Commenting on this site has been closed. If you need to reach me, please email me at maxDOTforte[AT]openanthropologyDOTorg. However, as I will also be taking a break from email, please do not expect a fast response. Any announcements, such as for the next edition of The New Imperialism, will be posted on the Facebook and Twitter extensions of ZA. Brief commentaries–if any at all–will appear in Facebook alone. I am sure that I will also have the pleasure of meeting some of you at the upcoming AAA conference in Montreal where, if the sessions are approved, I will be on two panels.

Even while not posting here, new posts, updates, documents, and videos will appear on ZA’s pages on Facebook, Twitter, Box.net, and ZATV. You can also follow Anthropologists for Justice and Peace, where the majority of new articles will appear for the next 18 months and which will be the focus of online efforts in that period.

In addition, here are some alternative sites that I warmly recommend, in alphabetical order, and they will point you to other newspapers, magazines, journals, etc.:

• Anti-war.com
• The Angry Arab News Service
• CLOSER (Martijn de Koning)
• The Cynical Arab
• Empire Strikes Black
• Investigating the New Imperialism
• Jewbonics
• Lenin’s Tomb
• Molly’s Blog
• Monthly Review
• P U L S E
• Quotha (Adrienne Pine)
• Tom Dispatch
• Truthout
• Wikileaks (WL) Central
• World Socialist Website (WSWS)

Finally, not even if the following were to happen will this site be reactivated before SEPTEMBER 2012:

1. Montgomery McFate takes the presidency of the AAA in a rigged election, imposes lifetime censure on everyone who signed the petition against the uses of anthropology in counterinsurgency, and convenes a commission to investigate the work of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists as not a legitimate exercise in professional anthropology.
2. The war in Libya ends up being such a failure, that NATO itself is dissolved in the immediate aftermath.
3. That the war in Libya is such a success for NATO, that “humanitarian” invasions and occupations are launched against Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and Syria.
4. Obama is pushed out by his own party, and is replaced by Dennis Kucinich.
5. Canada has 10 more elections, each one with the same result: the Conservatives win a minority government.

If I were to continue in this line, I would need a longer break.

Those who might be interested in writing for ZA once it revives, please contact me at the email address above. In the meantime, many thanks to everyone, until soon.

"The London Conference on Libya" (29 March 2011) -- No Libyans invited

From UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s opening speech at the London Conference on Libya, 29 March 2011:

“Today is about a new beginning for Libya – a future in which the people of Libya can determine their own destiny, free from violence and oppression.

But the Libyan people cannot reach that future on their own.

….we must help the Libyan people plan for their future after the conflict is over…

…As one Misurata resident put it: “These strikes give us hope”.

Today we must be clear and unequivocal: we will not take that hope away.

It’s never too early to start planning co-ordinated action to support peace in Libya over the long term.

…we must help the people of Libya plan now for the political future they want to build…

A new beginning for Libya is within their grasp….

…and we will help them seize it.”

If David Cameron had been known for modeling his speeches on old Monty Python films, then he might be praised for his witty and clever genius in devising such a politically and morally fraudulent speech such as the one above. He opens with gushing sentiment about a “new beginning for Libya,” hailing freedom from violence even as his jets pound Libyan targets. As always before, the British love to set an example on how politics are to be done, and it was usually with a good whipping followed by tutorials on how to best mimic the master, with powdered wigs, robes, and a broken sense of self. The Libyan people cannot reach that future on their own–they are dependents and apprentices, they must be aided, gathered together, and schooled. Remember that this is a struggle cast as one between all of the Libyan people versus one man, Muammar Gaddafi, Cameron can thus seek refuge in a single token Libyan voice that praises the master for the air strikes–bombs give hope, and the master is generous: he will not take those bombs away. We–and the we here is us, not a Libyan collective “we”–must begin to start planning for what comes after for Libya, and we must do so in the absence of Libyans, not even our closest hangers-on, who were not invited to the conference (except for one defunct ambassador). We will seize that “new beginning” for Libya, and then, like the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdous Square, orchestrated by U.S. Marines, we will hand over the moment to the locals. Indeed, Dick Cheney must still be wondering if he had a prolonged wet dream in looking at the news footage of Libyan crowds in Benghazi cheering the start of the U.S.-led air war against Libya.

Like a 19th portrait of European Monarchs

“Ultimately, the solution must be a political one,” David Cameron opines with all of the sincerity of a choir boy, and to maintain an air of piety he reminds us, “it must be for the Libyan people themselves to determine their own destiny.” Well, apparently, it is not for them to decide. First of all, many of them have obviously decided to stand with the regime–they form an invisible species in the view from London. Also invisible are those Libyans that the Colonial Coalition will recognize, whose “Interim Transitional National Council” was not invited to participate at the conference. Cameron adds that this self-determined Libyan political solution, “requires bringing together the widest possible coalition of political leaders….including civil society, local leaders and most importantly the Interim Transitional National Council….so that the Libyan people can speak with one voice.” Who will bring them together? Some quickly fashioned TNC that cannot come up with even the basics of a political plan that remotely sound like they have been derived from Libyan realities? And who will bring them together, who are the planners? The actual participants in London’s imperial conference on Libya, besides multilateral institutions such as the UN, NATO and EU, were: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, and the U.S.A. While one can certainly appreciate the urgent and immediate need for Estonia to have a voice on the future of Libya, one has to wonder how anyone could miss the obvious Eurocentricity of the whole affair.

For his part, William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, was unable to come up with any two statements that did not contradict each other. Speaking after the conference, these are the kinds of proclamations Hague made: “We agreed that it is not for any of the participants here today to choose the government of Libya: only the Libyan people can do that”–and yet: “Participants agreed that Qadhafi and his regime have completely lost legitimacy and will be held accountable for their actions.” Participants agreed to that? And they speak with the voice of all Libyan people, in deciding who is legitimate? If the regime had in fact lost as much as is claimed, there would be no regime. “The Libyan people must be free to determine their own future,” then followed by, “Participants recognised the need for all Libyans…”–if it is all up to the Libyans, then there was no need for this “London Conference” of non-Libyans.

In a joint statement with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, before the conference, David Cameron only adds to this comedy: “A lasting solution can only be a political one that belongs to the Libyan people. That is why the political process that will begin tomorrow in London is so important. The London conference will bring the international community together,” so that “the people of Libya can choose their own future.”

A Libyan Plan, You Say

As for that Libyan blueprint for change, it does not sound like a document that was anything other than “cut and paste” from various international charters. In A Vision of a Democratic Libya the “Interim National Council” (other times referred to as the Transitional National Council, or TNC) elaborates, briefly, a blueprint for a Libya where rights are conceived entirely within the framework of a Western discourse of individual civil and political liberties, thus ignoring the social and economic rights that had been advanced and protected under the Gaddafi regime. The plan leaves a privileged space for the private sector, and the Council’s staffing with neoliberal economists is not merely incidental. The plan calls for forming political parties–because Libya has been free of that cancer–and then having parliamentary elections, as if this is what a democracy is about. Given a clean slate, they will slather it with corrupt and bankrupt Western ideas and institutions. The draft is thus a very valuable document, as a testament to the intellectual slavishness of these so-called “revolutionaries,” who can neither think for themselves nor, as is now blazingly evident in broad daylight, act for themselves. In their plan, the right to tweet now trumps the right to eat.

As far as the TNC is concerned, their plan was not so much “revolution” as resinsertion of Libya into a neoliberal global regime. The forces needed to achieve that are those of Western war corporatism and militarism: NATO, Special Forces, USAID, and now the CIA…with all of their wonderful human rights achievements in Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

What Libyan Action Looks Like

With each passing day since the passage of UN Security Resolution 1973 (UNSCR 1973), the force and direction of the “opposition” and “revolution” against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi becomes more clearly marked with the imprint of a U.S.-led NATO/UN initiative. It is not Gaddafi who is running out of options: he is in his country and has vowed not to leave. The mounting frustration over the obvious–and abundantly predicted–failures of the No-Fly Zone/air strikes is steadily leading to an escalation of foreign intervention, that desperately begs Gaddafi to leave, so that the “Coalition” does not have to take the obvious next steps: arming the insurgents (which would violate the very same UNSCR 1973 that the Coalition expects Gaddafi to respect), which might produce no significant results, or too little too late; or, invading and occupying. Whatever “popular uprising” against Gaddafi some insisted had happened, or would happen, has yet to materialize. The insurgents cannot advance beyond their limited areas of core support, and even there the air strikes cannot help them (witness the continued cases of violence within Benghazi itself, attributed to “sleeper cells” of the regime’s Revolutionary Committees).

Western media make it abundantly clear, often with supporting statements from the “rebels” themselves, about who is now the leading force in action against the government of Libya. Typically, for almost a week now, AP reports have begun (similar to articles on this site) with banner images of U.S., French, or British jets–this being one example:

Given this week’s retreat of the “rebels,” images like the one above would be followed lower down in an article with an image like this, also from AP’s reports:

Whose destiny is being authored here, and by whom? Coupled with the images of insurgents fleeing in a panic, statements such as the following are printed by the news media:

“Where is Sarkozy?” the rebels in Bin Jawwad, Libya, lamented on Tuesday when they did not get the air cover that they had come to expect and that had been ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, President Obama and other Western leaders.

Or this:

“If they keep shelling like this, we’ll need airstrikes,” said Mohammed Bujildein, a 27-year-old rebel fighter.

And, as we are told by journalists that “the retreat Wednesday looked like a mad scramble: Pickup trucks, with mattresses and boxes tied on, driving east at 100 mph (160 kilometers per hour),” we are introduced to a “Col. Abdullah Hadi,” rebel in retreat:

“I ask NATO for just one aircraft to push them back. All we need is air cover and we could do this. They should be helping us,” Hadi said.

Robert Burns, the AP’s National Security writer, draws this conclusion: “Fresh battlefield setbacks by rebels seeking to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi are hardening a U.S. view that the poorly equipped opposition is probably incapable of prevailing without decisive Western intervention — either an all-out U.S.-led military assault on regime forces or a decision to arm the rebels.” They will likely decide to arm the rebels, as the last stop before an all out invasion–and with regime change will come nation-building, the establishment of an international protectorate, and those humanitarians who cannot afford to even look after their own kids just adopted themselves a new country.

More Foreign Intervention: From Start to Finish

Everyone who has been critical of intervention, from the earliest calls for even a limited no-fly zone, knew that the NFZ would simply be opening the door to ever increased foreign military intervention–because all such previous half-measures pursued to seek grand objectives had done so as well. Some critics were wrong on only one account: direct, covert intervention had already begun, before the NFZ was even tabled at the UN and passed on 17 March. From a Washington Post report of 10 March we learn that USAID teams had already been inserted in rebel-held territory. From 04 March in a report published by the Voice of America (VOA)–”Covert Action to Target Gadhafi?“–we find the earliest indications of what has now been confirmed as fact, that the CIA was undertaking covert action in Libya. By covert action, VOA reminds us of what that officially includes:

“Simply defined, covert action is any U.S. government effort to change the economic, military, or political situation overseas in a hidden way. Intelligence professionals consider it to be different than clandestine operations, which cover more traditional espionage and counterintelligence activities. Covert action can encompass many things, including propaganda, covert funding, electoral manipulation, arming and training insurgents, and even encouraging a coup.”

Even earlier, in a report from DEBKAfile from 25 February, we are told:

“Hundreds of US, British and French military advisers have arrived in Cyrenaica, Libya’s eastern breakaway province, debkafile’s military sources report exclusively. This is the first time America and Europe have intervened militarily in any of the popular upheavals rolling through the Middle East since Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution in early January. The advisers, including intelligence officers, were dropped from warships and missile boats at the coastal towns of Benghazi and Tobruk Thursday Feb. 24, for a threefold mission:

1. To help the revolutionary committees controlling eastern Libyan establish government frameworks for supplying two million inhabitants with basic services and commodities;

2. To organize them into paramilitary units, teach them how to use the weapons they captured from Libyan army facilities, help them restore law and order on the streets and train them to fight Muammar Qaddafi’s combat units coming to retake Cyrenaica.

3. To prepare infrastructure for the intake of additional foreign troops. Egyptian units are among those under consideration.

If correct, then that would mean that as little as a few days after the street protests had begun, a U.S. and European decision to directly intervene had already been taken. Now the New York Times reports that “Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels, American officials said Wednesday” (see: ”C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels” 30 March 2011). From “current and former British officials,” we learn that “dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations” (NYT). (See also: Reuters.)

This is not likely where matters will end. The U.S. commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, “left open the prospect of an international force entering Libyan territory,” when he testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Asked about whether NATO could send ground troops into Libya, this was his response:

“I wouldn’t say NATO is considering it yet, but I think that when you look at the history of NATO, having gone through this, as many on this committee have, with Bosnia and Kosovo, it’s quite clear that the possibility of a stabilization regime exists. And so, I have not heard any discussion about it yet, but I think that history is in everybody’s mind as we look at the events in Libya.”

From 10 March, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, stated to U.S. senators: “This is kind of a stalemate back and forth, but I think over the longer term that the (Gadhafi) regime will prevail.” Given the unsatisfactory performance of the rebels, whom Clapper likened to a “pick up basketball team,” choices are limited. To the extent that the U.S. has resolved to remove Gaddafi, the likelihood of an all out invasion–not just the few boots on the ground that have already been in Libya for weeks–seems inevitable.

The U.S. is no longer hiding that it is its hand that is shaping action on the ground, and that the purposes go far beyond anything that could be construed as “humanitarian.”

Humanitarian?

Anything would be better than Gaddafi, say distant foreigners who have never been to Libya, know nothing about it, and were not even saying a word about Libya before 17 February. In response to criticisms of their mysteriously selective and apparently hypocritical humanitarian concerns, they now usually respond that just because “we” do not intervene everywhere, and “save lives” everywhere, does not mean that “we” should not do so in Libya. No, what it means is that you continue to refuse to provide a logical account for your choices. The reason for that is that the logic is not a humanitarian one, but a crudely ideological one that is fueled by media hype and the imperial preconditioning that came with decades of U.S. demonization of Gaddafi. Libyans don’t mean anything to them, they ultimately could not care less: what’s important is a collective “win,” for America to feel good about itself again–and never far from any of the American “humanitarian” justifications, one will usually find an admission that it feels good to see America acting as a force for good (“for a change,” some of them might add, to add that thin patina of intellectual distance, courageous writers and dynamic “thinkers” that they are). What is quite common, among the liberal imperialists, is this steadfast objection to any “boots on the ground.” Well, some boots are on the ground. How many did you need to be counted before you could be counted on to speak out, courageous humanitarian?

They achieved something at least–like concerns that U.S. military spending may not be sufficient in the U.S., nor in the U.K. where now, in the midst of severe austerity measures that target lower income groups, the complaint is that not enough is being spent on the RAF.

Humanitarian imperialism is part of a complex, that reduces to military humanism, heightened militarization of politics and public consciousness, increased support for war corporatism, and a skewed morality that works to produce an immediate economic blowback. What is most humanitarian, in fact, is what is of least concern to various Avaaz petitions and London conferences: diplomacy, cease fires, peace talks, and political solutions.

Encircling Empire: Report #15—The Humanitarian-Militarist Project and the Production Empire in Libya

Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism and imperial decline ● militarism/militarization ● the political economy of the world system ● hegemony and soft power ● counterinsurgency ● revolution ● rebellion ● resistance ● protest ● activism ● advocacy ● critique.

This and previous issues have been archived on a dedicated site—please see: ENCIRCLING EMPIRE.

Not the usual media roundup, this report focuses on some of the questions raised in “The Libyan Revolution is Dead,” as part of a broader critique on the foreign military intervention in Libya, one week after it began. In particular, we examine:

• the political implications of the war in Western nations;
• the nature of the media spectacle, and how it resembles/differs from wars of the last 20 years;
• assessing the “successes” of the no-flight zone (NFZ) and what it allegedly prevented;
• the human rights frame, and the problem of evidence for “crimes;”
• the strategy behind the foreign military intervention, and the increasingly rapid slippage from one goal to the next;
• the slow but growing media analysis of “the rebels” in Libya, getting underneath some of the insurgents’ claims, followed by an examination of some of the promotional propaganda designed to sell them to Western audiences;
• growing critiques of the war, with perspectives from those outside of Western Europe and North America—one might say, from experts on imperialism for having been at its receiving end for many generations;
• and, finally, the folly of the late humanitarian project, that refuses to recognize its own complicity in creating the object of its destructive desires.

Links to the relevant articles are to be found throughout.

First, the top recommendations for this week:

1. “The Qaddafi I Know: The Good, the Bad, and the West’s Ugly Intervention,” by Yoweri Museveni, 24 March 2011, Foreign Policy—by very far the best article yet on Libya.
2. “Gaddafi, moral interventionism and revolution,” by Richard Falk, Al Jazeera, 23 March 2011.
3. “The five principles driving war propaganda are in play in Libya,” by Duncan Cameron, 22 March 2011, Rabble.ca.
4. “Hopes for a Qaddafi Exit, and Worries of What Comes Next,” by David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, 21 March 2011.
5. “Libyan rebels appear to take leaf from Kadafi’s playbook,” by David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, 24 March 2011.
6. “Journalists visit prisoners held by rebels in Libya,” by Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2011.
7. “‘Humanitarian War’ is an Oxymoron” by Cindy Sheehan, Dandelion Salad, 24 March 2011.
8. “Gadhafi’s military: Trained and armed by Uncle Sam: Millions of dollars in American arms sales have been approved for Libya in recent years,” by Justin Elliott,” by Justin Elliott, Salon, 23 March 2011.
9. “Instead of Bombing Dictators in Libya and Around the World, Stop Selling Them Bombs,” by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis, AlterNet, 23 March 2011.
10. “Libya’s biggest tribe joins march of reconciliation to Benghazi: Members of Warfalla deny plan to join civilians in carrying olive branches through war zone is a propaganda stunt,” by Ian Black, The Guardian, 23 March 2011.

The Humanitarian-Militarist Project and the
Production of Empire in Libya

The War at Home

Rapid intervention abroad, in the name of a vague humanitarianism, occurs at the expense of democratic consultation back home. Utilizing the military as a supposed solution to political conflicts, is a solution that always comes laden with “emergency,” requiring a rush into combat, and a minimization of debate and analysis. This war, like any other, also comes at the cost of democracy at home. While not only promoting the profile of the military-industrial complex, now treated as indispensible to the amelioration of the human condition, the war also promotes the careers of individual politicians, who might otherwise be in jeopardy in upcoming electoral campaigns. One of these is French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who can point to French flags being waved by the Libyan opposition in Benghazi, with some holding up signs that say, “Merci, Sarkozy.”

As Duncan Cameron observed: “The Conservative perpetrators, Sarkozy, Cameron, and Harper all had good reasons to draw momentary attention away from their own domestic failings. Along with U.S. President Obama, none have built a domestic alliance for the pursuit of a prolonged engagement.”

In the United States, it is the imperial presidency that is continually renewed and fortified by war. President Obama, in the most alarmist mode, declared the Libyan situation a U.S. “national emergency,” and one that required immediate action, in violation not just of his campaign promise to not take the U.S. into another war without first consulting Congress, but also in violation of the War Powers Resolution, which he had stoutly defended. But then again, the dishonest reply comes back: this is not a war, it is a “kinetic military operation” that, oddly enough, bears all of the traits of any other war. This euphemistic phrase has rightly earned the scorn and mockery of commentators from across the political spectrum.

While Obama declared Libya’s internal events a national emergency for the U.S., that did not stop him from leaving on a tour of South America, and failing to address the American people, which he is planning to do more than a full week after the bombing began. None of these actions speak of any real “emergency.”

All of these are the costs and consequences of this war, they are not minimal, and we have to decide if they represent a price worth paying for this adventure.

The Media Spectacle

There have been a few unexpected ironies and reversals that have arisen in this war. One of these is that, while still a cheerleader for war, CNN has tended to have more commentary that is skeptical, even critical, of the war, than has the supposed counterweight to U.S. militainment, Al Jazeera.

One other apparent difference, impressionistic at best, is that at least where cable news media are concerned there is a comparatively less war pornography when compared to the early days of the Iraq invasion and the Kosovo air war: few dazzling shots of weapons in action, not many “bomb cam” videos, and rather lackluster Pentagon PowerPoint presentations with a handful of generally unspectacular slides. Unlike Kosovo, no triumphalist, jubilant daily briefings that glorify air assaults and heap insults on the “enemy.” This might change, but for now one is left to wonder about the reason for the apparent minimalism. It might be part of an effort by the Pentagon to tone down the militainment, so as to create a better illusion that the U.S. is not in the lead; it might be out of respect for a public that is tired of war, that has seen enough already, and this is just another war among the others currently taking place; and/or it might be that the Pentagon is still working on its media strategy for this war (most doubtful of all).

