<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">FYI, A cogent criticism of Cole's polemic. --mkb<br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">Melvin Rothenberg <<a href="mailto:mel@math.uchicago.edu">mel@math.uchicago.edu</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">March 28, 2011 7:16:18 PM CDT<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">ufpj-activist <<a href="mailto:ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org">ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>Re: [ufpj-activist] In response to Juan Cole</b><br></span></div><br>
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Juan Cole's defense of western military intervention in Libya is
eloquent and articulate but ultimately a liberal defense of
imperialist rule throughout the world. His argument in its essence
states that if you can make an a priori case that a state is going
to employ significant violence against against a section of its
population, even when they are engaged in an armed uprising, that
the US has the right to intervene with its overwhelming military
force, liquidate the existing state, and replace it with one more
to its liking. Thus the US and its allies are in fact, and
justifiably so, not only the military but also the moral and
humanitarian guardians of humanity. This is the essential moral
justification of liberal imperialism.<br>
<br>
In making his argument Cole distorts clear facts. The notion that
the protesters were initially citizens spontaneously and
peacefully demanding rights and were shocked into rebellion by
Qaddafi’s brutal response is sheer nonsense. Of course the protest
organizers mobilized large sectors of the population fed up with
the corrupt and dictatorial regime, but the leadership of the
protests represented forces who have for many years opposed
Qaddafi's rule and joined by defectors from the government, had
rebellion in mind from the beginning. They quickly seized control
of Eastern Libya and its major city Benghazi , running Qaddafi's
weak security forces in that traditionally anti-Qaddafi region
out. Qaddafi in turn gathered his core security and military
apparatus and moved to crush the insurrection, first in his base
in Tripoli, and then moving eastward to destroy the rebel forces
in Benghazi. This is what regimes facing armed insurrections do.
Qaddafi accompanied his campaign with blood curdling threats to
strangle the opposition in their beds, characteristic of his
thuggish style of rule, and gave the rebels sympathy and the
imperialists cover to intervene, but it is a general rule that
regimes putting down rebellions are rarely gentle with the rebels.
The recent crushing of the Tamil Tiger rebellion by the Sri
Lankian regime ended with a bloody massacre of ten of thousands on
Tamil civilians, yet this occurred with hardly a peep from our
humanitarian imperialists. <br>
<br>
I do not question the sincerity of Cole's personal
"humanitarianism". Yet the decision of western imperialism to
intervene militarily in Libya used humanitarian concerns only as a
cover. The true motives are cold, calculating, and geo-political.
The decision to replace Mubarak in Egypt, a long time imperialist
ally and favorite was deemed necessary to pacify mass Egyptian
sentiment but was painful to US core supporters in the region,
particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel. They smelled weakness and
sellout. Ridding the region of Qadaffi, who had made peace with
imperialism and western oil interests, but was still regarded as
troublesome with his occasional anti-imperialist rhetoric and
bombast, would balance the exit of Mubarak, and reassure our core
allies we had not gone soft. Further, at the early stage of the
Libyan uprising it appeared that Qadaffi could be pushed out by
threats, and the administration made the public declaration that
he must go. When he decided to fight back, Obama's word was on the
line, and when Qaddafi's army pushed toward Benghazi, and
threatened to extinguish the rebellion, the US decided it had to
act to militarily to save the insurrection. The rest was maneuver
and spin, as Obama already bogged down in two unpopular wars, and
facing a tough re-election campaign in 2012, organized a very
clever diplomatic cover in the UN, with NATO, the Arab League so
as not to be overly exposed. One has to admire the slickness and
smoothness of the operation, as well as being disgusted with the
hypocrisy of the appeal to humanitarian sentiment. <br>
<br>
If Cole's humanitarian sentiment cannot be challenged his choice
of language in describing the events certainly can be. To describe
the military intervention as a limited UN operation if false on
two obvious counts. The fact that many on the security council
abstained from the vote, testify not to any genuine international
outpouring of sympathy for the rebels or an international taking
responsibility for a tough situation, but cynical calculation on
the part of the abstainers who are free to dissociate themselves
from the unsavory aspects while remaining aloof. Let the US and
its allies do the dirty work, and when it turns sour they will pay
the price. It is not UN soldiers which are involved but the US and
its NATO allies who are providing the force and are in command of
the operation. There is no time limits to the operation and it
will be only concluded when Qaddafi is removed from power. That
the declared mission of the operation is to protect civilians from
Qaddafi's forces, in the middle of a civil war, is bizarre. What
about the civilians who support Qaddafi? Are there not any?. Who
will protect them from the wrath of the rebels?. As the Qaddafi
forces retreat, the air strikes are being used as an air force
promoting rebel advance, focusing their raids on destroying troop
columns and equipment. When Qaddafi's forces stand and fight, and
this will happen in cities and towns, the NATO air force will
concentrate on killing as many of them as possible. There will be
many civilian casualties and massive destruction as the bombs
don't distinguish civilians from troops. Reports indicate that
already many towns and homes have been destroyed in this
unrelenting bombardment.<br>
<br>
It is revealing that Cole's interventionist instincts go back to
the suppression of the Prague rebellion in 1968 by Soviet
forces. He thinks the only reason not to have supported sending
US marines into Czechoslovakia, was the danger of igniting of WW3.
