Gaddafi is a terrorist; however he is not a jihadist. The Saudis, who fund salafism and wahabism in fundamentalist madrassa’s around the world, hate him. As does al Qaeda… he is in many ways much like Saddam Hussein, who also funded terrorism and used it, both domestically and internationally, but was ideologically more of a fascist than a theocrat. That’s not to say fascism isn’t heavily based on religious fanaticism, it always was, but there is a minor ideological difference that leads many people to argue the liberation of Iraq was unhelpful to the overall aim of crippling al Qaeda. To an extent this is true but it’s certainly more true than the idiotic claim that the result was empowering Iran which is then conflated with al Qaeda, and which unlike Saddam wasn’t just iffy on the subject of Sunni Arab jihad, but is openly hostile to and at war with it. The Iranian regime is a fundamentalist Islamic state, that is not a democracy, and supports terrorism both domestically and internationally… however it’s not the same kind of Islam, they are Shiite Persians, not Sunni Arabs. The anti war movement conveniently forget this detail when they claim to have been against the war for this reason. They of course, are also against doing anything to trouble the Iranian theocracy, so really the hypocrisy here is obvious.
My point here is important because there are parallels between the current conflict and the 03 escalation of the war with Saddam, which started in the early 90s and never truly ended. One, a no fly zone, primarily supported by nato with the tacit consent of the Arab league, which is essentially just Egypt and Saudi Arabia. When we stepped up the war in Iraq and made it about regime change, that support collapsed and the UN started posturing over its legality. Hence the whole, Bush is a war criminal nonsense that we are still subject to… By the standards of international law there are precious few regimes that aren’t guilty of war crimes, technically Obama already was from the moment he initiated drone strikes in Pakistan, (again with the covert off the record but now proven consent of the Pakistani government.) Well we are already stepping up our efforts in Libya, there are unconfirmed reports of cia operatives on the ground assisting rebels, and the president is considering arming them. Two, allegations of al Qaeda being in the opposition, and thus the old cry of, “we are helping the enemy with this war” has returned. The Pat Buchanan’s and Ron Pauls on the right and the Michael Moors and Cindy Sheehan’s of the world are already on the war path and Obama is going to find himself very quickly having to justify a 180 degree policy shift from his 08 campaign.
Now there are important distinctions, Bush first sold his war to the American people, and then tried to get the UN to come along, (they did not.) Obama went the other way around, first consulting the UN, then coming before the American people, only time can tell how effective this will be, while I was deeply moved by the speech given by Obama on this subject I must express a certain level of concern over his absurd claim that this is not a war. By any standard military action of one regime against another is a war, in this case it’s a war against a tribal oligarchy run by a lunatic hated by virtually everyone in the world, and especially by the majority of the people living under his regime. However it’s still a war and we had best start calling it that. In addition Obama made it clear that this is not, “an obama doctrine” well why the hell is that? By any standard of statesmanship it’s certainly a good starting point for a sane, stable, and ethical policy in the middle east, not to mention a popular one. Sadly realism trumps ethics and the fact that we are still allied to the tyrannies of Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia makes any ethical foreign policy sporadic at best, cynical at worst. That’s not to say we shouldn’t still support the government when it does something right, but that does mean we need to keep the pressure high on what it does wrong. We owe that much to the brave men and women risking life and limb against these despots… who have our weapons and our money to use in their suppression of human rights and dignities.
Another key distinction is that unlike with Saddam, we did not wait until well after it was “too late” we barely saved the Kurds and left the country to rot for ten years of Saddam, plus sanctions. Which is why it is barely governable now. In Libya we acted before, not after the genocidal repression of a population by a despotic lunatic.
We have to be clear, despite what the racist scum on the right, the Glen Beck’s of the world… say, al Qaeda is not behind the opposition and this has nothing to do with Israel. Its true there are al Qaeda sympathizers and anti Semites among the opposition, then again there are theocrats and anti Semites in the GOP, and I have a lot more faith in the Libyan opposition than I do in say… the tea party caucus. They are fighting for freedom from a dictator; if we step in to help we will insure that any anti American segments of the movement remain fringe elements and that the movement itself takes on a pro western view that will endear our two countries for generations to come. If we don’t, then where else will they turn for help? Well al Qaeda are known to involve themselves in fighting all our pet dictators, and earning popular support in the process. This isn’t the fault of the people in the middle east for going with the obvious lesser of two evils, (the dictator you know vs. the one you don’t know) it’s our fault for supporting evil in the first place. By siding with democracy we disarm our enemies and endear ourselves to the people.
Ultimately, we must understand human nature and act in the way which is most likely to win the support of the people in those areas in which we have an interest; our interests can only be served by people, not dictators, not kings, not despots. If we want peace in the Middle East, we must first amend our behavior, then seek to mend the behaviors of those that would do us harm, as they will always draw strength and undeserved credibility from our mistakes.
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