Rather than loving descriptions of weaponry and journalists fondling bombs, or asking for details on technical specs of ordnance and how machines performed in battle, CNN, Fox News, and other mainstream media in the U.S. have produced stories that critically detail how much this added war will cost the American public in a time of economic crisis, budget deficits, states eliminating benefits, and cities shutting down services (see: “U.S. Role in Libya Already Costs Hundreds of Millions,” Fox News). By now, we have the figures memorized: just one Tomahawk missile costs in excess of $1.4 million, and the U.S. has fired more than 160 to date into Libya; it costs $10,000 per hour to keep a bomber in the air, and bombing runs from the U.S. last 25 hours.

What continues unabated, even increasing, is the kind of spastic demonization that we see in the Christian Science Monitor, in particular this 25 March 2011 article by Scott Peterson, “In Libya, a campaign to confuse: Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, with his claims of total popular support and theatrical displays at bombing sites, treads a fine line between rhetoric and reality.” In that article we read everything from Gaddafi being a “mad dog,” because a U.S. president said so, to having a “borderline personality,” because one U.S. academic says so from afar…in which case, if mentally ill, he cannot be held accountable for his actions by any court—one irony of overkill.

The “successes” of the “No-Fly Zone” (NFZ)

The US-led military intervention has boasted of having destroyed the Libyan air force, of destroying military convoys on the ground, and of establishing a NFZ that cannot be challenged by Libyan government forces. Thus in terms of practical implementation, the intervening Western powers can claim success.

One week on, however, what we have not seen is evidence of:

1) significant government or military defections to the side of the insurgents;

2) an ability by the insurgents to advance without the support of what is ultimately the world’s most biggest air force;

3) popular uprisings against the Gaddafi regime across Libya;

4) a loss of popular support for Gaddafi, who retains the backing of several tribes, including the Gadadfa, Megarha, Tarhuna, and the country’s biggest tribe, the Warfalla.

What we have witnessed, instead, included:

1) increased worries by the NATO interventionists that there could be a “stalemate” on the ground and that the regime might not be overthrown;

2) determined NATO involvement as a partisan to the conflict, with the rapid slippage from “protecting civilians,” to clearly protecting the insurgents and aiding their military advance (which few seem to envision as opening up a threat to the safety of civilians as they are placed within the crossfire between government forces and the insurgents), to outright calls for regime change—going well beyond what UN Security Council Resolution 1973 either specified or authorized;

3) an expansion of the expected duration of the military intervention, escalating quickly from statements that said “days, not weeks,” to now “weeks, not months;”

4) a rise in the fighting between government forces and insurgents (“According to reports from Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, new fighting erupted Monday at Misrata”); and,

5) an increased outflow of refugees from towns at the centre of the increased hostilities (“Simon Brooks, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross operations in eastern Libya, reported big population movements from the Ajdabiyah area because of the fighting;” “Residents had already fled the [Zintan] town center to seek shelter in mountain caves”).

Precisely in line with what multiple critics of the NFZ said would happen, as it was in Kosovo, was that the NFZ—and the ensuing attacks on ground forces (not specifically mandated by UNSC1973), which were also predicted to result from the limitations of a NFZ to achieve the stated “humanitarian” objectives—has not caused the regime to fall, has helped to escalate hostilities, has heightened the refugee crisis, and has opened the door to further foreign military intervention that goes well beyond purely humanitarian goals.

What we have all been told, instead, is that the foreign military intervention averted what “would have been” a “massacre” in Benghazi. There is never any evidence for “would have been”—it is simply a belief premised on prediction, nor is there any evidence that Gaddafi aimed to target civilians in general. Had the Gaddafi regime wished to target civilians in Benghazi and “massacre” them, it could have easily done so using its air force alone, when it still had one. The convoy destroyed by French jets, on the road to Benghazi, was a small one, and not one up to the task of either occupying a large city, or wiping out its inhabitants. Leaving aside the obvious hyperbole and alarmism that helped to create a mandate for intervention, what the intervention likely did accomplish was to sustain the insurgents by exogenous means, setting in motion their continued dependence on foreign air cover just to move from one location to another.

Evidence of crimes by the Gaddafi regime, post-NFZ

In a following section we look at evidence of human rights and/or Geneva Convention violations for which the insurgents are responsible, as documented by Western journalists, but passing entirely without comment by either the UN, NATO, or any of the officials of the intervening Western powers.

As for evidence of crimes committed by Gaddafi forces, against civilians, in areas they occupy, this has proven to be more than just tricky for those who militated for intervention and advocate for the overthrow of the regime. If true, then it would be further proof of the failure of the NFZ/air strikes to achieve their stated objectives.

But then, how do we know what the truth is? Some seem to chafe at the very asking of questions about evidence, especially in social network sites such as Twitter. Social media is great comfort food for the mind, apparently, and also great for creating swarms of unanimity that actively work to stifle anyone asking critical questions, or even basic ones such as: how do you know what you claim to know? As I have argued elsewhere, social media is a great crowdsourcing tool for propagating and enforcing hype that serves official propaganda purposes.

Here is one example, where supposed humanitarian sympathy works to enforce alarm and suspend critical thinking—from Global Voices. “Amid the stories of destruction and the mounting death toll,” Amira Al Hussaini writes, “Libyan netizens are waking up this morning to news of…”—the language thus far is careless, for the best she can do, and even then without firm support, is to quote possible Libyans who are all outside Libya, glossed over by the phrase “Libyan netizens,” while referring to “stories” that they are waking up to…which rather distances them from the experience about which they are supposed experts. More importantly, she adds: “the world continues to watch as more evidence of horror and atrocities come out from Misrata”—but she cites no evidence, even less can she claim that the regime deliberately targeted civilians. Instead, what does she offer? Lopsided social media unanimity—a selection of tweets, some of which consist of little more than slogans. Asked to explain, Global Voices failed to respond.

Here is the “evidence” of “crimes” in Misrata, occurring during the last days of fighting, as reported by the international media—and this is critically important, because if Gaddafi and officials in his regime are ever to be held accountable by the International Criminal Court, one has to know what kind of evidence there is for his crimes:

• In “U.S.: Libya forces attack civilians in third largest city of Misrata,” Reuters reports: “The on-scene commander of the international coalition for Libya is confirming that civilians are under attack by government forces in Misrata, the North Africa nation’s third largest city.” The problem with this statement is that United States Navy Adm. Samuel J. Locklear is not actually on the scene, and is clearly not an independent source. In addition, no evidence was furnished to substantiate his claims.
• “A doctor in Misrata said the tanks fled after the airstrikes began around midnight, giving a much-needed reprieve to the city, which is inaccessible to human rights monitors or journalists” (AP). This signals that reports cannot be independently verified
• “After five days of fighting, resident Ali al-Azhari said….Al-Azhari, who spoke to The Associated Press by phone from the city, said one officer told rebels he had order ‘to turn Zintan to a desert to be smashed and flattened’ (AP). We do not know more than this person is a “resident,” that AP reporters had not actually met him, and that his report is little more than second-hand hearsay.
• “Rashid Khalikov, the U.N. aid coordinator for Libya, said Wednesday he was ‘extremely concerned’ about the plight of civilians there, adding that the global body hasn’t received any firsthand information about the humanitarian situation inside the country for a week” (AP). Again, this confirms that there is no independently verified, primary evidence.
• Note how this Reuters report moves from a grand claim to minimal numbers: “Residents said a ‘massacre’ was taking place with tank and artillery fire destroying buildings and snipers picking off people indiscriminately….A rebel spokesperson said 16 people had been killed in Misrata and another six in attacks on Zintan, another rebel-held town in west Libya,” and, “It was impossible to independently verify the reports.”
• We do know that coalition bombers launched an attack against “an ammunition bunker near Misrata” but we are not told how near Misrata, or whether civilians live close to the bunker (AP).
• “a resident said pro-Gaddafi snipers were still shooting at people from rooftops in the centre of the town and that the death toll during the past week had reached 115 people, including several children” (Reuters). Is the resident a partisan source? How does this resident know the total of all those killed in the city for the past week? We simply do not know.
• “ ‘Snipers continue to target civilians,’ said the resident, who did not give his name” (Reuters). Even if we use hearsay, is there at least a second source to corroborate this? More credible evidence is provided by doctors—yet, they do not speak of any number of people killed, just those wounded, and we do not know who wounded them given the fight between opposing forces.
• CNN provides more than Reuters above: “A doctor said 109 people have died in Misrata over the past week. Six were killed Thursday by Gadhafi’s rooftop snipers — unseen but too often precise. More than 1,300 others have been wounded since the protests erupted in the western city last month.” Of the 109 people killed and 1,300 wounded, how many were insurgents? Do injured insurgents have their own, independent, medical treatment capabilities?
• “Gaddafi’s forces shelled an area on the outskirts of the city, killing six people including three children, a rebel said” (AP). In other words, we have the word of a single person, a partisan, that indicates a small number of casualties, and does not address whether the intentional targets were civilians.

When civilians die in the cross-fire between government forces and insurgents, are these to be treated as crimes by the regime alone? Are they to be treated as a deliberate attack on the civilian population?

None of this amounts to either the need to “support” the Gaddafi regime, or to avoid democratization, nor does it mean that no crimes could have possibly been committed and that there is no need for accountability. Needless to say, some heads will explode nonetheless when what is challenged is the act of emoting in an information-depleted environment.

The war has been sold as humanitarian, allegedly to prevent a “massacre” that officials assert “would have happened” with civilians presumably the intended target (no discussion of why, if that was the Gaddafi regime’s goal, the air force was not used to raze Benghazi while Libya still had an air force). As Cameron points out:

“The main motivation given for the bombing of Libya by western forces is the need to protect the civilian population from bombing attacks ordered by Gaddafi on insurgents in eastern Libya, and stop an expected massacre in Benghazi by advancing armored divisions. When asked at a press briefing March 1 if there was evidence of bombing attacks on civilians, American Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replied ‘We’ve seen the press reports, but we have no confirmation of that.’ U.S. Admiral Mullen added: ‘That’s correct. We’ve seen no confirmation whatsoever.’ Their statements confirmed what Russian military intelligence sources had previously reported: the attacks had never happened.”

Nonetheless, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton persists: “We faced the prospect of an imminent humanitarian disaster. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were in danger,” and, “a massacre in Benghazi was prevented.”

As for rebel spokesmen, and as noted by the New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick (see below), statements about Gaddafi’s atrocities have frequently been wildly overblown and unsubstantiated, and apparently designed to motivate international action. For example, Abdel Rahman Al Abar, Libya’s Chief Prosecutor who defected to the opposition, told Al Jazeera, “What happened and is happening are massacres and bloodshed never witnessed by the Libyan people.” Never before witnessed­—an interesting erasure of Italian colonialism (perhaps convenient, since Italian bombs may soon be raining down on Libyan soil once again), which seems to forget the actual genocide practiced by the Italians in launching air strikes on civilian populations, using mustard gas, killing thousands in detention camps, and in some estimates, killing off as many as 37% of all Libyans. We see history being reinvented before our very eyes, if we choose to remain awake.

“Protecting civilians” means regime change, expanded war, and ignoring consequences

Not content with the obvious failures of the current air war to achieve any of the ultimate political objectives, the Obama administration—still not wanting to be seen as leading this “kinetic operation”—is considering drastically more lethal firepower: “Among the weapons being eyed for use in Libya is the Air Force’s AC-130 gunship, an imposing aircraft armed with cannons that shoot from the side doors with precision. Other possibilities are helicopters and drones that fly lower and slower and can spot more than fast-moving jet fighters” (AP, 26 March 2011: “US eye more firepower to hit pro-Gadhafi forces”). The aim, clearly, is not just to negate Libyan air capabilities, or to remove them from positions where they can harm civilians, but to “remove” government forces from their own country entirely. Hopefully, none of these government troops have families, or those benefitting from NATO’s actions that terminate them will likely feel the wrath of revenge for some time to come.

Learning more about the insurgents and the political opposition

According to Hillary Clinton, “When the Libyan people sought to realize their democratic aspirations, they were met by extreme violence from their own government.” Yet, the New York Times correspondent on the ground, David Kirkpatrick, gives us a different account: “In the neighborhoods of the capital that have staged major peaceful protests against Colonel Qaddafi, many have volunteered — speaking on the condition of anonymity — that their demonstrations were nonviolent mainly because they could not obtain weapons fast enough.”

Kirkpatrick presents this analysis of what we know, and still do not know about the opposition:

“The behavior of the fledgling rebel government in Benghazi so far offers few clues to the rebels’ true nature. Their governing council is composed of secular-minded professionals — lawyers, academics, businesspeople — who talk about democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law. But their commitment to those principles is just now being tested as they confront the specter of potential Qaddafi spies in their midst, either with rough tribal justice or a more measured legal process.

“Like the Qaddafi government, the operation around the rebel council is rife with family ties. And like the chiefs of the Libyan state news media, the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.

“Skeptics of the rebels’ commitment to democracy point to Libya’s short and brutal history. Until Colonel Qaddafi’s revolution in 1969, Libya could scarcely be considered a country, divided as it was under its former king into three separate provinces, each with myriad tribes of rural, semi-nomadic herders. Retaliatory tribal killings and violence were the main source of justice.”

TIME’s Mark Thompson in “Just Who Are These Libyan Rebels?” is worried by what he sees as evidence that the Benghazi region is in fact a base for those who fought the U.S. in Iraq, finding data that supports what Hillary Clinton stated to Congress and, oddly enough, giving some weight to what the media otherwise treated as Gaddafi’s “crazy” allegations about “Al Qaeda” fighters.

On another issue, the clear dependence of the Libyan insurgents on NATO air strikes, and the fact that some journalists are saying there is clear evidence of the coordination between the two, Yoweri Museveni makes the following stinging, valid, point: “if the Libyan opposition groups are patriots, they should fight their war by themselves and conduct their affairs by themselves. After all, they easily captured so much equipment from the Libyan Army, why do they need foreign military support? I only had 27 rifles. To be puppets is not good.”

As if hearing Museveni’s criticism, one insurgent, Ahmed al-Aroufi, told Reuters: “We don’t depend on anyone but God, not France or America. We started this revolution without them through the sweat of our own brow, and that is how we will finish it” (source).

In a poorly titled promotional piece, “Libya’s Reformist Revolutionaries,” by Anjali Kamat and Ahmad Shokr—they are either reformists or revolutionaries, but cannot be both, if one understands even the basic meanings of these political concepts—the authors set the tone for their piece with a hostile and defensive reaction:

“The newly formed and heterogeneous rebel council that has taken control of parts of eastern Libya realises that what began as a hopeful pro-democracy uprising has been forced into a perilous war against a quasi-fascist regime. It is in desperation in the face of mounting casualties that the National Transitional Council has supported the ‘no-fly zone’ demand. The imperative for solidarity with the Libyan rebels is being lost in anti-imperialist polemics, some of which has [sic] casually dismissed those Libyans who call for a no-fly zone as naïve or, even worse, as imperial stooges.”

It is also a misleading and inaccurate piece of propaganda. There have been no casual dismissals, but very studied critiques that have advanced many skeptical and critical questions that go unanswered (and remain so, even after articles such as the one above). In addition, the calls for a NFZ preceded any threats of a “massacre” by weeks, so it was by no means a last-resort call. This was established already, in the words of opposition leaders themselves, in the last article on this site. Finally, it is a high-ranking member of the opposition Transitional National Council, Ali Tarhouni, who himself suggested the insurgents were naïve: “…the lingering disarray stemmed from an initial expectation that Gadhafi would quickly crumble and flee after the uprising’s initial success, Tarhouni said.” Kamat and Shokr need to have some discussions with those they claim to represent and support, before impugning the rest of us.

As for the “imperative for solidarity”—there is no imperative, though one can certainly appreciate the totalitarian tone. The insurgents are not entitled to solidarity, not automatically, not without question. What is interesting is that even with the support of the world’s most powerful militaries, even with the backing of the UN, the Arab League, and a mass of self-described humanitarians, that articles like this still need to be written—as if stricken by fear that they might not have also won total unanimity, as if some questions cause too much discomfort, and risk becoming contagious. Far from winning sympathy, articles such as this one by Kamat and Shokr invite even more criticism.

Contrary to the “imperative for solidarity,” more sober documentary analyses from correspondents on the ground provide a very disturbing picture of these “reformist revolutionaries.” In “Libyan rebels appear to take leaf from Kadafi’s playbook,” Los Angeles Times reporter David Zucchino writes:

“The rebels of eastern Libya have found much to condemn about the police state tactics of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi: deep paranoia, mass detentions, secret prisons and tightly scripted media tours….

“But some of those same tactics appear to be creeping into the efforts of the opposition here as it seeks to stamp out lingering loyalty to Kadafi. Rebel forces are detaining anyone suspected of serving or assisting the Kadafi regime, locking them up in the same prisons once used to detain and torture Kadafi’s opponents….”

In particular, they are focusing on sub-Saharan Africans, with an approach that can only be characterized as racially selective xenophobia. They are either violating the human rights of innocent civilians, beating them and wrongly imprisoning them (sometimes worse), or violating the Geneva Conventions by parading prisoners of war if they are truly mercenaries. So far, the evidence that some are mercenaries is backed by the insurgents who merely present their African passports to journalists, as if this was sufficient proof. See also: “Libyan rebels appear to take leaf from Kadafi’s playbook,” by David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, 24 March 2011.

See also: “Libya’s Rebels Embrace West,” by Yaroslav Trofimov and Charles Levinson, Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2011; “Key figures in Libya’s rebel council,” by David Gritten, BBC News, 10 March 2011.

Critiques of the war, from outside Europe and North America

From Africa and the Caribbean, articles are now appearing that condemn Western military intervention in Libya. This is by no means even the start of a representative summary, which might be the focus of upcoming reports. In Trinidad & Tobago, Khafra Kambon, a respected long-time activist, writes in “Africans need a strong international voice” (and read the comments):

“If it is the protection of civilians, and we abhor the indiscriminate killing of unarmed, peaceful protestors, why was the fervour to intervene not decreased when it was clear that the Gadaffi government was in fact faced with an armed uprising? The opposing sectorally-based militia, has even war planes, which was revealed when one was shot down. They are brutally murdering the Black-skinned citizens of other African countries, who have been working in Libya. No mention is made of the plight or protection of these civilians.

“Why does the UN-mandated ceasefire apply only to the government while the armed insurgents advance to take over cities under cover of coalition aircraft?

“Why was the Western media silent on the African Union’s rejection of military intervention and proposal for a negotiated solution? Why did the allies block the AU team from going to Libya before they started their assault? Libya is an African country and part of Gadaffi’s problem with the Arab world stems from his identification with Africa.

“Libya now faces a serious threat of being destroyed as a nation. Africa and Africans around the world need a louder international voice if we are to survive as a viable people in a dangerous world where wars for resources and battles for our minds are intensifying.”

Also, Guyanese journalist Rickey Singh, also a long-standing critical voice in the region’s media, wrote in “Arab ‘fig leaf’ for regime change”:

“the US, UK and France using as a ‘fig leaf’ the Arab League’s flattering endorsement of a ‘no-fly zone’ in Libya to unleash enormous military power and now the warning from President Obama that ‘Gadaffi must go’, President George W Bush must be smiling.

“Let us get ready for regime change in Tripoli — compliments of even a coalition of intervening powers with conflicting messages and priorities.”

Most striking of all, is the balanced, very detailed, and very critical article by Yoweri Museveni, which is this week’s top most recommended article and defies any neat summary, but I will leave it at this extract:

“I am not able to understand the position of Western countries, which appear to resent independent-minded leaders and seem to prefer puppets. Puppets are not good for any country. Most of the countries that have transitioned from Third World to First World status since 1945 have had independent-minded leaders….

“Qaddafi, whatever his faults, is a true nationalist. I prefer nationalists to puppets of foreign interests. Where have the puppets caused the transformation of countries? I need some assistance with information on this from those who are familiar with puppetry….

“Excessive external involvement always brings terrible distortions. Why should external forces involve themselves? That is a vote of no confidence in the people themselves. A legitimate internal insurrection, if that is the strategy chosen by the leaders of that effort, can succeed. The Shah of Iran was defeated by an internal insurrection; the Russian Revolution in 1917 was an internal insurrection; the Revolution in Zanzibar in 1964 was an internal insurrection; the changes in Ukraine, Georgia, and so forth — all were internal insurrections. It should be for the leaders of the resistance in a given country to decide their strategy, not for foreigners to sponsor insurrection groups in sovereign countries.

“I am totally allergic to foreign, political, and military involvement in sovereign countries, especially the African countries. If foreign intervention is good, then, African countries should be the most prosperous countries in the world, because we have had the greatest dosages of that: the slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, etc. But all those foreign-imposed phenomena have been disastrous. It is only recently that Africa is beginning to come up, partly because we are rejecting external meddling. External meddling and the acquiescence by Africans into that meddling have been responsible for the stagnation on our continent. The wrong definition of priorities in many African countries is, in many cases, imposed by external groups….Quislings and their external backers do not care about all this.”

