In an essentially excellent piece Sara Flounders ‘Libya: Demonization and Self-determination‘ (Global Research, July 24, 2011), near the beginning under the sub-hed ‘What should be the response to this terror?’ she writes:
“Unfortunately, a minority of groups or individuals who present themselves as opponents of war spend more time cataloguing Gadhafi’s past real or alleged shortcomings than rallying people to respond to this criminal, all-out U.S. attack. Their influence would be small, except that it coincides with the opinions of the U.S. ruling class. Thus it is important to thoroughly answer their arguments.”
Then she writes:
“The response to this colonial war of aggression should be the same as the response to a racist mobilization, a racist lynch mob or a police attack on an oppressed community: Mobilize all possible forces to stand up to the crime and say �no!� Refuse to take part in the orchestrated campaign of vilification.
“This may not be an easy position to take. But it is essential to reject the racist political onslaught that accompanies the military onslaught.”
I get the impression that the author is caught between a rock and an alleged leftie, else why say ‘This may not be an easy position to take’? Why is it not an easy position to take if it’s so clearly a imperialist and racist attack on a sovereign country? Flounders continues:
“Of course, such misguided groups are a small minority in the progressive movement. But there are those political organizations, which six months ago had not bothered to mention Libya, that now suddenly seek out respectable venues to add their own reasons that the dictator Gadhafi �must go� � an echo of the imperialist demand. Some even insist that in order to be part of the political discourse, every anti-war voice must first join in condemnation of Gadhafi.”
But nowhere do I find Flounders asking the question why?
And it’s not merely “misguided groups [who] are a small minority” who fell (again) into the Imperial trap. We saw the same ‘misguided minority’ do it over Yugoslavia and Kosovo. At the the end of the 60s it was Nigeria and the Biafra War (over oil of course with surprise-surprise, Shell, at the centre of it).
But why is the ‘misguided minority’ even regarded as being a part of a (real) left in the West? Or does it reflect a general loss of direction, even motivation for wanting real change within what’s left of the left?
I think it’s time to take a look at the timeline of the latest barbarian attack on the defenceless of the world. I think it reveals far more about how the left in the West operates, what are its motivations, than it does about the aims of the Empire (which should surely by now be apparent even to a reluctant leftie).
First, the ‘Arab Spring’ which was in fact an ‘African Spring’ as it kicked off in Tunisia then spread to Egypt. But this is par for the course. It used to be that all of Africa was actually in Africa but in the 19th century the Western colonialists starting moving things around a bit and all of a sudden, Egypt was an Arab country, as was Algeria, indeed all of the Mahgreb.
We see the same sleight of hand used in the Sudan (now successfully partitioned, eg Balkanized), whereby the country is split between the ‘Arab’ North and the Christian and ‘Black’ South. But they are all Africans in Africa! Most African countries had their current boundaries decided not by them but by their Western colonizers. Most didn’t even exist within their current boundaries before they were colonized and then successfully neo-colonized.
In any case, the popular insurrections in Africa and the Middle East were the setting, the context for what was in Libya, clearly an attempted coup masquerading as a popular insurrection carried along on the wave of the ‘Arab Spring’. This is where it gets interesting.
First, it should have been apparent that unlike the other ‘revolutions’, the Empire was gung ho for the Libyan version, that should have been a warning sign. But for the ‘established’ Western Left Gaddafi is a bit of a Gadfly (in the Western media they can’t even bother to spell his name right, I must have seen at least four varieties and now I’m not sure how it’s spelt either). He didn’t fit the mould of liberation fighter. He was peddling this weird (to lefties) Green Book, neither capitalist nor socialist, floating somewhere inbetween. And he ‘switched’ sides thus he wasn’t to be trusted.
In reality of course the Empire said either you do as we say or we’ll destroy you. So Gaddafi, Khadafi, Ghaddafi or Qhadafi did a deal. It wasn’t the first time and unfortunately it won’t be the last and anyway it didn’t help him, they got his oil, or nearly so.
