Is this as good as it gets?

[Suresh]

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Gary MacLennan - Let us now proceed to excerpt 1b. Chandan proudly unfurls
Gaddafi's
anti-Imperialist CV. It is as if, for Chandan, Gaddafi's shit doesn't even
smell. He goes as far as to invoke the name of the martyred Patrice Lumumba
to bestow an aura of revolutionary grace on the Libyan tyrant. I doubt if
the Sudanese Communist revolutionaries who were handed over by Gadaffi to be
hung by Nimeri in 1971, would have agreed with Chandan here. But hey -
maybe that is just me indulging in more "narrow minded hysteria".

Having conveyed on Gaddafi the mantle of anti-Imperialist hero -First Class
- Chandan now has little recourse but to pour scorn on his opponents. This
he does in the following excerpt.


Suresh - One thing is for sure, U.S. and European imperialism never saw Gaddafi
in the same light as Yemeni President Saleh, Bahrain's King Hamad, Sultan Qaboos
of Oman, or King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. However much you and Marvin Gandall
and others talk about how much the Libyan government was in America's bag prior
to the recent civil war there, the evidence suggests that the imperialists never
lost the distinction between Gaddaffi and our real clients. France sold Libya
it's Mirage jets, but it has no qualms using those same fighter planes to
bombard the country. Would they ever do the same to absolute monarchist Bahrain?
Not unless the King turns against the West.


I think history provides strong evidence that America never fully forgives past
rebels. Even if Fidel were to sweep back into power and privatize more of the
Cuban economy than Raul is planning to, he would remain persona non grata in
Washington. So it was with Saddam after he attempted to occupy Kuwait. There was
never a chance he could have complied enough with the U.S. to let him off the
hook. For the same reason the U.S. is loath to let Iran enter the international
community, so strong is the need for vengeance for overthrowing the Shah and
holding the embassy diplomats hostage.


But, you know, it's instructive to see so many Marxists more or less taking a
third campist position while Libya is suffering invasion. It's almost as if the
lessons of the Balkan wars, let alone the genocidal disaster of Iraq, never even
happened.





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[Louis Proyect]

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Post by Suresh
But, you know, it's instructive to see so many Marxists more or less taking a
third campist position while Libya is suffering invasion. It's almost as if the
lessons of the Balkan wars, let alone the genocidal disaster of Iraq, never even
happened.

Which Marxists are you referring to? Stating that Qaddafi was a
torturing, neoliberal, despot is not "third campist". The third camp, on
the other hand, is a position associated with Max Schachtman after he
left the Trotskyist movement. It tried to stake out a middle ground
between backing imperialism and what it saw as a bureaucratic system
that had nothing to do with socialism. Perhaps you are trying to say
that someone like myself who kept documenting Qaddafi's friendly
relations with Berlusconi, his expulsion of Sub-Saharan immigrant
workers for cash payments, etc. was implicitly backing the bombing of
Libya. Of course this is a filthy slander of the kind that one segment
of the left perfected long ago.

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[Marv Gandall]

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Post by Suresh
But, you know, it's instructive to see so many Marxists more or less taking a
third campist position while Libya is suffering invasion. It's almost as if the
lessons of the Balkan wars, let alone the genocidal disaster of Iraq, never even
happened.

Which Marxists are you referring to? Stating that Qaddafi was a torturing, neoliberal, despot is not "third campist". The third camp, on the other hand, is a position associated with Max Schachtman after he left the Trotskyist movement. It tried to stake out a middle ground between backing imperialism and what it saw as a bureaucratic system that had nothing to do with socialism.

If Libya was a "workers' state" - an anticapitalist state, at any rate - as was the Soviet Union in 1940, which was not violently repressing a democratic uprising from below, it would be easy to call for its defence, nothwithstanding the repressive nature of the regime. But Libya is a bourgeois state whose regime long ago lost its anti-imperialist credentials and has opened the country up to Western oil firms, arms dealers, and investment banks.