And finally, Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam in the U.S., with a stirring denunciation of the intervention, in a video originally taken down by YouTube after it had received almost half a million views:

The folly of spontaneous and reactive “humanitarianism”

Much of the overwrought “humanitarian concern” expressed mostly by Western liberals, social democrats, and some socialists, including many who were not even paying attention to Libya just over a month ago, deserves continued critique. (Of course, in terms of American party politics, there are Republicans who support and who oppose the war, so I am not backing the misunderstanding that opposition to the war is either “left” or “right”–unlike Juan Cole’s piece of misguided ideological claptrap, a scribe too enthused by NATO propaganda to ever be taken seriously again.) The displacement of sympathy, after the fact of repression, in a selective and impetuous manner, is a manifestation of dependence both on mainstream media for their guidance, and a rejection of their own primary responsibility in not working against the military-industrial complex which armed and trained these regimes in the first place. Instead, they praise the work of the very same war corporatism in bringing “salvation” to civilians.

What we know is that Col. Gaddafi obtained his own military training in Britain in the 1960s. In addition, in an article by Justin Elliott, “Gadhafi’s military: Trained and armed by Uncle Sam,” we learn the following:

“in fiscal 2009 (the year beginning in October 2008)…the Defense Department spent about $30,000 training two Libyans in the Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program. An annual report on foreign military training talks about increasing spending for fiscal 2010, including a State Department program to teach English to Libyan officers. The report praises Libya as ‘an important partner in counterterrorism and regional stability,’ and makes the case for future training.

“In September 2009, three senior Libyan military officers visited headquarters of the U.S. Africa Command in Germany to receive ‘in-depth briefings on the command, how it functions and works with African militaries,’ according to a DOD report. The Africa Command is now overseeing the bombardment of Libya.

“Earlier that year, in March, ‘Libyan naval officers spent a day aboard the USS Eisenhower in the Mediterranean Sea to speak with crew members and watch flight deck operations,’ according to the same report. That followed the January 2009 signing of a ‘memorandum of understanding’ between the U.S. and Libya on military cooperation.

“There’s also evidence that Libya has purchased American weapons. More than $15 million in arms sales from U.S. manufacturers to Libya were authorized by the government in fiscal 2009 alone, according to the State Department. (Only $400,000 of that was delivered that year; presumably the rest was delivered in later years, for which data is not yet available.) That sum was mostly authorized in the category of ‘aircraft and associated equipment.’ That year more than 20,000 components and parts of aircraft were authorized for sale to Libya. In 2008, $46 million in military sales were approved by the government.

“In late February, the State Department suspended all arms export licenses for Libya, suggesting there may have been a flow of U.S. arms into the country until very recently. U.S. allies in the fight against Gadhafi have also been involved in arms deals with Libya, including Britain and France, which has reportedly sold missiles to the Libyans…”

An article by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis in AlterNet, “Instead of Bombing Dictators in Libya and Around the World, Stop Selling Them Bombs” (23 March 2011), also tells us:

“In 2009 alone, European governments–including Britain and France–sold Libya more than $470 million worth of weapons, including fighter jets, guns and bombs. And before it started calling for regime change, the Obama administration was working to provide the Libyan dictator another $77 million in weapons, on top of the $17 million it provided in 2009 and the $46 million the Bush administration provided in 2008.”

(After this was published, this excellent overview of European arms sales to Gaddafi was recommended to me: “EU arms sales to Libya: fleshing out the figures.”)

Rather than fight their countries’ original intervention in supplying arms and training, many of those advocating for the NFZ turned their sights on the anti-interventionists. As international lawyer and UN special rapporteur Richard Falk notes,

“The anti-interventionists, who doubt the current effectiveness of hard power tactics, especially under Western auspices, were outmanoeuvred, especially at the United Nations and in the sensationalist media that confused the Gaddafi horror show for no brainer/slam dunk reasoning as to the question of intervention, treating it as a question of ‘how’, rather than ‘whether’, again failing to fulfil their role in a democratic society by giving no attention to the anti-intervention viewpoint.”

Instead of action against militarism, the ironic humanitarians/liberal imperialists will quicker denounce the “anti-war crowd,” than face their own complicity in creating the monsters they first ignored, and now tilt against with full-throated indignation. But this is the “feel good” war, an act of self-fulfillment in the white, western, civilizing mode.

Meanwhile, unlike any of the other international governmental organizations, such as the Arab League and the UN, whose stated concern for protecting civilians did not lead them to think of peaceful means of conflict resolution and diplomacy—it is the African Union that has stepped forward to both criticize Gaddafi and propose a nonviolent resolution. The African Union called for a transition period that would lead to democratic elections—this is a chance for the opposition to definitively demonstrate the extent of its popular support, rather than rush to grab power by force of arms. AU leaders rebuked Gaddafi and called for reforms that could well lead to his removal—“A Libyan government delegation is meeting in Ethiopia with five African heads of state who plan to develop a road map to encourage political reform in the North African country. It couldn’t immediately be confirmed if Libyan rebels were also in attendance” (source). Jean Ping, the AU commission chairman, stressed the inevitability of political reforms in Libya and called the aspirations of the Libyan people “legitimate” (source). (Also see: “African Union invites Libya govt, opposition to talks.”) What will the “humanitarians” do, dismiss regional solutions for peaceful conflict resolution and democratization…and support more bombing?

The “Arab Spring” was a short one; what follows, another NATO Summer, will last much longer.

If you do not think about it, there is a lot to cheer about the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, against what this time has been a mountain of advice, questions, and critiques from all imaginable political quarters, and not as the warmongering extremists would have it, from “Gaddafi lovers” (George Will? Pat Buchanan? Richard Haass? Gen. Wes Clark? Gaddafi lovers?). In previous articles, I have criticized the flip-side enough, meaning the positions taken by Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, without sparing Gaddafi in the least–I do not need to repeat any of it here, because it is entirely irrelevant to the discussion now. Instead, this is an autopsy, identifying the weapons used, and the criminals responsible for killing the Libyan revolution. This is no longer a Libyan story–that chapter is now closed. My autopsy is divided into several broad categories of actors: the humanitarians, the rebels, the international organizations, the mass media, and the Americans. Finally, what we should be watching in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.

The “Humanitarians”

A great mass of humanitarian social media addicts and self-styled cyberactivists in their hundreds of thousands signed petitions to beg the United Nations to authorize the bombing of Libya. Bearers of good intentions, no doubt, but perhaps less skilled as historians. Many will not even Google their way to the nearest Wikipedia entry that might cause them to ask some basic questions. On the other hand, history does not always repeat itself, and I am not one to make solid predictions, so perhaps this is not a useful basis for discussing the role of “humanitarian concern” in this debacle.

Instead, I have questions.

For example, exactly what kind of global human rights agenda is it that requires substantial military spending, private defense contractors, and a robust air force?

“We can’t stand by and do nothing”–and why not, when it is precisely what you are doing every day when it comes to the slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan (courtesy of our own troops), when it comes to the “secret” war in Pakistan, the “secret” war in Yemen, the “secret” war in Somalia, or for that matter, the killing of civilian protesters today in Yemen and Bahrain? How about how we stood by and did nothing, as our allied torture state, Uzbekistan, boiled alive opponents and the detainees sent to them by the CIA? Boiled alive–whisper it, because not even Gaddafi has imagined perpetrating such horrors. Whisper it, so you can forget it again: “Andijan massacre;” “Uzbekistan: Repression Linked to 2005 Massacre Rife;” “500 bodies laid out in Uzbek town;” “‘High death toll’ in Uzbekistan;” “’700 dead’ in Uzbek violence.” Surely, by now, we have abundant practice in doing nothing at all–we must be a hardened people, with very thick skin, and an ability to ignore the screams coming from the basement whenever we like. So why must Libya be this exception? What made you wake up, and wake up in such a way that you wanted to be the hero of someone else’s story?

“If the world does nothing, the message to dictators will be: ‘Just kill your own people, we will look away’.” They got that message already, and they are still doing just that, thankful that we are all focused on Libya alone. Indeed, some of them even helped to divert our attention toward Libya.

But how about if we just do not finance them, arm them, school them, and otherwise embrace them to begin with? At the very least, wouldn’t that be the cost effective thing to do? And wouldn’t that start the story with us, by placing responsibility on us first, so we don’t have to send planes in to destroy the planes we sold them? I mean, can one be a humanitarian and logical at the same time, or are these now mutually exclusive?

Either way, “the humanitarians” have validated the military-industrial complex: “The military hierarchy, with their budgets threatened by government cuts, surely cannot believe their luck – those who usually oppose wars are openly campaigning for more military involvement” (source).

“I usually don’t support foreign military intervention, but…” is how some lead their apologies. But…you know what? You do favour foreign military intervention, and having done so you automatically disqualify yourself as a hypocrite next time you try to pretend to oppose it.

The Rebels

I have no intention of simply lambasting those who tried to fight for their freedom, and I think that I can understand their cheers in Benghazi more than ours. However, I cannot deny feeling sadness, watching them cheer, as if victorious, when in fact they had just surrendered. Here too questions remain to be raised/addressed.

This is no longer their story. A major break has occurred. Whatever is written now, it will likely include stories of UN meetings, jet fighters, aircraft carriers, bombs, and the tactical cleverness of Hillary Clinton. Libyans have been displaced as authors of their own destiny. Whatever they wrote, has now become a series of paragraphs in yet another chapter of imperial “morality” deployed from overseas.

One opposition leader reportedly said, “We asked for a no-fly zone to be imposed from day one.” From day one? He’s not kidding either. So why were you prepared to hand over the reins of power to foreign actors, so soon, so quickly? You boasted of defections from the military, of vast popular support, of marching on Tripoli–it did not sound like you needed any global cavalry to come in and save your day. Why did you ask, and then demand?

Elements of the rebel leadership have stained their own name, and stained their revolution. That is inescapable now. But what is damaging to all of us is the narrow, self-centered, provincialism of what is clearly a neo-colonial elite of former regime insiders serving as self-appointed “representatives of the Libyan people,” elites who like the neo-colonized, depend on aid from abroad as part of their self-fulfillment. Cheering for what will be a NATO-led operation, is a validation and legitimation of that organization, and in a time when budgets for education, health, public works, and programs for the poor are all being slashed across the West, they help to validate the need for maintaining heavy military spending. Nobody is out in the streets cheering universities and hospitals, but apparently they are out in the street cheering the bomb. Their provincialism was displayed in their lack of solidarity, or even passing concern, with social justice and anti-war activists in the West, in cases berating those of us who felt we should have a voice–these are, after all, our planes, our bombs, and our political leaders–because all we needed to know was that “Libyans” asked for this intervention. If that is a reflection of the kind of political work and solidarity-building they did at home, then no wonder they had to turn to artificial, prosthetic solutions. Not just the anti-war movement, and the anti-secrecy movement, will be damaged here, as the clock is turned back to 2003–it is the very meaning of “revolutionary,” which can now be made to include those who would be clients of imperial patrons.

In the meantime, a theory is circulating–that the West deliberately delayed so that the rebels would be militarily degraded, and more dependent than ever on NATO, which will now have the upper hand in stage managing their revolt. We will have to see if there is any evidence that comes to light to support that.

The International Organizations

If one were to read the speech given by Alain Juppé, the French Foreign Affairs Minister, at the UN Security Council meeting that passed 1973, one should have an awfully difficult time understanding how everything he said could not also be said about the NATO war, his war, against the people of Afghanistan, and the dictator that they prop up there. Yet, this is what sets the code by which to administer Libya. As for the five countries that merely “abstained” from voting (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Germany)–what portraits of courage. They opted for diplomatic wiggle room and plausible deniability.

The Arab League’s decision to first call for a no fly zone can only invite the most scornful mockery. This is a club of dictators, who found the ideal opportunity to remove a competing dictator that they have long resented and detested. Soon after their vote, Saudi Arabia sent its troops into Bahrain to smash peaceful, unarmed protesters, and the Gulf Cooperation Council agreed to intervene against the fight for democracy there. Human rights have always been the least of the Arab League’s concerns.

But Washington, skillful and cynical, pressed the Arab League to speak first in favour of a no-fly zone, so it could then use that thin pretense of “answering” the calls of authentic Arabs. Never mind that the U.S. would need their overflight “permission” anyway, for sorties to be flown from U.S. airfields in Iraq, against Libya.

The Mass Media

Here I will focus on one of the other great disappointments in this story: Al Jazeera (with whom I have terminated my relationship). Al Jazeera’s coverage has been heavily slanted, in terms of amount of coverage, to the story of Libya, rather than other cases where tyrants were beating and killing peaceful and unarmed protesters at the very same time: Yemen and Bahrain, to name just two. Today, while they wait for NATO bombs to drop, they have turned a little to Yemen, which has turned much uglier–but is an ally of the U.S. in the “war on terror,” and no UN meetings have been called. When the UN passed the latest resolution against Libya, the Al Jazeera correspondent in Benghazi, Tony Birtley, engaged in obscene and undignified cheering and gloating. Utterly delirious. Never, he said, had he been hugged so much since the birth of his daughter. Rich symbolism. The liberating angel embraced. Had this been Fox News, we would all be slamming it as propaganda. It is. And it covers for the Emir of Qatar, Al Jazeera’s paramount if not exclusive financial sponsor, who by all means has topped anything Rupert Murdoch could ever dream of being powerful enough to do: the Emir is an interventionist in his own right, supporting the Saudi invasion of Bahrain, the crushing of peaceful protest, to which he may add more Qatari forces, while also promising support for the implementation of the no fly zone against Libya. If Murdoch had done just half of that, American protesters would likely reduce Fox News studios to rubble. Al Jazeera is not the voice of the Arab Spring after all, as some of us thought.

The Americans

Good morning America! It’s a great day to be an American again! Finally, a bad guy, who isn’t American. Finally, a good guy, who is American. Once again, another crazy murderous Arab, easy to mock and hold up as the target of mass orchestrated contempt. The kids got all busy making viral “zenga zenga” videos, and the media proudly featured them, enjoying the fruit of their own labour in shaping young minds. Hey and guess what? This evil Arab tyrant might also have some WMDs! Every night I watched CNN’s Anderson Cooper, hot, breathless, turgid, anally righteous, spewing venom against the dictator–much of it deserved, some of it resting on ignorance and fabrication–the dictator’s “lies,” “keeping them honest,” all principles never directed back at CNN. Expect to see pictures of Gaddafi’s dead sons happily featured on evening broadcasts. The blood thirsty ghouls are back.

What a perfect war this will be. No troops on the ground. Do you hear that, suicide bombers? No troops on the ground. No roadside bombs. This will be clean and surgical, the way spectators imagine high-tech war to be. Death from above, baby. War will be spectacularized once again, with an appropriate focus on ordnance, impressive gadgets, mellow-voiced professional pilots, and a wonderful assortment of planes. Already, talk that this will be a cakewalk. Cakewalk, baby.

America is on top again. Iraq? Afghanistan? Fuck you! If anyone in the world for a moment thought these did any damage to the American soul, or to the fact that America remains “the indispensable nation,” then someone missed the fact that Americans have finally been cheered as liberators, in Benghazi. Iraq syndrome? As if! Humanitarian imperialism is back, NATO is cool, America thank you, cakewalk.

Who imagined that this, political satire with puppets, would rise to the status of a documentary? Who expected this to become the liberation charter, the theme song, for both desperate, groping Libyan opportunists and Americans thirsting for patriotic self-validation? The world policeman…is back, baby.

What to Watch For

These are just some of the things we will want to watch for over the coming hours, and years:

1. Which nation’s planes will be the first to bomb? After that, in the overall number of sorties, how many will have been flown by U.S. pilots? This will be important to see how the U.S. ensures that, in terms of image management, an illusion that the U.S. is not in the lead is created.
2. When civilians are killed from aerial bombardment, who will get the blame?
3. Gaddafi is a dead man–and he knows it. Will he just resign to the fact stoically? Last night he said: “If the world is crazy, we will be crazy, too.” Will Gaddafi outlive the coming air war? How will he be removed from power?
4. Will hostilities on the ground be escalated? Will there be larger numbers of refugees?
5. Fracturing of the opposition. Will the “Interim Transitional National Council” become truly national, or remain a creature of Benghazi? Will it seek to become somewhat less “interim,” and somewhat more secure in its hold on power?
6. Opportunistic infiltration, by that other group also desperate for renewed validation: Al Qaeda. Yes, indeed, Gaddafi hurled all sorts of “crazy” allegations that the opposition comprised Al Qaeda terrorists. Interestingly, however, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton partly backed him up (not that many bothered to comment on this): “many of the Al-Qaeda activists in Afghanistan and later in Iraq came from Libya and came from eastern Libya which is now the so-called free area of Libya.” Clinton also noted: “It’s important to recognize that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the motives, the opportunism, if you will of people who are claiming to be leaders right now.” This also means that the U.S. reserves for itself the right to decide who will be treated as legitimate, and who will be treated as the enemy.
7. How will the U.S. exercise leverage over the opposition/government in waiting? Will it be slow to lift sanctions in order to obtain concessions?
8. American media coverage: how much time will be spent describing the hardware? How lovingly will fighter pilots and their machines be portrayed? How many times will you hear American voices, compared to Libyan voices?
9. The bases used for operations: there has been no buildup of U.S. aircraft carriers in the region. Expect flights from land bases nearby. Will this be used to legitimate the American need to hold on to those bases?
10. Will there be continued subdivision of the left in the West? Are we seeing the emergence of a rift between the Arab left and the Latin American left, whose leaders have been resolutely anti-intervention and in some cases pro-Gaddafi? What about divisions within the left inside the West, and with regard particularly to the anti-war movement?
11. Will there be diminished cuts to military spending, or no cuts at all in coming years?
12. How will the U.S. manage yet another war added to its roster, which includes: the lingering occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the “secret” wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia…and now Libya? How much of this weight will have to be shouldered by NATO partners, and their tax payers?
13. Will dissent and critique of this war be silenced, marginalized, and virtually criminalized as it has in all of the other recent Western wars? Which politicians’ fortunes will be made on the basis of this war, and who will be made to suffer for not supporting it?
14. If this ends up being a fiasco, or with the need for foreign troops on the ground, will it be the final act that breaks the back of empire?
15. Which questions would you add here?

Encircling Empire: Report #14—Foreign Military Intervention in Libya: A Report on Neo-colonial dependency and humanitarian imperialism

Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism and imperial decline ● militarism/militarization ● the political economy of the world system ● hegemony and soft power ● counterinsurgency ● revolution ● rebellion ● resistance ● protest ● activism ● advocacy ● critique.

This and previous issues have been archived on a dedicated site—please see: ENCIRCLING EMPIRE.

This report is being published just as the UN Security Council is moments away from voting on a new resolution against Libya, that could significantly escalate and internationalize the violence there. More than that, in response Libya’s leader has promised to retaliate against all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean, which would lead to a further escalation and internationalization of the war. France is promising military action within mere hours of the passage of the UN Resolution. Now, as I finish these words, news that the UN has in fact passed a “no fly zone” resolution. See this, just published: “UN Votes for Libya Air Strikes,” by Lenin’s Tomb. An early copy of the resolution can be obtained here.

In this report ZA continues from the last one, by presenting a media roundup that focuses on arguments for and against foreign military intervention in Libya. (As usual, the reports are listed in chronological order, starting with the most recent.) Many of the arguments have centered around the imposition of a no flight zone, although frequently the argument for intervention includes proposed air strikes on Libyan government targets. First to be presented are those articles that criticize humanitarian imperialist premises and the (re)turn to validating military humanism, as they tend to be the most cogent and continue to be largely unanswered. Second, a listing of key rebel statements calling for Western intervention, and some articles about the Libyan opposition. Third, articles and essays that promote and justify foreign military intervention. Also, ZA’s top recommendations.

COMMENT: As the author of this report, what I specifically protest are minds instantly made up, with absolute certainty, when just a little over a month ago hardly anyone was speaking about Libya. The way those instantly certain minds repeat many of the exact same “humanitarian” justifications for war in Iraq and Kosovo, in the most absolute terms, with little attention to any lessons learned, is shocking and disappointing. We know from Google Trends that Libya was almost not mentioned at all just over a month ago, and yet so many speak as if they are ready-made experts on Libya, and have a deep familiarity with the rebels, who they are, what they want, and what is their depth of popular support. In addition, few remark on the fact that almost from the very start of the anti-Gaddafi protests there were suspiciously fast calls for a Western-backed no fly zone: the Libyan protests began on February 17—and yet it was, as far as can be determined using Google news archives, on February 20 that the first articles began to appear that coupled the terms Libya and “no fly zone.” One opposition leader said: “We asked for a no-fly zone to be imposed from day one” (source). This ought to raise more questions, for anyone who is a free thinker and values the importance of skepticism. What determination did Gaddafi’s opponents have to see this struggle through to the end, by their own efforts? What political groundwork, consciousness raising, and network building did they engage in before rebelling? What kind of estimate did they make of the regime’s strengths? What level of popular support do they enjoy, outside of Benghazi? Given that the army was kept deliberately weak by Gaddafi himself, to preclude any viable military coup, how has it managed so many gains when the rebels claimed to have won all sorts of defections?

