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Tawfik Bensaud
"People are starting to whisper again when they talk about politics or discuss the situation in Libya." That was how it was under Qaddafi. But back then, an activist from Benghazi explained, "if you spoke your mind you could get jailed -- but now, you get killed or have to flee the country. You just live in fear for your life and the lives of your family."
On September 19th, 18 year old Tawfik Bensaud, who tweeted this quote,  was gunned down and killed. Bensaud had been a vocal activist for civil society in Libya. According to an article in Foreign Policy, the lack of any real goverment in the failed state that used to be Libya, someone like Bensaud being murdered is routine:
Leaders of the Islamist militias that have been wreaking havoc across Libya have unleashed an army of loyal, unemployed, and mostly uneducated followers to carry out a campaign of intimidation. They are threatening, kidnapping, and targeting the relatives of politicians and civil society activists. "Militia leaders are now using an army of young people who will carry out their orders without any questions," said prominent activist Ahmed Ghedan, who had to flee Libya to Tunisia after he spoke out against the militias.

These foot soldiers have been bribed into joining the militia-gang culture. For activists, dealing with this army of brainwashed criminals is much harder than dealing with the militia bosses, who are leading from behind. The new recruits are clueless about the intent and consequences of their actions, and their loyalty simply lies with those who pay their checks. Political groups with links to the militias are taking advantage of this chaos to take out their opponents one by one.

These same groups are also targeting journalists and activists, who have found their lives and livelihoods threatened in myriad ways. For example, their movement is being restricted, and they have been unable to travel around or out of the country, since airports are still under the control of the militias. Not only does this threaten their reporting ability -- a blow to press freedom -- but the detours require them to travel by land through areas in which they could be stopped, identified, and either prevented from traveling or kidnapped.

The reason this is happening is Libya has no real goverment. They have two competing parliaments, one recently elected with only 18% turnout. Thats the one the US recognizes. They recently appointed the Chief of Staff of whats left of the Libyan Army as Prime Minister. On his watch:
In the latest chaotic development in Tripoli, gunmen surrounded government offices, threatened ministers with assassination and prevented employees from entering their workplaces, the transitional administration said in its statement, adding that “most of the ministries and institutions and commissions” in Tripoli were now outside its control.
The PM's goverment has run away to Tobruk. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is governed by militiasof various sorts. Some tribal, some criminal, some religious. There is an ISIS style militia that has declared an Islamic emiratein Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, after taking control of nearby army bases. We count Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist group. Because it is. Meanwhile foreigners of all kindshave fled the country and Western goverments have closed amd evacuated their embassies. Returned diplomats tell us things are about to get much worse, quickly.

Worst of all, the death toll. When America intervened by bombing Libya some two to three thousand people had been killed as Qaddafi moved to suppress an armed rebellion. Since that time some two to three thousand people have been killed by militias. Bensaud was killed in what was a coordinated series of assassinations targeting activists, journalists, government ministers, foreigners and other political and militia leaders.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the story you will find at every single juncture of American involvement in Middle Eastern internal problems. Every single time. Nothing good ever comes of it. Not for the people there, not for us. Especially when that involvement begins with military force, as it almost always does.

Recently Egypt and the Emirates are suspected of conducting air strikes against Islamic militias in Libya. The US response:

When asked about the New York Times report, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said: “I’d certainly refer you to the governments of Libya, Egypt, and the UAE.” She added: “We believe outside interference in Libya exacerbates current divisions and undermines Libya’s democratic transition.”
Facepalm.

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Comment Preferences

  •  Thanks for this (10+ / 0-)

    I think it's objectively worse, the grinding repression of a police state being all in all less untolerable that civil war and anarchy.

    An astounding figure you don't hear much about: nearly 2 million people, a third of the country, has fled to Tunisia, and thousands other have fled via boat, some of whom have died drowning. And to think that many cruise missile liberals--including people here--were celebrating the "success" of the NATO bombing and hailing President Obama for "taking out" Gaddafi.

    More proof, as if more were needed, that imperial regime change missions are bad for the people supposedly being liberated. (Of course their liberation is never the real goal.?

    •  Thanks for the observation that repression is (1+ / 0-)
      Recommended by:
      Richard Villiers

      better than war. Yay, repression.

      Not only do you and the diarist give undue legitimacy to that kind of throw away reasoning, but it comes with the other dash of illogical guilt common to the neoisoltionist-pacifists who have come into vogue lately at dKos: If the US ever did anything anywhere then it is responsible for everything that happens there forever. Wrong. We helped Libyans to remove a dictator; only helped, they did most of the work. Running the rest of their lives is their job, not ours. We can try to help a little, if they want, but we should have zero guilt if they can't get their sh*t together. That's on them. We couldn't run their lives for them even if we wanted to...and we don't.