He welcome the change in environment which now allows such
intervention. His instinctive, almost chemical, reaction is that
the key to supporting a popular uprising is to bring in the armed
might of imperialism. He has no other proposals. This is a sad,
bankrupt position for someone who considers himself an
anti-imperialist. <br>
<br>
The issue of mass repression and violence against their people by
dictatorial and oppressive regimes is a serious one. More serious
to me is the issue of violence and mass slaughter of foreign
populations by imperialist powers whose own citizens are protected
by traditions and rights. The slaughter of Vietnamese or Iraqi's
by the US, in the course of military invasion and occupation, and
the slaughter by the their allies around the world in the
permanent struggle to repress just resistance and rebellion never
some how rises to the level of war crime or atrocity that the much
smaller efforts of the pariah states such as Libya engage in.
When Juan Cole advocates armed intervention against the US
invasion of Iraq, then I will be prepared to take his arguments
for intervention in Libya seriously.<br>
<br>
Mel Rothenberg <br>
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<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/an-open-letter-to-the-left-on-libya.html">http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/an-open-letter-to-the-left-on-libya.html</a><br>
<h2><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/an-open-letter-to-the-left-on-libya.html" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to An Open Letter to the
Left on Libya">An Open Letter to the Left on Libya</a></h2><p class="date">Posted on 03/27/2011 by Juan</p><p>As I expected, now that Qaddafi’s advantage in armor and heavy
weapons is being neutralized by the UN allies’ air campaign, <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/libyan-rebels-advance-as-kadhafi-forces-flee-strikes-20110327-1cbqg.html">
the liberation movement is regaining lost territory</a>.
Liberators took back Ajdabiya and Brega (Marsa al-Burayqa), key
oil towns, on Saturday into Sunday morning, and seemed set to
head further West. This rapid advance is almost certainly made
possible in part by the hatred of Qaddafi among the majority of
the people of these cities. The Buraiqa Basin contains much of
Libya’s oil wealth, and the Transitional Government in Benghazi
will soon again control 80 percent of this resource, an
advantage in their struggle with Qaddafi.</p><p>I am unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on, and glad
that the UNSC-authorized intervention has saved them from being
crushed. I can still remember when I was a teenager how
disappointed I was that Soviet tanks were allowed to put down
the Prague Spring and extirpate socialism with a human face. Our
multilateral world has more spaces in it for successful change
and defiance of totalitarianism than did the old bipolar world
of the Cold War, where the US and the USSR often deferred to
each other’s sphere of influence.</p><p>The United Nations-authorized intervention in Libya has pitched
ethical issues of the highest importance, and has split
progressives in unfortunate ways. I hope we can have a calm and
civilized discussion of the rights and wrongs here.</p><p>On the surface, the situation in Libya a week and a half ago
posed a contradiction between two key principles of Left
politics: supporting the ordinary people and opposing foreign
domination of them. Libya’s workers and townspeople had risen up
to overthrow the dictator in city after city– Tobruk, Dirna,
al-Bayda, Benghazi, Ajdabiya, Misrata, Zawiya, Zuara, Zintan.
