Imperialism in a Bell Jar?

I wrote this polemic as part of an ongoing discussion about the attitude of revolutionaries toward imperialism and toward the military conflicts that have arisen out of the "Arab Spring." It's crossposted from Kasama, "A Reply to Pham Binh and Clay Claiborne: Imperialism in a Bell Jar?"  It's a response to an article by Claiborne and Binh on an episode late in World War 2 where the revolutionary anti-colonialists of the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap briefly cooperated with the OSS, the predecessor of the American CIA. I've discussed many of these themes before but they remain central.

Ever since they decided to back US/NATO intervention in Libya (and later to argue for the US to arm or otherwise support the rebel forces in Syria), Clay Claiborne, Pham Binh and other folks associated with the North Star trend like Louis Proyect, have been repeatedly touting this story of US-Viet Minh cooperation. They fall back on this story as though it's some kind of stunning death-ray evidence that annihilates any argument against their position. They argue that it bolsters their case, somehow transforming their support of their own imperialist power into an act of revolutionary internationalism.

There are many problems with the attempt to enlist this historical episode as an argument for their position. Let's dismiss outright Binh's ridiculous assertion that this is just about historical "fact." We all know why he posted this article. But let's tackle a few of the problems with Claiborne and Binh's assertions.

So what actually happened in Vietnam? It's instructive to read Ho Chi Minh's 1952 article "Imperialist Aggressors Can Never Enslave The Heroic Vietnamese People," up on Marxists.org. Unlike the recipients of US armed beneficence in Libya, Ho is absolutely clear what the role of the United States was in Indochina. He rightfully called the American interventionists "masters" of French colonialism: "The U.S. interventionists have nurtured the French aggressors and the Vietnamese puppets, but the Vietnamese people do not let anybody delude and enslave them."
There was a brief historical moment when the strategy of Ho and the Viet Minh was to exploit the contradictions among imperialists. In the declaration of independence that Ho wrote, he says "The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country. We are convinced that the Allied nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam."

But there is simply no comparison, historical or otherwise, between the situation in Indochina in 1945 and North Africa and the Middle East in the 2010s. There is simply no contradiction to exploit. And while I think many debates are possible about the nature of the war between Japan and the US, the US was aiding an actual anti-colonial national liberation struggle, regardless of whether they were ultimately trying to hijack it. Binh has claimed that in Libya the US was aiding a "bourgeois democratic revolution." In the post-colonial age of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, this argument strikes me as dangerously flawed. Perhaps BInh would support waves of NATO airstrikes against the less-than-democratic regimes across Africa? What does he think of the French neocolonialist intervention in Mali?

Who in Libya or Syria today is calling out imperialism for what it is? It's not the people that the US and its close allies are assisting, and that Claiborne and Binh seem to be supporting.
One has only to look as far as Binh's North Star blog to see what the relationship of the pro-NATO Libyan forces is to US imperialism: In "Stage Two of the Libyan Revolution," a "Libyan Rebel" writes, unchecked by any North Star moderator, "Since the killing of Libya’s tyrant and official declaration of liberation, the Libyan people began calling for the next stage in their revolution which is state building....The attack on the U.S. consulate and the passing of the late Chris Stevens was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The act of attacking guests of Libya and the resulting death of a good friend of the Libyan people highlighted the fragility of the state and the danger these militias posed." The article is glowingly illustrated by a picture of Libyans carrying signs like "Sorry People of America" to atone for the attack on the Benghazi spy den.

Back to Vietnam, it's no stretch of the imagination to draw a straight line from US cooperation with the Viet Minh toward the end of WWII to the US relationship with French colonialism and their various puppets in South Vietnam after the war and the eventual defeat of the French, to the apocalyptic war of annihilation waged by the US against the NLF and the North Vietnamese in the 1960s and early 1970s. It would be interesting to know what Ho Chi Minh thought, from the benefit of historical hindsight much later before he died in 1969, whether the aid the Viet Minh received against the Japanese was balanced by the fact it allowed US imperialism a toehold in the independence struggle. Certainly the appeals to American conscience in the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence seem to have quickly given way to condemnations of American meddling.

Which brings us to another problem with Claiborne and Binh's arguments. They argue as though NATO intervention in Libya happened in a bell jar. Or now, that US arming the Free Syrian Army that they advocate would be happening in that same bell jar. Ironically they don't seem to even notice the leap from Libya to Syria. One might think such an attitude was quaintly naive, but neither Claiborne nor Binh are naifs new to the way the world works. Is it an accident that the US/NATO embrace of the Libyan manifestation of the so-called Arab spring corresponded to the US acquiescence of the smashing of Arab spring revolts in the US client state of Bahrain? Is it an accident that in the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, full of the same brutal violence from the sky that NATO and the US displayed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now successfully established a drone base in neighboring Niger? Is there no connection between what imperialism wrought in Iraq and what they're up to now in the rest of the Arab world?

Imperialism was emboldened by its success in Libya. Obama's strategy — which, by the way, should be of great concern to revolutionaries — has been to employ clients and high-tech weapons systems to maximize US military success while minimizing the potential for domestic opposition; this has proved itself invaluable to imperialism's warchest. Regardless of the nature of the Gaddafi regime (in my opinion unmourned), US imperialism achieved a major victory in Libya. And Binh and Claiborne cheered that victory on.

Elsewhere Binh has argued that his call for arming Syrian and Libyan "revolutionaries" doesn't mean he supports U.S. "boots on the ground." But this is meaningless semantics. Everyone knows that the claim the US only facilitated actual military action by NATO members Britain and France in Libya is bullshit. And everyone knows that the claim that the FSA is being armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar but not the US is equally bullshit.

Imperialism is a web of dependent connections, and the destructive, world-dominating force that is US imperialism is the monstrous spider at the center of that web. It's true that the US finds the presence of Salafist and Al-Qaeda-linked forces in the ranks of the Syrian rebels somewhat problematic. It's true that despite the militant rhetoric of the Assads over the years they have proved to be some of the best, non-actually-threatening neighbors the Zionist regime could have asked for, and that therefore the US and its Israeli allies are waiting to see which way the wind blows before making their next commitments. But the partial hesitation of US imperialism to throw its full weight behind the Syrian opposition, or to establish something like a no-fly zone (a thinly veiled declaration of war) shouldn't be seen as some kind of alibi for what Binh and Claiborne are calling for.

Let's get real: Pham BInh and Clay Clayborne are standing right next to the war criminal John McCain in calling for the US to send heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels. The John McCain who, by the way, didn't mind being photographed with sectarian kidnappers in his quick jaunt across the Syrian border.

In my opinion the Assad regime is not something communists have any business supporting. But as the leftish Lebanese resistance movement HIzbollah and some Palestinian factions enter an increasingly polarized conflict on Assad's side, will Binh and Claiborne really be cheering on the shipping of weapons to be used against, say, the PFLP?

What will be the legacy of avowed socialists supporting the military actions of "their own" imperialist power? Karl Liebknecht taught this to us a long time ago: "The main enemy is at home!"  The best way for those of us in imperialist countries to aid the oppressed peoples of the world is to do everything we can to defeat the ruling classes of our own countries. Solidarity that doesn't follow that basic lesson is no solidarity at all: and every failure of leftists like Binh and Claiborne to tell the truth to Libyan or Syrian rebels who might be listening to us further weakens the already damaged reputation of socialism.

