This Sunday’s talk-shows were pathetic. Or else they’re practicing double-speak.
Are we supposed to believe that Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, or any of the other civilians or military who answered the call to enlighten the nation on who we are fighting in Libya, don’t know what kind of regime Muammar Gaddafi set up there four decades ago? The country is called the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and according to Wikipedia, the last word is an Arabic term generally translated as "state of the masses". Describing the form of statehood of Libya under Gaddafi from 1977, it is roughly comparable to the term ‘People's Republic’,.
Before trying to guess ‘what kind of people we are supporting’ when referring to the rebels, do these learned individuals not owe the perhaps less learned among their listeners a short primer on the nature of the Gaddafi regime? We’ve been repeatedly told that the man is idiosyncratic, unpredictable, fond of dramatic capes and gestures, that he has - or had - a Ukrainian nurse. But what average American knows anything about the ideas that inspired this former army Colonel? His socialist and nationalist political philosophy, published in the Green Book in 1975, is said to have been inspired by Mao’s Red Book.
Does this mean that the rebels are anti-socialist? Perhaps. More likely, the educated leaders who flew to someplace safe are. The Chalabis. The rag-tag band that didn’t know how to load a rifle is probably made up of a lot of people who are frustrated at not having a say, and not benefitting enough from the oil wealth the brother leader nationalized long ago.
What this tells us is that Gaddafi is likely to have serious support from the lower classes - as does Ahmedinejad. Moreover, no country with socialist leanings is likely to support a war against him. And right-wing Arab rulers, facing rising public opposition from their lower classes, will participate daintily in the coalition to oust him.
Instead of worrying about Shi’a Iran’s understandable desire to play a role in the region commensurate with its illustrious culture and history, which it underlines by building nuclear reactors, or its (understandable) support of friendly regimes such as Syria or Lebanon, or its (equally logical) penetration of Iraq, where we inadvertently brought the formerly downtrodden Shi’a to power, let’s have a serious, academically - as opposed to politically-based discussion about pan Africanism, which Gaddafi has tried to sell to non-Arab African leaders more interested in oil or diamonds, and socialism (yes!), which has many adherents worldwide. (See the implications for Egypt and Tunisia, Libya’s neighbors, whose people kicked out despotic RIGHT-WING rulers just weeks ago.)
I know it’s hard to get your head around this, but you cannot continue indefinitely to put ‘Islam’ in one box, and ‘equity’ in another. Rather than being mutually exclusive, they often overlap, and it serves no purpose to pretend otherwise.
Please, ladies and gentlemen of the gilded screen, start factoring in the age-old notion of equity when you consider ‘American interests’ (oil) and ‘European interests’ (oil and the Mediterranean as an area of influence - which puts them somewhat at odds with us).
Accept the fact that our phalanx of geographically designated ‘Commands’ are part of the Middle East problem. And oh, before I forget, please factor in Israel, which continues to attack Gaza as though it were located on a different planet from the places ruled by Gaddafi, Assad (another leftwing ruler), and Nasrallah. As if the throne of Jordan were not under siege, and this thing is only a week old.