Even in the capital of Tripoli, working-class neighborhoods such
as Suq al-Jumah and Tajoura had chased out the secret police. In
the two weeks after February 17, there was little or no sign of
the protesters being armed or engaging in violence. </p><p>The libel put out by the dictator, that the 570,000 people of
Misrata or the 700,000 people of Benghazi were supporters of
“al-Qaeda,” was without foundation. That a handful of young
Libyan men from Dirna and the surrounding area had fought in
Iraq is simply irrelevant. The Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq was
for the most part not accurately called ‘al-Qaeda,’ which is a
propaganda term in this case. All of the countries experiencing
liberation movements had sympathizers with the Sunni Iraqi
resistance; in fact opinion polling shows such sympathy almost
universal throughout the Sunni Arab world. All of them had at
least some fundamentalist movements. That was no reason to wish
the Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians and others ill. The question
is what kind of leadership was emerging in places like Benghazi.
The answer is that it was simply the notables of the city. If
there were an uprising against Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, it
would likely unite businessmen and factory workers, Catholics
and secularists. It would just be the people of Milan. A few old
time members of the Red Brigades might even come out, and
perhaps some organized crime figures. But to defame all Milan
with them would be mere propaganda. </p><p>Then Muammar Qaddafi’s sons rallied his armored brigades and
air force to bomb the civilian crowds and shoot tank shells into
them. Members of the Transitional Government Council in Benghazi
estimate that 8000 were killed as Qaddafi’s forces attacked and
subdued Zawiya, Zuara, Ra’s Lanuf, Brega, Ajdabiya, and the
working class districts of Tripoli itself, using live ammunition
fired into defenseless rallies. If 8000 was an exaggeration,
simply “thousands” was not, as attested by Left media such as
Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! As Qaddafi’s tank brigades reached
the southern districts of Benghazi, the prospect loomed of a
massacre of committed rebels on a large scale.</p><p>The United Nations Security Council authorization for UN member
states to intervene to forestall this massacre thus pitched the
question. If the Left opposed intervention, it de facto
acquiesced in Qaddafi’s destruction of a movement embodying the
aspirations of most of Libya’s workers and poor, along with
large numbers of white collar middle class people. Qaddafi would
have reestablished himself, with the liberation movement
squashed like a bug and the country put back under secret police
rule. The implications of a resurgent, angry and wounded Mad
Dog, his coffers filled with oil billions, for the democracy
movements on either side of Libya, in Egypt and Tunisia, could
well have been pernicious.</p><p>The arguments against international intervention are not
trivial, but they all did have the implication that it was all
right with the world community if Qaddafi deployed tanks against
innocent civilian crowds just exercising their right to peaceful
assembly and to petition their government. (It simply is not
true that very many of the protesters took up arms early on,
though some were later forced into it by Qaddafi’s aggressive
military campaign against them. There still are no trained
troops to speak of on the rebel side). </p><p>Some have charged that the Libya action has a Neoconservative
political odor. But the Neoconservatives hate the United Nations
and wanted to destroy it. They went to war on Iraq despite the
lack of UNSC authorization, in a way that clearly contravened
the UN Charter. Their spokesman and briefly the ambassador to
the UN, John Bolton, actually at one point denied that the
United Nations even existed. The Neoconservatives loved
deploying American muscle unilaterally, and rubbing it in
everyone’s face. Those who would not go along were subjected to
petty harassment. France, then deputy secretary of defense Paul
Wolfowitz pledged, would be “punished” for declining to fall on
Iraq at Washington’s whim. The Libya action, in contrast,
observes all the norms of international law and multilateral
consultation that the Neoconservatives despise. There is no
pettiness. Germany is not ‘punished’ for not going along.
Moreover, the Neoconservatives wanted to exercise primarily
Anglo-American military might in the service of harming the
public sector and enforced ‘shock therapy’ privatization so as
to open the conquered country to Western corporate penetration.