      Also remember that there was a civil war in Libya before the limited NATO-led intervention. Mass executions and genocide were being documented, (even more so than Gadaffi normally did). We tipped the scales against Gadaffi. Yes. Good. Then, we got the hell out. That's precisely what we should. If you want to be an isolationist, do it after honoring treaty obligations which require us to stop genocide. Then, get the hell out and be an isolationist all you want, especially from the guilt of false choices, like tryanny being better than war.

      The alternative would be the Syria, where half the population has fled, hundreds of thousands have been killed, wounded, crippled or dissappeared. Terrorist are running rampant and there is no end in sight. But as usual, the isolationist-pacifist response is just never do anything. Watch killing and suffering. Maybe send food to the concentration camps and see if today's mini-Hitlers will just stop and be nice. Today's pacifism is a cop out by people who just do not want to be blamed for anything. Better to let another Rwanda happen than to lift a finger to stop it and be blamed for the consequences. That's not peace. That's cowardice. Where is the guilt for our failure to act there? I know pacifists who say if we saw the exact same events unfold in Rwanda today, they would insist in non-interventuon. Shame on them. Blood is on their hands.

      But, now that we've fired a single bullet at ISIS in Syria, apparently we will now be responsible everything (bad) that has ever happened there and everything that ever will. Bullsh*t. Libya and Syria are not finished, but neoisolationist-pacifism is. It has no answers.

      Just doing my part to piss off right wing nuts, one smart ass comment at a time.

      by tekno2600 on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 09:08:37 AM PDT

      [ Parent ]

      •  you kinda prove our point here (0+ / 0-)
        Better to let another Rwanda happen than to lift a finger to stop it and be blamed for the consequences.
        There is no way to deal with these civil wars and genocides that don't leave just as much "real" blood on our hands as not dealing with them leaves buckets of "proxy" blood on our hands.  We're "evil" because we let the Hutu massacre the Tutsi, but we'd have been "evil" if we made ourselves complicit in the Tutsis' historical repression of the Hutu majority blah blah blah.  Hitler killed X people, but we killed Y people so "Give peace a chance, man!"

        The real problem is that the obvious alternative to an uncomfortable "Prime Directive" position is a double standard on violence.  Certain people - dubbed "good guys" - have the right to be violent, everyone else does not.  A man in a uniform can do X, but a man in civvies cannot do X.  People decide to be OK with some dead children but not others ... depending on who killed them and why.  Fucking up bad people and then remaking their countries in our image is the neocon position in case you hadn't noticed.  And if you remake their countries in our image without fucking them up first, then you're still bad because that's also imperialism.

        •  Actually, no. I said YOU would allow genocide (1+ / 0-)
          Recommended by:
          Richard Villiers

          through your extreme isolationist pacifism. You go on to prove my point exactly. You think allowing mass exterminations is ok, as long as someone else does it in another country and the US does not do anything to respond. If Hitler were gassing the Jews today, you and Kuccinich would be more worried about impeaching Obama for wanting to stop it than actually preventing millions of deaths. I'm sure you would also send food packages and blankets to the concentration camps.

          There are already Responsiblity to Protect principles in international law that provide a means and an obligation to deal with these types of atrocities. The Nuremberg Principles deal with this. Chapter VII of the UN Charter deals with this. It's not about remaking a country in another country's image and it's not a "neocon" principle. It about international human rights and the courage to stand up against murder instead of taking the coward's way out and saying it will probably be worse if you try to do anything, so you'd rather just hide in the corner and watch the murders happen. And, oh yeah, that's what peace is all about, right? Wrong. Very wrong.

          Just doing my part to piss off right wing nuts, one smart ass comment at a time.

          by tekno2600 on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 01:11:40 PM PDT

          [ Parent ]

          •  I know what you're saying but I don't think you do (0+ / 0-)

            It's easy to preach heroic intervention on lofty moral and humanitarian grounds. It's not so easy to deal with the reality of combat and collateral damage that comes from going after bad guys.  Especially when it comes to counterinsurgency, probably the ugliest form of warfare there is because the war is waged over people, not land.

            You're basically arguing that there are circumstances in which it's not just acceptable but mandatory for us to go in with guns blazing because better our guns than theirs and better the people we want to kill than the people they want to kill.  I don't object to this thinking but I insist that we be honest about what it is - war, not some bloodless euphemism - and I'm not going to be happy about the mess that will be made.

