, surrounded by shantytowns and slums - and
so he has laid the material basis for such divisions. Imperialism creates
divisions where none existed before (look at Iraq). This is how it always
operates. So it's implausible that where there already are such divisions,
and where such divisions have a direct bearing on the conflict underway,
that imperialist intervention would not exacerbate them. This may be the
worst thing that could possibly have happened to the Libyan revolution.
That's a worst-case scenario.
"The best-case scenario is that people are killed to little avail, and the
former regime elements in the transitional leadership have just diverted
energies and initiative down a blind alley. I suppose you might object that
the best-case scenario is that the air strikes exclusively kill the bad
guys, turning the initiative in favour of the revolutionaries, allowing them
to sieze power, build a liberal democratic state, and the cavalry heads
home. And the band played, 'Believe it if you like'. Look, I'd like to
believe it. I'd also like to believe that Obama is a socialist, Hillary
Clinton a feminist, and David Cameron a salesman for unsecured personal
loans. But the occasions in which imperialism has directly assisted a
revolutionary process are rather infrequent, wouldn't you say? In fact, I
suspect you'd be struggling if I asked you to name one.
"I'm also afraid that all the talk about the inaction, delaying,
dilly-dallying and procrastination of the 'international community', not to
mention the demonology about Russia and China obstructing the good guys once
again, has played straight into a very familiar war narrative. Just when
you've uttered your last "but why won't they DO something?", just when
you're about to give up and lapse into foul depression, the good guys come
to the rescue. It's like 1941 all over again. There was never any doubt, as
far as I'm concerned, that the US would support a no-fly zone if it could be
suitably internationalized and involve support from the miserable
dictatorships of the Arab League. And no one will be tasteless enough to
point out that those very same states are currently butchering their
populations with the arms and financial assistance of the imperial powers
commanding this coalition of the willing. Because that would just be sour
grapes."
>From "Angry Arab":
Libyan Opposition
"The Libyan people have been betrayed. Their revolution against the
Libyan tyrant has been hijacked by US and Saudi Arabia. That lousy henchman
for Qadhdhafi, Mustafa Abd-Al-Jalil, is now a Saudi stooge who hijacked the
uprising on behalf of a foreign agenda. I mean, what do you expect from a
man who until the other day held the position of Minister of Justice in
Qadhdhafi's regime, for potato's sake. And don't you like it when Western
media constantly refer to him as "the respected Libyan minister of Justice."
Respected by who? By Western governments."
Posted by As'ad AbuKhalil
-Matt
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