+ re: http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/25/the-%E2%80%9Cdecent-left%E2%80%9D-and-the-libya-intervention/
Dear Alex,
your and Professor Gibbs' two pieces on Libya, much as I agree especially with your take, yet contains
the usual mix of 75 % truth and 25 % Corbuncle [to make a lousy pun] e.g: Gibbs:" The intervention has generated significant dangers to global security: The character of Western policy toward the Libyan despot – by first persuading Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons development program and then overthrowing him – has discouraged other countries from abandoning their own nuclear weapons programs. The intervention thus constitutes a setback for international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation. "
Gibbs, tendentiously I would say, elides two unrelated events - Omar the Great giving up on The Bomb + his downfall - into one, whereas The West was getting the oil anyway and generally prefers the solidity of an known s.o.b. to the unknown one or to many who are vying currently. Thus Gibbs asserts a falsehood and then derives, asserts non-consequences from it.
The case that you make out really rests on the assertion that the reporting was second-hand as of a certain
point [" It was the secondhand allegation of massacres that drove both news coverage and U.N. activities – particularly in the early stage, when U.N. Resolution 1970 was adopted, calling for sanctions and the referral of Gaddafi’s closest circle to the International Criminal Court."}
and that Qaddafi never had a chance to answer either via the media or the UN. In court of course you allow even "the mad dog" his growl [about the one instance I happen to agree with one of Ronnie's assessments!], and I will have to take a slog through the voluminous reporting to check how second hand it was.
I would also say that you do yourself no favors by the calumny of the insinuation that because the
CIA may at least have been intelligent enough to consult with Juan Cole, for lack of IQ on its own part,
he nilly-willy becomes "CIA-consultant Juan Cole". Or in calling the rebel council a "jerry-rigged rebel committee in Benghazi" - how can it be anything but under the circumstances?
I miss in both your and Gibbs' assessment any relation of the Libyan phenomenon to the one that had its inception in neighboring Tunisia, referred
to as "the Arab Spring", now lasting well into winter.
I agree but for the qualifier "vague" and "supposed" with statements of yours such as ; "we moved from vague allegations of Gaddafi’s supposed “genocide” or “crimes against humanity” to two separate votes in the U.N. Security Council, which permitted a NATO mission to establish a “no-fly” zone to protect civilians, this latter protection to be achieved by “all necessary measures.” + entirely with: "Also, by late May, it was apparent that the rebels’ military capacities were modest in the extreme, that Ghadafi’s eviction was not going to be the overnight affair, confidently predicted in western capitals and in Benghazi, also that NATO’s bombardments were not having the requisite effect.
Our Bernard Henry Levy seems to have persuaded Sarkozy that this was his main chance.
Respectfully as ever.
I will post this on the much neglected "summa.politico.blog".
Michael Roloff [as "Summa.Politico"]
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/ http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html This LYNX will LEAP you to my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html "Degustibus disputandum est" {Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno} "May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James Joyce} "Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." {von Alvensleben} "Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." {Dante} "Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of experience." {Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.} http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/ http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/A COMMENT ON ALEX COBURN + PROF. GIBBS TAKE ON LIBYA IN COUNTERPUNCH