            I also consider it hypocritical when the people who defend "intervention" in theory (Rwanda, Darfur, etc.) attack it in practice (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) because they object to the execution of it.  What did you think was going to happen?  We were going to kill people, hopefully most of them on purpose ... and the people we're fighting are also going to kill people, mainly so they won't lose those people to us.

            It really doesn't help that the parents of the dead children aren't going to care why your soldiers or bombs killed their children.  The personal loss will always trump your rhetoric: "What could possibly be worth all this fear and pain and death?!"  Despair turns to resentment turns to hatred and you lose the war even as you win every battle.

            •  We've signed UN treaties on genocide that obligate (0+ / 0-)

              us to act when we see it. In Rwanda, the genocide happened very quickly, and we initially denied it was genocide, because then we'd have been obligated to act. By the time we acknowkedged it was genocide, it was too late.

              You seem to think I am just making up a new argument about the obligation to prevent genocide. But, after the Holocaust, the whole world wondered how it happened and how to stop it from happening again. These principles were created precisely to deal with people like you who wisely preached the pacifist line of doing nothing as Hitler killed millions...and yes, we did know he was killing them. Perhaps we didn't know the scale, but we knew, and we didn't do jack shit; not even take refuges.

              Just doing my part to piss off right wing nuts, one smart ass comment at a time.

              by tekno2600 on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 07:55:55 PM PDT

              [ Parent ]

          •  Both Wrong, stop bringing up Rwanda. (2+ / 0-)
            Recommended by:
            PhilJD, chipmo

            There was a UNPROFOR in Rwanda.

            They made the conditions clear, and the future as well, ample warning.

            They asked for:
            - new rules of engagement,
            - 1500 additional "committed" Peacekeepers, a 25 % increase in manpower,
            - armoured vehicles.

            The CIC guaranteed that with these additional means, they could at the first sign of trouble, forestall the planned genocide, disarm the militias, protect the members of Government not complicit, arrest the leaders and instigators of the genocide and restore civil order.

            What they got:
            - Russia offered armoured vehicles but didn't have fast heavy lift. The US, the only nation with the ability, refused and let the Globemasters sit idle on the Tarmac.
            - several Nations offered additional Peacekeepers, France,( who backed the Hutu) and the US vetoed the funding.
            - new rules of engagement were also vetoed by France and the US.

            In the aftermath of the UNSC meetings, several nations pulled their contingents, as quite clearly, with what was coming, they would just be slaughtered if they tried to do the right thing.

            As in Bosnia, in Rwanda there was the opportunity to do the Right Thing, and prevent a genocide, at minimal cost, before it happened, but for assorted political reasons, the US avoided doing anything positive, at any cost.

            Many of those here, arguing against bombing ISIS, were all for pre-intervention in Rwanda,

            The US knew, when they disbanded the Iraqi Army, created de-Baathification, targeted Sunni communities, they were creating ground for Sunni extremism, and we did it anyway.

            None of the political, economic or military actions that have created ISIS have gone unnoticed, by the US, and we have elected to do, absolutely nothing to forstall the rise of ISIS.

            Just as bombing the Rwandan mass graves will do nothing to bring 1.7 million Rwandans back to life, only bombing ISIS will do nothing to degrade Sunni extremism.

            •  Jay, you're caught up in the minutia of (0+ / 0-)

              what happened in previous Administrations instead of thinking about solutions for the current problem. Many people said it was a terrible idea for Bush to disband the Iraqi army, but after all these years, you can't just glue humpty back together. You're also under the illusion that we have much more influence in Iraq than we do. The Shia government and their Iranian backers wanted us to go to zero forces. I'm glad Obama called their bluff, pulled out, and actually showed them what happens with the US out and them stoking sectarian divisions. We're not going to fix that and Obama's action against IS is not intended to solve everything. But, any plan is better than the never-do-anything approach offered by the isolationist-pacifist left. I'm glad you now say you're in favor of sometimes taking pre-intervention steps to major crises. So, surely, you should support attempts to cut off IS's supply of money and weapons, like Obama is doing. Surely you should support helping villager break the IS seige around them. Basically, you should support Obama's plan.

              And, while you're at it you should also stop supporting Putin's imperialism, especially now that it is clear that he lied and the EU did discuss the trade pact with him over a year ago. For him to now play the victim, and for people on the left to buy his propaganda and defend his agression is galling to say the least, and at worst, will give him the kind of support and inaction he needs to keep killing innocent people.

              Just doing my part to piss off right wing nuts, one smart ass comment at a time.

              by tekno2600 on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 07:40:34 PM PDT

              [ Parent ]

              •  If you bring up a simplistic analogy (0+ / 0-)

                to support your position, then don't balk when your opponent delivers context to explain why your analogy doesn't work.

                Further, don't call it "minutia".