‘Britain [to Gaddafi]: We’ll let you stay if you step down’ — The Times front page headline, 26 July 2011
Hence the initial response on the left and not just a minority, was to support the ‘rebellion’, after all it appeared to have all the right credentials, unless you looked very closely. For me, as soon as I saw that a main player in the rebel camp was a CIA asset based in Washington DC, that was it for me. Game over.
In any case, this ‘assessing’ by the Western Left generally of all those actually engaged in struggle, as to whether or not it’s ‘supportable’ reflects the arrogance of Empire. Who are we to judge? What business is it of ours anyway? This is especially galling when we can’t get our own act together and are still conducting a never-ending fraticidal struggle with each other over who has the ‘real’ socialist vision, let alone who or what to support.
Then came UN Resolution 1973 and the ‘no-fly zone’, itself a clear act of war, period. This got some on the left thinking a little more clearly, but not all. Some actually felt it might compel Gaddafi, Khadafi, Ghaddafi or Qhadafi to go, leave town, disappear. Outrageous but true as it’s predicated on the idea that we have the right to decide whether Gaddafi, Khadafi, Ghaddafi or Qhadafi should live or die.
The setting for this was the propaganda war launched by the West with allegations of ‘African mercenaries’ (note not Arab mercenaries), then mass rapes and slaughter from the air. You know the thing, none of it true and simply airbrushed out of the equation. It had had the intended effect and thus could be conveniently ditched. ‘Black ops’ that many on the Left swallowed hook, line and sinker.
Even Flounders falls into the trap of making apologies for Gaddafi, Khadafi, Ghaddafi or Qhadafi when she writes:
“Whatever mistakes made by the leaders of a small, underdeveloped country facing U.S. sanctions, sabotage and assassination attempts, they are not the reason the U.S. is hell-bent on destroying Libya today.’
Whatever ‘mistakes’ Gaddafi, Khadafi, Ghaddafi or Qhadafi has made are to be deplored, no doubt, but unless you want to invade and overthrow him, there is little that can be done about it except by the Libyans themselves and right now they come out in marches a million strong in support of the guy, and apparently they are all armed. But what if they didn’t? What then?
We all live in a world dominated by Capital as for example Venezuela, the first post-Soviet country to attempt to embark on some kind of quasi-socialist road but it does it in a world dominated in every sense of the word, by its northern neighbour. Building a genuinely socialist economy in Venezuela is all but impossible, there are simply too many obstacles placed in the path of the Bolivarian revolution. Chavez treads a narrow line, able to initiate genuine reforms in some areas but limited by all manner of factors in others. Some because of ‘internal’ contradictions and others from the outside (which in any case feed back on to internal events).
Thus whatever even vaguely anti-imperialist countries do to resist the predations of the Empire should be supported, even Iran, a capitalist country run by the Mullahs. Let the Iranians sort out their own government, a task made all the easier if we do our job and change our governments whose attacks directly drive internal repression in Iran, in part it’s their function.
Should we not support Russia when it objects to NATO expansion right up to its borders? It doesn’t mean we support Russian capitalism or its own lack of human rights or whatever, so why is it so difficult to apply the same reasoning to Libya or Iran? Surely it should be a reflex by now?
If you cast your mind back to the post-war period with its multitude of liberation movements, especially in Africa, virtually all the successful ones were led by Marxists of one flavour or another and even those that weren’t adopted central planning and state intervention in the economy. Many called themselves socialist or ‘African socialist’ and thus most were locked out of the global economy and doomed to fail. Did we in the West not support them even if we didn’t like what they were doing? Did we stop supporting the ANC when it embarked on an armed struggle and in the process killed civilians?
When I worked with and later for, the ANC I was under no illusions about it not having a socialist vision or indeed socialist platform but that didn’t stop me working for the ANC to win power. After that it’s up to South Africans to sort it out one way or the other.
Either way, we have to make the decision about which side we are on. If you think it’s our business to decide what kind of government a country should have then you must surely support armed intervention by the Empire. If you don’t then it’s incumbent on you to try get your government not to do it. All else is merely opinion.