Marxist orthodoxy requires calling for an end to imperialist military intervention against a semi-colonial country. The complicating factor in this case - I'm not aware of any historical precedents - is that the call for withdrawal, whether one chooses to turn a blind eye to it or not, is tantamount to endorsing a massacre of the armed democratic fighters in Benghazi and elsewhere whom Gadhafi has vowed to crush as, he puts it, like rats and cockroaches without pity or mercy.

The tragedy of Libya is that both foreign intervention and a victory for the regime will each in their own way put paid to the democratic movement in the Middle East, at least for a time.

I confess that the only dog I have in this three-cornered fight is the armed democratic opposition of young workers, farmers, students, soldiers, and the unemployed, and that I'm prepared to follow their lead on the question of foreign intervention rather than what dogma dictates.






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[Tom Cod]

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C'mon, was the kaiser's Germany a workers state? Obviously not. Then again
too many social democrats gobbled up all the hooey about "The Hun" and its
attendant phony democratic posturing to jump on that imperialist bandwagon.
Moreover, where's the outrage at the massacres being committed by in Yemen
and Bahrain by US client states? Gaddafi's a tyrant for sure, but what is
going on now are not wholesale massacres, but a civil war in which a section
of the populace, rightly or wrongly, backs this guy.

Seems like the lessons of Iraq are so easily forgotten after a few news
cycles of CNN which are summarily swallowed whole hog. Sure the dissidents
can call for help from whomever based on the realpolitik of their situation
without compromising their bona fides, that's not the issue; for example,
while we might not begrudge some Irish for asking the Germans to intervene
in their country in 1916, it would another leap entirely to actually support
that, particularly for German socialists.

Hands off Libya!

Post by Marv Gandall
If Libya was a "workers' state" - an anticapitalist state, at any rate - as
was the Soviet Union in 1940, which was not violently repressing a
democratic uprising from below, it would be easy to call for its defence,
nothwithstanding the repressive nature of the regime. But Libya is a
bourgeois state whose regime long ago lost its anti-imperialist credentials
and has opened the country up to Western oil firms, arms dealers, and
investment banks.

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[Tom Cod]

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Oh BTW, what's the social and political character of the US, British and
French regimes re "Western oil firms, arms dealers, and investment banks"?
Marx had a very pointed analysis of this sanctimonious reasoning regarding
the war of French "civilization" against Algerian feudalism. Moreover, we
should look at what these putative liberators' machinations brought to that
country, not in the 1850s, but in the 1990s: a democratic election annulled
and military dictatorship imposed resulting in the deaths of over 100,000.

Post by Marv Gandall
But Libya is a bourgeois state whose regime long ago lost its

Post by Marv Gandall
anti-imperialist credentials and has opened the country up to Western oil
firms, arms dealers, and investment banks.

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[Marv Gandall]

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Post by Lüko Willms
Karl Liebknecht, one of only two deputies in the German Reichstag to vote
against giving money to the Kaiser Wilhelm for his war "for civilasation
against Russian barbarism" etc, proclaimed that the enemy is always within
our "own" country.
C'mon, was the kaiser's Germany a workers state?...Gaddafi's a tyrant for sure, but what is
going on now are not wholesale massacres, but a civil war in which a section
of the populace, rightly or wrongly, backs this guy.
Seems like the lessons of Iraq are so easily forgotten after a few news
cycles of CNN which are summarily swallowed whole hog.

It's a civil war, but one pitting a segment of the population struggling for democratic rights against an anti-democratic regime which another segment of the population wrongly (not "rightly or wrongly") supports. Nor are there easy analogies to draw on for guidance, neither the interimperialist wars nor the US invasion of Iraq, where there was no democratic movement engaged in combat, broadly supported by the Arab masses and international left, whose physical survival was at stake to confuse the issue.