                I mean, unless your point is to derail a conversation rather than expand your own understanding.  Then by all means, carry on.

                If you wouldn't prefer a world without the rich, then you are not of the left.

                by chipmo on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 07:53:28 PM PDT

                [ Parent ]

                •  He offered no context to explain anything, just a (0+ / 0-)

                  meaningless laundry list of how we sort of had some future plan, but we sort of don't really, and that politics is really complicated. That's the only so-called point I could find in what he said.

                  But, no matter what, he doesn't want us bring up Rwanda anymore. Case closed.

                  Except that when other similar conflicts come up, the first people to oppose doing anything are the isolationist pacifists.

                  Just doing my part to piss off right wing nuts, one smart ass comment at a time.

                  by tekno2600 on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 08:16:53 PM PDT

                  [ Parent ]

                  •  Sorry teckno2600, (1+ / 0-)
                    Recommended by:
                    chipmo

                    But you really need to learn to read, think and even ponder.

                    I'm a big fan of fixing things before they get broken, or in the least, if you have to break stuff have an actual plan in place to clean up.

                    The US had, and still has, a lot of "pull" in Iraq, but we gave them an ultimatum at every step, US or Iran.

                    Take a look at a map at Iraq. Probably your first time, as War is God's way of teaching Americans Geography. see that big border to the east? The country on the other side, is Iran. see all the other borders? do you see USA anywhere, or even Texas or Alaska, our biggest States?

                    No?

                    So maybe, now that we have bombed, sanctioned, tortured, murdered, war crimed, and depleted uranium wasted Iraq into a weak, basket case, maybe, they need to pay attention to what the neighbours think?

                    Maybe?

                    So why did we waste all our "pull" and influence in childish either or games?

                    Maybe because we don't really don't give a furry rats @ss about peace in the Middle East?

                    As for Ukraine, the world has changed, it's not a Unipolar world any more and the new trade routes follow the old Silk Road, east to west and none of it even comes close to the US.

                    Ukraine's "natural" place is as a transit route between Europe, and Russia, and as a trading partner with both. Only Russia offered the Ukraine the option of both and a place in the New Silk Road.

                    Little tip for you, if a negotiating partner offers you an either or proposition, walk, nope run away. They have no interest in your well being at all.

                    •  You act condescending, but your actual content (0+ / 0-)

                      doesn't measure up to your high opinion of yourself. You clearly know nothing about me, my knowledge of international politics, and my knowledge of the Middle East in particular. You certainly don't have any more formal education than me, since I have a terminal degree. Informally, I also gained a lot of knowledge by living with an Iraqi family. Two of my closest friends are Iranian expats. I almost married an Iranian girl. You really don't need to lecture me about the region or tell me to look at a map.

                      The first thing that tells me you don't really understand international politics is you keep saying "we" did this, "we" did that. There is no we. The Bush 1 administration did things that were totally different than the Clinton administration or Bush 2, or Obama. So, we didn't do shit. It's interesting you think Obama gave the Iraqis some kind of terrible ultimatum to choose us or the Iranians. Actually, it was the Iranians who gave the "go to zero" ultimatum. The Iraqis probably expected us to beg them to stay. But, Obama actually followed through on his promise to withdraw. There is no way he should be vilified by the Left or the Right for that. It's the right thing to do. The Iraqis have to fix their own shit. Does that mean we do absolutely nothing about IS in the short term? No. We'll take little pot shots at them and wear them down (while the Left screams that one bullet is too much and the Right screams that a million are not enough). But, if the Iraqis seize the moment and build an inclusive government, maybe they'll have a chance. If they don't that's their problem.

                      It also funny that you opine:

                      "Little tip for you, if a negotiating partner offers you an either or proposition, walk, nope run away. They have no interest in your well being at all."
                      That's exactly what Iran did to Iraq, only they took the offer and we got the hell out. Now they're seeing the deal isn't all it was cracked up to be. But, basically, Obama followed your advice. Now, somehow you're criticizing him for it.

                      As far a Ukraine goes, it's really a shame that you make so many excuses for Putin in so many diaries. You usually substitute conspiracy theories for scholarship. There are times when I think you make some good points, if you'd just ditch the conspiracy theories.

                      Also, you presume to tell Ukraine that it belongs in it "'natural' place" with Russia, on the "New Silk Road," whatever the fuck that means. But, that's not the way the vast majority of Ukrainians see it. Even many of the Russia speakers in Ukraine don't want that. They don't want to be another Transnistria. Ukraine will move toward the EU and Putin can't stop them. Even if he completely invaded and occupied, it would only delay the inevitable. Ultimately, an invasion would/will also be his undoing. Russians would turn on him if their Ukrainian relatives and friends were being killed en masse and Russians were coming home in body bags year after year. He can't sustain a long-term counter-insurgency war in Ukraine. It would suck up all his resources, ruin his economy, and isolate him from the entire world. Putin's little lebensraum experiment has failed. He and his apologists just need to take off those ski masks that his imperial storm troopers use to claim "hey, we're not Russian...no really" and they need to visit reality for a change. Candyland is nice, but you can't live there.