Top recommendations:

1. “Another NATO Intervention? Libya: Is This Kosovo All Over Again?” by Diana Johnstone, CounterPunch, 07 March 2011.
2. “Libya and the folly of intervention: After turning a blind eye to Gaddafi’s violent rule, the West has no legitimacy to enforce a no-fly zone,” by Sami Hermez, Al Jazeera English, 07 March 2011.
3. “The Old Gang’s All Here: Libya and the Return of Humanitarian Imperialism,” by Jean Bricmont, CounterPunch, 08 March 2011.
4. “Seeing Through the ‘Humanitarians’,” by Marko Markanovic, Antiwar.com, 12 March 2011.
5. “The revival of imperialist ideology,” Lenin’s Tomb, 01 March 2011
6. “Why a no-fly zone means no freedom for Libyans— Those looking to the West to intervene against Gaddafi degrade the name of internationalism and deny Libyans the right to control their fate” by Mick Hume, Spiked, 15 March 2011.
7. “On Libya, too many questions,” by George F. Will, Washington Post, 08 March 2011.
8. “Don’t Use U.S. Force in Libya!” by Leslie H. Gelb, The Daily Beast, 13 March 2011.
9. “Iraq Then, Libya Now,” Op-Ed by Ross Douthat, New York Times, 13 March 2011.
10. “Will We Ever Learn? Kicking the Intervention Habit,” by Richard Falk, 07 March 2011.
11. “Pack Journalism Promotes War on Libya,” by Stephen Lendman, IntelDaily, 11 March 2011.
12. “Internet activists should be careful what they wish for in Libya: Calls for a no-fly zone over Libya ignore the perils of intervention. Long-term solutions aren’t as simple as the click of a mouse,” by John Hilary, The Guardian, 10 March 2011.
13. “It’s Their War, Not Ours,” by Patrick J. Buchanan, Antiwar.com, 08 March 2011.
14. “Don’t Think, Recognize! Sarkozy’s Stupid Move on Libya,” by Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch, 11-13 March 2011.

Continue reading…

The Israelites Leaving Egypt, David Roberts, 1828

Exodus: Movement of the People

Thinking still of Gastón Cordillo’s essays on resonance—“Resonance and the Egyptian Revolution” and “The Speed of Revolutionary Resonance,” and others writing about “The Phenomenology of the Resonance-Reverberation Doublet”—I remember writing to Gastón that the concept of resonance reminded me of “agitation,” which raised other associations of political terms that are grounded in bodily movement: resistance, attrition, and even terms such as passive and active, as in activism, where active is synonymous with being alive and animated, astir, bustling, exertive, flowing, functioning…and going, impelling, mobile, movable, moving, progressive, traveling, walking, etc. Thinking of how much of our Western political terminology is grounded in mobile acts of the body, I remembered a text I read as an undergraduate, on how the Jewish Exodus story is the foundation for many of our key conceptualizations of revolution. As it turns out, movement, which its political connotations, as well as progressive, are rooted in this Jewish story, which now forms an archetype for all sorts of other, secular, stories.

The key text here is Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), from which all of the following quotes are derived. (Footnote: relevant to current debates, Michael Walzer is also a “humanitarian interventionist” and a “just war” theorist—in no simplistic sense either, as he criticizes air campaigns and no fly zones.) All the emphases in the quotes that follow were added.

“I have found the Exodus almost everywhere,” Walzer writes (p. 4), and indeed it is everywhere in the Western language of progress and liberation. (Footnote: It survives, even thrives, in contemporary popular culture: among the many other stories built into it, the beautiful movie Disrict 9, derives a great part of its emotive power from being in essence a Zionist Exodus story, culminating in the escape of aliens from a land of oppression where they suffered as unwanted “guests”.) As Walzer explains, “the escape from bondage, the wilderness journey, the Sinai covenant, the promised land: all these loom large in the literature of revolution. Indeed, revolution has often been imagined as an enactment of the Exodus and the Exodus has often been imagined as a program for revolution” (p. ix). The American revolutionary, Benjamin Franklin, designed the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States in 1776 (never used), which featured the exodus and the words, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Walzer argues that the Exodus is “an idea of great presence and power in Western political thought, the idea of a deliverance from suffering and oppression: this-worldly redemption, liberation, revolution,” all of which originate “in the story of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt” (p. ix). Exodus has become “a paradigm of revolutionary politics,” though not a theory of revolution (p. 7).

“Exodus is a story, a big story, one that became part of the cultural consciousness of the West,” Walzer emphasizes while noting that “a range of political events (different events, but a particular range) have been located and understood within the narrative frame that it provides. This story made it possible to tell other stories” (p. 7). “The pattern,” in Exodus is one that “has been etched deeply into our political culture”—indeed, “it isn’t only the case that events fall, almost naturally, into an Exodus shape; we work actively to give them that shape” (p. 134). The pattern is significant in that “cultural patterns shape perception and analysis too” (p. 134).

The Exodus story is “a classic narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end: problem, struggle, resolution—Egypt, the wilderness, the promised land” (pps. 10-11). Given those features, the narrative is fundamentally historical one. As Walzer adds, Exodus is,

“A political history with a strong linearity, a strong forward movement, the Exodus gives permanent shape to Jewish conceptions of time; and it serves as a model, ultimately, for non-Jewish conceptions too. We can think of it as the crucial alternative to all mythic notions of eternal recurrence—and hence to those cyclical understandings of political change from which our word ‘revolution’ derives. The idea of eternal recurrence connects the social to the natural world and gives to political life the simple.” (p. 12)

From revolution as restoration, Exodus provides a break: revolution as arrival at a fundamentally new place. Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory of change combines both “cyclical rhythms” and “secular trends,” and in this sense Exodus, as revolution, as a linear forward movement falls more in line with the secular trends. “In Exodus,” Walzer writes, “events occur only once, and they take on their significance from a system of backward and forward-looking interconnections, not from the hierarchical correspondences of myth” (p. 13). This story of history is one reason why Exodus has had an appeal “to generations of radicals,” because in its linearity resides “the idea of a promised end…the purposiveness of the Israelite march” (p. 14). The linearity is progressive, and also resides at the root of our ideas of progressive politics.

The movement from beginning to end “is the key to the historical importance of the Exodus story”:

“The strength of the narrative is given by the end, though it is also crucial that the end be present at the beginning, as an aspiration, a hope, a promise. What is promised is radically different from what is: the end is nothing like the beginning. This is an obvious but critical point.” (p. 11)

Movement. How did we come to politicize the concept of “movement” in our Western lexicon to begin with? Walzer interprets this as a product of Exodus thinking, where “the movement across space is readily reconstructed as a movement from one political regime to another” (p. 14). Walzer tells us that “Change of position is a common metaphor for change of regime,” and that “much of the political language of the left has its origin in that metaphor” (p. 14). Not just in battle cries, or the famous Rasta-Zionist song by Bob Marley (below), we find the Exodus notion about change of position in space as liberation embedded in “articles and essays about progress, progressive parties, advanced ideas, vanguard politics, revolution (in its current sense), movement itself, as in ‘the labor movement’” (p. 15). “Exodus is a literal movement,” he adds, “an advance through space and time, the original form of (or formula for) progressive history” (p. 15).

Exodus thinking is present in socialist revolutionary constructs, and as Walzer says, it “seems to have survived the secularization of political theory”:

“Thus, when utopian socialists, most of them resolutely hostile to religion, argued about the problems of the ‘transitional period,’ they still cast their arguments in familiar terms: the forty years in the wilderness.” (p. 134)

The Israelites do not, as Walzer explains, simply “go wandering in the wilderness”: “the Exodus is a journey forward—not only in time and space. It is a march toward a goal, a moral progress, a transformation. The men and women who reach Canaan are, literally and figuratively, not the same men and women who left Egypt” (p. 12).

As Walzer notes, Exodus thinking “plays a large part in the ‘liberation theology’ worked out by Catholic priests in Latin America. In the 1970s, the most serious and sustained work on the Exodus was probably being done in countries like Argentina, Peru, and Colombia. ‘If we take the Exodus as our theme,’ wrote the Argentine theologian Severino Croatto, ‘we do so because in it Latin American theology finds a focal point . . . and an inexhaustible light.’ (p. 4) [See J. Severino Croatto, Exodus: A Hermeneutics of Freedom, trans. Salvator Attanasio ( Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1981), p. iv.] Walzer quotes Croatto, who asks: “Have we paid sufficient attention to the fact that the first, exemplary liberation event, which ‘reveals’ the God of salvation, was political and social?” (p. 7).

Walzer makes a very plausible case that the Exodus reference is very common in the political history of the West (p. 5). He lists numerous examples, without even trying to provide an exhaustive or comprehensive history of the reference:

Benjamin Franklin's Great Seal of the United States, 1776

“It figures prominently in medieval debates over the legitimacy of crusading warfare. It is important to the political argument of the radical monk Savonarola, who preached twenty-two sermons on the Book of Exodus in the months just before his fall and execution. It is cited in the pamphlets of the German peasants’ revolt. John Calvin and John Knox justified their most extreme political positions by quoting from Exodus. The text underpins the radical contractualism of the Huguenot Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos and then of the Scottish Presbyterians. It is crucial, as I have already suggested, to the self-understanding of the English Puritans during the 1640s, and of the Americans, too, on their ‘errand into the wilderness’. It is an important source of both argument and symbolism during the American Revolution and the establishment on these shores of ‘God’s new Israel.’ In 1776, Benjamin Franklin proposed that the Great Seal of the United States should show Moses with his rod lifted and the Egyptian army drowning in the sea; while Jefferson urged a more pacific design: the column of Israelites marching through the wilderness led by God’s pillars of cloud and fire. The Exodus story is important in the writings of that early socialist, Moses Hess, and it figures, though only occasionally and marginally, in the political writings of Karl Marx. And, of course, the Exodus has always stood at the very center of Jewish religious thought and has played a part in each of the reiterated attempts at a Jewish politics, from the Maccabean revolt to the Zionist movement. Zionism has sometimes been conceived in messianic terms, which both derive from and stand in tension with Exodus thinking; but it is also a call for a literal exodus—an escape from oppression and a journey to the promised land—and the biblical narrative has provided much of its imagery. Other nationalisms, too, have found hope in a promise that seems to include, whatever else it includes, the idea of political independence. The Book of Exodus came alive in the hands of Boer nationalists fighting the British, and it is alive in the hands of black nationalists in South Africa today [mid-1980s].” (pps. 5-6)

As Walzer reiterates, “since late medieval or early modern times, there has existed in the West a characteristic way of thinking about political change, a pattern that we commonly impose upon events, a story that we repeat to one another” (p. 133). The story takes this form: “oppression, liberation, social contract, political struggle, new society (danger of restoration)” and “we call the whole process revolutionary,” with “a strong forward movement” (p. 133). This is not a universal story, it “isn’t a story told everywhere” and “it isn’t a universal pattern”–instead “it belongs to the West, more particularly to Jews and Christians in the West, and its source, its original version, is the Exodus of Israel from Egypt” (p. 133).

Exodus: Movement of Jah people! [select extracts from the lyrics]
…….
So we gonna walk – all right! – through the roads of creation:
We the generation (Tell me why!)
(Trod through great tribulation) trod through great tribulation.

Exodus: Movement of Jah people! Oh, yeah!

Uh! Open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied (with the life you’re living)? Uh!
We know where we’re going, uh!
We know where we’re from.
We’re leaving Babylon,
We’re going to our Father land.

Exodus: movement of Jah people!
Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!

Jah come to break downpression,
Rule equality,
Wipe away transgression,
Set the captives free.

Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Uh-uh-uh-uh!
Move(ment of Jah people)!

Whose Responsibility?

One would expect that the citizens of the nations that exported arms to those regimes that they now find offensive, need to take personal responsibility to make sure that their weapons manufacturers are blocked from ever again selling weaponry to states with a record of human rights violations–there is little point in first selling them the guns, and then balking when they are used. Otherwise, these revolutions do not belong to us–that “the best revolutions are completely organic,” is apparently a principle that even Obama voices (when not speaking of Afghanistan, of course). Readers should also read Patrick Buchanan’s article, “It’s Their War, Not Ours,” which makes many critically important points. I also agree with the Canadian Peace Alliance that any call for Western military intervention is “like asking the arsonists to put out their own fire.”

Why Does Libya Matter?

We should ask ourselves why it is that actions that have been taken against the Gaddafi regime were never even voiced as a possibility against the Mubarak regime in Egypt, with its own history of decades of torture, murder, imprisonment of dissidents, and the use of thugs and paramilitaries to injure and in numerous cases kill unarmed protesters. In Egypt’s case, there were no sanctions, no assets freeze, no arms embargo, and no call for the international criminal prosecution of the dictator and his henchmen. What kind of calculation is at work, where effectively one despot is treated as a “good dictator” and the other one as a “bad dictator”? What makes the difference? Is it the level and nature of the violence used against protesters? If so, and it is a matter of a body count, then what is the “magic number” of protesters killed that causes us to invoke the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine? (Just look at how people think of the violence as “genocide”–which by definition it is not–when speaking of Gaddafi’s violence.)

But apparently these questions glide past most of those citizens–not those in power–who make impassioned calls for urgent military action to “get Gaddafi out” and “stop the violence” (see the relevant section in our latest EER), including respected bodies such as Physicians for Human Rights and numerous other rights groups calling, ultimately, for military action should “peaceful” measures fail. Some go as far rehabilitating discredited tools in the imperial armoire, such as the no fly zone. And this has the urging of some Libyan rebels who ask for it. Yet, when it is pointed out that a no fly zone is actual military intervention, then the call is revised: yes, to the no fly zone, and air strikes (added recently), but no to foreign troops on the ground. Then they call on the UN to impose these, when the UN has no air force and no means of enforcement…so those in Libya calling for military intervention know very well that it will come from NATO. Neither no fly zones nor air strikes have ever removed a dictator or ended human rights violations–but they have always led to an escalation of atrocities and have vastly expanded the range of suffering. No matter: action now, any action, the no fly zone is suddenly validated. Also validated, NATO, as if it were some sort of global protector of revolutionaries. Gone from some minds are the lessons of Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The discussion is getting polarized in a bleak way, so that even some I might ordinarily support (Chavez, Ortega, Castro) seem intent on engaging in the most retrograde, embarrassing, self-destructive dichotomy politics: the enemy of my enemy is my friend (even if recently he was a greater friend to Tony Blair, western oil interests, neoliberalism, and privatization, more than a friend to any “revolutionary”); opposing NATO intervention must mean supporting Gaddafi; being a friend to the people of Libya does not extend beyond being a friend to Gaddafi. I do not understand why it is so difficult for some to both denounce the fascism of Gaddafi, his extravagant elitism, megalomania, and contempt for his own people, and denounce any NATO intervention at the same time. (As for a war to grab Libya’s oil, as Fidel argues…Libya was never denying the world market its oil, and there is no sign from the “revolutionary leaders” [with backgrounds in privatization, management, trade and investment] that they have any intention of keeping Libya’s oil within Libyan borders.)

Why is it that so many apparently feel that we must do something about supporting their revolution? This is the central question to this whole essay. What accounts for this desire to intervene? Is this a novel global phenomenon?

Revolutionary Resonance: “I may be in France, but my spirit is in Tahrir Square”

In a recent essay, “The Speed of Revolutionary Resonance,” by Gastón Cordillo, we begin to find some answers about this desire by non-Libyans to intervene in Libya. In that essay he speaks of “expansive empathy,” built on “instant systems of global communication” that “now shoot out powerful revolutionary resonances that travel at high speed toward anywhere on the planet.” Cordillo notes the ”unfathomable speed of this briefly disembodied resonance,” and that it involves “not bodies but affects decomposed in bits of information through networks of instant media communication that, on impacting TV and computer screens, affects other bodies and makes them resonate.” He builds his theory by speaking of the velocity and acceleration of current revolutions, “new revolutionary velocities,” “high-speed deterritorializing force,” and “fast-paced rhizomic synergy” aided by “instant forms of communication.” Cordillo provides us with an interesting quote to this effect from Nikolai Grozni:

“Ever since the uprising in Egypt began on Jan. 25, I have hardly moved an inch away from the TV screen. I may be in France, but my spirit is in Tahrir Square. I’m throwing stones. I’m breathing in tear gas. I’m lighting up Molotov cocktails. I’m dodging bullets. I’m fighting thick-headed policemen. I’m cursing every symbol of the regime until my voice cracks.”

As Cordillo explains,

“Grozni’s body (not just his spirit) was affectively and fully in sync with those bodies on Tahrir Square, to the point that the spatial distance between Egypt and France seemed to had dissolved. His body resonated, via his TV, together with those bodies on Tahrir Square. This instantaneous affectation amplified through global networks was the same that, a few days earlier, had inspired millions of Egyptian bodies following the news about the uprising in Tunisia to take to the streets to topple Mubarak.”

Cordillo also quotes Emily Bell who appeared on a panel organized by Al Jazeera and compared the speed of these revolutions, in language that will be useful later on: “We are now looking at a much more compressed time frame. Six weeks instead of six months.”

What makes me worry about the implications of a theory of resonance, is what it says about those who fail to resonate. I think here of Trinidad, now celebrating Carnival, whose mass media seem almost oblivious to what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa. We have heard humanitarian interventionists deride “isolationism” (as with Buchanan, above), but now “resonance” may unintentionally recreate the category of the “isolated,” reproducing a kind of Levi-Straussian, and Eurocentic binary between the “hot” (dynamic, modern) and “cold” (frozen in time) societies. Update: but given Cordillo’s response, my worries may be unwarranted. I hope so.

Globalization as Compression

Cordillo’s essay brings to mind a substantial body of writings on cultural globalization which, until recently, I had generally devalued for overstating the novelty of the past 40 years, taking instead a longer-term world-systemic perspective. (In fact, this was the subject of one of my earliest journal articles [more booklet] which was published when I was still a MA student: “Globalization and World-Systems Analysis: Toward New Paradigms of a Geo-Historical Social Anthropology (A Research Review),” Review 21(1) 1998, 29-99.) In these writings, as represented by Anthony Giddens, Roland Robertson, and Malcolm Waters, we find a stress on the following novelties of what they call globalization, as a post-1960s cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a single human community, indeed, a virtual community formed by instantaneous “real-time” interaction, leading to an “an emerging global culture of consciousness” and the emergence of “globality”–“the circumstance of extensive awareness of the world as a whole.” In this situation we find the growth of the systematic interrelationship of “all the individual social ties that are established on the planet” and even “the intensification of worldwide social relations” to the extent that we can speak of the formation of “genuinely world-wide ties.” Space has shrunk, we are told, and localizations of time have disappeared. Some anthropologists prefer to call this “distanciation,” which is quite misleading and often leads students astray: the more significant and useful concept is that of “compression,” of everything seeming to have come closer together. Where Cordillo speaks of movement, we might speak of “implosion.”

Continuing in this vein, Martin Albrow (see “Travelling Beyond Local Cultures,” in The Globalization Reader, 2nd. ed., edited by Frank J. Lechner and John Boli. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) describes globalism as “the values informing daily behaviour for many groups in contemporary society,” and how they “relate to real or imagined material states of the globe and its inhabitants” (p. 134). Globality consists of ”images, information and commodities from any part of the earth [that] may be available anywhere and anytime for ever-increasing numbers of people worldwide, while the consequences of worldwide forces and events impinge on local lives at any time” (p. 134). Time-space compression is the situation where “information and communication technology now make it possible to maintain social relationships on the basis of direct interaction over any distance across the globe [emphasis added]” (p. 134). Anthony Giddens defined globalization as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa [emphasis added]” (see The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 64). For Frederic Jameson the concept of globalization “reflects the sense of an immense enlargement of world communication [emphasis added]” (see his Preface in The Cultures of Globalization, edited by Frederic Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, Duke University Press, 1998, p. xi). Roland Robertson argues that globalization as a concept “refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole [emphases added]” (see “Globalization as a Problem,” in The Globalization Reader, 2nd. ed., edited by Frank J. Lechner and John Boli. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). Similarly, James Mittelman explains that “globalization compresses the time and space aspect of social relations [emphasis added]” (quoted in Manfred B. Stenger, Globalization: A Brief Insight, New York: Sterling, 2009). Finally, it was David Harvey who conceptualized globalization “principally as a manifestation of the changing experience of time and space. He captures this change in the notion of ‘time-space compression,’ which refers to the manner in which the speeding up of economic and social processes has experientially shrunk the globe, so that distance and time no longer appear to be major constraints on the organization of human activity [emphases added]” (Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo,  ”Tracking Global Flows,” in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 2008, p. 8).

