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(http://blogs.aljazeera.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/FeaturedImagePost/images/680_4.jpg)

seems like 1989 in North Africa, hopefully the Egyptians will succeed in driving Mubarak out of power

It's super neat, and all because of a single market trader in Tunisia.

I have been watching it on the news. Scary stuff in Egypt. It could so easily produce an active enemy for Israel and destablise the whole area. People's revolutions don't often actually benefiit the people. Swatting one bloodsucking fly away, another hungrier one often takes its place.

Mike

Looks like Egypt is pulling a Romania next to Tunisia's Hungary.

Mubarak has sacked the government (but not apparently himself)

Quote from: bwv 1080 on January 28, 2011, 01:40:15 PM
Mubarak has sacked the government (but not apparently himself)

Yes.  I wonder how that will go with the people, as he himself is their object of protest.  Talk about misreading a situation or what?  It is like someone saying "I hate you and I want you out of the house!"  with the reply "I understand you.  I will send the children out to play for you."

Quote from: John on January 28, 2011, 01:49:21 PM
Yes.  I wonder how that will go with the people.

Not well. They're now shouting "Down with Mubarak!" The longer a dictator has been in power the more daft he is in comprehending these sorts of things.

His new Governent is set up with new powers to 'deal with the situation'.  I hope he does not mean the situation on the streets, but rather the situation of his country.

Well, I have no sympathy with Mubarak, but I'm not convinced good will come of this.  What are the odds that Islamic Fundamentalists will end up running things when the smoke clears?

It's not just any arab country, though. It's the most populous (I think) in the middle east, its demographic is young and more educated than many others. It's more than worth a punt, as if any country could create a domino effect, it would be this one.

Quote from: Scarpia on January 28, 2011, 02:08:39 PM
Well, I have no sympathy with Mubarak, but I'm not convinced good will come of this.  What are the odds that Islamic Fundamentalists will end up running things when the smoke clears?

Well, the Muslim brotherhood, which is the largest opposition party is Islamic conservative in outlook, but they are not fundamentalists by any stretch, as that term would be understood in the West. Plus Mohammed El Baradei seems to be a credible opposition leadership figure and he surely is no extremist. If the West is serious about stopping Islamic fundamentalism there has to come a point where they realize that supporting repressive regimes on the grounds of presumed "stability" and resistance to "terrorism" and "fundmentalism" achieves the opposite: it radicalizes the population in the long run.

Quote from: Lethe on January 28, 2011, 02:13:20 PM
It's not just any arab country, though. It's the most populous (I think) in the middle east, its demographic is young and more educated than many others. It's more than worth a punt, as if any country could create a domino effect, it would be this one.

I agree.  Egypt (just as some other countrties we don't expect, Iran, Jordan...) has a level of sophistication which is on a par with Western levels, just like Israel does.  We shouldn't put it down as some kind of 'peasant' revolt.     :o

I must admit, if the UK governemnt decided to block mobile and internet access in a 24 hour period because of riots, I'd be out there with everyone else (with Bruckner on my ipod of course).   :P

QuoteAn Obama administration official says the US will review its $1.5bn in aid to Egypt based on events unfolding in the country, where the authoritarian government is struggling to extinguish huge and growing street protests.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation. Egypt has been a key US ally in the volatile region. US officials are now increasing calls on President Hosni Mubarak, the target of the protesters, to respond with restraint and reverse steps taken to cut off the protesters' ability to communicate.

The decision to review assistance to Egypt is a significant step as the US seeks to balance the desire to maintain stability in the region with a recognition of the unexpected scope and uncertain outcome of the protests.

Now we're talking! Take him off the IV already!

I am so busy watching Al Jazeera and the BBC News Channel that I'm not listening to anything!!  Unusual.   Anyone know of any Egyptian composers?

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/101313/20110114/the-story-of-mohamed-bouazizi-the-man-who-toppled-tunisia.htm


Friday, January 14, 2011 3:12 PM
The Story of Mohamed Bouazizi, the man who toppled Tunisia
Mohamed Bouazizi was a 26-year-old Tunisian with a computer science degree.   

Like millions of angry and desperate Tunisians, he faced the unpleasant combination of poor employment prospects and food inflation. Moreover, the Tunisian government was seen as corrupt and authoritarian.

By December 17, resentment against authorities has been brewing for a while.

To make ends meet, the unemployed Bouazizi sold fruits and vegetables from a cart in his rural town of Sidi Bouzid, located 160 miles from the country's capital Tunis. He did not have a license to sell, but it was his sole source of income.

On December 17, authorities confiscated his produce and allegedly slapped his face.

Bouazizi became incensed.

He then drenched himself in gasoline and set himself on fire outside the governor's office. Bouazizi survived his initial suicide attempt. After being transported to a hospital near Tunis, he was visited by President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali before passing away on January 4.   