It's not like the current conflicts aren't the first time leftists have gone soft on imperialism. In the US wars on Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, segments of the left all abandoned their principle to support the actions of imperialism. It's a timeworn tradition that has happened over and over again when socialists in the homeland of imperialism lose faith in their arguments and doctrines. And the embrace of "state department socialism" is usually also marked by all sorts of other accommodations to capitalism, to imperialism. It marks a shift in roads: is this shift something the fragile and tiny US left can afford?

You wouldn't know it from reading Claiborne and Binh's writings up on North Star, but there are Syrian leftists who recognize the danger from imperialism, while also completely opposing the Assad regime. From the Syrian Leftist Coalition's statement "A Marxist Perspective on Syria: A letter from the Syrian Left Coalition to the Leftists in the Arab Countries" (definitely worth a read in its entirety):

"The media is trying to represent the people’s revolution by the forces of current political “opposition”. This media does not focus on the fighting people, but it considers an “opposition” is combating the regime. This shallow logic reflects a shallow “Marxism” that considers this opposition to represent the people, and thus approaches the revolution through the opposition... No doubt these “opposition” parties should be criticized. Parties that called for an imperialist military intervention, and published an ethnic, fundamentalist speech, in alliance with imperialists and reactionary Arab regimes, should be condemned. These parties are very harmful for the revolution as much as they delay the growth of this mass movement by posing the a speech that frightens the minorities, and also frightens the wide spectrum of people that supports resistance and defiance against imperialism and Zionism...In this situation, a Marxist should be with the people against the regime. At the same time, a Marxist should also fight against this liberal elite “opposition” and against all these fundamentalist forces that threaten a derailing of the revolution into an inter-ethnic and inter-religious struggle, and this is the exact aim the regime was trying to achieve since the beginning of the popular uprising. This can only be achieved first by improving the role of the oppressed masses in this struggle, expressing their demands in a clear program, organize the revolution, and stating a strategy for this revolution in order to overpass its spontaneity into an organized conscious movement.... We should reject any calls for imperialist military intervention, and on this basis also we should reject the intervention of Russia and Iran."

Yes, this is a harder, more difficult position to maintain. The conflict in Syria has taken thousands and thousands of innocent lives. Lives that the United States doesn't actually care about, not one bit. Communists must take the side of the Syrian people, and that means telling some truths that might be unpopular and hard to hear: that intervention of the US into the Syrian civil war, which is already happening, will not free the Syrian people. US weapons come with long strings attached.

So that story about Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Minh, and the American OSS is an interesting historical tale. But as a rationalization for abandoning everything revolutionaries know to be true about imperialism? No thanks. The first gut response of revolutionaries in the U.S should be to bristle with rage against the machinations of our imperialist ruling class.

Vietnam, Libya, Syria, different stories, different times. But the enemy remains the same.

The Benghazi Circus: Is There Anything There?

Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi! (to the tune of "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia"). Meme floating around Facebook.

Question: Why has there never been a coup d'etat in Washington, D.C.?
Answer: Because there is no U.S. embassy there.

Not a new joke, but appropriate in the light of this week's congressional hearings into the "terrorist" attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last September 11. Republicans are up in arms, trying to implicate President Obama and now former Secretary of State and presumed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in something resembling a scandal. Increasingly shrill, Republican politicians and conservative pundits are claiming that there's something here worse than Watergate, the actual scandal back in the early 1970s that revealed illegal activities in President Nixon's reelection campaign.

It's obvious the primary Republican motivation is "gotcha," a continuation of their base, and often deeply racist, campaign against the country's first black president. We're all used to seeing how when Obama says "yea," they say "nay." It's a tiresome spectacle, especially because Obama's underlying positions are often much closer to those of the Republicans than anyone cares to acknowledge. But it seems to me clear that the Obama administration is indeed engaged in a fairly clumsy attempt to muddy the waters over the Benghazi incident. There's some leaked e-mails showing an attempt to get the administration talking points just so, and an effort to explain the odd spectacle of Obama's sleazy U.N. diplomat Susan Rice being shuttled around the talk show circuit to soft-peddle what was, from their perspective, a minor diplomatic disaster.

Of course there's the standard Republican hypocrisy. One need only recall the unheeded message "Osama Bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S." from a presidential briefing in August 2001, that George W. Bush was never seriously held responsible for; or the hundreds of large and small attacks on American diplomatic properties that have taken place in the last couple decades. And there's little discussion of Republicans cutting back on the budget for diplomatic protection. So in one sense, scandal, schmandal. This is a routine Washington sideshow. These are all sleazebag politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, looking not for truth but looking to make — or cover up — hay.

But I think it's a fair question to ask why the Obama administration stuck to a trivially unimportant talking point, that the Benghazi consulate was spontaneously attacked during a protest against a crude anti-Islamic American film rather than attacked as part of a planned action by enemies of the United States.

Iranian revolutionaries display captured evidence of CIA spying at the occupied US embassy in Tehran

Question: What do you call the destruction and burning of a U.S. embassy?
Answer: A good start.

I think two things happened in Benghazi that the administration would not care to admit. First, that post-NATO regime change Libya was full of people not so apparently grateful for U.S. intervention; and secondly that the so-called U.S. Benghazi Consulate was something more than just a diplomatic installation. Indeed it seems that one of the objectives of the Benghazi attackers was to liberate prisoners who were being held at the consulate. The question must be asked: Was the Benghazi Consulate actually a CIA black site?

As the exposure of the nest of spies in Tehran back in 1979 by heroic Iranian students revealed, so-called American diplomatic installations are actually and commonly hotbeds of espionage and subversion. For decades and decades all over the world, U.S. embassies were hosts to coup plotters and schemers to manipulate foreign governments to the will and interests of the United States. In the post-911 era of the so-called war on terror, it would surprise noone to learn that the web of CIA black sites — off-the-public-grid facilities where suspected "terrorists" could be held, interrogated, tortured, or worse, often with the assistance of local repressive secret police agencies — would include American facilities in hotspot countries like Libya. There's already a public record of the CIA working with repressive governments, ironically including Libya's Gaddafi who it eventually helped overthrow, and Syria's Assad, to interrogate suspected terrorists. It would seem to me shocking and counter-intuitive to think the Benghazi consulate was NOT such a blood-soaked station of international repression.

The new Libyan government was embarrassed by the attack on Benghazi (the state-department socialists of the North Star blog, big supporters of the NATO intervention, even ran an embarrasing apologia for the attack.) With the establishment of a U.S. drone base in neighboring Niger, one suspects that spying eyes will be quick to foil any future "terrorist" attack against U.S. interests in Libya.

The real lesson of Benghazi is that U.S. imperialism has a proven record of covert and open manipulation of foreign governments. As far as I'm concerned, the destruction of the consulate there was another case of chickens coming home to roost. To me the real outrage is that other U.S. diplomatic facilities elsewhere all over the world are engaged at this very minute in acts of subversion, control and exploitation. That's what imperialism does, and that's not a truth one should expect to come out of the congressional Benghazi circus.

Perhaps there's some perverse pleasure to be taken in watching corrupt, war-mongering politicians in Washington bloody each other: I for one have no interest in choosing between creepy racist Republicans and Hillary Clinton/Susan Rice/Barack Obama. But ultimately scandals like this one are ugly spectacles that demoralize and depoliticize people. One day we'll put all those buildings in Washington, built by forced labor of black slaves, to good use.