                      Just doing my part to piss off right wing nuts, one smart ass comment at a time.

                      by tekno2600 on Fri Sep 26, 2014 at 08:35:30 PM PDT

                      [ Parent ]

  •  Funny, I never heard people say... (3+ / 0-)
    Recommended by:
    quaoar, tekno2600, Richard Villiers

    ...that South Africa was better under dictatorship.  Why are some countries better under dictatorship and some aren't?  And it can't be that US military intervention is the story, because there was no US military intervention in Syria or Egypt.

    It's not the side effects of the cocaine/I'm thinking that it must be love

    by Rich in PA on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 07:25:52 AM PDT

    •  Apartheid was fucking horrific (5+ / 0-)
      Recommended by:
      shaharazade, corvo, mickT, cybrestrike, chipmo

      but it wasn't Dictatorship. It was minority rule.

      That life is now even worse in Libya than it was under Qaddafi doesn't mean that Libya is "better under dictatorship", in some open ended sense, or in that dictatorship is "best" for Libya.

      That direct US military intervention did not occur in Syria or Egypt in no way means that US military intervention didn't make things ever shittier in, say, Iraq.

      How broken does a person have to be to make Tsk-Tsking their life's work?

      by JesseCW on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 07:32:13 AM PDT

      [ Parent ]

    •  US Military Intervention is not the First Step, (4+ / 0-)

      When all other things don't go to plan, US Military intervention is the last step.

      IRI and NED intervention are the first steps, and often, that is enough.

      Military/Dictatorships provide security, a functioning economy, and a social envelope, in exchange for varying levels of repression.

      Anarchy and low grade Civil War, take those all away.

      •  What's IRI and NED? (0+ / 0-)

        I assume IRI isn't Islamic Republic of Iran :)

        It's not the side effects of the cocaine/I'm thinking that it must be love

        by Rich in PA on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 10:19:30 AM PDT

        [ Parent ]

        •  Wow, (2+ / 0-)
          Recommended by:
          cybrestrike, chipmo

          IRI is the International Republican Institute,
          NED is the National Endowment for Democracy,

          Google , Color Coup, Arab Spring , Haiti, IRI, NED.

          The IRI also works with Conservative Parties in Foreign Countries, like Canada, Poland, Australia, to set up and copy successful Republican Tactics, policies and Institutions, to swing platforms further right, AstroTurf and Tea Bag, elect Conservatives and pass neo-liberal economic policies. For example, the Manning Institute in Calgary Canada.

          While the IRI and NED hold that they simply foster Democracy and Democratic Movements, they are 1970's spin offs, (mandated by Congress in a wake of scandals), of CIA programs to create "soft" coups by organizing and putting the losers of the last elections, onto the streets and into the media.

          The IRI and the NED have been barred from a bunch of countries, and some countries, like Venezuela have created counter organizations, programs and policies to negate or minimized IRI and NED programs.

          The EU has copied some of the policies and programs of the NED and IRI to create and foster pro-EU movements.

          In addition, it looks like Russia may have caught on, as there are a bunch of Wingers and Teabaggers taking trips to Russia to attend "Issue", "Democracy" and "Governance" programs and conferences put on and hosted by a bunch of nebulous Russian Institutes.

          •  I've heard of them, just not by their initials! (0+ / 0-)

            It's crazy that our government pays for exporting the most dysfunctcional aspect of our democracy.

            It's not the side effects of the cocaine/I'm thinking that it must be love

            by Rich in PA on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 06:10:21 PM PDT

            [ Parent ]

            •  They arn't just exporting dysfunction, (0+ / 0-)

              If you google deep, and check out the IRI Governance Conferences  in the Ukraine, prior to Maiden, you will find a bunch of photo's of attendees and presenters.

              Now, these are supposed to be anti-corruption activities, to the tune of $28.6 million over 5 years.

              So why  are the top three guys of Pravy Sector standing next to and shaking hands with a NSA Secure Communications consultant?

              And why, after all that money and conferences on countering corruption, by monitor organization accounts, was 94% of the first IMF tranch to the Ukraine in offshore banks with in 48 hours?