Having previously criticized these authors’ emphases on the novelty of globalization, I now have to issue a retraction. I think especially of past revolutions against dictatorial regimes, and how there was generally no popular outcry from citizens in other nations, nor special Security Council resolutions, nor even any effort to end support for the tyrannical regimes in question. Think of the 1949 Chinese revolution–in fact, I can think of the Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune, monumentalized as he is in Canada precisely because his involvement was such an exception (I belonged to Norman Bethune College at York University, and a statue of Norman Bethune greets me at the entrance to Concordia University). Think of the Cuban revolution in 1959–and again, an exceptional example of foreign involvement came in the body of Ernesto Ché Guevara, again a doctor, this time Argentinean. Think of the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979–U.S. involvement there consisted of Jimmy Carter ending aid to Somoza but also, through his ambassador (Lawrence Pezzullo), working quietly behind the scenes to unsuccessfully prevent the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) taking power after doing years of heavy lifting in toppling a brutal dictator backed by Washington. One of the few other acts of foreign intervention against that revolution came in an attempted secret shipment of weapons to the Somoza dictatorship, sent by Israel, which had previously armed Somoza’s troops with Uzis and Galil rifles. Think of the Grenadian revolution against the dictatorship of Eric Gairy, also in 1979, and also a domestic phenomenon that did not benefit from any significant international aid.

Something has definitely changed. Now, whenever a crisis erupts “we are all Americans” (9/11) or “we are all Palestinians,” (Gaza 2009) and recently “we are all Egyptians” and “we are all Libyans.” It seems like these days we are all busy being somebody else.

The Will to Intervene: “Are we there yet?”

Now, revolutions are to be measured in days, where two weeks of survival for the Gaddafi regime–after 42 years in power–is deemed “too long.” Revolutions must be instant, and we all get to have a say in what happens to make them succeed. Indigenous revolutions, painful, and enduring for years and even decades, are treated (if even acknowledged) as if they belonged to the Jurassic Park of political history. This attitude, and these expectations, of instant success, demanded by all of us, with the aid of our resources, is decidedly a novel phenomenon. We now speak of Facebook revolutions, and events in Libya may unfold in a way that we will speak of it as the “F-16 Revolution.”

While I am not one to sweep aside all proponents for intervention as “iPad imperialists” and narcissists (the will to intervene is about the need for me)–because I know of the many good intentions behind such desire to intervene, to stop violence and save lives–I am nonetheless troubled by this phenomenon, and not from a morally superior position as I was one of those calling for the ICC to initiate a trial against Gaddafi and his regime for crimes against humanity, and supported most of UN Resolution 1970 (except for its odd exclusion of mercenaries from any mention of possible prosecution, a deliberate exclusion designed to win Washington’s support–on the other hand, there may never have been any mercenaries, according to Human Rights Watch’s investigation).

The phenomenon is troubling, and not because of the vicarious, voyeuristic nature of the participant spectatorship. It is troubling because what do we really know about Libya? What do we know about the opposition forces? Unarmed protesters? Not any more. “Anyone’s better than Gaddafi”? Sober up. After days of contacting journalists and asking them to pursue this angle of inquiry vigorously–one freelancer and one Al Jazeera producer both acknowledged this remained a black hole in our knowledge of the actors on the ground…but they have done very little to remedy it–we still know little, and even fleeing migrant workers are treated as wallpaper for foreign reporters to talk about, but never talk to. I have never before witnessed a revolution where we knew so little about the revolutionaries. And what do we know about Gaddafi? While Fidel Castro lauds Gaddafi for vastly improving the lives of Libyans, CNN’s Anderson Cooper berates Libya’s educational system as “a joke,” when Libyans have the highest literacy rate in Africa (see UNDP, p. 171) and Libya is the only continental African nation to rank “high” in the UNDP’s Human Development Index. Does Anderson Cooper have better, secret statistics? It’s interesting because the BBC, if anything, affirms that Castro is correct:

“Women in Libya are free to work and to dress as they like, subject to family constraints. Life expectancy is in the seventies. And per capita income – while not as high as could be expected given Libya’s oil wealth and relatively small population of 6.5m – is estimated at $12,000 (£9,000), according to the World Bank. Illiteracy has been almost wiped out, as has homelessness – a chronic problem in the pre-Gaddafi era, where corrugated iron shacks dotted many urban centres around the country.”

Gaddafi appears deranged and nonsensical on television. So would many other politicians, speaking at rallies, in constitutional democracies, addressing supporters in their language, in a style they know and understand, with the flourishes that are customary in local politics. Observers scorn Saif Gaddafi and his wagging finger…but they have never seen a finger wagged at an audience until they have watched former Trinidadian Prime Minister Patrick Manning in action, who rambled from god, to fidelity, to jobs, sentences truncated, statements often contradicting each other, and the applause was wild. My simple point is that there is a lot we do not know, and do not understand, from the outside looking in, with little background.

Resonance may improve the agitation of bodies, but what does it do to educate minds?

NATO: Prosthetic Device for Revolutions?

Finally, what I am most concerned about is the possible prospect of would-be revolutionaries launching themselves into action, with little sense of cost and consequence, with little preparation to meet a military giant head on, as if approaching an injured and rabid tiger by waving a napkin at him. At one time revolutionaries used to brood and stew over questions such as “are the conditions ripe for revolution?” and “are the masses ready?” and so on. I am not saying this is absent from the minds of Libya’s revolutionaries–I know no such thing. What I worry about here are expectations. What would be a tragic downfall is for that admittedly excessive and vanguardist scientism to be replaced by a heady optimism that says, “Hey, but they did it over there, so let’s do it over here!” Revolutions are not raves, and more than just sensation.

More than that, one cannot go into a revolution thinking someone else, a superpower, will be there to back up the revolutionaries. One cannot screw on NATO as if it were a secret weapon needed to finish the job one started, and fears not being able to complete. Real revolutions are always violent; they are never clean and without bloodshed. In this vein, let me present (thanks to a friend’s recommendations) two especially vital videos of Malcolm X, demanding special attention to his message to revolutionaries:

Encircling Empire: Report #13—Revolution, Intervention, Anthropology

Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism and imperial decline ● militarism/militarization ● the political economy of the world system ● hegemony and soft power ● counterinsurgency ● revolution ● rebellion ● resistance ● protest ● activism ● advocacy ● critique.

This and previous issues have been archived on a dedicated site—please see: ENCIRCLING EMPIRE.

In this report, first two maps of social media penetration in the Middle East and North Africa, in relation to ongoing revolts; then, a long overdue catalogue of anthropologists writing online about the revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa; then a series of opposing items, those dealing with rejections of any foreign military intervention in Libya (a position best articulated by Fidel Castro), followed by statements by what would otherwise be willing interventionists, in the U.S. government, who find multiple problems with imposing a no-flight-zone, and then those articles and statements  that strongly favour intervention, and the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P); finally, we end with notes on empire at work in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Given that this is our longest report yet, here is a minor short cut—our top recommendations in no particular order:

1. “The narcissism of the iPad imperialists who want to invade Libya,” Brendan O’Neill, The Telegraph (blogs), 25 February 2011
2. “High Risks for Acting Now,” Kori Schake, 02 March 2011
3. Security Council–SC/10187–Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York: Security Council, 6491st Meeting: “In Swift, Decisive Action, Security Council Imposes Tough Measures on Libyan Regime, Adopting Resolution 1970 in Wake of Crackdown on Protesters”
4. “US defence secretary Robert Gates slams ‘loose talk’ about no-fly zones” – The Guardian, 03 March 2011
5. “In one of final addresses to Army, Gates describes vision for military’s future,” Greg Jaffe, Washington Post, 25 February 2011
6. “The militarization of aid and its perils,” International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 22 February 2011
7. “All-American Decline in a New World: Wars, Vampires, Burned Children, and Indelicate Imbalances,” by Tom Engelhardt, 25 February 2011
8. Resonance and the Egyptian Revolution , byGastón Cordillo

MAPPING SOCIAL MEDIA AND REVOLUTION

Libya Crisis Map – “The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force has been undertaking a mapping of social media, news reports and official situation reports from within Libya and along the borders at the request of OCHA. The Task Force is also aiding in the collection and mapping of 3W information for the response. UNOSAT is kindly hosting the Common Operational Datasets to be used during the emergency. Interaction with these groups is being coordinated by OCHA’s Information Services Section.”

Technology and Revolution—How Wired are the Middle East and North Africa? – surprisingly little, it turns out, which makes one wonder why some call Egypt the “Facebook revolution” when 5.49% of Egypt’s population uses Facebook. What is astounding, and either understated or ignored altogether, is the vast range of cell phone users.

ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND FIELD REPORTS ON THE ARAB REVOLUTIONS

The following are listed in no particular order, and each one is a highly recommended resource/essay.

Essays:

From Canada’s newest blogging anthropologist, Gastón Cordillo at the University of British Columbia, two essays on the embodiment of revolution, a thought provoking series on “resonance,” taking political agitation to the physical level:

Resonance and the Egyptian Revolution

“What has coalesced as a powerful, unstoppable force on the streets of Egypt is resonance: the assertive collective empathy created by multitudes fighting for the control of space. Resonance is an intensely bodily, spatial, political affair, materialized in the masses of bodies coming together in the streets of Egyptian cities in the past thirteen days, clashing with the police, temporarily dispersed by teargas and bullets, and regrouping again like an relentless swarm to reclaim the streets, push the police back, and saturate space with a collective effervescence. Resonance is what gives life to this human rhizome and the source of its power….”

The Speed of Revolutionary Resonance

“The current wave of revolutionary insurrections seems to be the fastest in history. Revolutions always come in waves, but insurgent shockwaves that once expanded across continents over years or months are now making states crumble, one after another, in a matter of weeks. As the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are rapidly followed by widespread rebellions in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and now Oman, it is clear that these are not just events but nodes of acceleration, which shoot out high-speed resonances in all directions and make millions of bodies fight oppression in myriad places at the same time. This political whirlwind is a distance-dissolving machine. It is also an evolving constellation that shifts its form and pulsation because of the striated nature of the global terrain, one day creating moments of joyful exhilaration on Tahrir Square and a few days later facing unrestrained state violence in Libya. In these mutating territories, we seem to be witnessing an epochal clash between new revolutionary velocities and the old, increasingly eroded supremacy of the state in controlling means of speed-creation….”

“Power, realpolitik, and freedom: Egypt and US Ideals about Freedom” – Ryan Anderson, Ethnografix

“Democracy, it seems, only applies here at home. When it comes to a distant population like the people of Egypt, it seems that many people are willing to sidestep all of the rhetoric about political freedom and openly advocate supporting a repressive policy state, all in the name of ‘our interests’….”

“Democracy or Extremism? Political Ideals and Egypt” – Ryan Anderson, Ethnografix

“The US has a pretty confusing–if not outright contradictory–history of foreign policy. On the surface, we supposedly are the champions of democracy, human rights, and freedom. Right? Those are the ideals that the nation was founded upon, and they continue to play a primary role in the political rhetoric and overall idealism of its people. However….”

“Autocrats, democracy, and pragmatism” – Ryan Anderson, Ethnografix

“Over on a political blog that I check every now and again, one of the respondents to this post argues that the US should keep supporting Mubarak (despite that fact that he’s a SOB), and that they would be perfectly content if the conditions of the last 30 years continued unabated. This is one strain of realpolitik that has been pretty common in certain circles the last few days, one that is akin to a long-running foreign policy philosophy that has reigned in the US for decades….”

“Events in Egypt (everything is fine love the Egypt government)” – Ryan Anderson, Ethnografix

“One of the most blatant moves of the Egyptian government was the decision to close down social media (internet access, cell phone use, etc) to attempt to control popular unrest. Not a good decision–and this speaks to the power of these tools when it comes to political organization and expression. Of course, this whole story is developing as we speak, so it remains to be seen how things will play out….”

Reports from the Field:

The Egyptian Revolution: First Impressions from the Field - Mohammed A. Bamyeh, Portland State University, Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies

“Everyone I talked to echoed similar transformative themes: they highlighted a sense of wonder at how they discovered their neighbor again, how they never knew that they lived in “society” or the meaning of the word, until this event, and how everyone who yesterday had appeared so distant is now so close. I saw peasant women giving protestors onions to help them recover from teargas attacks; young men dissuading others from acts of vandalism; the National Museum being protected by protestors’ human shield from looting and fire; protestors protecting captured baltagiyya who had been attacking them from being harmed by other protestors; and countless other incidents of generous civility amidst the prevailing destruction and chaos.

“I also saw how demonstrations alternated between battle scenes and debating circles, and how they provided a renewable spectacle in which everyone could see the diverse segments in social life converging on the common idea of bringing down the regime. While world media highlighted uncontrolled chaos, regional implications, and the specter of Islamism in power, the ant’s perspective revealed the relative irrelevance of all of the above considerations. As the Revolution took longer and longer to accomplish the mission of bringing down the regime, protestors themselves began to spend more time highlighting other accomplishments, such as how new ethics were emerging precisely amidst chaos. Those evidenced themselves in a broadly shared sense of personal responsibility for civilization—voluntary street cleaning, standing in line, the complete disappearance of harassment of women in public, returning stolen and found objects, and countless other ethical decisions that had usually been ignored or left for others to worry about….”

“‘You’ll be Late for the Revolution!’ An Anthropologist’s Diary of the Egyptian Revolution” – Samuli Schielke, Jaddaliya

“On 28 January, as millions went out all over the country, I booked my ticket to Cairo for a short visit, with the aim of making myself an idea of the atmosphere, of the sensibility of life of an uprising that had completely taken me by surprise. As an anthropologist, my work in the last years has focussed on the aspirations people have, the frustrations they experience, and the ways they try to find to live a life of dignity under constantly frustrating conditions. But I had not taken seriously the possibility that there would emerge a sudden collective consciousness that it is actually possible to change these conditions. Just days before 25 January, a friend asked whether there could be a revolution in Egypt like there was in Tunisia, and I said no, I don’t think so, because it seems so difficult to mobilise the people in Egypt, and for decades people have expected a revolution to break out in Egypt, but it hasn’t. Well, now it has, and much of what I thought I knew about Egyptian society has to be revised. But much more than revising academic knowledge is now at stake, and the short week I spent in Egypt from 31 January to 6 February also has changed me and my priorities….in the course of a week I transformed from an anthropological observer sympathetic with the events, into an activist committed to the sake of revolution even at personal risk. Personal and political transformation often go hand in hand….”

“The Egyptian Protests: A View from the Ground (The Beginning)” - Gregory Johnsen, Big Think

“…one of the doormen leads police to us.  They separate the Egyptians from the foreigners.  The foreigners they escort out to the street and tell us to go home.  The Egyptians they take away.”

“The Egyptian Protests: A View from the Ground (Neighborhood Watch)” - Gregory Johnsen, Big Think

“It became clear to me what was going to happen.  Mubarak was going to make a play for power essentially attempting to convince people that a police state with him was better than chaos without him.  And that is exactly what happened. There were three groups of looters – undercover thugs from the regime, prisoners that escaped/were set free and other elements looking for free stuff….”

Roundups:

“A wonderful development” – Anthropologists on the Egypt Uprising (updated 6.2.) – antropologi.info

One of Lorenz Khazaleh’s excellent overview essays of a range of anthropologists writing about the Egyptian uprising.

“Saba Mahmood: Democracy is not enough – Anthropologists on the Arab revolution part II” – antropologi.info

Lorenz does it again, his second overview essays featuring many excellent essays, reports, and other resources produced by anthropologists.

Martijn de Koning at CLOSER (Anthropology of Muslims in Europe) is continuing a weekly series of roundups of essays, news, and other documents on the ongoing protests and uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa—see for example:

• “Closing the week 8 – A need to read list of the uprisings in the Middle East”
• “Uprising – Music, Images and The Tunisia and Egypt Revolution on Youtube”
• “Closing the week 5 – Featuring the Tunisia & Egypt Uprising”

“Tunisia and Egypt uprisings – selected bookmarks” – John Postill, media/anthropology

A very useful collection of some of the essays and reports dealing with the role of the broadcast media, as well as social media, and Wikileaks, with reference to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

AGAINST FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

Fidel Castro—Reflections from Fidel: NATO’s Inevitable War, Part 1

“Imperialism and NATO – seriously concerned about the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which produces a large portion of the oil sustaining the consumer economies of the rich, developed countries – could not miss the opportunity to take advantage of Libya’s internal conflict to promote a military intervention. The statements formulated by the United States government from early on were clearly in this vein. The circumstances could hardly be more propitious….”

Fidel Castro—Reflections from Fidel: NATO’s Inevitable War, Part 2

“We totally abstained from expressing any opinions concerning the concepts of the Libyan leadership. We can clearly see that the fundamental concern of the United States and NATO is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs. It is an irrefutable fact that relations between the United States and its NATO allies in recent years were excellent until the rebellion in Egypt and in Tunisia arose. In high-level meetings between Libya and NATO leaders, none of the latter had any problems with Gaddafi. The country was a secure source of high-quality oil, gas and even potassium supplies. The problems which arose between them in the early decades had been overcome….”

Fidel Castro—Reflections from Fidel: NATO’s plan is to occupy Libya

“One can be in agreement with Gaddafi or not. The world has been invaded with all kind of news, especially through the mass media. We shall have to wait the time needed to discover precisely how much is truth or lies, or a mix of the events, of all kinds, which, in the midst of chaos, have been taking place in Libya. What is absolutely evident to me is that the government of the United States is totally unconcerned about peace in Libya and will not hesitate to give NATO the order to invade that rich country, possibly in a matter of hours or a few days.”

USA Today, Editors: “Our view: No-fly zone in Libya holds more risks than rewards,” 04 March 2011:

“When a crisis like the one in Libya arises, replete with barbaric actions by a dictator against his own people, calls for U.S. military action follow like a spasmodic reflex. Americans see people in trouble, want to help and look to the military to deliver a quick, effective, cost-free blow. But that impulse rarely produces the desired result, which makes the chorus calling for a no-fly zone over Libya sound gratingly off-key, despite the good intentions and notable credentials of some of the advocates….”

“Chavez proposes talks for Libya: Venezuelan president calls for mediation to end crisis while the US and other powers weigh military options,” Al Jazeera English, 01 March 2011: “ ‘We want a peaceful solution … We support peace in the Arab world and in the whole world.’…Chavez said it was better to seek ‘a political solution instead of sending marines to Libya, and better to send a good will mission than for the killing to continue.’ Al Jazeera’s Dima Khatib, reporting from Caracas, said the comments come from ‘Chavez’s ideology that the south can come up with solutions for the south.’… Chavez repeated his warning that the US wanted to invade Libya to get oil, a view that has been voiced by both Cuba and Nicaragua. ‘He is worried that the United States is after the Libyan oil, just like they were after the Iraqi oil. He says that they have gone mad because of the Libyan oil; it’s driving them crazy,’ our correspondent said. ‘He also wondered why doesn’t the world condemn the massacres in Falluja, in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’…”

“Chavez says he won’t condemn Libya’s Gadhafi,” Christopher Toothaker, Associated Press, 01 March 2011: Hugo Chavez: “We must be prudent. We know what our political line is: We don’t support invasions, or massacres, or anything like that no matter who does it. A campaign of lies is being spun together regarding Libya.”

“Venezuela: US, allies fomenting Libya’s violence,” Christopher Toothaker, Associated Press, 25 February 2011: “Venezuela’s top diplomat on Thursday echoed Fidel Castro’s accusation that Washington and its allies are fomenting unrest in Libya to justify an invasion to seize North African nation’s oil reserves. Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro claimed the United States and other powerful countries are trying to create a movement inside Libya aimed at toppling Moammar Gadhafi. Maduro did not condemn or defend the violent crackdown on Libyans participating in the popular uprising against Gadhafi’s long rule. He called for a peaceful solution to the upheaval in Libya and questioned the veracity of media reports on the bloody uprising, which has crept closer to Gadhafi’s stronghold in Tripoli. ‘They are creating conditions to justify an invasion of Libya,’ Maduro said. ‘Libya is going through difficult times, which should not be measured with information from imperial news agencies,’ Maduro added, referring to Western media. Gadhafi has been a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Chavez’s political opponents have strongly criticized those close relations. In a Twitter message Thursday, Venezuela’s leftist president said: ‘Viva Libya and its independence! Gadhafi is facing a civil war.’…”

“The narcissism of the iPad imperialists who want to invade Libya,” Brendan O’Neill, The Telegraph (blogs), 25 February 2011: “In a modern political sphere that has its fair share of narcissists and ignoramuses, no one is quite as narcissistic or as ignorant as the liberal interventionist. From the comfort of his Home Counties home, possibly to the sound of birds tweeting on the windowsill, the liberal interventionist will write furious, spittle-stained articles about the need to invade faraway countries in order to topple their dictators. As casually and thoughtlessly as the rest of us write shopping lists, he will pen a 10-point plan for the bombing of Yugoslavia or Afghanistan or Iraq and not give a second thought to the potentially disastrous consequences. Now, having learned nothing from the horrors that they cheer-led like excitable teenage girls over the past 15 years, these bohemian bombers, these latte-sipping lieutenants, these iPad imperialists are back. This time they’re demanding the invasion of Libya….”