Remembering The Main Enemy

In the belly of the beast

As the "Arab Spring" continues to challenge the established order in countries across the Middle East, a key question has emerged: given the predatory nature of the United States, what's the proper response when local forces call for "humanitarian" military assistance from American or NATO forces? There's an ongoing debate on left forums in the internet, and I am happy to report that Kasama's Mike Ely has succinctly staked out a position that jibes with my own. This is a response written to a piece by Pham Binh, which originally appeared on The North Star and was reposted on Kasama called "Libya and Syria: When Anti-Imperialism Goes Wrong."

Here is a portion of Mike Ely's article. Read the whole thing at Kasama.

Answer to Pham Binh: Our responsibility to oppose new U.S. crimes, by Mike Ely

Here is one of the most basic and important questions of any revolutionary movement: Do you support the government and this system or don’t you? Do you see what their interests are, and the criminal nature of their actions, or don’t you?

All my life, I have seen how in popular movements the most basic goals are controversial. In ironic ways, it has been controversial to be antiwar in the antiwar movement. It has been controversial to be communist in the communist movement.

So I’m not surprised that someone writes (for audiences of communists, revolutionaries, and socialists) that we should support the U.S. military in its previous attack on Libya, and then even urges pre-support for a not-yet-existent U.S. attack on Iran’s ally government in Syria.
(I  wonder: Is this argument the leftist pre-stage to supporting coming Israeli/U.S. attacks on Iran? And which of Pham’s arguments here can’t be applied there?)
Here is my view in a nutshell:

• We should not support U.S. military attacks around the world. We should not support U.S. bases, fleets, drones, agents, trainers, commandos or nukes intruding into the lives of people around the world.
• We should support the isolation, defeat and dismantling of the U.S. military (not its murderous deployment in the troubled spots of empire). “Yankee Go Home!”
• We should politically expose this military, its purposes, its goals, and its nature — not portray it as a possible force for good.
• We should not create public opinion for its next possible attacks in the next zone of civil conflicts.
• We should create public opinion for the future political dismantling of the U.S. military as an institution (and for its systematic removal around the world, break up of its office corps, the destruction of its nukes, the trial and punishment of its leading war criminals). Where the Pentagon stands, we should hope for a salted field of the kind that surrounded ancient Carthage.

I would like to break down parts of Pham’s argument, piece by piece.
Starting with insult for your opponents

Pham  starts by saying

“Reflexive opposition to Uncle Sam’s machinations abroad is generally a good thing. It is a progressive instinct that….”

Since Pham then goes on to reject such opposition, it is worth noting that the phrasing here is loaded. Our opposition to U.S. imperialism is here described as “reflexive,” “instinct” and later as “a broken record.” At one point, he even compares us to dogs salivating on command.

His claim is that consistent opposition to U.S. imperialist actions is unnuanced, mechanical and unthinking, as if we don’t consider specific circumstances, and are just on autopilot following raw gut feelings. And then his own analysis is purported to be, by contrast, thoughtful and engaged with reality.

I think these characterizations are as mistaken as they are rude.
Is it counterrevolutionary to oppose U.S. imperialism?

Pham writes:

“The moment the Syrian and Libyan revolutions demanded imperialist airstrikes and arms to neutralize the military advantage enjoyed by governments over revolutionary peoples, anti-interventionism became counter-revolutionary because it meant opposing aid to the revolution.”

This jumbles everything up.
First, supporting the U.S. government (from here within the U.S.) is counterrevolutionary, because we intend to make a revolution against them.

One of the key tasks of any revolutionary movement is to systematically expose the core institutions, figures and interests that define the existing system. It is an inflexible task. Any movement that is not clear on that cannot and will not ever train forces to make a revolution.

There may be rebellions against established governments in Syria and Libya, and this-or-that group may make tactical decisions of various kinds. But their choice hardly define (for us) what we should say or do in regard to this empire and its military.

We obviously can’t control what political forces do in Libya or Syria (and we are hardly in a position to advise them). But I can tell you that regardless of what anyone says, anywhere in the world, we will oppose U.S. imperialism.

When the German revolutionaries said during World War 1 “The main enemy is here in our own country,” they were saying that their political exposure and activity had to be aimed at the German imperialists –  at the German justifications of war aims, at the German government’s pretenses of democracy and anti-autocracy etc. Why? Because they (the communist revolutionaries in Germany) intended to mobilize forces to overthrow the German Kaiser and the capitalist system in Germany.
People in other countries (say in Russia, or France during World War 1) had other tasks — because (obviously) if a Russian socialist focused mainly on exposing German imperialism’s oppressive nature it would (objectively, in the real world of politics) mean encouraging the Russian war effort and strengthening the Russian Tsar.

We (in our time and place) have a special and distinct task in regard to U.S. imperialism. We are in the belly of this beast, in the heart of the empire — and the demagogic lies of the U.S. government have an especially great influence among the people.

Here in the U.S., too many people believe “The U.S. might not always be good, but it is certainly better than a Saddam, or an Assad, or a Gaddafi, or a Brezhnev, or…..” When the Hillaries and Reagans of this government portray the U.S. as a force for good, and for “democracy,” and for ending torture, and for popular sovereignty of distant peoples, we have a special and ongoing responsibility to expose all that.

There may be times when revolutionaries in distant places may find themselves in tactical alliances with reactionary powers. Mao Zedong in China and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam took aid from the U.S. in WW2. The Vietnamese took aid from the USSR during their struggle for independence…
But again no decision by anyone anywhere should lead revolutionaries in the U.S. to ally with U.S. imperialism. And history is rich with examples of those who flirted with such pro-imperialist tactics, and the terrible consequences of that.

The illusion that the U.S. military might help the revolution
Pham assumes that the U.S. military intervention is somehow aid for revolutions in Libya and Syria.  This is perhaps the key issue (and key illusion) to discuss  (and I will open that issue here without dealing with it in great depth).

But here is the core reality to confront: The U.S. military is the single largest force of murder and oppression in world history. Its very purpose (its nature and its conscious goal) is to serve, defend and extend U.S. imperialism. When this massive and brutal military enters anywhere, that is done to extend U.S. power (and serve the larger purposes of U.S. state policy and capitalist interests).
Sometimes the U.S. fails in its policy goals. Sometimes its military actions bog down in failure and defeat (thank gawd). But their purpose and intent is always to deepen the U.S. grip on key and strategic parts of the world, to prevent genuine revolution, prevent the rise of non-revolutionary but anti-U.S. forces, to co-opt and intimidate diverse political forces, to force intrusion of U.S. economic interests and so on.

The military entrance of the U.S. imperialists is (objectively and inevitably) the intrusion of American interests and power — and (especially in fragile, undefined and chaotic political situations) they intentionally skew and transform the entire situation.

They encourage pro-U.S. puppet forces to emerge, they corrupt and compromise those who were not previously inclined that way, they attach threads to everything (including debts, trainers, etc) as political-military forces on the ground become dependent (for their day to day survival) on imperialist actions (and therefore inevitably obedient to imperialist demands, or even hints).
We oppose all of that.

We do not want the U.S. empire strengthened. We do not want the U.S. to have a say in who emerges in Syria or Libya or Iran. We do not want them to be able to mascarade as defenders of popular aspirations anywhere.

We need to oppose their practical efforts and politically expose their nature (to anyone we can reach)....

For a decade, the U.S. has been on a rampage (unprecedented since Hitler attacked his neighbors one by one in the late 1930s). This U.S. “war on the world” has focused on the wide swathe of countries from North Africa to Central Asia: Afghanistan, Iraq, Western Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, now potentially Syria and Iran. This is all part of a single global strategy that emerged from 9/11 — where Bush and Obama policies have a great deal of overlap.