After his suicide attempt, unrest broke out in Sidi Bouzid. The police cracked down on the protestors, which only fueled the movement.  The revolt eventually spread to the capital city.

On January 14, the masses of protestors prevailed as President Ben Ali fled the country amid escalating violence and opposition.

During Bouazizi's funeral, Agence France Presse reported that marchers chanted "farewell, Mohamed, we will avenge you. We weep for you today, we will make those who caused your death weep."

Quote from: Mensch on January 28, 2011, 02:15:10 PM
Well, the Muslim brotherhood, which is the largest opposition party is Islamic conservative in outlook, but they are not fundamentalists by any stretch, as that term would be understood in the West. Plus Mohammed El Baradei seems to be a credible opposition leadership figure and he surely is no extremist. If the West is serious about stopping Islamic fundamentalism there has to come a point where they realize that supporting repressive regimes on the grounds of presumed "stability" and resistance to "terrorism" and "fundmentalism" achieves the opposite: it radicalizes the population in the long run.

     The West will not realize that, and I don't have a very good argument for why it should. Because democracy is better? All things being equal, yes. All things are not equal, though.

     Why do you think ElBaredei is better? Why be happy with him since he'll do the same thing Mubarak does?

     And why do you put terrorism, stability and fundamentalism in quotes? Are they illusory, or creations of Western propagandists? I would say instead that the fictionality of these is itself a creation of a different set of propagandists, who don't have a very good explanation for how these illusory terrorists and fundamentalists manage to kill so many nonillusory people.

Quote from: drogulus on January 28, 2011, 04:35:45 PM
Why do you think ElBaredei is better? Why be happy with him since he'll do the same thing Mubarak does?

That is why he is useful in this matter - his Nobel peace prize winning status would leave him more likely to want to be a good leader, if only for egotistical reasons. Becoming just another despot would lose him all that delicious international admiration and attention that he has gathered until now.

Quote from: drogulus on January 28, 2011, 04:35:45 PM
     Why do you think ElBaredei is better? Why be happy with him since he'll do the same thing Mubarak does?

Based on his leadership style at the IAEA he doesn't strike me as being of nearly the same mold. Also, he offered to be head of an *interim* government if the people so desire. That is a rather modest ambition that speaks well of his character.

Quote from: drogulus on January 28, 2011, 04:35:45 PM
     And why do you put terrorism, stability and fundamentalism in quotes? Are they illusory, or creations of Western propagandists?

I'm not saying they are fictional or illusory. Rather, like many other things in politics, they are extremely shortsighted concepts. To really fight terrorism and fundamentalism and create stability in the long term you have to resist the easy fixes that give you "stability" in the short term. That is what we're seeing in the case of Egypt. Remember that a significant number of the 9-11 attackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, came from Egypt. Remember that the Egyptians tolerated and encourage the tunnels to the Palestinian territories in Sinai. So what was that "stability" worth in the end? From a sober perspective, Mubarak failed to live up even to those modest expectations of "stability" for which the West supported him, and he failed long before these protests came about.

One sure way to fix it....

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011128222033802146.html

What sort of stinks is that Egypt has gotten so large it has distracted us from Gabon.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article877998.ece/Tensions-rise-in-Gabon

Quote from: Lethe on January 28, 2011, 05:24:03 PM
That is why he is useful in this matter - his Nobel peace prize winning status would leave him more likely to want to be a good leader, if only for egotistical reasons. Becoming just another despot would lose him all that delicious international admiration and attention that he has gathered until now.

What do Boris Yeltsin, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Vladimir Lenin all have in common?  They were popular revolutionaries that at one point seemed like a better alternative to the corrupt regimes that preceded them.  Who knows if ElBaredei will find his reputation particularly valuable when he controls the levers of power. 

I suppose so, but I suppose I am excessively optimistic. I can't consider supporting people like Mubarak over a potential improvement as a moral option - it's condemning members of poor countries to forever living in a dump at the expense of the dubious view that people like him make everyday life in rich countries better (Mexico having its own Saddam Hussain would probably make it cheaper and more convenient for the US to deal with, but that would still be a untentable proposition). Large risks have been an inherent part of how western countries developed their own political systems to their currently levels of adequacy and if attempts to reach those levels are stifled by western governments, no wonder those societies produce so many anti-western crazies.

I still maintain that Egypt is far away from the nightmare the last few US governments have dug themselves into in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's not surprising that Somalia and Yemen are the next highest on the worry-scale, as those four countries aren't just undeveloped, exluding a few areas of mainly Pakistan, they are pre-modern. Egypt is like a more advanced Iraq, and all the things that went wrong with that country aren't present here (western military invasion, sectarian divide [at least between Muslims], a neighbouring country doing its best to pour terrorists over the border).

Well luckily for everyone Mubarak has dissolved the government, in a day.

