Reply #84: The Price of the Divide on Libya

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The Price of the Divide on Libya
By Guest ⋅ April 4, 2011 ⋅Contributed by Tasnim

The military intervention in Libya has divided the left into two camps, the pro-interventionists and the anti-imperialists who define it as a military assault equivalent to the war in Iraq. At the centre of this division is an apparent contradiction between supporting the people’s revolution against autocracy and an anti-imperialist stance which denounces western hypocrisy. As a Libyan, I reject this false contradiction. I see myself as an anti-imperialist, I denounce western double standards, and I supported the revolution and the intervention. I see no need to twist myself into an arguing position where I declare myself to be for the people’s revolution, but against the intervention that sustained it. That, to me, would be the contradiction.

The accusations levelled at the pro-interventionists include naivety, hypocrisy, and selling their soul (and dignity) to the devil. The rhetorical questions fly: How can you believe this is a humanitarian intervention? Who bolstered Gaddafi? How about Bahrain, Yemen, Palestine? Afghanistan, Iraq, see what they did there? Rwanda, see what they didn’t do there? Do the three letters O-I-L mean anything to you?

The charge of naivety is popular, because proving you’re not naive can be difficult. I don’t speak for Libyans, but I can speak for myself and those I know, and we don’t need to be told that those intervening in Libya are acting in their own interests. None of us believe that this so-called humanitarian intervention is motivated solely by concern for human life. We know who rehabilitated Gaddafi. We watched Berlusconi kiss his hand and Clinton pose with his son Mutassim and Blair sit in his tent and announce a New Era, all when the brutality of the regime was being masked by the thinnest possible patina of change, the change of Saif’s western bought PR.

We also remember when Gaddafi was lionized by some in the left as an anti-imperialist Nasserite during the 70s and 80s, a time when people were hung in public and Libyans were poisoned against progressive ideas because of the brutality of the regime that pretended to espouse them. We remember when Gaddafi was the enemy of the west. We remember Operation El Dorado Canyon. We remember the collective punishment of sanctions as a whole nation was held responsible for Pan Am 103, only adding to the suffering of the most vulnerable. We remember when we were the pariah-state, and Libyans were the terrorists after the plutonium. We don’t need to be told that this intervention is, as one friend put it, mish ashan sawad eyona – not for the sake of our eyes. None of us are apolitical or naive, we haven’t had a chance to be. Yet all of us support the intervention.

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Complete article:
http://www.kabobfest.com/2011/04/the-price-of-the-divide-on-libya.html

Highest recommendation, must read, anything short of begging for a look-see. Ok, I will beg after all. It's a better expression somehow than the most lauded pundits, perhaps only because it comes from the heart and bitter experience but without heartless cynicism.