Do we really need to train the people to look at each of these cases, one by one, and ponder afresh “Is this one good for the people there?”

We should (and do) support popular uprisings against oppressive governments (including in China, Iran, Syria, Libya, Greece, Egypt, etc. etc.) but we should be firm, strategic and consistent in our opposition to U.S. imperialism. (That is our special responsibility for reasons having to do with both our position in the world and our particular task within world history.)...

We are revolutionaries and communists in the belly of the beast. We are people with serious responsibilities and serious intentions.

The End of Qaddafi

Propaganda image of Moammar al-Qaddafi dressed as an admiral among sailors of the Libyan navy, ca. 1980

It's not often one gets to watch the end of an era come to a bloody end on a tiny Youtube screen, but today I watched two videos of the death of the fugitive Libyan dictator Moammar al-Qaddafi at the hands of the NATO-backed former rebel forces. The first shows a bloodied but still alive Qaddafi being dragged off the hood of a car. He looks dazed and semi-conscious as he's manhandled into a crowd. He had apparently just been discovered in a metal culvert, and shot while trying to escape his fate. This was at the end of the merciless siege of the last Qaddafi stronghold of Sirte, a town that apparently proved the old Vietnam-war era military adage about "destroying the village in order to save it." The second video shows Qaddafi's considerably bloodier and less alive body being kicked around in the dust. A gory still photo that followed showed more of Qaddafi's bloodied head and lifeless eye sockets than I cared to ever see.

And so an oppressive dictator died, reportedly about the same time as his two sons Muatassim (definitely dead, more gory pictures) and Saif al-Islam (reportedly so or at least wounded), who had stayed with their father and refused to go into exile with other members of the family as Tripoli fell to the rebels in late summer. It was time for his dictatorship to go, and at least a whole lot of Libyan people seem pretty happy about that. But honestly, watching these gruesome videos I felt a little sad.

All the Libyan civilians and international photojournalists who lost their lives in Libya's short but brutal civil war deserve the real tears that perhaps Qaddafi does not, but it's hard not to reflect on the humanity ending so abruptly before the cameras. Oh I understand the merciless are rarely afforded mercy, but still it doesn't feel exactly like justice when those living by the sword die by it, despite what the Christian Bible says about such inevitabilities. I'm against the death penalty, even for men who have proved their moral bankruptcy many times over. I don't celebrate the brutality I witnessed today.


Stamp design showing the American assassination attempt on Qaddafi in 1986 in which his adopted daughter was killed

It's so easy to accept the media cliche that Qaddafi was a "madman." He was certainly a man of his own tastes and eccentricities, but isn't it funny how America's "enemies" are always demonized as "madmen" as though it's the requisite dehumanization required to objectify them and lust for their deaths: Iraq's Saddam, Iran's Khomeini and Ahmedinejad, Venezuela's Chavez, even Cuba's Castro. Never mind that all these leaders, rogues or heroes depending on one's perspective, all have or had plenty of solid reason to choose the side they were on. I have never believed I was better than anyone else solely because of the accidental location of my birth (which, come to think of it, wasn't the United States anyway, but I digress). That kind of us-against-the-forces-of-darkness patriotism is a sickness. Americans might want to hold our own leaders to higher account before looking to cast stones about the neighborhood. And pity the poor actual madmen among us: I saw several today on the subway. They weren't capable of running countries and I didn't want to kill them even slightly.

And I don't know about you, but somebody sending jets to try and kill me but instead killing one of my children and a few dozen neighboring civilians, well, that would sure make me mad.

Many cite the PanAm airplane explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland and grit one's teeth coldly and say Qaddafi deserved what he got. Well, if you believe that's what actually happened. I'm no scholar of that terrible destruction of innocent life, but the accounts that claim Libya had nothing to do with Lockerbie and place the blame on other rogue terrorists seem as feasible to me as the ones that claim Qaddafi somehow masterminded it. Not being a student of those facts I wouldn't get involved in a heated argument on the subject. But I know the record of spies and lies in the 1970s and 1980s and let's just say if I had lost a loved one over Lockerbie I would resent my loss being used for anyone's political justifications, and certainly wouldn't wish to spread the suffering around.


Cartoonish propaganda stamps showing Qaddafi in civilian and military guise ca. 1982

Certainly Qaddafi had a high opinion of himself, and created a classically visual personality cult around himself. He had his own ideology, contained in the incredibly boring and disingenuous Green Book (I guess my copy is now a collector's item). He had an army of women with guns around him for a while, which you would think would have made him more popular with elements of the American population who like B-movies with that plot, but oh well. He really, really wanted to be loved. He claimed the love of the Libyan people, the African people who he claimed to want to unite, and, at his last speeches to the United Nations in which he pleaded for more powerful representation for the third world, he claimed the love of the peoples of the entire planet. I'm not saying that love was actually redeemed.

There's a lesson there for all of those with money and (regional) power: those who tell you they love you might not really mean it when the money and power go away. And if you want your people to love you for giving them the pleasure of living in a socialist egalitarian paradise like the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya claimed to be (yes, that was the official name of the country), you might want to remember that a reasonable standard of living is not enough if your faux socialist paradise is also secretly a repressive police dictatorship where you can end up in jail or a mass grave for speaking your mind.

In the end Qaddafi and his sons refused an extended Saudi Arabian retirement, unlike certain other falling dictators. They were not apparently thanked for this last display of patriotism. I guess they proved they were committed to their own image. Whatever that's worth. Not much in the end, I guess.


Just a couple of world leaders shaking hands.

In the aftermath of the American toppling of Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi decided to come in from the cold. While occasionally reverting to bouts of his former rhetoric, he made nice with imperialism. He made nice with President Bush and with British Prime Minister Blair and for a while with Bush's successor Obama. He took the virtual bullet for Lockerbie more or less on the same basis as Mark Zuckerberg settled lawsuits over his social network, something you can afford to do when money is being pumped out of the ground. Where once he reviled Italy for its brutal decades of occupation before World War II — the world's first civilian concentration camps were established by Italy to punish rebellious Libyans in the early 20th century — Qaddafi made especially nice with corrupt Italian leader Berlusconi, promising to help him keep unwanted African immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean into Italy.


Hillary Clinton making nice with Qaddafi's son Muatassim, also reported killed today.

Qaddafi's grown children tried to rehabilitate their reputations and that of their father, posing as international businessmen or diplomats. Heck they were international businessmen selling lots of oil to a greedy European market. But all those smiles went south when the season turned to Arab spring.

Memo to self: beware of shaking hands with members of a government that has already tried to kill you even if the last time you met them they seemed happy to see you.


One of the last stamps issued by the Qaddafi regime (in 2010) honored the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and claimed racism was outlawed in Libya.

Qaddafi was the last of his kind: that generation of late 1960s/early 1970s nationalist leaders who spoke a language that sounded like it was leftist and anti-imperialist but on closer examination proved to be something quite different. It seems like today's authoritarians have mostly dispensed with the language of socialism or social justice. The dictators of Qaddafi's day needed to legitimize themselves by claiming a higher cause. Sadly, in the end they just poisoned the well, ruining the reputation of socialism which became equated with mere statism and repression; reserving the equality of poverty for the masses while a privileged class at the top enjoyed villas and luxury yachts.