    •  Well there was Saudi/Turkish/Qatari (9+ / 0-)

      intervention in Syria and know a solid majority of Syrians (according to best available evidence) want to return to the ostensible stability of a dictatorship, which they naturally find preferable to mass slaughter and war.

    •  Obama 2011 (6+ / 0-)

      Remember this?

       “This is how the international community should work in the 21st century — more nations bearing the responsibility and costs of meeting global challenges,” Mr. Obama said. “Indeed, it is the very purpose of this United Nations. So every nation represented here today can take pride in the innocent lives we saved and in helping Libyans reclaim their country. It was the right thing to do.”

      "The oppressors most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed." - Stephen Biko

      by gjohnsit on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 08:49:34 AM PDT

      [ Parent ]

    •  And we bombed South Africa in what year was it? (7+ / 0-)

      In Syria, when a popular protest started being suppressed, the US began funding and training 'rebels.' By all accounts the rebellion would have ended a couple of years ago without the aid of ourselves and our Dear Friends, the Beneficent and Democracy-Loving Saudis, who leapt at a chance to get rid of Assad.


      My country goes dead making money.

      by Jim P on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 08:50:55 AM PDT

      [ Parent ]

    •  deeply divided societies benefit from strong rule (3+ / 0-)

      Societies where national consciousness is weak or nonexistent and race, sect, tribe, clan, etc. provide the primary source of a person's identity and interests are civil wars waiting to happen.  At the very least institutionalized favoritism and corruption are the norm, as whoever's in charge runs the place like a Mafia don: favoring his people in all things and taking his cut from everyone whether as "earned" tribute for his services or "protection" from his people.  Democracy is the last thing that a society like that needs; sure, they might all get together to take down the dictator, but after that?

      But not all these societies are poor and brown.  Wealthy and high-tech Singapore has always justified its narrowly technocratic politics and de facto dictatorship on the basis that their country is far too diverse to hold together if politics becomes based on racial, ethnic, or religious consciousness like they believe is inevitable otherwise.

      Historically, in Muslim societies, politics revolved around one of two points: ancient tribe and clan loyalties ... or Islam itself.  Destroy the closest thing that countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria have to Western-style government as punishment for not being a model liberal democratic republic, and they will revert to either tribalism or Islamism.

  •  Does anyone have a suggestion for how to fix? (3+ / 0-)
    Recommended by:
    quaoar, Lawrence, tekno2600

    Obviously, we (the West) helped to break it. Is there anything we can do that will fix it? Or does it have to burn out on it's own?
    One of the problems with a dictatorship is that underlying tensions are pushed into the corners where they become lifelong obsessions. Once the lid comes off, those problems break out into the open.
    Reinstalling the dictatorship doesn't help, it just squeezes the problem back into the shadows. "Democracy" as imposed by the West on recovering dictatorships often leads to elected tyranny followed by breakdown and chaos.
    How can the world community help to prevent this cycle?

    If I ran this circus, things would be DIFFERENT!

    by CwV on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 08:16:48 AM PDT

    •  Stopping the killing (1+ / 0-)
      Recommended by:
      corvo

      bombing, torturing, imprisoning, droning, invading, occupying, resource stealing, and ending the covert (spooks) and overt wars would be a good start. Calling it humane intervention or democratization does not change what it is. President Obama says the world is a dangerous place. Fixing it is what they call this geopolitical war on terra for profit and domination. The US military is the enforcer for the multinational corporate looters like Chevron or Halliburton.

      The dictatorships we install arm and support are our allies. When there is a falling out amongst thieves as with Saddam or when the people who live in these places get sick of oppression then we intervene or preemptively attack invade and bomb.

      Perhaps the US military and our bloody spooks did not reek havoc on the ME the cycle would not continue. Look at Iran they had a democratically elected president who threatened BP and so the Brit's and the spooks took him out and installed the Shah.  Mubarak was our friend and his bloody regime was one of our allies who we used as a contractor for our renditions and torturing some folks.

      The US isn't interested in stopping the cycle. It's a feature not a bug. An endless war that creates new enemies we have to stop as they are the worst terrorist's ever since Vlad the Impaler. A endless supply of Goldstien's who are a threat to our interest's and security. The blow back is inevitable and the danger is us.

             

    •  partition along ethnic, religious, etc. lines (2+ / 0-)
      Recommended by:
      CwV, Norm in Chicago
      "Democracy" as imposed by the West on recovering dictatorships often leads to elected tyranny followed by breakdown and chaos.

      How can the world community help to prevent this cycle?

      Elected tyranny always grows out of taking the Western mantra of "majority rule" at face value: "Whaddya mean we have to share power?!  And with the people who oppressed us no less!  We're the majority, so we rule!  That's what you kept saying!"