That having been said, IMHO the Libyan opposition should have opted, on both principled and tactical grounds, to abandon the armed struggle and to disperse underground rather than to call on the Western powers to intervene when the military tide turned against it. I suggested previously that an overt or thinly-disguised NATO intervention would compromise and likely shatter the democratic movement, and I still believe that's a real possibility, particularly in a protracted conflict where foreign bombs and missiles take an increasing toll of civilian lives. In that case, we could see what is now a mass democratic struggle transformed into a genuinely anti-imperialist one as increasing numbers of oppositionists abandon their positions "to stop fighting the tyrant and shoot the Americans instead," as a veteran of Libya’s war in Chad manning an old anti-aircraft gun on Benghazi’s corniche told the Economist last week.
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[Mark Lause]

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I've avoided jumping into this heated non-discussion thus far. The
intensity of these things usually escalates as the subject reaches ever more
lofty abstraction... approaching the level of pointlessness...

I do seem to have missed that Marv Gandall and others had been voting the
Kaiser war credits in the Reichstag. :-)

If I had had any idea that members of the list were that important, I'd have
certainly been nicer to everybody over the years.....

An underlying issue here seems to be an unspoken assumption that imperialist
intervention would actually give them free reign to do what they will in
Libya. That is entirely unclear, and fatalistic. We have no reason to
believe that the people of Libya or the region will accept the mere
replacement of the regime or the partition of the country or other solutions
that fall short of what they want....

ML
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[Peggy Dobbins]

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They will be too busy sweeping up the flowers they threw in the street

Post by Suresh
========================================
We have no reason to
believe that the people of Libya or the region will accept the mere
replacement of the regime or the partition of the country or other solutions
that fall short of what they want....
ML

[Mark Lause]

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Wow! It does amaze me sometimes how little confidence some of you seem to
have in the ultimate good sense and intelligence of the people. And how
much some of you seem to have in the power of the capitalist states....

ML
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[Marv Gandall]

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I do seem to have missed that Marv Gandall and others had been voting the Kaiser war credits in the Reichstag. :-)

No, I wouldn't have voted that way, given my politics. And, yes, if forces loyal to the Russian Tsar were endeavouring to crush a mass democratic uprising, and the Kaiser allowed me my safe passage across Germany to participate in the revolutionary process, I would have accepted German imperialist aid on the understanding that you deal with the immediate threat to your survival first and your other enemies later.


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[M***@aol.com]

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To be consistent the left must call for non-intervention
So that when Gaddafi is defeated the left can demand withdrawal
George Anthony
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[Lüko Willms]

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the call for withdrawal [of the imperialist military from Libya],
whether one chooses to turn a blind eye to it or not,
is tantamount to endorsing a massacre
of the armed democratic fighters in Benghazi and elsewhere
whom Gadhafi has vowed to crush as, he puts it,
like rats and cockroaches without pity or mercy.

Karl Liebknecht, one of only two deputies in the German Reichstag to vote
against giving money to the Kaiser Wilhelm for his war "for civilasation
against Russian barbarism" etc, proclaimed that the enemy is always within
our "own" country.

Karl Liebknecht became later, together with Rosa Luxemburg, one of the
founders of the German communist party, and was murdered with Luxemburg
in January 1919 by a gang of those "civilizers".


Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany
--------------------------------
visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in
German

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[Ralph Johansen]

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Midhurst14 <mailto:Midhurst14%40aol.com> wrote

To be consistent the left must call for non-intervention
So that when Gaddafi is defeated the left can demand withdrawal
George Anthony

-------------------------------

Quickly, summarizing how the Grand Chess Game appears to be playing out
this time:

The US, not wanting to be seen as launching yet another war in the
middle east, is 'reluctant' to join the attack on Libya without Arab
support - read sheikhs protecting their respective asses and scared
shitless of their own people - and quickly, tacit support is extracted
from 'representatives of the Arab League', from the seemingly more
secure among them - Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates --
saying they do back the no-fly zone over Libyan airspace;

While all the world's bourgeois media [except in some respects Russia's
RT], including the by-now obviously complicit, softly-back-pedaling Al
Jazeera, occasionally switching vaguely to events elsewhere in the
middle east, are focusing almost exclusively on the hated Gadaffi and
the cruise missile attacks and other developing events in Libya;