And so this last Qaddafi-era stamp is sort of poignant. I mean, even the United States hasn't put MLK on a stamp since the 1980s. Yet it seems extraordinarily unlikely given the rumors of racist atrocities against West African immigrants by the now-victorious Libyan rebels that there was some kind of widespread anti-racist consciousness under Qaddafi's rule.

I hope the Libyan people find justice and freedom from new kinds of oppression. I hope they haven't poisoned that well with the brutality of this civil war and the extra-legal execution of their former ruler. I hope they understand — or learn quickly and not too painfully — what kind of deal with the devil they have made by inviting in NATO and empowering a new spirit of American interventionism. A new spirit of interventionism that is, by the way, already evident in President Obama's dispatch of a small unit of American soldiers and military advisers to Uganda to fight the so-called Lord's Resistance Army. Yes, our so-called "peace" president involves the country in another war.

I hope Arab spring fulfills its promise. As spring turns now toward winter, there are reasons both for hope and for concern. Libya shows how hard the "West" will try to keep control of the situation. Despite the decidedly mixed bag of events in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Palestine, we also have the worldwide Occupy Together movement birthed by #OWS but spawned by a new popular awakening. As much as NATO bombings and executions in the streets seem like depressing precedents, I remain hopeful. Spring always comes round again.

Stamp images mostly from Libyan-Stamps.com

Peoples of the World, Beware!

"At the same time, Libya is a lesson in what the international community can achieve when we stand together as one. I said at the beginning of this process, we cannot and should not intervene every time there is an injustice in the world. Yet it’s also true that there are times where the world could have and should have summoned the will to prevent the killing of innocents on a horrific scale. And we are forever haunted by the atrocities that we did not prevent, and the lives that we did not save. But this time was different. This time, we, through the United Nations, found the courage and the collective will to act....

The United States was proud to play a decisive role, especially in the early days, and then in a supporting capacity. But let’s remember that it was the Arab League that appealed for action. It was the world’s most effective alliance, NATO, that’s led a military coalition of nearly 20 nations. It’s our European allies -- especially the United Kingdom and France and Denmark and Norway -- that conducted the vast majority of air strikes protecting rebels on the ground. It was Arab states who joined the coalition, as equal partners.

This is how the international community should work in the 21st century -- more nations bearing the responsibility and the costs of meeting global challenges. In fact, this 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....

First, and most immediately: security. So long as the Libyan people are being threatened, the NATO-led mission to protect them will continue.... For without security, democracy and trade and investment cannot flourish."

—President Obama at the United Nations today

Read between those lines very carefully. This is why the American/NATO intervention was wrong, and much worse than the faux left-wing Qaddafi dictatorship on a grand scale. With the Libyan action U.S. imperialism, the world's sole superpower, was announcing that the disaster of Iraq would not stop it from deciding for the world's peoples which of their governments, which of their struggles, which of their aspirations, are deemed legitimate. All the pretty talk about saving lives, let's tell it plainly, is utter bullshit.

Tell the people of Bahrain that the U.S. cares about democracy. Tell the people of Gaza the U.S. cares about saving lives. Tell the people of Yemen the U.S. cares about injustice.

Even the New York Times sees between those lines. Check out how they reported this speech: ' “Today the world is saying, in one unmistakable voice, ‘We will stand with you as you seize this moment of promise; as you reach for the freedom, the dignity and the opportunity you deserve,’ ” he said Tuesday. But he was talking about Libyans, not Palestinians. American officials say that Palestinian statehood at the United Nations will jeopardize the peace process; Israel is adamantly opposed to United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state.' [italic emphasis added]

The most powerful war machine on earth (and we know that's not Denmark and Norway) now knows it can get away with sending remote-controlled death from above on your country, your cities, your revolution, your counterrevolution — no matter — with total impunity. They will get away with it. They will claim it is the will of the "international community." And there is nothing you can do about it. There is no way you can fight back against it.

And if you are not in their pocket, do not offer them the proper strategic or "trade and investment" opportunities, they will look the other way. They will ask you to "negotiate." They will stab you in the back. Beware what has now been unleashed.

Graphic is a 1960s Cultural Revolution-era Chinese poster, snagged from the extraordinary ChinesePosters.net. It reads, optimistically: "Awakened peoples, you will certainly attain the ultimate victory!"

Anti-American Art: Bab al-Azizya

I figured I better feature this rather iconic statue before it's gone. Earlier in my series of Anti-American art images I featured a Libyan stamp showing a similar illustration, but here's the real thing, the statue erected by the Libyan dictator Qaddafi at the site of the American assassination attempt/bombing raid back in 1986 that took the life of his adopted daughter. Showing a hand crushing an American jet, it's located in his expansive Bab al-Azizya compound in Tripoli, and was, as seen below, just overrun by the NATO-backed rebels of the Libyan Transitional National Council.


A particularly noxious NY Times video already makes the not completely off-base comparison between this statue and the ones of Saddam Hussein pulled down by American invaders, so it seems likely that these NATO revolutionaries will shortly pull this iconic symbol of defiance down so as not to offend their new overlords.

It seems likely that Qaddafi's quixotic faux egalitarian faux anti-imperialist regime is now a thing of the past, though the TNC is rife with his former allies. It's also far from clear in any case that the war is at all over or that Libya's future is resolved.

Although before the US/NATO intervention I was all in favor of a real Libyan people's revolution, I have my doubts that this now beholden-to-NATO hitchup of former bureaucrats will bring anything resembling actual democracy to the Libyan people. Beware of NATO bombers bearing gifts. It ought to give all freedom-loving people pause to think that the rebels are now in effect celebrating the high-tech rain of death from the skies that this statue challenges. No doubt the world's future hindsight will be 20-20.

(PS: That earthquake today! Unnerving and momentarily terrifying...but no damage done here in the home of The Cahokian. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.)

News from the Malabar Front: US Bombs Over Libya Are Not "Hostilities"

What is it about the war in Libya that brings George Orwell's 1984 to life over and over again? From today's New York Times online:

'The White House is telling Congress that President Obama has the legal authority to continue American participation in the NATO-led air war in Libya, even though lawmakers have not authorized it.... The White House, for the first time, offers lawmakers and the public an argument for why Mr. Obama has not been violating the War Powers Resolution since May 20....

[T]he White House argued that the activities of United States military forces in Libya do not amount to full-blown “hostilities” at the level necessary to involve the section of the War Powers Resolution that imposes the deadline....The two senior administration lawyers contended that American forces have not been in “hostilities” at least since April 7, when NATO took over leadership in maintaining a no-flight zone in Libya....

The administration had earlier argued that Mr. Obama could initiate the intervention in Libya on his own authority as commander-in-chief because it was not a “war” in the constitutional sense.'

Is it not outrageous that Obama is now practically begging the Republicans to assume an (utterly phoney) anti-war mantle? As if their newfound anti-war, pro-War Powers Resolution identity is anything other than an anti-Obama smokescreen. What sheer clusterfuck!

And what unbelieveable hubris: everyone knows NATO is the United States.

Just a few days ago the Times noted: "The United States accounts for about three-quarters of total military spending by all NATO countries, and it has in the past taken the lead in military operations and provided the bulk of the weapons and matériel. ... If the United States did not have large stockpiles of ammunition, a senior NATO official said, the NATO campaign would already have come to a halt. The Americans are selling the ammunition, but it was the American military budget that paid for its manufacture and stockpiling. Similarly, NATO allies must still rely on American Awacs planes and refueling aircraft, American suppression of air defenses and American intelligence gathering. Even with the United States playing a secondary role, by mid-May its operations in Libya had already cost $664 million, according to a Pentagon memo circulating in Washington."