“Stop the War Coalition statement on Middle East revolutions,” Stop War UK, 25 February 2011: “There must be no US or British intervention in Libya: the future of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen. must be determined by the people of those countries alone. The uprisings sweeping the Middle East deserve the support of all progressive people. They are directed against autocracies which have denied their people basic rights and the possibility of a decent life. These autocracies have also, for the most part, depended on the self-interested support of the big powers, the USA and Britain first of all. Western governments have prioritised cheap oil, arms sales and support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians above the rights of the Arab peoples…. The future of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen and all the other states facing popular uprisings must be determined by the people of those countries alone. Solidarity with those fighting for their democratic and national freedom is our obligation. We can best discharge it by demanding that the government at long last takes its hands off the Middle East and its people, leaving them to settle accounts with their own rulers.”

Canadian Peace Alliance: “Support the Libyan people. Yes to freedom and democracy across the Arab World! No Military Intervention in Libya”: “The Government of Canada has announced that it will send HMCS Charlottetown to Libya to join the US aircraft carrier fleet led by the USS enterprise. This is part of a much larger NATO led buildup in the area. The Canadian Peace Alliance is opposed to any military intervention in Libya or in the region as a whole. If the western governments were genuine in their desire to help the people of Libya – or Egypt or Tunisia for that matter – they would not have supported the dictators and their regimes. That support for the dictators is a chief reason why the situation is so violent for the people rising up. Western military deployment to Libya is a bit like asking the arsonist to put out their own fire. Far from being a shining light in a humanitarian crisis, western intervention is designed to maintain the status quo and will, in fact make matters worse for the people there.”

“Gadhafi’s LatAm allies show solidarity, caution,” Andrea Rodriguez and Alexandra Olson, Associated Press, 22 February 2011: “The bloody upheaval in Libya is creating an uncomfortable challenge for Moammar Gadhafi’s leftist Latin American allies, with some keeping their distance and others rushing to the defense of a leader they have long embraced as a fellow fighter against U.S. influence in the world. Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said Tuesday that the unrest may be a pretext for a NATO invasion of Libya, while Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega offered support for Gadhafi, saying he had telephoned to express solidarity. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, on the other hand, has stayed mute. Bolivia came closest to criticizing the government in Tripoli, issuing a statement expressing concern over ‘the regrettable loss of many lives’ and urging both sides to find a peaceful solution….”

FROM WASHINGTON AND THE UN: PROBLEMS WITH FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION

“US defence secretary Robert Gates slams ‘loose talk’ about no-fly zones” – The Guardian, 03 March 2011: While UK Prime Minister David Cameron appears eager to impose a no-flight zone, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (who seems intent on exiting office by covering his tracks with a series of very sober and critical assessments), stated:

“There is a lot of, frankly, loose talk about some of these military options. Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone. Then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. That is the way it starts. It also requires more aeroplanes than you would find on a single aircraft carrier. It is a big operation by a big country.”

“Senator: Army could train Libyan opposition in anti-aircraft defense,” Adam Levine, CNN, 03 March 2011:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

“We are working to understand who is legitimate, who is not, but it is premature in our opinion to recognize one group or another. I think it’s important to recognize that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the motives, the opportunism, if you will, of people who are claiming to be leaders right now.”

Senator John McCain’s response to Gates:

“McCain seemed to take offense at Gates’ comment Wednesday that there has been a lot of ‘loose talk’ about military options, including the no-fly zone. ‘May I just say personally, I don’t think it’s loose talk on the part of the people on the ground in Libya, nor the Arab League nor others, including the prime minister of England, that this option should be given the strongest consideration. The perception of Libyan pilots who now take off and land and attack pro-revolutionary forces might prove rather cautionary to them if they think that we will stop them and shoot them down if they carry out those missions’….‘Deterrence is always one of the options that we should have available to the national command authority,’ Dempsey agreed. ‘I will say, of course, that my own personal experience is sometimes the way our potential adversaries interpret our deterrent actions is not exactly as we’ve planned it. But deterrence is a valid option’.”

“US signals caution about Libya military intervention,” Lachlan Carmichael, AFP News, 02 March 2011: “In testimony to the US Senate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that any US intervention to help opponents of Moamer Kadhafi would be ‘controversial’ both within Libya and the broader Arab community. She has said that Washington understands the Libyan opposition wants to ‘be seen as doing this by themselves’ as they seek ways to dislodge Kadhafi and his forces from the capital Tripoli and other areas they hold. In a speech on Wednesday, Kadhafi warned that ‘thousands’ would die if the West intervened to support the more than two-week old uprising against him.”

From The New York Times’ “Room for Debate” series, “Should the U.S. Move Against Qaddafi? What are the dangers for the U.S. and the international community in intervening in Libya?”:

“What We Should Know by Now,” John Mueller, 02 March 2011: “But there are a couple of cautions. One is that the experience of the last decade or so does not lead one to be confident that launching military force with woefully inadequate intelligence solves more problems than it creates or that, on balance, it actually ends up saving lives.

The other is that there is danger in posturing dramatically (or sanctimoniously) from outside about supporting an embattled side and then failing adequately to follow up with quick and effective action, which is often impossible to put together. The danger of coupling vast proclamation with limited action is that it can encourage people desperately to hold out in hopeless situations waiting for the promised, or seemingly promised, deliverance from outside.”

“No Clear Playbook,” Camille Eiss, 02 March 2011: “But deciding to act requires understanding where our leverage with Colonel Qaddafi and his henchmen lies. Do assets matter against power? Beyond the challenges of establishing a no-flight zone, will one prevent murderers from fighting on the ground? The sad reality in the case of Libya is that we have no clear playbook. So far, the best strategy may be the administration’s approach to other recent uprisings: focus on nonviolence and let Libyans be the primary players. With international partners who share this responsibility, the U.S. should intervene as necessary to promote these goals and to fulfill our responsibility to protect civilians and to end the violence. More extensive U.S. involvement might only muddy the indigenous democratic process, undermining our long term efforts to support free societies and a more stable region.”

“First, Define the Goals,” Steven Simon, 02 March 2011: “…armed intervention in an unfolding civil war would pose far greater risks. Again, the issue would be, what are we intervening for? If it is merely to put our thumb on the opposition’s side of the scales, by, say, intercepting regime aircraft, as the rebels have requested, or even staging air raids on airbases under the regime’s control, the risk to U.S. forces would be limited. The Navy, or Air Force if staging from NATO bases, could do this without breathing hard. But even for these limited missions, the U.S. would probably want to make sure that Libyan air defenses are unable to hinder U.S. air operations, which would mean a wider range of ground targets, with all the risk of collateral damage and loss of aircrews to accident or a lucky Libyan shot. And the mission would have to continue, perhaps for a long while, especially if Qaddafi’s air forces stood down, to wait out the U.S. presence. At that point, the U.S. would risk losing the battle for public opinion.”

“What Military Force Will Require,” Bruce W. Jentleson, 02 March 2011: “Intervention will require more than the United States and NATO. For reasons of history, power and politics a strictly Western intervention would be highly problematic. U.N. Security Council authorization is crucial. Russian and Chinese opposition has to be overcome. Efforts should continue to get African Union support. So, too, is support from the Arab League, though the opposition by the Organization of the Islamic Conference makes this unlikely.”

“A Logical, but Difficult, Step,” Richard Fontaine, 02 March 2011: “But, as General James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, said at a Senate hearing, taking out Libyan air defenses, ‘wouldn’t be just telling people not to fly airplanes.’ It would also imply risking American lives and possibly shooting down Libyan aircraft. The effort is even tougher at the diplomatic level. The administration would surely prefer to proceed with any military action under a United Nations mandate, which would require Russian agreement. But Moscow has already rejected the idea of a U.N.-authorized no-flight zone. NATO could carry out the mission outside U.N. authorization, as it did during the Kosovo war, but France has said that such a mission could go forward only with U.N. approval — and it’s unclear where other members stand. So the United States might be stuck, unable to get U.N. or NATO authorization, witnessing continued aerial bombings, and having to choose between doing nothing or pulling together a coalition of the willing.”

“High Risks for Acting Now,” Kori Schake, 02 March 2011: “we ought to be very cautious about actually using American military force to affect the rebellion in Libya, for four reasons. First, it is difficult to see what practical measures, short of removing Colonel Gaddafi ourselves or sending military teams into Libya to assist rebel forces, would affect the fight…. Second, we have not had an ambassador in Libya for months, and we have evacuated our diplomats; we ought not overestimate how much we understand what is occurring in the country or the shape Libya’s rebellion will take…. Third, debate over the Security Council resolution suggests it is unlikely the Chinese and Russians would authorize the use of force (they had to be assured the resolution that passed would not), and NATO would not be an alternative without a U.N. mandate…. Fourth, military force is sticky — once the president commits American military forces to involvement, even tangentially, he commits the nation. It is difficult to disengage if the limited force committed doesn’t achieve the president’s objectives….”

“Top powers split over Libya options: Amid calls for a no-fly zone, Russia and France caution against military intervention without UN authorization,” Al Jazeera English, 01 March 2011: “Russia has however described the no-fly zone idea as “superfluous” and along with France cautioned against moving militarily against Gaddafi without UN authorization….”

CALLS FOR INTERVENTION: ON THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (R2P)

“Obama’s Choice: To Intervene or Not in Libya,” Mark Landler, The New York Times, 05 March 2011: “Mr. Obama’s blunt call last Thursday for Colonel Qaddafi to leave office, coupled with a threat to leave all military options on the table if he doesn’t, made it clear that the president believes the United States cannot stand by while Libyan jets bomb civilians. But his reluctance to talk about the most obvious measure — a no-flight zone over the country — reveals his qualms about thrusting the United States into a volatile situation in a region where foreign intervention is usually viewed as cynical neo-colonialism….The fact that protesters in Egypt and Tunisia were able to drum out their leaders without the help of American F-16s is viewed inside the White House as a big victory. Making sure that young Arabs feel “ownership” of their political movements has been a central piece of the administration’s strategy, even if it has exposed Mr. Obama to criticism that he is not doing enough to stop violence when it occurs….He won’t lack for impassioned advice: Among his staff members is Samantha Power, a human-rights expert who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book chronicling American foreign-policy responses to genocide.”

New “Libyan Transitional National Council” calling for air strikes–Rebels in east Libya set up crisis committee | Reuters: “The council repeated its call for foreign air strikes to help dislodge the man who has been in power for 41 years and has used warplanes and helicopters against rebel forces….Speaking at a news conference, the head of the national council, ex-Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, said the body did not want foreign troops on Libyan soil and had sufficient forces to liberate the country….‘Our people have the numbers and the determination toliberate all of Libya, but we will ask for air strikes to help us do this in the shortest possible time’.”

“Senator: Army could train Libyan opposition in anti-aircraft defense,” Adam Levine, CNN, 03 March 2011: Senator Joseph Lieberman—“While we’re considering the no-fly zone, and I hear all the concerns about how it would be … another alternative I’m raising is that we might provide the Libyan opposition with the capacity to defend themselves from Gadhafi’s aircraft.”

“Opposing view: A moral obligation to intervene,” Jamie M. Fly, USA Today, 04 March 2011: “A no-fly zone enforced by the U.S. and key allies does not require the approval of the United Nations Security Council. The no-fly zones over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and NATO’s 1999 war with Serbia over Kosovo did not have the council’s explicit blessing. It is in our interest to see the Libyan people free themselves from Gadhafi’s brutal reign. We should thus explore all possible options to do so, including arming the opposition so they are not slaughtered by regime forces. Gadhafi’s days are over. It is just a matter of time until he is forced from power. The question is whether we will stand on the sidelines and continue to watch thousands be killed in protracted fighting or whether we will ensure that his departure is hastened and casualties minimized. Intervening is a moral obligation for the United States — a moral obligation we’ve all too often ignored in similar cases in the past, with disastrous consequences. This time we need to get it right. It’s time for President Obama to lead.”

“Libyan ambassador: The U.S. must do more to stop Qaddafi’s massacre,” David Kenner, Foreign Policy, 04 March 2011: “Libyan Ambassador to the United States Ali Aujali, who joined the opposition in the early days of the crisis, issued an urgent plea for the United States to take more aggressive eactions against the Libyan government in an interview with Foreign Policy today. Aujali strongly supported the implementation of a no-flyzone over Libya, calling it ‘a historic responsibility for the United States.’ He also criticized the arguments about the risks of no-fly zone, which have been made by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other military officials. ‘When we say, for example, that the no-fly zone will take a long time, that it is complicated — please don’t give this regime any time to crush the Libyan people,’ he said.”

“Gaddafi bombs oil areas, Arabs study peace plan,” Mohammed Abbas, Reuters, 03 March 2011: “Opposition activists called for a no-fly zone, echoing a demand by Libya’s deputy U.N. envoy, who now opposes Gaddafi. ‘Bring Bush! Make a no fly zone, bomb the planes,’ shouted soldier-turned-rebel Nasr Ali, referring to a no-fly zone imposed on Iraq in 1991 by then President George Bush. But perhaps mindful of a warning by Gaddafi that foreign intervention could cause ‘another Vietnam,’ Western officials expressed caution about any sort of military involvement including the imposition of a no-fly zone….”

“Arabs may impose Libya no fly zone: International concern grows over violence in Libya with Arab state ministers saying they could impose a ‘no-fly’ zone,” Al Jazeera English, 02 March 2011: “The Arab League has said it may impose a ‘no fly’ zone on Libya in co-ordination with the African Union if fighting continues in Libya. Wednesday’s Arab League ministers’ meeting in Cairo rejected any direct outside military intervention in Libya…”

“ICC to launch Libya probe: The ICC probe will look into the killing of civilians by Gaddafi’s forces during Libya’s uprising,” Al Jazeera English, 02 March 2011: “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said he will open a formal investigation into possible crimes against humanity in Libya….The announcement was an unprecedentedly swift reaction to the violent crackdown on anti-government protests by Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, and his supporters. Prosecutors often take months and sometimes years to decide whether to open an investigation into possible war crimes….”

“Are sanctions enough? We ask what the international community can do to protect the Libyan people,” Inside Story, Al Jazeera English, 01 March 2011: “On Saturday, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to impose financial sanctions on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and to refer Libya to the International Criminal Court. And in an attempt to strengthen this decision, foreign ministers met in Geneva on Monday at a UN Human Rights Council to discuss the future of Libya. But also on the agenda – what action should be taken against Gaddafi and his regime for human rights violations against the Libyan people. But with Gaddafi threatening to cleanse the country house by house, are words enough to protect unarmed Libyan civilians?”

“Britain considers Libya no-fly zone: David Cameron says military intervention including arming rebels could be needed to stop Gaddafi ‘murdering’ his people,” Al Jazeera English, 01 March 2011: “David Cameron, the British prime minister, has said the international community cannot let Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ‘murder’ his own people, as he justified considerations for a no-fly zone over the riot-torn country. ‘It’s not acceptable that Colonel Gaddafi can be murdering his own people, using aeroplanes and helicopters gunships … and we have to plan now to make sure that if it happens we can do something to stop that,’ he said on Tuesday. If he starts taking that sort of action we might need to have a no-fly zone in place very quickly’….”

“Exile an option for Gaddafi: White House—Nothing is off the table against Gaddafi: Clinton,” Al Arabiya, 28 February 2011: “…The United States had said it was prepared to offer ‘any kind of assistance’ to Libyans seeking to overthrow Gaddafi as his opponents piece together a transitional body comprising representatives from the liberated cities….”

“EU approves wide sanctions against Libya,” John Heilprin and Bradley Klapper, Associated Press, 28 February 2011: “The European Union slapped its own arms embargo, visa ban and other sanctions Monday on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, part of an escalating global effort to halt a bloody crackdown on his critics in the North African nation. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came to Geneva on Monday to press EU diplomats, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, for stronger action against Gadhafi’s regime….”

“Libya quashes protest in Tripoli; West to aid east,” Maggie Michael, Associated Press, 28 February 2011: “ ‘We’ve been reaching out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize in the east and as the revolution moves westward there as well,’ Clinton said. ‘I think it’s way too soon to tell how this is going to play out, but we’re going to be ready and prepared to offer any kind of assistance that anyone wishes to have from the United States.’ Two U.S. senators said Washington should recognize and arm a provisional government in rebel-held areas of eastern Libya and impose a no-fly zone over the area — enforced by U.S. warplanes — to stop attacks by the regime. But Fillon said a no-fly zone needed U.N. support ‘which is far from being obtained today’.”

“Security Council imposes sanctions on Libyan authorities in bid to stem violent repression,” UN News Centre, 26 February 2011: “The Security Council today voted unanimously to impose sanctions against the Libyan authorities, slapping the country with an arms embargo and freezing the assets of its leaders, while referring the ongoing violent repression of civilian demonstrators to the International Criminal Court (ICC). In its Resolution 1970, the Council obligated all United Nations Member States to ‘freeze without delay all funds, other financial assets and economic resources which are on their territories, which are owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the individuals or entities’ listed in resolution. The Council imposed a travel ban on President Muammar Al-Qadhafi and other senior figures in his administration, including some members of his family and other relatives. ‘All Member States shall immediately take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, from or through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and related material of all types, including weapons and ammunition,’ according to the arms embargo clause of the resolution….”

United Nations Webcast: “Security Council Meeting,” 26 February 2011: Peace and security in Africa and other matters including the situation in Libya. Adoption of Resolution 1970 imposing sanctions on the Libyan regime.

Security Council–SC/10187–Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York: Security Council, 6491st Meeting: “In Swift, Decisive Action, Security Council Imposes Tough Measures on Libyan Regime, Adopting Resolution 1970 in Wake of Crackdown on Protesters”: “Many expressed hope that the resolution was a strong step in affirming the responsibility of States to protect their people as well as the legitimate role of the Council to step in when they failed to meet that responsibility…. Recalling the Libyan authorities’ responsibility to protect its population….

“Libya needs a multilateral response,” Michael O’Hanlon, Politico, 25 February 2011: “One thing that both Iraq and Afghanistan have again demonstrated is the potential for war not to go as planned — even when we think all major factors line up in our favor…. With Libya, there is a considerable possibility that if we were to impose no fly zones and no drive zones, Qadhafi would not only threaten any Americans still in Libya, but he would intensify — rather than scale back — the pace of killing of his own citizens…. So we would have had to consider the possibility of needing to put forces on the streets of Tripoli to defeat parts of the Libyan army; the African mercenaries and thugs whom Qadhafi cultivated over the years….”

“NATO to hold urgent talks on Libya,” Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press, 25 February 2011: “NATO’s main decision-making body holds an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss Libya’s unrest, and the alliance may discuss deploying ships and surveillance aircraft to the Mediterranean, officials said. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who chairs meetings of the North Atlantic Council, has said the alliance does not intend to intervene in Libya, that it has received no such requests to do that, and that such an action would require a U.N. mandate….”

“NATO Secretary General’s statement on the situation in Libya,” NATO, 24 February 2011: “I do not consider the situation in Libya a direct threat to NATO or NATO Allies, but, of course, there may be negative repercussions. Such upheaval may have a negative impact on migration, refugees, etc., and that also goes for neighbouring countries….”

“Crisis alert: The Responsibility to Protect in Libya,” 23 February 2011, responsibilitytoprotect.org: An extensive collection of calls for action in Libya from a wide range of human rights organizations.

“It’s Time To Intervene: What the international community can do to support regime change in Libya,” Shadi Hamid, Slate Magazine, 23 February 2011: “What can be done? This is a time for bold, creative policy-making. For starters, NATO should quickly move to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, both to send a strong message to the regime and to prevent the use of helicopters and planes to bomb and strafe civilians. The United States and European allies should freeze the assets of senior Libyan officials and consider other targeted sanctions. Meanwhile, the international community should also let it be known that any individuals involved in perpetrating atrocities will be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court, while regime figures who defect to the opposition will be granted amnesty. If the conflict threatens to spill over into outright civil war, and the death toll reaches into the tens of thousands, the United Nations will need to consider more advanced measures, including authorizing the deployment of peacekeeping troops to protect civilian populations in the eastern part of the country….The ‘responsibility to protect’ provides further grounds for action. During the 2005 U.N. World Summit, member states unanimously affirmed that ‘each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.’ In Paragraph 139 of the summit outcome document, states affirmed their readiness to take collective action ‘in a timely and decisive manner’ if nations ‘manifestly fail’ to protect their populations from crimes against humanity….”