While behind that facade Saudi Arabia intensifies attacks on its own and
the Bahraini revolutionaries, Saleh attacks and kills Yemeni protesters,
presumably the Syrian, Egyptian, Omani, Tunisian and Algerian ruling
factions do likewise [redounding to the tacit benefit of the Qatari Amir
in his role simultaneously as tribune of the liberal media audience and
as local gamekeeper to the oil interests];

The Security Council and Nato conclude their bargaining and scheming and
at length unite behind a series of joint moves, all designed to
culminate in the crushing of the revolutionaries in the middle east -
none of whom have the slightest support of any members of the Security
Council, once that is, everyone gets honed in on how they share in the
mutually agreed outcome of throttling dissent in the middle east by any
means necessary, guaranteeing for yet another protracted period
continued control of access to energy resources for the privileged
guzzlers and once more keeping the benefits of those resources from the
people under whose land the fabulous energy resources lie;

And the cynical prating of Sarkozy, Obama, Hillary, Cameron, Ban Ki-moon
and so forth about how they're 'saving' the Libyan people, all the while
reluctantly collateralizing them;

While Gates and Clinton are prancing about in advance of overt action,
like ballet directors coordinating and directing the movements of the
oil guzzlers and their allies, now including the Danes and Canadians
prominently featured with planes in Mediterranean bases as well;

Meanwhile, Germany's Angela Merkel says that the fact that Germany
abstained from the UN vote on establishing the no-fly zone does not mean
that they do not support that vote. While Russia's Foreign Ministry says
it 'regrets' the international intervention in Libya;

It's all too blatant, while it nevertheless serves to drive a series of
wedges among liberals, middle eastern nationals and revolutionaries, who
might otherwise unite behind the slowly-developing coordination among
the national uprisings in the region, and possibly more widely, but who
now face the dangerous prospect of being lulled into impotence through
attacks by their own rulers, by divide and rule splitting of factions,
between secular and religious dissidents, between interventionists and
non-interventionists, in Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Lebanon,
Libya, Yemen and globally - - while sympathizers adopt the illusion that
the UN and Nato are entering to protect the 'people' from the
newly-reviled Gaddafi, with repressive leaders elsewhere getting carte
blanche;

Nor am I surprised that people like Chavez, Castro, Ortega and others,
forced as heads of nations to enter into untenable underdog roles in the
continuing savage Grand Strategies of realpolitik, would decide that,
yes, Gaddafi is a son-of-a-bitch but for the time being he's our
son-of-a-bitch - and ditch movements of people against their ruling
elites [as did the Soviet Union and China in the past, repeatedly] in
the interest of positioning themselves in the realpolitik pecking order.

Unless:

It certainly reinforces the urgency of the radical left everywhere,
united beyond national interests, being on top of the stratagems of
realpolitik, quickly gaining the savvy to maneuver, paying due attention
to the dialectics of capital's designs, and ultimately surmounting and
benefiting from ruling state-corporate machinations while not being
forced into the negative ambiguities of the destructive great power
game-plans. Some of that initially appeared to be taking place in
Tunisia and especially in Egypt, with the joining in of the workers
there. We can only hope that's still the case.
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[Alan Bradley]

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From: Mark Lause

Post by Mark Lause
An underlying issue here seems to be an unspoken assumption that
imperialist intervention would actually give them free reign to do what
they will in Libya. That is entirely unclear, and fatalistic. We have no
reason to believe that the people of Libya or the region will accept the
mere replacement of the regime or the partition of the country or other
solutions that fall short of what they want....

Unfortunately, experience tends to support pessimism here.

Clearly, the forces of reaction are making a concerted attempt to bring an end to the revolutionary wave (Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and so on). It's far from clear that the revolution can survive this. In some cases (Bahrain comes to mind), it's pretty clear that it will be defeated.

Meanwhile, the revolution in Libya has been hijacked by reactionary bourgeois figures. Removing Gadaffi will merely open a struggle against them (and their imperialist sponsors.)

This brings us back to classic Marxist postulates about the need to deepen the revolution. What are the chances of that?