I don't watch much so-called news on TV since it's mostly paid infotainment or government-authorized propaganda, but I do listen to NPR all the time. Have you noticed, as I have, that casualties in Afghanistan are now reported as being "NATO casualties"? As if everyone can't see that NATO means American. Do they think people won't notice?

A few years ago I worked in the music business. The megacorporation I worked for specialized for a while in absorbing smaller, independent companies: When it was still part of German-owned Bertelsmann, the BMG Music Service purchased CDNow, an innovative but financially troubled independent music website. At first they tried to maintain its business, but then the cutbacks started. Eventually hundreds of people were laid off and offices were closed, and the CDNow brand was licensed to Amazon.com. It changed from being an independent site that provided reputable editorial content as well as music sales to being basically an automated brand script on Amazon's servers. Well shortly after BMG washed its hands of day-to-day CDNow affairs, our company had a town hall meeting. The CEO was taking questions. Somebody asked him why he killed off CDNow. You could see the smoke pour from the CEO's ears. Almost tearfully he raged, "How dare you say we killed off CDNow! It's right there on the back of our business cards. It's a great brand for us. We're committed to that brand. We have turned it around into a brand that makes a profit for us!" See, it didn't matter that hundreds of people had lost their jobs. It didn't matter that CDNow the company, the employer, the home to hundreds of careers, ceased to exist: in corporate double-think, he really believed CDNow still existed. It sure did on his profitability statements and on his yearly bonus.

My point in this digression is that in the world of corporatists like my old CEO or President Obama, reality is not experienced the same way you and I experience it. So if there's no U.S. "hostilities" in Libya because the pieces of paper in front of him say "NATO," then that's the way it must be. It's not war...in the constitutional sense.

Excuse me, but fuck that BS.

(Illustration from the excellent left-wing "Rag Blog." That's Obama's now painfully embarrassing Nobel Prize bleeding on his lapel.)

News from the Malabar Front: Republicans Are Against Expensive and Unjustified War!

"So, during this debate we must make clear to the American people that the United States had to take action in the best interests of the security of our nation and the world community. As Republicans who supported military action against Saddam Hussein and terrorists around the globe, the United States had to show our resolve as the world’s premier defender of freedom and liberty before such ideals were preyed upon, rather than after standing witness to their demise at the hands of our enemies. ...

Republicans believe victory in Iraq will be an important blow to terrorism and the threat it poses around the world. Democrats, on the other hand, are prone to waver endlessly about the use of force to protect American ideals. Capitol Hill Democrats’ only specific policy proposals are to concede defeat on the battlefield and instead, merely manage the threat of terrorism and the danger it poses.

These are troubling policies to embrace in a post-9/11 world. During this debate, we need to clarify just how wrong the Democrats’ weak approach is and just how dangerous their implementation would be to both the short-term and long-term national security interests of the United States." — Republican Rep. John Boehner, House Majority Leader, June 2006 when George Bush was President


"We have our opportunity to do what our forefathers have done, and that's to stand up, support our troops and to win, because the outcome of failure is actually too ominous to even think about." — John Boehner on Iraq in 2007, when George Bush was President


"[HR292 declares] that the President shall not deploy, establish, or maintain the presence of units and members of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Libya, and for other purposes.

(1) The United States Armed Forces shall be used exclusively to defend and advance the national security interests of the United States.

(2) The President has failed to provide Congress with a compelling rationale based upon United States national security interests for current United States military activities regarding Libya.

(3) The President shall not deploy, establish, or maintain the presence of units and members of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Libya unless the purpose of the presence is to rescue a member of the Armed Forces from imminent danger. " — H.Res 292, authored by Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, and passed by the Republican majority in the House, while Barack Obama is President

“The American people and the members of this House have questions and concerns that have gone unanswered,” Mr. Boehner said on the floor of the House. “The president of the United States is our commander in chief, and I’ve always believed that combat decisions should be left to the commander in chief and the generals on the ground. But the House also has an obligation to heed the concerns of our constituents and to carry out our constitutional responsibilities.” — reported today in the NY Times

I am completely against President Obama's policy of military intervention in Libya (or in Iraq and Afghanistan for that matter). But is there any doubt that the newfound Republican interest in the War Powers Act and in monitoring the costs and rationale behind a military adventure is 100% solely a product of the fact that a black Democrat is sitting in the White House? The hypocrisy and opportunism boggle the mind.

Mr. Boehner, WHERE ARE THE FUCKING JOBS?

(Excellent graphic from somebody's Cafepress store — not mine!)

Silencing the Witnesses

This disturbing and extraordinary photograph of a little girl in Iraq, covered in the blood of her parents who have just been murdered by American soldiers, was taken in 2005 by Chris Hondros, one of the two photojournalists killed yesterday in Misurata in Libya. The other was Tim Hetherington, one of the directors of the film "Restrepo." Both were killed when struck by a RPG while covering the attack on the rebel-held town by government forces.

Photojournalists are the eyes of the world: they reveal things that most of us would not otherwise see, bringing acts of horror and heroism to light. Smart governments try to co-opt their vision; others try to repress it, and the most brutal try to silence it with violence. These photographers were real heroes. Sadly much of what passes for a free press in the United States is the pathetic drivel of infotainment or corporate and rightwing propaganda merely disguised as news. The work of these two men transcended that base standard.

Information on the rising number of journalists targeted with violence and repression can be found at the Committee to Protect Journalists website.

Adventures in Neocolonialism

Above is an outline map of Africa, 1914, showing the breadth of colonial conquest. Note two-thirds of Libya is colored "Italian" and one-third "British." That would be "French West Africa" where Cote D'Ivoire is today.


Above is an outline map of Libya between the Second World War and independence. It has been seized from Italy and split up between France and Great Britain.

The following headlines are from April 2011:

"3 Western Powers Sending Military Advisors to Libya...France, Italy and Britain." — LA Times

"Ivory Coast Fighting Worsens; France, UN Bomb Gbagbo Forces" — Bloomberg

"A More Assertive France in Africa" — CSM

Here's a tidbit from an article entitled "Italian oil giant suspends supply from Libya": "Italy is Libya's biggest trade partner and imports 25 per cent of its oil and around 10 per cent of its gas from the North African country." — Telegraph

And here's some statistics about Cote D'Ivoire from Wikipedia: "Export goods: cocoa, coffee, timber, petroleum, cotton, bananas, pineapples, palm oil, fish
Main export partners: Netherlands 13.92%, France 10.75%, US 7.79%..."

Somehow it's all starting to add up, isn't it.

Snakes in the Grass

"The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials." report in the NY Times, March 30, 2011

The Central Intelligence Agency may be nightmare fodder for conspiracy theorists, but the fact is that they function as an extra-legal force for American governments who want to intervene in other countries without the niceties of democratic scrutiny. For Presidents both Democrat and Republican, they function as a private army that comes with a wink and a pair of crossed fingers. Presidents know that they can deny everything but still use the CIA to do whatever they want since the CIA doesn't, apparently, count. President Obama has now admitted to following in the illustrious corrupting footsteps of sending the CIA off to do his bidding while making statements in direct contradiction to what he's having the CIA do. So of course Obama says there will be no American "boots on the ground" in the LIbyan conflict: follow the wink and the crossed fingers to this new admission that the CIA is already there, on the ground, doing Lord only knows what.