      This is magnified by the fact that recovering dictatorships (and ex-colonies) usually have very weak civil societies, so violence is usually the first choice of marginalized and/or deprived groups just as it's usually the first choice of the establishment.  It's easy to change the people who make up a government; but it's a lot harder to change the cultural of a government ... and probably impossible to change the culture of an entire society.  

      When a large part of a country's economy is nationalized or otherwise strongly connected to the establishment, politicians eventually start to fight for control of patronage, egged on by citizens who want to either keep the only good jobs in the country (i.e. military, civil service, etc.) or get their own hands on those jobs.

      It only gets worse when after decades and generations of suppressing genuine political consciousness, all people have is exclusive definitions of "self" and "us" based on race, religion, ethnicity, etc.

      The dilemma then is that "nation-building" is technically the right answer for an ex-dictatorship or recovering colony.  But it's clear that it doesn't work in practice.

      •  I think that depends on who does the building. (0+ / 0-)

        If I ran this circus, things would be DIFFERENT!

        by CwV on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 11:10:11 AM PDT

        [ Parent ]

        •  I see your point, but I doubt it (2+ / 0-)
          Recommended by:
          Norm in Chicago, CwV

          Gandhi couldn't forge an "Indian" identity out of the religiously divided British Raj.  People who respected him still said no.  And a generation later the Muslim state carved off from the corpse of the Raj eventually had its own bloody breakdown along an ethnic divide, which is why we have Pakistan and Bangladesh rather than just Pakistan.

    •  You have to let the population (0+ / 0-)

      fight out its disputes for a time.  It's not complicated but it takes patience.

      This diarist and several others are enamoured of advocating what I've called the Failure Doctrine.  That is to declare that your personal patience is exhausted post-intervention and therefore The West Has Failed and No Democracy Will Happen.

      The problem is a gross ignorance, and/or unwillingness to accept, the general historical pattern of liberal democratization.  

      The German historical pattern is the best template.  There's the reactionary Empire/Kaiser, fall of the Kaiser and the violent and impoverished mess with lots of Right-reactionaries that was the Weimar Republic, then Rightism- Hitler and the Third Reich-, then Adenauer's center Right Federal Republic, Erhart's centrist Federal Republic, Brandt's Left/center Left Federal Republic, and then Schmidt's liberal democratic Bundesrepublik.

      Libya, Egypt, and Iraq are in what one might term the Weimar and Rightist phases of this process.  The Weimar element is that previously suppressed and backwards forces of the Right, and smaller ones of the far Left, are engaged in violence as a liberal democratic apparatus is paralyzed by their actions.  And the economy is in terrible recession because the system of subsidies designed to protect the monarchy and its bureaucrats has collapsed and the agrarian-based economic and social order is inviable.  The Rightist phase is one of elements of the military or a well organized paramilitary running the state and fighting internal rebellion or traditional external opponent(s).  After that resolves come center Right governments which are quite peaceable and focussed on economic growth.

      The precedent for what is going on in Libya and Egypt and maybe Tunesia now was seen in Algeria in the late 1980s and 1990s and called a civil war.  But no adherent of the Failure Doctrine will admit to this.  In their minds the Arab Spring is an artifice induced by The West, not an organic evolution occurring 50-100 years later than in Central Europe.  They generate arbitrary deadlines for e.g. Libya to conform to some standard they don't bother to justify.  I see this arbitrariness of expectations or mismeasure being generated by  anti-liberal democratic propaganda sources elsewhere.  (Many of their source websites, aggregators, and listservers are or plausibly could be funded by Russian sources.  A good indicator of this is an anti-EU, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Georgian party line and non-Leftist opposition to secessionism within the Russian Federation which is otherwise difficult to explain.  Also a lot of excusing of the soft fascism called Putinism.)  A certain kind of Leftists here drag them onto DK and pretend these misexpectations to be reasonable and normative.  It takes a level of manipulativeness to do so and a false consciousness of the factual, actual interests and suffering of e.g. Libyans; the signature of this is that is misrepresentation of how sensible average Libyans, Iraqis, Egyptians, Ukrainians, etc. actually understand their disputes.

      You will never learn from these propagandist diarists that while these people are deeply pained by the awfulness of the present conditions of their countries, that they think these conditions explained not by Western perfidy but by preexisting backwardness, immaturity, incompetence, grievances, tribalism, lust for power, greed, corruption, and criminality of large groups of their countrymen.  Not many locals subscribe to the conservative delusion- strangely, much advocated by Leftist diarists and commenters here- that in the absence of regime change these could or would have been ameliorated away in some (essentially magical) fashion.  They're a lot more fatalistic that it would have continued to fester and if regime change had been deferred, rot of the kind would have emerged and had to be faced in all its misery and horror then.  