All this social engineering required boots on the ground, a land
invasion and occupation. Mere limited aerial bombardment cannot
effect the sort of extreme-capitalist revolution they seek. <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/top-ten-ways-that-libya-2011-is-not-iraq-2003.html">
Libya 2011 is not like Iraq 2003 in any way</a>.</p><p>Allowing the Neoconservatives to brand humanitarian
intervention as always their sort of project does a grave
disservice to international law and institutions, and gives them
credit that they do not deserve, for things in which they do not
actually believe.</p><p>The intervention in Libya was done in a legal way. It was
provoked by a vote of the Arab League, including the newly
liberated Egyptian and Tunisian governments. It was urged by a
United Nations Security Council resolution, the gold standard
for military intervention. (Contrary to what some alleged, the
abstentions of Russia and China do not deprive the resolution of
legitimacy or the force of law; only a veto could have done
that. You can be arrested today on a law passed in the US
Congress on which some members abstained from voting.)</p><p>Among reasons given by critics for rejecting the intervention
are:</p><p>1. Absolute pacifism (the use of force is always wrong)</p><p>2. Absolute anti-imperialism (all interventions in world
affairs by outsiders are wrong).</p><p>3. Anti-military pragmatism: a belief that no social problems
can ever usefully be resolved by use of military force.</p><p>Absolute pacifists are rare, and I will just acknowledge them
and move on. I personally favor an option for peace in world
policy-making, where it should be the default initial position.
But the peace option is trumped in my mind by the opportunity to
stop a major war crime.</p><p>Leftists are not always isolationists. In the US, progressive
people actually went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, forming
the Lincoln Brigade. That was a foreign intervention. Leftists
were happy about Churchill’s and then Roosevelt’s intervention
against the Axis. To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other
values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions. I
can’t tell you how annoyed I am by the fringe left adulation for
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the grounds that he is
‘anti-imperialist,’ and with an assumption that he is somehow on
the Left. As the pillar of a repressive Theocratic order that
puts down workers, he is a man of the far Right, and that he
doesn’t like the US and Western Europe doesn’t ennoble him. </p><p>The proposition that social problems can never be resolved by
military force alone may be true. But there are some problems
that can’t be solved unless there is a military intervention
first, since its absence would allow the destruction of the
progressive forces. Those arguing that “Libyans” should settle
the issue themselves are willfully ignoring the overwhelming
repressive advantage given Qaddafi by his jets, helicopter
gunships, and tanks; the ‘Libyans’ were being crushed
inexorably. Such crushing can be effective for decades
thereafter.</p><p>Assuming that NATO’s UN-authorized mission in Libya really is
limited (<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-26/middle-east/29192049_1_senior-nato-officials-military-action-forces">
it is hoping for 90 days</a>), and that a foreign military
occupation is avoided, the intervention is probably a good thing
on the whole, however distasteful it is to have Nicolas Sarkozy
grandstanding. Of course he is not to be trusted by
progressives, but he is to his dismay increasingly boxed in by
international institutions, which limits the damage he could do
as the bombing campaign comes to an end (Qaddafi only had 2000
tanks, many of them broken down, and it won’t be long before he
has so few, and and the rebels have captured enough to level the
playing field, that little further can be accomplished from the
air).</p><p>Many are crying hypocrisy, citing other places an intervention
could be staged or worrying that Libya sets a precedent. I don’t
find those arguments persuasive. Military intervention is always
selective, depending on a constellation of political will,
military ability, international legitimacy and practical
constraints. The humanitarian situation in Libya was fairly
unique. You had a set of tank brigades willing to attack
dissidents, and responsible for thousands of casualties and with
the prospect of more thousands to come, where aerial
intervention by the world community could make a quick and
effective difference. </p><p>This situation did not obtain in the Sudan’s Darfur, where the
terrain and the conflict were such that aerial intervention
alone would have have been useless and only boots on the ground
could have had a hope of being effective. But a whole US
occupation of Iraq could not prevent Sunni-Shiite urban
faction-fighting that killed tens of thousands, so even boots on
the ground in Darfur’s vast expanse might have failed.</p><p>The other Arab Spring demonstrations are not comparable to
Libya, because in none of them has the scale loss of life been
replicated, nor has the role of armored brigades been as
central, nor have the dissidents asked for intervention, nor has
the Arab League. For the UN, out of the blue, to order the
bombing of Deraa in Syria at the moment would accomplish nothing