It's a grand old tradition, and it usually comes back to bite the United States in the ass. Witness 9/11: One can set aside all the absolutely crazy conspiracy theories about inside jobs and rockets and explosive-packed foundations and missiles and state secrets and all sorts of loony-toon stuff, and still not escape the undebatable facts that Al Qaeda and its Afghan sanctuaries would not have existed if it were not for the clandestine CIA operations in Afghanistan during the time of Soviet intervention there in the 1980s. You don't have to be a fan of dimestore spy novels to see that it is hugely problematic both for America and the countries of the world to have a secret army engaged in undemocratic subversion at the whim of whomever is running things in Washington.

I found this list of CIA interventions since World War II on the web. These are chapters from a book called "Killing Hope" I have not read nor make no pretense of endorsing, but the list of locales jibes with what I know about history. Congratulations President Obama! There should be a chapter about you and Libya added soon. Here's the list of shame:

1. China - 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
2. Italy - 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style
3. Greece - 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state
4. The Philippines - 1940s and 1950s: America's oldest colony
5. Korea - 1945-1953: Was it all that it appeared to be?
6. Albania - 1949-1953: The proper English spy
7. Eastern Europe - 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor
8. Germany - 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism
9. Iran - 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings
10. Guatemala - 1953-1954: While the world watched
11. Costa Rica - Mid-1950s: Trying to topple an ally - Part 1
12. Syria - 1956-1957: Purchasing a new government
13. Middle East - 1957-1958: The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America
14. Indonesia - 1957-1958: War and pornography
15. Western Europe - 1950s and 1960s: Fronts within fronts within fronts
16. British Guiana - 1953-1964: The CIA's international labor mafia
17. Soviet Union - Late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing
18. Italy - 1950s to 1970s: Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism
19. Vietnam - 1950-1973: The Hearts and Minds Circus
20. Cambodia - 1955-1973: Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism
21. Laos - 1957-1973: L'Armée Clandestine
22. Haiti - 1959-1963: The Marines land, again
23. Guatemala - 1960: One good coup deserves another
24. France/Algeria - 1960s: L'état, c'est la CIA
25. Ecuador - 1960-1963: A text book of dirty tricks
26. The Congo - 1960-1964: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba
27. Brazil - 1961-1964: Introducing the marvelous new world of death squads
28. Peru - 1960-1965: Fort Bragg moves to the jungle
29. Dominican Republic - 1960-1966: Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy
30. Cuba - 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution
31. Indonesia - 1965: Liquidating President Sukarno … and 500,000 others
East Timor - 1975: And 200,000 more
32. Ghana - 1966: Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line
33. Uruguay - 1964-1970: Torture -- as American as apple pie
34. Chile - 1964-1973: A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead
35. Greece - 1964-1974: "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution," said
the President of the United States
36. Bolivia - 1964-1975: Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat
37. Guatemala - 1962 to 1980s: A less publicized "final solution"
38. Costa Rica - 1970-1971: Trying to topple an ally -- Part 2
39. Iraq - 1972-1975: Covert action should not be confused with missionary work
40. Australia - 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust
41. Angola - 1975 to 1980s: The Great Powers Poker Game
42. Zaire - 1975-1978: Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven
43. Jamaica - 1976-1980: Kissinger's ultimatum
44. Seychelles - 1979-1981: Yet another area of great strategic importance
45. Grenada - 1979-1984: Lying -- one of the few growth industries in Washington
46. Morocco - 1983: A video nasty
47. Suriname - 1982-1984: Once again, the Cuban bogeyman
48. Libya - 1981-1989: Ronald Reagan meets his match
49. Nicaragua - 1981-1990: Destabilization in slow motion
50. Panama - 1969-1991: Double-crossing our drug supplier
51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991: Teaching communists what democracy is all about
52. Iraq - 1990-1991: Desert holocaust
53. Afghanistan - 1979-1992: America's Jihad
54. El Salvador - 1980-1994: Human rights, Washington style
55. Haiti - 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?

"Liberals Love War, Too"

As readers of The Cahokian know, I love quoting things. I've been disappointed of late to find a number of my favorite websites running pieces begrudgingly or even enthusiastically coming out in favor of the American attack on Libya. I am struck by the peculiar lack of imagination on Libya, that somehow in order to support the awakening of the Libyan people, people who should know better are embracing the worst kind of interventionist behavior. We've seen how this story ends countless times, and yet somehow the siren's song of "humanitarian intervention" has seduced a new generation of people. So here I'm quoting at great length a piece which nails exactly what's going wrong here.

I am excerpting below most of a blisteringly angry piece by Margaret Kimberley, editor and senior columnist of Black Agenda Report. Margaret Kimberly blogs as "The Freedom Rider." This piece, "Attack of the Cruise Missile Liberals," went up on BAR today.

"Peace loving Americans are few and far between. The vast majority of our citizens see nothing wrong with their government killing masses of people as long as the rationale sounds high minded and noble.

The love of bloodshed is generally connected with the right wing in this country, but nothing could be further from the truth. The desire for America to dominate the rest of the world is prevalent among most of its citizens, regardless of party affiliation. Those citizens differ only on who they want to see doing the dominating. Republicans are ecstatic when a Republican president drops bombs, sends drones on killing missions or occupies other nations. Democrats are equally enthusiastic when one of their own does the same.

Democratic party reaction to President Obama’s military intervention in Libya is but the latest example of the American propensity to exult over government sponsored violence. Obama, like George W. Bush before him, claims that his intervention, no-fly zone, peace mission (take your pick) is being conducted only for the most humanitarian of purposes. The dead bodies belie the claims of dogooderism but those words have a distinct power for people in this country and will always be used as a pretext for someone dying somewhere on the planet.

The legacy of Manifest Destiny and the belief in white American superiority effects and infects every policy discussion in this nation. The equation of goodness and rightness with white America holds sway very strongly and sadly not just for white people either... The United States attack on Libya has brought out the worst in this phenomenon. Liberals are gleeful that conservative icon Newt Gingrich backtracked on supporting intervention until the Democratic president actually intervened, but Gingrich is no different than they are.

We now have MSNBC television host Ed Schultz proclaiming “Support for Obama’s Invasion of Libya.” Never mind that Obama has taken great pains to claim that the bombing will be of limited duration and that ground troops will not have a presence there. Schultz seems to be ahead of the president on this one, but his show of support is telling in revealing the true support for American motivations in its interventions abroad. Likewise Juan Cole in an “Open Letter to the Left on Libya” dismisses criticism of the intervention thusly. “I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time,” and adds, “We should avoid making ‘foreign intervention’ an absolute taboo . . .”

Foreign interventions conducted by the United States should be taboo. Our system is not designed to be in any way humanitarian. Its motives are to say the least suspect and no matter how evil its enemies are made out to be, the evidence of past history should make us suspicious of the arguments in favor of war.

The liberal hawks, like Obama, have no concern for Libyan civilians who are enduring bombing, and exposure to depleted uranium shells which create cancers and birth defects for years to come. This is not conjecture, but has been seen in Iraq and ought to be a reason for anyone who claims to be on the “left” to oppose the actions which bring it to pass.

The true anti-war activist, not just anti-Republican activist, has to raise its voice. The true anti-war movement must reawaken itself and hit the streets in the hundreds of thousands, just as they did in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq. That moment can be recreated, and in a deeper, more honest way, now that a Democrat is the head killer in charge."