“On Libya we can’t let ourselves be scarred by Iraq: The international community must get over the foolishness of the 2003 invasion, and take swift action against Gaddafi,” Ian Birrell, The Guardian, 23 February 2011: “It is like an apocalyptic Hollywood film. There are even rumours of systematic male rape in this elegant city of jacaranda trees and Italianate buildings. Who knows what is true and what is false, only that there is a whirlwind of terror amid a media blackout as the people of Libya try to overthrow the despot who has ruined their country these past 41 years….The international community may be forced to make a choice: does it sit back and prevaricate while people are massacred, as it has so often in the past. Or does it refuse to be scarred by the foolishness of the Iraq invasion and show that it can act when there is unacceptable barbarism….”

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: “Open Statement on the Situation in Libya,” 22 February 2011: “United Nations (UN) member states must uphold their 2005 commitment to the responsibility to protect (R2P) and take immediate action to protect the population of Libya from mass atrocities….”

“24 rights groups urge US and EU to confront Libyan massacres in UN Security Council and Human Rights Council,” UN Watch, Global Post, 20 February 2011: “The letter asserts that the widespread atrocities committed by Libya against its own people are ‘particularly odious’ actions that amount to war crimes, requiring member states to take action through the Security Council under the responsibility to protect doctrine….”

EMPIRE AT WORK

“Nine Afghan Boys Collecting Firewood Killed by NATO Helicopters,” Alissa J. Rubin and Sangar Rahimi, The New York Times, 02 March 2011: “Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake. The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war’s worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces. The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.”

“Egypt, Serbia, Georgia… The History of US Sponsored ‘Democratization’,” Eric Walberg, Global Research.ca, 03 March 2011: “Central to Egypt’s revolution was a tiny group of Serbian activists Otpor (resistance), who adapted nonviolent tactics of in the late 1990s and successfully forced Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to resign in 2000. Egyptian youth in the 6 April Youth Movement even adopted their clenched fist symbol, bringing Otpor…”

“Angelina Jolie visits schoolgirls in Afghanistan,” Ann Oldenburg, USA Today, 03 March 2011: “Jolie visited families and presented education materials to local schoolgirls in Qala Gudar village, where she will fund a new girls primary school, outside Kabul. The lack of a proper classroom means most girls now can’t study beyond fourth grade. Jolie also paid for a school in the remote returnee settlement of Tangi in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, according to the UNHCR.”

“In one of final addresses to Army, Gates describes vision for military’s future,” Greg Jaffe, Washington Post, 25 February 2011: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

“The militarization of aid and its perils,” International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 22 February 2011: “…For the International Committee of the Red Cross, the question is not whether the military can contribute to humanitarian efforts; it, for example, has an obligation under international humanitarian law to evacuate wounded civilians. Aid becoming part of counter-insurgency strategies, however, is much more problematic. I have never forgotten a press statement issued by international forces in Afghanistan a couple of years ago emphasizing that humanitarian assistance was helping them and Afghan forces win the ‘fight against terrorism’….”

“Business as usual for David Cameron and merchants of death,” John Kamfner, The Guardian, 22 February 2011: “When Robin Cook tried to tighten rules on British arms sales to dodgy regimes in 1997 he was told by Tony Blair’s team to grow up….This is one area where the boardroom and the unions are in harmony, and one that does not change whatever the government. Britain is a market leader in fighter jets, electric batons, sub-machine guns and teargas. Why add to the jobless total for the sake of morals? If we don’t sell the kit someone else will….”

“Petraeus Accuses Afghan Parents of Burning Kids to Make US Look Bad: Attempt to Downplay Kunar Massacre Sparks Outrage,” Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, 21 February 2011: “One would think that the effort to downplay the killings of as many as 64 civilians, including a large number of children, would be enough to spark considerable anti-US outrage, but apparently Gen. David Petraeus saw an opportunity to make things even worse, and took it. In a closed door meeting aimed at explaining why they had killed so many civilians, Gen. Petraeus actually accused parents in the region of burning their own children in an attempt to raise the death count and make the US look bad….”

“All-American Decline in a New World: Wars, Vampires, Burned Children, and Indelicate Imbalances,” by Tom Engelhardt, 25 February 2011: “This is a global moment unlike any in memory, perhaps in history. Yes, comparisons can be made to the wave of people power that swept Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91. For those with longer memories, perhaps 1968 might come to mind, that abortive moment when, in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere, including Eastern Europe, masses of people mysteriously inspired by each other took to the streets of global cities to proclaim that change was on the way. For those searching the history books, perhaps you’ve focused on the year 1848 when, in a time that also mixed economic gloom with novel means of disseminating the news, the winds of freedom seemed briefly to sweep across Europe.  And, of course, if enough regimes fall and the turmoil goes deep enough, there’s always 1776, the American Revolution, or 1789, the French one, to consider.  Both shook up the world for decades after. But here’s the truth of it: you have to strain to fit this Middle Eastern moment into any previous paradigm, even as — from Wisconsin to China – it already threatens to break out of the Arab world and spread like a fever across the planet.  Never in memory have so many unjust or simply despicable rulers felt quite so nervous — or possibly quite so helpless (despite being armed to the teeth) — in the presence of unarmed humanity.  And there has to be joy and hope in that alone….”

Bernie is one of a bold band of browbeaten brigadiers who have stuck their heads above the parapet to plead amnesty for the casualties of the cultural war on finance. His sentiments echo those of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan & Chase Co., who’s got a bone to pick with banker-bashing and recently flooded Davos with a shower of tears lamenting the egregious vilification of his kind. “Not all bankers are the same. And I just think this constant refrain – bankers, bankers, bankers….it’s really an unproductive and unfair way of treating people.” He’s been joined in this courageous counter-chorus by improbably-named Barclay’s boss and prospective £9m bonus beneficiary Bob Diamond, who testified before a panel of his BFFs in Parliament that “There was a period of remorse and apology for banks and I think that period needs to be over.”

Dimon’s intervention, however, went down like a cup of cold sick with French President (and former homeboy on the Grubstake Crew as Minister of Finance) Nicolas Sarkozy, who retorted that “The world has paid with tens of millions of unemployed, who were in no way to blame and who paid for everything….too much is too much,” in a stark indication that the bankers’ best buddies are deserting them. Even Mayor of London Boris Johnson, once lauded as “the last politician in the country willing to stick up for the bankers,” has slated the bonus bonanza and yesterday implored Bob Diamond to take one for the team by renouncing his hard-earned 2010 windfall. BoJo aide Anthony Browne has thrown a small crust of comfort to the City, warning Chancellor George Osborne that the threat by bankers, stock brokers and all manner of maligned money-men to make tracks for some fictional country where ordinary people don’t hate their guts, could cost Britain dearly in tax terms. This is less an expression of profound comradely solidarity than a pragmatic endorsement of geopolitical extortion but still, every little helps.

Other quarters have climbed aboard the halfhearted hug-a-banker bandwagon in a similar spirit of blunt self-interest, not least academia. Officials at Cass Business School, part of the City University of London, warned last year that applications for their undergraduate degree in banking and finance had dropped precipitously due to “The relentless nastiness about bankers and how horrible they are.” The finance-friendly press has also piped up with lukewarm support, the Telegraph arguing that bankers “need to know the current hostile environment is not the new status quo” in order to “allow London to remain competitive long-term.” More compassionately, James Sleater of Savile Row tailors Cad and the Dandy – recent sponsors of Britain’s in-no-way-crass-or-inappropriate Best Dressed Banker Award of 2010 – has gone a step further in calling time on the withering and relentless disparagement of his favourite customers, opining that “bankers work some of the longest hours and in one the most stressful of environments in the country.”

It’s a start. But it’s not enough. I’m moved by Mr. Madoff’s plea for mercy, and I’m disgusted that the best manifesto we can muster in defense of the fraught financial firmament boils down to mere expedience. It’s high time we started celebrating our hardworking, salt-of-the-earth, undersung usurers. To that end, I’ve revised an old classic from the American labour movement. This is somewhat London-biased; please feel free to adapt to your own downtrodden district of depressed debt dealers. With apologies to Merle Travis.

Sixteen Shares

I was born one mornin’ down in old Mayfair
Picked up a briefcase, walked to Paternoster Square
I sold sixteen shares of telecom stocks
And the CEO said, “Well bless my socks!”

You sell sixteen shares, and what do you get?
You get another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Savile Row

Born one morning it was capital gains
Buyin’ and sellin’ are my middle name
I was raised in a co-op by a French au pair
And no high-toned treasury gonna make me declare

You sell sixteen shares, and what do you get?
You get another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Savile Row

See me comin’ better step aside
A lot of men didn’t and a lot of men died
I got one fist of bonds and the other of bills
And if the right don’t get ya, then the left one will

You sell sixteen shares, and what do you get?
You get another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Savile Row

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A rich man’s made outta pure cold-blood
Pure cold-blood, no sense of right or wrong
A soul that’s a-weak and a fund that’s strong

You sell sixteen shares, and what do you get?
You get another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Savile Row

WARNING: Contains satire, mockery and travesty. Suitable for mature audiences only.

Reported events in Libya are very intriguing, to some extent. While one hopes that the following statements do not go too far over the top, we might say that unconfirmed allegations of loss of life may give one reason for pause. It is possible that some of us may entertain certain misgivings about the multifaceted and complex comments offered by the Libyan leader. While some may wish to argue that Col. Gaddafi is a “dictator,” a less tendentious characterization should suggest itself as the situation is neither black nor white, but grey.

It is important that the tone of discussion be kept serious, civil, and reasoned. Certainly one may express concern at the troubling reports, but what is needed is a process of broad consultation. Violence should be restrained. Commentators should respect the process by avoiding strident language, and respecting the fundamental, reflexive, and recursive ambiguity of what is a contingent and contested process.

As observers of the complexities around the social negotiation of constructed meanings, it would do us well to remember that democracy is inscribed as a gesture of erasure, that human rights exist as an absence through an erasure that is the sign of their own creation. What we urgently need then are less of the over-determined portrayals of reality that lead to debased forms of point scoring– “dictator!” “murderer! “bastard!”–and more sophisticated treatments of the contingency of discourse, while tacking back to the free floating signifiers that constitute the flows of democracy instantiated in the reflexive negotiation of identity best understood as friction where the practice of inscription is embodied but ever perched on the border with the simulacra of memory qua narrative.

Our colleagues in the diplomatic corps, working with the best of intentions and under the most pressing of circumstances, should be held in high regard. For while one may state in the strongest possible terms that events may be deplorable, one does not want to preclude the possibility for dialogue. Is it important to stress that Col. Gaddafi may be a confounded ne’er do well? Perhaps. But such intemperate and highly inflammatory polemics could jeopardize difficult but necessary ways of restoring calm, for what Libyans need now more than anything else is stability. Democracy cannot be achieved overnight. Hopefully, through a series of reforms brought about in an orderly transition, we can look forward to the moment when, like ourselves, Libyans may enjoy the fruits of civilized discourse.

And this is why we need nuance.

In “The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race and Gender,” by Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins (reprinted in The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, 2002, pps. 92-116), we encounter this very illuminating passage dealing with the figure of the veiled, non-Western woman, photographed by National Geographic, placing the apparent obsession with the veiled woman in a broader historical and cultural context:

Fanon (1965: 39) pointed out in his analysis of French colonial attitudes and strategies concerning the veil in Algeria that the colonialists’ goal, here as elsewhere in the world, was “converting the woman, winning her over to foreign values, wrenching her free from her status” as a means of “shaking up the [native] man” and gaining control of him. With this and other motives, those outsiders who would “develop” the third world have often seen the advancement of non-Western women as the first goal to be achieved, with their men’s progress thought to follow rather than precede it. In the nineteenth century, evolutionary theory claimed that the move upward from savagery to barbarism to civilization was indexed by the treatment of women, in particular by their liberation “from the burdens of overwork, sexual abuse, and male violence” (Tiffany and Adams 1985: 8). It “saw women in non-Western societies as oppressed and servile creatures, beasts of burden, chattels who could be bought and sold, eventually to be liberated by ‘civilization’ or ‘progress,’ thus attaining the enviable position of women in Western society” (Etienne and Leacock 1980: 1), who were then expected to be happy with their place (pps. 109-110).

Lutz and Collins are right in that we can find evidence going far back in the literature of men writing about the abuse of women by their native male partners. In my own research on the historical narratives that invented the “extinction of the indigenous” in the Caribbean, I came across this passage from a volume published in 1858 with a lot of material about Trinidad’s aboriginal population (specifically: De Verteuil, L. A. A. 1858. Trinidad: Its Geography, Natural Resources, Administration, Present Condition, and Prospects. London: Ward & Lock, p. 172):

“At present there cannot be above 200 or 300 Indians in the colony, so that the aborigines may be said to be almost extinct….finally sunk under the ascendancy of a more intelligent race….but I also coincide in opinion with some judicious observers, who trace the approximate extinction of those tribes to the marked presence manifested by the Indian women towards the negroes and the whites, by whome they were kindly treated, whilst they were regarded by their husbands, of kindred race, more as slaves and beasts of burden, than as equals or companions. As a consequence of those connections, there exists at present, in the colony, a certain number of individuals of Indian descent, but of mixed blood.”

This narrative of the West bringing freedom to the women of the non-West is hardly absent today; if anything, it seems louder and even more hypocritical than ever before, especially when we learn that one of the agents of this liberation–the U.S. military–is a misogynist’s paradise. Presumably looking at the Arab revolution–but not really–media celebrities have cynically and opportunistically exploited the reported rape and assault on CBS journalist Lara Logan in Egypt as an excuse for a sweeping commentary on “Middle Eastern attitudes” and “Muslim men” and the need for a “sexual revolution,” with some like Bill Maher insisting, “We’re better….we’re better!” (this is how Maher, inevitably, always purchases a space of acceptance, radical on some fronts, but reassuringly jingoistic and blatanly ethnocentric on other fronts). In line with this discussion, I recommend the recent articles and reports below for a much deeper and more up to date reading.

Roger Ebert’s ‘sad focus,’ by South/South:

Extract: Here’s why Ebert’s statement was out and out harmful and hurtful: • It singles out ‘Middle East attitudes toward women’ at the exclusion of all other regions and all other people. • It promotes a generality about ’Middle East attitudes toward women’ that is unverifiable, but one that easily plays in to orientalist, bigoted and racist attitudes toward Middle Easterners, Arabs and Muslims. •  It makes the indignities that women suffer, from unsolicited groping to catcalls to group sexual assault into a cultural issue rather than a grave and global obstacle to gender harmony. • It wrongly limits the scope of sexist attitudes to the Middle East. This is ethnic exceptionalism. • In the face of all these generalizations it obscures rape culture: ‘Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to “cure” queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.” • In the past decade of the Global War on Terror, brown bodies have been attacked on the basis of such justifications. If women in the Middle East are mistreated and subjected to derogatory attitudes and beliefs, then Western ‘civilized’ nations are justified to ‘liberate’ Middle Eastern women from their men.

Five inquiries on the worth of an Afghan woman, by South/South:

Extract: Is it worth remembering when Laura Bush visited Afghanistan in 2005 to put ‘a female-friendly face on an unpopular pro-corporate agenda‘?

In Tahrir Square and the Pentagon: Sexual assault exposed, by Suzanne Merkelson, Foreign Policy–a definite “must read”:

Extract: When one woman made a mistake at work, her boss called her a “stupid fucking female” and spit in her face. She was later stalked, sexually harassed, and raped. Another woman got drunk with her coworker, who was her superior, when he raped her. She spent the next two years forced to continue working with him; her work assignments were downgraded because she took medication to cope with the trauma of the ordeal. A third woman was sexually harassed by a supervisor and raped by a coworker. When she sought help from her workplace’s chaplain, she was told that “it must have been God’s will for her to be raped” and was recommended to attend church more often.

Where do these women work?: The U.S. military.

Military sexual abuse ‘staggering,’ Al Jazeera:

Extract: According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the rate of sexual assault on women in the military is twice that in the civilian population. A Government Accountability Office report concluded that most victims stay silent because of “the belief that nothing would be done; fear of ostracism, harassment, or ridicule and concern that peers would gossip.”

While a civilian rape victim is ensured confidential advice from his or her doctors, lawyers and advocates, the only access a military rape survivor has is to a chaplain.

Gates, Rumsfeld Sued Over U.S. Military’s Rape Epidemic, by Jesse Ellison, The Daily Beast:

Extract: A landmark lawsuit filed Tuesday against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, alleges that the military’s repeated failures to take action in rape cases created a culture where violence against women was tolerated, violating the plaintiffs’ Constitutional rights.

Copy of Class-Action Suit against Gates and Rumsfeld

Copy of 2009 Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military

…and some interesting statistics that show how much better “we” are:

• “According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006. That’s more than 600 women every day” (National Organization of Women)
• “1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime” (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network)
• “Rape and sexual assault comprise 2.1% of all workplace victimizations, accounting for an average of 36,500 incidents annually” (Houston Area Women’s Center: Sexual Assault in the Workplace)

A report by the Center for Naval Analyses, as mandated by Congress last year as a precondition for releasing further funds to the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System, declares that HTS is a success, and at worst, a victim of its success. The report is primarily focused on management structure (not managers), organization, recruiting, the “metrics” of success, and policy and regulatory issues (p. 1). It now seems more than likely that the report was a formality as part of a public, political window-dressing act where Congress ostensibly “responds” to criticisms and controversies surrounding HTS, but with every intention of continuing the program. Indeed, that is a fitting conclusion, considering that the report came on the eve of the announced resurgence and expansion of the program.

It’s a Success, and a Victim of its Success

While “success” is the overarching theme of the report, at no point do we find a CNA explanation of what it means by “success,” and indeed it remains the big mystery word of the entire report, even when the CNA investigators themselves note that HTS also lacks a formal understanding of success and how to gauge it. Here is the first declaration of success, appearing right up front in this report, which serves more as a justification for continuation of the program than an in-depth analysis of the many criticisms of the program:

“First, the HTS program has been, in many ways, a success. It is a unique and dynamic program, and its leadership and staff have been able to generate a new and innovative capability within a bureaucratic environment that is not always open to such initiatives. In our interactions with HTS personnel and staff, we consistently came across individuals who were deeply committed to the mission, which most likely has also contributed to its successes. The program also has support within the Army leadership. General David Petraeus, who recently became commander of International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is a staunch supporter. There are some indications in the data we collected for this assessment that this capability fills a gap for the war-fighter and therefore has made an important contribution to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan” (p. 2)

The CNA does note that there have been criticisms of the program—largely muffled—but argues that they are rooted in “misunderstandings” and that they tend to focus on issues of decision-making and specific incidents (which, as critics of HTS, we know is an entirely deceitful characterization):

“the program remains the target of criticism. Part of this appears to stem from specific incidents and poor decisions that have occurred within the program, such as sending unqualified personnel into combat zones. Our analysis suggests that poor internal communications and the absence of an overall outreach or communications strategy may also be contributing to a misunderstanding of the program’s goals and operations. This may also account for some criticism” (p. 2).

Given the immense, and usually favourable, media coverage devoted to HTS and often stage-managed by HTS, one has to wonder how the CNA came to the conclusion that HTS lacked a communications strategy, or in which ways the program’s “goals and operations” were misunderstood. Since the very report itself was mandated at the culmination of a wide range of critical opposition, one would be justified in expecting some more detailed and careful treatment of these points. Instead, we have vague and obscure generalizations.

Some Anthropologists are Opposed to HTS

“For numerous reasons,” we are told, but without going into any detail, “some anthropologists are opposed to the program. To learn more about the nature of these concerns, we recommend the reader refer to the ‘AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC) Final Report on The Army’s Human Terrain System Proof of Concept Program,’ Submitted to the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, October 14, 2009.” At no point in this report does the CNA simply lump a major theme under a single reference and tells the reader to go elsewhere—usually there is an attempt at a summary. “In addition,” they continue, “there is also an active blog community made up of a variety of outspoken individuals who oppose the program” (fn. 4, p. 2)—but no links, because the understanding is that Congress should not be made aware of any of our criticisms. Indeed, the CNA explicitly prefers to avoid them: “we do not directly wade into the broader debates surrounding the HTS program that are currently taking place on various websites and blogs” (p. 11). Somehow missing the lead role played by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists—which is never mentioned even once in the report by name—the CNA states: “A key stakeholder in this debate is the academic community, most prominently represented by the American Anthropological Association” (p. 12). We will return to what the CNA says about academics’ criticisms, and relationships with universities, further down.

The problems the CNA found/chose to examine were these:

1. Recruiting/hiring of unqualified team members
2. High rates of attrition among HTS team members
3. Contract ceiling being reached, halting HTS operations
4. Timecard problems
5. Frustration over permanent duty station assignment for Department of Army Civilians who rotate or transit through Fort Leavenworth
6. HTS program management (p. 8).