      In short, Libyans and Iraqis and Syrians and Ukrainians believe the essential conflict is with their own people's corruption and immaturity and preexisting injustices.  With no side pure or anything like perfect, though some are better than others.  And violence is sadly unavoidable in the longer term.  Western military intervention knocks away undue military protection/power of some groups and arms some others.

  •  I'd love to hear from a certain other FPer (4+ / 0-)

    on this . . . but I doubt we will.

    Dogs from the street can have all the desirable qualities that one could want from pet dogs. Most adopted stray dogs are usually humble and exceptionally faithful to their owners as if they are grateful for this kindness. -- H.M. Bhumibol Adulyadej

    by corvo on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 08:47:16 AM PDT

  •  Which Presidential candidate will say this: (5+ / 0-)
    This ... is the story you will find at every single juncture of American involvement in Middle Eastern internal problems. Every single time. Nothing good ever comes of it. Not for the people there, not for us. Especially when that involvement begins with military force, as it almost always does.
    Our Global Domination Game IS the enemy of humanity and, yea, even the United States and its people. But who will dare to point out that it has brought failure upon failure? Heck, even in the media, let alone the politicians.

    Unless destabilizing the world is counted as some kind of success.


    My country goes dead making money.

    by Jim P on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 08:47:18 AM PDT

  •  The conclusion would seem to be (5+ / 0-)

    that failed states are a feature, not a bug.  Which means the democracy vs dictatorship stuff is just a blind; ie, the guys running policy in DC are neocons.

    •  they think liberal democracy is inevitable (1+ / 0-)
      Recommended by:
      mickT

      Like Marx thought communism was inevitable.

      There's never any planning or follow-through because their ideology is a love child between Rousseau and Reagan that simply declares that republican government, rule of law, civil society, laissez-faire capitalism, etc. are the default state of "free" human beings and when you topple a dictatorship, all that good stuff is just going to happen ... with no more effort or intent than water flowing downhill.

      When it all goes to hell instead, the only explanation that their ideology allows is that some other totalitarian force has stepped in and is still not letting freedom ring ... so we need to fight it now.

      Even when they recognize that bells have ropes instead of brakes because they don't ring on their own, that's still an argument for intervention and "nation building".

      •  I doubt neocons gave a tinker's damn (3+ / 0-)

        about "liberal democracy," seeing as they had so little use for it right here at home.

        Dogs from the street can have all the desirable qualities that one could want from pet dogs. Most adopted stray dogs are usually humble and exceptionally faithful to their owners as if they are grateful for this kindness. -- H.M. Bhumibol Adulyadej

        by corvo on Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 11:09:01 AM PDT

        [ Parent ]

  •  What did they expect? (1+ / 0-)
    Recommended by:
    Norm in Chicago

    The Arab Spring was never a good idea. It was the French Revolution all over again. I hope jackasses calling for revolution here in America stop to think about this.

    •  In Syria, in theory, (2+ / 0-)
      Recommended by:
      Norm in Chicago, chipmo

      The Arab Spring had a chance.

      After the initial strikes, protests, and police action simply made the protests larger and they spread nationwide,

      The Assad Regime offered pardons, economic, political and corruption reforms.

      Instead of accepting the reforms as a good first start, a few core groups in the protests, refused all concessions and instigated violence, which cumulated less than 10 days later with a rampaging mob killing cops, Assad Regime members and hiring Government buildings. protestors were also killed in the violence.

      After that, it was civil war.

      An interesting documentary to watch, is "The Revolution Won't Be Televised". It "appears" that there is an Organised program where in some nations, like the Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, gradual reform will not be accepted and instead, violence is used to try to push protest movements into revolutions.

      In our allies, places like Morocco and Tunisia however, moderate change is somehow accepted, with out the element of shadowy organized violence appearing.

      •  JFK said (1+ / 0-)
        Recommended by:
        Norm in Chicago

        Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

        •  JFK also said it was an Advisor Mission to Vietnam (1+ / 0-)
          Recommended by:
          chipmo

          JFK got punked a lot.

          Few Revolutions, peaceful or otherwise, have ever brought about Democracy, or even more progressive Governments.

          Positive Change is usually a gradual civil process of two steps forward, one step back, not an all or nothing deal.

          In Syria, we know know that in parallel to IRI and NED funding and training of Arab Spring groups and leaders, there was also military training and arming of Islamic "moderates" and jihadi's.

          At this time, we don't know if the US, Saudi, UAE, Turkish and Qatari programs were run in parallel,  in cooperation, but some time in the future, when the archives are declassified or wikileaked, we will.

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