Read the entire piece at Black Agenda Report. Thanks to Jon for turning me on to this article.

Newsflash from the Malabar Front!

"Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end." -- George Orwell, 1984

"Of course, there is no question that Libya -– and the world –- would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake." -- Barack Obama's address to the nation on Libya, March 28, 2011

"Leaders of the four dozen countries and international organizations meeting here on Tuesday made it clear that they agreed that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi would have to relinquish power, even though regime change is not the stated aim of the United Nations resolution authorizing military action against his forces...." News report the very next day, March 29, 2011

----

"For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant -– Muammar Qaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world." -- Barack Obama's address to the nation on Libya, March 28, 2011

Estimated Total Deaths from U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2011
1,435 (low estimate) 2,283 (high estimate)
number of actual militants killed in these strikes
1,145 (low estimate) 1,822 (high estimate)
non-militant fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 21 percent

"Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair offered confirmation on Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community is authorized to assassinate Americans abroad who are considered direct terrorist threats to the United States." --news report February 2010

Friends & Enemies

The First World War was a watershed for the international left. For decades, socialists had organized in the nations of the industrialized world for the rights of workers, for social justice, for democracy; they exhorted values of international labor solidarity and talked about the common interests of the same classes across national divisions. The First World War was nobody's moral crusade: it was clearly a war for power and territory and economic strength. And yet, all of a sudden major portions of the left in each nation decided that being French or German or English or Russian was the most important thing. Their former class brothers and sisters across each other's borders were now enemies to be shot at; and the governments they were formerly protesting or struggling with were now the embodiments of their national pride. In an instant as socialist parties in the parliaments of France and Germany voted to support the war begun by their governments, the ideals they had bandied about were shown to be virtually meaningless.

Not all the socialists made this shameful turn, and it was from those who refused to surrender their ideals and principles that what became the Communist movement was born. The story of what happened to that movement later after the successful Russian revolution can be rightfully debated. But there was a moment of real heroism as some socialists said "no" to their own ruling classes, and continued to regard their allies as the people, the working classes, of all nations. Karl Liebknecht was one of those heroes. I've quoted this document before, and I'll probably quote it again, but in 1915 as the majority of German Socialists were rallying behind their government and the German flag to support the war, he wrote and distributed this leaflet, called "The Main Enemy Is At Home!" Liebknecht's heroic genius was in recognizing that for the working class, the war changed nothing. The government that was suddenly appealing to them for support, attempting to morally inspire the German people to war, was the same government, the same class force of big business and the aristocracy, that was moments before engaged in ripping them off and oppressing them.

Here's a few key excerpts. Liebknecht is too optimistic about the immediate future, but he's pointing out that the German government is lying when it says it has embarked on a quick and easy war. Italy has just joined the other side in the war.

"The masses in the warring countries have begun to free themselves from the official webs of lies. The German people as well have gained insight about the causes and objectives of the world war, about who is directly responsible for its outbreak. The mad delusions about the "holy aims" of the war have given way more and more, the enthusiasm for the war has dwindled, the will for a rapid peace has grown powerfully all over – even in the Army! This was a difficult problem for the German and Austrian imperialists, who were seeking in vain for salvation. Now it seems they have found it. Italy's intervention in the war should offer them a welcome opportunity to stir up new frenzies of national hatred, to smother the will for peace, and to blur the traces of their own guilt. They are betting on the forgetfulness of the German people, betting on their forbearance which has been tested all too often.

The enemies of the people are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – we counter this with the solution:

Learn everything, don't forget anything!...We have seen how when war broke out, the masses were captured for the capitalist aims of the war with enticing melodies from the ruling classes. We have seen how the shiny bubbles of demagogy burst, how the foolish dreams of August vanished, how, instead of happiness, suffering and misery came over the people; how the tears of war widows and war orphans swelled to great currents; how the maintenance of the three-class disgrace, the unrepentant canonization of the Quadrinity – semi-absolutism, junker rule, militarism, and police despotism – became bitter truth.

Offensive are the tirades with which Italian imperialism glosses over its pillaging... More offensive still is that in all of this we can recognize, as if reflected in a mirror, the German and Austrian methods of July and August 1914. The Italian instigators of war deserve every denunciation. But they are nothing but copies of the German and Austrian instigators, the ones who are chiefly responsible for the outbreak of war. Birds of a feather!...

For thinking people, Italy's imitation of Germany's actions from summer of last year cannot be a spur for new war frenzies, just an impetus to scare away the phantom hopes of a new dawn of political and social justice, just a new light for the illumination of the political responsibilities and the exposure of the public danger presented by the Austrian and German pursuers of war, just a new indictment of them.

The main enemy of every people is in their own country!

The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war party, German secret diplomacy. This enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, cooperating with the proletariat of other countries whose struggle is against their own imperialists.

We think as one with the German people – we have nothing in common with the German Tirpitzes and Falkenhayns, with the German government of political oppression and social enslavement. Nothing for them, everything for the German people. Everything for the international proletariat, for the sake of the German proletariat and downtrodden humanity. The enemies of the working class are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – provide that that be a grave miscalculation. They are betting on the forbearance of the masses – but we raise the vehement cry:

How long should the gamblers of imperialism abuse the patience of the people? Enough and more than enough slaughter! Down with the war instigators here and abroad!... Proletarians of all countries, follow the heroic example of your Italian brothers! Ally yourselves to the international class struggle against the conspiracies of secret diplomacy, against imperialism, against war, for peace with in the socialist spirit.

The main enemy is at home!

----

These are important words, far more important than the long-forgotten details of national intrigue in the early days of the First World War. Because once again a large portion of the left who knows better is making the wrong choice of friends.

I read the very disappointing "Open Letter to the Left on Libya" by Middle East Scholar and anti-war activist Professor Juan Cole. And Cole, who's made numerous insightful analyses of the U.S. war on Iraq is now siding with the liberal interventionists and calling the bombing of Libya a "humanitarian" action. The same NATO, the same US war machine, the same neocolonialist European allies, that Cole has criticized elsewhere are now, in his opinion, doing the right thing.

It is more difficult to respond to current events than it is to analyze history. But history's lessons are useful. And forgetting the material class interests of NATO, US imperialism, and European neocolonialism, is an absolutely fundamental mistake of those who think that the current intervention into the Libyan civil war is any way legitimately humanitarian. Even in the possible (but unlikely, in my opinion) outcome of a quick end to this conflict, a low bodycount, the removal of a dictator, and the restoration of civil order, the story does not end there.

The foreign intervention in Libya may ostensibly be in support of the Libyan rebels, but it is most certainly NOT in the support of the tide of revolution sweeping the Arab world. It is an an attempt to control and tame that struggle. Just connect a few dots. US. Arab League. Saudi Arabia. Bahrain. And do the world's protesters really want to empower the US airforce and NATO to act as the world's policemen?

This is grotesque. The left knows better; at least it knew better.

Other recommended readings:
* Zunguzungu blog has an intelligent but ultimately incorrect post on the subject, "Libya, Waiting to See."
* On The Unrepentant Marxist a left veteran analyzes the situation but criticizes left-wing countries in Latin America for supporting Qaddafi, "Libya, Imperialism and ALBA"
* Richard Seymour on the excellent Lenin's Tomb hasn't really written a definitive piece on Libya, but he reminds of his timely book "The Liberal Defence of Murder." I should review that book here.