and would probably outrage all concerned. Bombing the tank
brigades heading for Benghazi made all the difference.</p><p>That is, in Libya intervention was demanded by the people being
massacred as well as by the regional powers, was authorized by
the UNSC, and could practically attain its humanitarian aim of
forestalling a massacre through aerial bombardment of murderous
armored brigades. And, the intervention could be a limited one
and still accomplish its goal. </p><p>I also don’t understand the worry about the setting of
precedents. The UN Security Council is not a court, and does not
function by precedent. It is a political body, and works by
political will. Its members are not constrained to do elsewhere
what they are doing in Libya unless they so please, and the veto
of the five permanent members ensures that a resolution like
1973 will be rare. But if a precedent is indeed being set that
if you rule a country and send tank brigades to murder large
numbers of civilian dissidents, you will see your armor bombed
to smithereens, I can’t see what is wrong with that.</p><p>Another argument is that the no-fly zone (and the no-drive
zone) aimed at overthrowing Qaddafi not to protect his people
from him but to open the way for US, British and French
dominance of Libya’s oil wealth. This argument is bizarre. The
US declined to do oil business with Libya in the late 1980s and
throughout the 1990s, when it could have, because it had placed
the country under boycott. It didn’t <i>want</i> access to that
oil market, which was repeatedly proffered to Washington by
Qaddafi then. After Qaddafi came back in from the cold in the
late 1990s (for the European Union) and after 2003 (for the US),
sanctions were lifted and Western oil companies flocked into the
country. US companies were <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/22/us-libya-usa-oilcompanies-idUSTRE71L5VI20110222">
well represented</a>, along with BP and the Italian firm ENI.
BP signed an expensive exploration contract with Qaddafi and
cannot possibly have wanted its validity put into doubt by a
revolution. There is no advantage to the oil sector of removing
Qaddafi. Indeed, a new government may be more difficult to deal
with and may not honor Qaddafi’s commitments. There is no
prospect of Western companies being allowed to own Libyan
petroleum fields, which were nationalized long ago. Finally, it
is not always in the interests of Big Oil to have more petroleum
on the market, since that reduces the price and, potentially,
company profits. A war on Libya to get more and better contracts
so as to lower the world price of petroleum makes no sense in a
world where the bids were already being freely let, and where
high prices were producing record profits. I haven’t seen the
war-for-oil argument made for Libya in a manner that makes any
sense at all.</p><p>I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at
the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a
case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that
supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like
Libya. If we just don’t care if the people of Benghazi are
subjected to murder and repression on a vast scale, we aren’t
people of the Left. We should avoid making ‘foreign
intervention’ an absolute taboo the way the Right makes abortion
an absolute taboo if doing so makes us heartless (inflexible a
priori positions often lead to heartlessness). It is now easy to
forget that Winston Churchill held absolutely odious positions
from a Left point of view and was an insufferable colonialist
who opposed letting India go in 1947. His writings are full of
racial stereotypes that are deeply offensive when read today.
Some of his interventions were nevertheless noble and were
almost universally supported by the Left of his day. The UN
allies now rolling back Qaddafi are doing a good thing, whatever
you think of some of their individual leaders.</p>
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On 3/28/11 2:23 PM, Robert Naiman wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:AANLkTinZwvGfnaF1QkG-QtM1DBvg-88RfRGWHkZAyVEW@mail.gmail.com" type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_quote">My response to Juan Cole.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In brief: the Administration's decision to embark on a new
war without Congressional authorization represents a long-term
threat to the U.S. peace movement, because Congress is a key
arena in which the peace movement tries to affect U.S. policy
in the direction of less war. Taking away Congressional war
powers is to the peace movement as taking away collective
bargaining is to the labor movement: a direct threat to our
ability to move our agenda in the interests of our
constituents.
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<div><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/an-open-letter-to-liberal_b_841505.html" target="_blank">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/an-open-letter-to-liberal_b_841505.html</a></div>
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-- <br>
Robert Naiman<br>
Policy Director<br>
Just Foreign Policy<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/" target="_blank">www.justforeignpolicy.org</a><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:naiman@justforeignpolicy.org" target="_blank">naiman@justforeignpolicy.org</a><br>
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