I haven't a clue, but I'm prepared to guess that they are pretty slim.

I won't say zero, though. First of all, there is still a struggle going on in Egypt. The spread of the revolution may be being halted, but it's still being fought in Egypt. If the Egyptian revolution deepens, there will be a demonstration effect in Libya, which could help tip the balance.

Second, the Tripoli masses haven't really yet become involved. The Gadaffi-ist forces have been repressing them. The imperialists have started bombing them. The bourgeois rebels will, without a doubt, take up where they left off.

It's most probable that they (the workers and so on of Tripoli) will be demoralised, and just seek to get on with their lives, but that may not be the case. They've clearly been wanting to raise their voices, but haven't been able to. They may not be prepared to remain silent.

And Tripoli, of course, contains a third of the population. Quite likely, a majority of the working class.

Of course, all of this is assuming there isn't a direct imperialist occupation. Even a rather short lived one, involving relatively small forces, could change the situation radically.

Basically, this whole situation is so classically "Marxist" that it's rather odd people are having trouble with it. Or maybe it isn't, but that just leads back to the ridiculous cycle of name calling.

It's still a damn shame that some of the world's most prominent socialists have proven themselves suspicious of, if not hostile to, the revolutions in the Arab world. Arab Marxists, as has been pointed out, have been much less so, which might be more important. However, it doesn't help that "we" (that is, those who are assumed to speak for "us") aren't unequivocally on the side of the revolution.

What would Marx have said? I don't know - it would probably have been in German. Or possibly Latin or ancient Greek. And Not Safe For Work.




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[Alan Bradley]

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From: Mark Lause

Post by Mark Lause
An underlying issue here seems to be an unspoken assumption that
imperialist intervention would actually give them free reign to do what
they will in Libya. That is entirely unclear, and fatalistic. We have no
reason to believe that the people of Libya or the region will accept the
mere replacement of the regime or the partition of the country or other
solutions that fall short of what they want....

Unfortunately, experience tends to support pessimism here.

Clearly, the forces of reaction are making a concerted attempt to bring an end to the revolutionary wave (Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and so on). It's far from clear that the revolution can survive this. In some cases (Bahrain comes to mind), it's pretty clear that it will be defeated.

Meanwhile, the revolution in Libya has been hijacked by reactionary bourgeois figures. Removing Gadaffi will merely open a struggle against them (and their imperialist sponsors.)

This brings us back to classic Marxist postulates about the need to deepen the revolution. What are the chances of that?

I haven't a clue, but I'm prepared to guess that they are pretty slim.

I won't say zero, though. First of all, there is still a struggle going on in Egypt. The spread of the revolution may be being halted, but it's still being fought in Egypt. If the Egyptian revolution deepens, there will be a demonstration effect in Libya, which could help tip the balance.

Second, the Tripoli masses haven't really yet become involved. The Gadaffi-ist forces have been repressing them. The imperialists have started bombing them. The bourgeois rebels will, without a doubt, take up where they left off.

It's most probable that they (the workers and so on of Tripoli) will be demoralised, and just seek to get on with their lives, but that may not be the case. They've clearly been wanting to raise their voices, but haven't been able to. They may not be prepared to remain silent.

And Tripoli, of course, contains a third of the population. Quite likely, a majority of the working class.

Of course, all of this is assuming there isn't a direct imperialist occupation. Even a rather short lived one, involving relatively small forces, could change the situation radically.

Basically, this whole situation is so classically "Marxist" that it's rather odd people are having trouble with it. Or maybe it isn't, but that just leads back to the ridiculous cycle of name calling.

It's still a damn shame that some of the world's most prominent socialists have proven themselves suspicious of, if not hostile to, the revolutions in the Arab world. Arab Marxists, as has been pointed out, have been much less so, which might be more important. However, it doesn't help that "we" (that is, those who are assumed to speak for "us") aren't unequivocally on the side of the revolution.

What would Marx have said? I don't know - it would probably have been in German. Or possibly Latin or ancient Greek. And Not Safe For Work.




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