The Assessment

The CNA does acknowledge that there were limits to what it could assess and how:

“A significant portion of HTS activities and operations take place in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, given the 90 day time-frame we were allotted to conduct this assessment, the CNA assessment team was not able to travel to either theater to conduct our research. As a result, we relied mostly on information we could gather within the United States” (p. 10)

Relying on assessments from HTS’ own Program Development Team, the CNA reports that past PDT documents reveal “‘pockets’ of brigade commander feedback on the program—some positive and some negative” (p. 60), but also notes that there is a reason why there would be less negative feedback: “It was also voluntary for a unit to participate in the survey, thus units who were positive about their HTTs tended to participate, while those that had not had positive experiences with their HTTs were not” (p. 61). On a positive note, and unlike the mainstream media, Appendix B of the CNA report has detailed comments from brigade commanders who were critical of the HTTs assigned to them and did not find them useful.

Interestingly, while judging the program to be a success, the CNA devotes many pages to describing the partial, incomplete, halting, inconsistent, uneven, and often confused nature of internal HTS self-assessments. Our question should be: if HTS judges itself to be a “success” (and secures CNA’s agreement on this front) then what do they mean by success and how do they assess success? There is no clear and consistent answer. Indeed, even as the CNA explains at length that there were no consistent attempts to define or measure success, or that certain standard military assessment measures were never put in place, and that it is unclear who was the intended audience of the “mixed bag” of HTS assessments, and how the assessments resulted in decisions to change practices (if they did)—nonetheless, in spite of all of that, the CNA still begins its report with its primary conclusion: HTS is a success, and it’s the one basic, recurring term that it is consistently unable to define. Here are some examples of its findings:

“HTS has not relied heavily on metrics as part of past assessments procedures. Those that have been used have evolved over time, and have not been used consistently….In 2008, an effort was launched to develop a more formal assessment process similar to those in other military organizations. As part of that process, metrics have been developed, but apparently have not been employed….There has never been a permanent, fully-staffed component responsible for assessments within the HTS structure” (p. 69)

“It is unclear over time, what the exact purpose and goals of past assessments have been and who the intended audience is….Using the current approach it is difficult to do any trend analysis of the program because the tool used to assess the program’s performance and the final product has changed from year to year” (p. 70)

“There does not appear to be a formal process for implementing the suggestions/conclusions reached in the various” HTS internal assessments (p. 71)

“absence of clearly defined tasks and standards” (p. 71)

Even though they are unable to determine what success is, in the section following their detailed overview of the problems of HTS assessments, the CNA nonetheless continues with this line: “The HTS organization has been both blessed and cursed by its own success” (p. 73)

After charting poor recruitment, training and high attrition rates, the CNA still insists on concluding as follows:

“That HTS has succeeded at all (and it has had some notable successes [unspecified]) is a tribute to the hundreds of men and women who have dedicated themselves to making it happen. Many of the people we interviewed, including the most critical of HTS, indicated that HTS teams are performing a vital function. They contend that even if only a few of the teams are successful [meaning what?], the good work that the successful teams do is so important that it makes the whole enterprise worthwhile” (p. 109)

Stirring words.

Desperate and Unscrupulous Recruits, Optimism about Management

In the CNA investigators’ view, the most significant and persistent problem plaguing HTS has been recruiting (p. 3)—which is not to say that even with this limited scope they do not produce some interesting findings.

When speaking of recruitment and training, the CNA describes the work of the private defense contractor, BAE Systems, and its selection of candidates as ranging from “loose” in 2009 to “moderately selective in 2010—in the case of 2010, 60% of the total 1,342 applications received was rejected (p. 87). Interestingly, in speaking to a CNA interviewer, “BAE would not characterize recruiting as either good or bad but as ‘involved’” (p. 88). The CNA was not moved by this evasive non-explanation, and concludes:  “the quality of the personnel supplied under the BAE contract is substandard and is at the heart of most of the problems in the program….The government seems to have to take whatever BAE provides” (p. 106).

If this seems like it will take us on a journey through a maze of corrupt contractor practices and incompetent management, it would occasion disappointment, as the report spends more time outlining the unsuitable quality of recruits, and the bad economy that sends them to BAE Systems. As BAE itself told the CNA: “The weak economy had brought in some recruits….The weak economy has caused some of them to make the decision” (p. 89). The CNA says that the managers themselves found the recruits to be of poor quality: “Throughout HTS, managers comment on what they consider to be the poor quality of many of the recruits” (p. 90)—in some months, as many as 56% of trainees either resign and/or are dropped by the program. Again, the question persists: where in this do we see “success”?

What is an interesting revelation is that those in charge of recruiting and management suspected that many recruits are merely using HTS training for purposes other than serving HTS:

“Equally problematic is an apparently recent trend noticed by trainers of substantial numbers of recruits resigning at the very end of training—see for example the data of November 2009 and January 2010. The trainers tell us that many of these recruits seemed to have had no intention of actually deploying and were only there to collect pay for 4.5 months and get a security clearance….the substantial amount of pay collected during this interval may well be attractive,  particularly during this economic downturn. With the 4.5 months of training and a security clearance the recruit may also be able to get a lucrative long term job with another contractor” (p. 93)

As for the instructors, the CNA determines that 69% are from backgrounds that are “not relevant” to the stated requirements of the program (p. 96). As for the research managers, 76% are from educational backgrounds that are “not relevant” (p. 97) Of the deployed social scientists, 40% are from “not relevant” training backgrounds (p. 98) As for team leaders, 88% are from “not relevant” backgrounds: “On balance the team members’ academic specialties all too often lack real relevance to the behavioral and social science research backgrounds that the teams appear to need and is referenced in the position descriptions and the associated knowledge, skills, and abilities” (p. 100).

The CNA outlines what we already knew, that there has been a consistent lack of recruits with the necessary language skills, so much so that the requirement has been dropped (p. 101).

What is perhaps much more astounding, and never mentioned by the media, is the extremely high number of those being fired or resigning once they have already been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan: “we estimate that about 8 deployed team members are relieved from duty each year and about 80 team members resign while on deployment” (p. 102)—then, by its own reported numbers of persons deployed (157), that would mean about half of all deployed HTS team members either resign or are relieved of duty.

Even though the CNA did say that as many as 76% of all managers come from irrelevant backgrounds, the CNA is more positive in its commentary about managers. The CNA writes: “In general, there is reason for optimism about HTS internal management. The management structure has greatly improved in the last 12 months. Of note, there has been the addition of a Chief of Staff, several key replacements in directorates, and the organization is in the process of converting all remaining contractors that currently head directorates in government civilian status” (p. 5).

The CNA did assess the quality of the recruits. Did it do the same with respect to managers? No: “It is important that the reader understand that we were not asked to assess the quality of the managers, but only to comment on the adequacy of the structure” (p. 41). Even when it seems that the CNA might take a critical turn—“Given media reports (at least some of which we believe to be substantially correct) of inappropriate behavior on the part of some team members, it is reasonable to question whether the management is, in fact, adequate to the task” (p. 44)—the CNA pulls back: by inadequate management they mean management structure, and they proceed to recommend that there be more managers, following models that include those of management gurus like Peter Drucker. The problem with the managers is…there are not enough of them. As for management problems, the CNA concludes there is “reason for optimism” that all of the necessary changes to improve HTS management are well underway (p. 48).

Quite aside from the issues raised above, and included only because it supplements the photos provided by former HTS employee John Allison, what is interesting are the CNA’s notes about the HTS training facility:

“The physical plant for training at Fort Leavenworth can be described as Spartan. Until recently, training has been conducted in a group of trailers. The facility has been ‘upgraded’ and now occupies the basement of a small shopping center. The space consists of classrooms for students and cubicles for instructors. When we visited each of the classrooms was occupied with 15-25 students. Many of the classrooms are noisy due to the nature of the air conditioning system—making it very difficult to hear the instructor. During our visit, the instructors were experimenting with a headphone system to enable students to hear them over the air conditioning. This was the first day with the system and it was not working well” (p. 91).

Anthropology and Academic Outreach

First, it is important to note that, contrary to the ways HTS tried to distance itself from anthropology in the U.S. mainstream media when it could no longer counter overwhelming criticism and rejection, the CNA does note that anthropology is a cornerstone of HTS’ preferred identity: “HTS emphasizes the use of tools and approaches commonly associated with the academic disciplines of anthropology and sociology in its efforts to collect and analyze data about local populations” (p. 1).

To overcome criticisms, the CNA recommends more academic outreach, but notes “HTS also faces negative attitudes within some academic circles. For example, some universities have been reluctant to work with HTS” (p. 6). This is repeated on page 122:

“HTS also faces the challenge of negative attitudes within some academic circles towards the HTS program overall. In some of its outreach efforts, HTS has already faced an unwillingness on the part of some institutions or individuals (in particular some within the Anthropological community) to work together.”

Yet, as we know already, HTS has been successful in gaining the cooperation of at least four universities, as charted by the CNA:

How to get around the lack of subject matter experts and persons with relevant qualifications? The CNA notes that “in a resource-constrained environment, seeking opportunities to leverage the expertise, programs, and work of outside organizations is a worthwhile endeavor” (p. 121).

The CNA proposes a simple, awful solution—that all of us become silently enlisted into training HTS recruits:

“An alternative for the long term is for HTS to ‘grow its own.’ Promising young officers could be selected for training program in social science and sent to an appropriate university for advanced degrees….One downside to this approach is that the military officer trained as a social scientist might have more difficulty gaining the trust of the local population than a civilian social scientist” (p. 121).

They still want anthropologists and academics for their legitimacy and credibility in being able to penetrate local communities—assuming those communities have no access to these debates, and some do. There is no consideration of the likelihood that once the association with military training has permanently burnt the reputation of anthropologists, they will then get about the same welcome as the military gets.

An alternative that the CNA points to, and we shall have to look at whether this materializes in the future, is for HTS to work with any of “a number of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs),” or “other public research institutions such as the center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Brookings Institution,” which, “may also be appropriate partners for HTS” (p. 122).

It is peculiar that the CNA chose to blame the overwhelming criticism on HTS lacking a strategic communications plan for outreach to academic organizations, noting that HTS also lacks a directorate or individual within HTS who has the assigned responsibility for pursuing relationships and partnerships with academic organizations (p. 121)—yet we do know that Montgomery McFate attended anthropology conferences specifically with the aim of recruiting people, and that she featured herself in numerous articles about HTS.

More than One Human Terrain Program

With the assistance of an officer in U.S. military intelligence, we already posted some information on other human terrain capabilities in the U.S. military, as well as similar functions of SCRATs, and we identified multiple human terrain programs. The CNA charts some of these, but does not address the question of why HTS is therefore needed when its capabilities have been multiplied across several domains.

Also of Interest, Some Facts and Figures:

Number of Human Terrain Teams Deployed:

• Number of deployed Human Terrain Teams in Iraq is 10, or 92 personnel
• Number of deployed Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan is 17, or 65 personnel
• Total persons deployed 157–for May 2010 (p. 19)

In addition, there are a further 7 Human Terrain Analysis Teams in Afghanistan, and 3 in Iraq (p. 21)

In Afghanistan, HTTs are deployed with the U.S. Army, Marines, NATO, Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, Task Force Phoenix, and “3 other unspecified units.”

Of 555 employees in total (as of 18 June 2010), 101 were military personnel, 206 were private contractors, and less than half (248) were civilians (p. 76).

Funding:

“HTS was not able to provide us with a detailed budget” (p. 43) – instead, all they have is a general funding plan. From that (p. 43) we learn of the funding provided to HTS in the following fiscal years:

• 2008–$144,000,000
• 2009–$92,541,000
• 2010–$159,729,000
• 2011–$154,822,000

TOTAL = $551,092,000

* the program began in 2006, and no figures are supplied for 2006 and 2007

From those amounts, the following was spent on deployed teams:

• 2008–$77,950,000
• 2009–$72,061,000
• 2010–$125,752,000
• 2011–$112,261,000

The CNA judges the level of funding to be inadequate (p. 43).

The BAE recruitment contract, renewed in September 2009, is $380 million, over five years (p. 86).

Anthropologists in the Military:

Some interesting data on the total number of all civilians with degrees in anthropology employed by the Pentagon, as of September 2009 (pps. 113-114):

• US ARMY: 285 (160 with a BA in anthropology, 95 with a MA, 30 with a PhD)
• US NAVY: 119 (68 with a BA in anthropology, 30 with a MA, and 21 with a PhD)
• US MARINE CORPS: 15 (8 with a BA in anthropology, 6 with a MA, 1 with a PhD)
• US AIR FORCE: 70 (47 with a BA in anthropology, 17 with a MA, and 6 with a PhD)
• OTHER DoD CIVILIANS: 43 (39 with a BA in anthropology, and 4 with a MA)

TOTAL = 532 (322 with a BA in anthropology, 152 with a MA, 58 with a PhD)

The CNAR report vindicates, again, the stories and observations of the nearly 100 sources from inside the HTS program that were responsible for the production of a staggering 50 articles written over a two year period. It is in large measure their stories that were responsible for the severe rework of the program. Sound minds in the US Congress and within the US Army/OSD—including the AR-15 investigator should receive some sort of commendation for their efforts.

Now HTS is evolving into a program-of-record and is unabashedly an intelligence support program as everyone knew it always was. HTS teams will be a mix of information gatherers from a variety of military, intelligence and social science disciplines mixed with US Army warfighters and combat hardened contractors.

In short, the HTTs will become multidimensional teams capable of deploying around the globe with the capability to use “civilian power” but go kinetic in the snap of a finger. The Sri Lankan soldier who once said, “I fear Human Terrain Teams more than the CIA” was quite prescient.

The HTS effort will continue during Operation New Dawn in Iraq and is ongoing in Afghanistan. According to US Army FY2012 budget documents, the HTS program will expand into other combatant commands like AFRICOM.

According to the CNAR, US Army TRADOC leadership was largely ambivalent to the HTS program even as General David Petraeus, USA—and ostensibly the CG of TRADOC–aggressively supported the effort as the premier solution to the failure of American political and military to prepare the human-cultural terrain for American soldiers.

On their watch soldier/civilian casualties (KIA, WIA), a manslaughter and hostage case, and sexual harassment cases took place within HTS. That TRADOC leadership in G2 and up the chain of command in TRADOC tolerated this state of affairs is common but utterly distasteful.

And people get promoted while people and programs crash and burn around them?

Some say that the next generation HTS is doomed because the reputation of HTS is so horrid that many in the field will try to avoid getting ensnared in the social science/intelligence combination product that HTS pushes. Within the US Army’s budget documents justifying HTS and other intelligence programs, there is a note that indicates the costs have increased because more contractors are being used to perform intelligence tasks of all types–just so.

At any rate, two excerpts from the CNAR are listed below.

“It appears that HTS’s most significant problems revolve around human resourcing and the level of support provided to HTS by TRADOC. We believe that solutions to these immediate issues exist. We emphasize, however that, these issues are not new. Problems in human resourcing and support have been evident in HTS for years—and little has been done to address them to date. As a result, we conclude that a more fundamental problem may exist: there may be a lack of TRADOC institutional commitment to making HTS a success. Hence, while further exploration would need to be conducted to determine this definitively, it is possible that the HTS mission would be better served if HTS were located elsewhere, but potential alternatives are beyond the scope of this assessment.”

“It, it is unclear what the exact purpose and goals of past assessments have been and who the intended audience is. It appears that the Project Management Office was the primary recipient of HTS products and that TRADOC G2 has not received or reviewed HTS assessment products. Second, the current approach has made it difficult to conduct any trend analysis of the program’s development. Finally, there is not a formal process for implementing the suggestions/conclusions reached in the various assessments within HTS. Any organizational change that has come about due to past assessments has been the result of an informal decision-making process.”

President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

“The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt. We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary and asked for to pursue a credible transition to a democracy.” –Barack Obama, speech on Friday, 11 February 2011, on the resignation of Hosni Mubarak

Finally, Mubarak is out. But the U.S. is still very much in, for now. Are we seeing, in Egypt, a novel American mode of intervention? Are we seeing evidence of what we might call the (Hillary) Clinton Doctrine? The U.S. government is certainly not speaking as if it has suffered a major loss. If anything, it sounds like it has plans for the future of the Egypt.

Numerous observers, even in the American mainstream media, have painted a picture of a “shifting,” ambiguous, ambivalent, often contradictory set of U.S. government narratives about the Egyptian revolution, since just days after the 25 January protests began. Their observations are not flawed. But one caution is very necessary: when we encounter people that we know are smart and astute, the best way to underestimate them and miscalculate their moves is to assume that they have become suddenly dumb when offering seemingly contradictory statements. The objective ought to be to search for the deeper logic that unifies seemingly opposed parts of the narrative into a working whole. In doing so, we will find what is evidence of what I think we can call the Clinton Doctrine, and evidence of its momentary success in Egypt.

It deserves to be called the Clinton Doctrine since U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been the author of several related foreign policy initiatives, which we can group under the banner of “21st Century Statecraft,” while Obama has really done nothing to be distinguished as a unique “foreign policy president.”

The (Hillary) Clinton Doctrine thus far does not exist officially, written up as a widely acknowledged policy. It should be, because as mentioned before it is a relatively novel approach, one that is much more insidious and yet appropriate to a weakened and recessionary empire. Simply put, the Clinton Doctrine involves hedging U.S. bets by keeping a foot in almost all camps, by maintaining contact with diverse sectors in a society critical to U.S. national security interests, emphasizing “stability” when regime survival seems possible, and then emphasizing “orderly transition” when change seems probable. It is a mixture of realism and opportunism and a desire to intervene without being seen to intervene, a low cost foreign policy that builds on established bases of military aid and support for civil society groups. By maintaining open and positive channels of communication (with Mubarak, the military, the April 6 Movement, El Baradei, and even the Muslim Brotherhood [long a working ally of the U.S.]) the U.S. made sure that no matter what resulted, it would remain in the picture as a continued player of importance. Viewed in this light, there is nothing contradictory about U.S. statements on Egypt.

“In these difficult times, I know that the Egyptian people will persevere, and they must know that they will continue to have a friend in the United States of America.” –Barack Obama, speech on Thursday, 10 February 2011

“I am telling tell you, in my capacity as am president of the republic, that I never find it embarrassing to listen and respond to my country’s youths, but it is shameful and I will never accept is to listen to foreign dictations , whatever their sources, pretexts or justifications were….I have never been subjected to foreign pressure or dictations“–Hosni Mubarak, speech to the nation, Thursday, 10 February 2011

If Mubarak made some nationalist sounds in his final days, against those who had provided tens of billions of dollars in support for his regime over the decades, it is because he observed the U.S. playing different camps, especially knowing for how many years the U.S. had maintained open channels to human rights activists in Egypt and had repeatedly complained to Mubarak about the excessive brutality of his security services and his far-too-tight control over the political process. For a recessionary empire, Mubarak’s regime was a high-cost alternative that increasingly made violent opposition less of an option and more of a certainty–and the U.S. cannot stand what one activist today proclaimed (with great hope) was an Egypt where “all horizons are open.” No, there has to be more predictability than that, where the U.S. is concerned. So the U.S. shifted its weight to its alternatives: pro-West human rights activists, and more powerful than Mubarak, the huge military infrastructure that the U.S. helped to build. Here is “orderly transition” with “friendship” to the Egyptian people.

That the U.S. has had positive contact with diverse camps is established in various sources. On the one hand, there is the work of the Alliance of Youth Movements, originating from the U.S. State Department and the work of Jared Cohen and aided by major Web firms such as Google, for whom Cohen now works while maintaining a leading position in AYM. This opened direct communication between one April 6 Movement activist and U.S. diplomats. Ahmed Salah, co-founder of the April 6 Movement is also a senior fellow at AYM, which maintains an active profile of engagement with Egypt. Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who was captured by state security and turned into a virtual hero by U.S. media as the founder of the Facebook page that allegedly led to the January 25 protests, openly corresponds with the State Deptartment’s Alec J. Ross, with his release getting special mention by State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, praised by Jared Cohen as the source to follow in Egyptian events. Before Mubarak had formally stepped down, Ghonim was posting in Twitter, repeatedly, “Mission Accomplished” and hailed the success of something he calls “Revolution 2.0.” Here Ghonim asks the protesters to now demobilize, as if the revolution was to stop merely at the removal of one man. Here he praises the army, clearly entrusting them to now take the lead. Ghonim instantly won the severe repudiation of those who have fought long and hard in Egypt for transformation.

Egyptian pro-democracy activists have certainly scored a major victory. Removal of Mubarak seemed almost impossible before, especially not by peaceful means. One fears that the revolution may now become fragmented, divided, manipulated, with the Ghonims touted by Washington as “heroes” and “moderates,” and others pressing for much needed greater changes likely to be set apart as “extremists.” For now, the Clinton Doctrine ensures that the U.S. is not yet down and out of Egypt.