More updates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7BYZG_hhUU

;D

edit: You can hear "their" "leader's" "response".

Live streaming:
http://english.aljazeera.net/

Over thirty dead so far.

Up to 53.

Police now using live ammo to put down protesters.

Rumors surfacing that Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Anan may assume power.

Death toll up to 95.

4pm local time (2pm GMT) is the deadline for a curfew, apparently after which the police suggest it will be "dangerous" for people to remain outside. With 50,000+ and growing on Cairo's streets it seems like Super Drama Time :-*

Quote from: Lethe on January 29, 2011, 04:09:34 AM
4pm local time (2pm GMT) is the deadline for a curfew, apparently after which the police suggest it will be "dangerous" for people to remain outside. With 50,000+ and growing on Cairo's streets it seems like Super Drama Time :-*

This is scary stuff. We're watching world history happen. There are so many ways this could end (so few of them desirable).

Quote from: Mensch on January 28, 2011, 05:51:29 PM
Based on his leadership style at the IAEA he doesn't strike me as being of nearly the same mold. Also, he offered to be head of an *interim* government if the people so desire. That is a rather modest ambition that speaks well of his character.

ElBaradei is a boring technocrat. He wouldn't be a bad choice to oversee a temporary government, draft a new constitution ensuring democratic measures, and administer an election.

Heck, then he'd finally earn his Nobel Peace Prize.

Quote from: Brian on January 29, 2011, 04:39:36 AM
ElBaradei is a boring technocrat. He wouldn't be a bad choice to oversee a temporary government, draft a new constitution ensuring democratic measures, and administer an election.

They have a constitution ensuring democratic measures.  Mubarek has been ruling under a declaration of a "state of emergency" for 30 years since the assassination of Anwar el Sadat by radical Islamicists interrupted his program of political and economic reform.

I guess, then, that after 30 years they need someone new to declare the end to the state of emergency . . . .

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on January 29, 2011, 04:54:38 AM
I guess, then, that after 30 years they need someone new to declare the end to the state of emergency . . . .

And when the street riots started they had nothing further to declare.   :'(

Fascinating coverage from AJ. Let's hope the Islamists don't come out on top.

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

Live coverage. 10 minutes into curfew, thousands crammed on the streets.

Mike

Newly announced VP (the West's choice, of course), seeminly it seems that the prez is on his way out (perhaps like Putin).

Quote from: Lethe on January 28, 2011, 05:24:03 PM
That is why he is useful in this matter - his Nobel peace prize winning status would leave him more likely to want to be a good leader, if only for egotistical reasons. Becoming just another despot would lose him all that delicious international admiration and attention that he has gathered until now.

     Like Karzai? No, these guys bask in international acclaim for a season then pivot away when they see how unpopular their status makes them at home, where they're seen as Western stooges. When push comes to shove the leader will always yield to internal pressures. In 6 months or less ElBaradei will be siding with the homies. Always appease the side most likely to kill you. Expressions of hatred for the West are cost free.

     I know the argument about the shortsightedness of supporting dictators, but it only convinces if the democratic alternative is better. Remember Algeria? If a genuine democratic alternative shows up we should support it, even at the risk of harming its chances. We want democracy and peace, but we want peace first.

     Foreign policy is not run by stupid people. They know what we know and more. Nor is it run by people with different values than the critics have. That is a myth. It's run by people with real power, so what's different is their circumstances. What they do matters, and they aren't free to adopt ethics without consequences, which makes them look blind to consequences from the perspective of someones used to having opinions that have no consequences at all.

     What we will do and probably should do is ease Mubarak out by tying his hands (we might have done that already). We will welcome the new leader with expressions of hope, try and get the best people out of jail and into the new gov't. What else can we do?

I have visited Egypt and been off the tourist trail. I have seen grinding poverty, eg families living in depressions in the ground, and spoken to people about how the government restrictions affected them, eg not being allowed to cross the Nile without a permi. also religious suppression, eg Coptic Christians being excluded from government controlled posts in the provinces.

If it is being implied that the US ought now to be easing Mubarak out because intolerable conditions have broken the patience of the people, then it might have been better to have eased him out in a more controlled way and somewhat earlier. Or is it mere sick fantasy that the US holds this kind or authority, I wonder. 

Quote from: knight on January 29, 2011, 08:01:29 AM
I have visited Egypt and been off the tourist trail. I have seen grinding poverty, eg families living in depressions in the ground, and spoken to people about how the government restrictions affected them, eg not being allowed to cross the Nile without a permi. also religious suppression, eg Coptic Christians being excluded from government controlled posts in the provinces.

If it is being implied that the US ought now to be easing Mubarak out because intolerable conditions have broken the patience of the people, then it might have been better to have eased him out in a more controlled way and somewhat earlier. Or is it mere sick fantasy that the US holds this kind or authority, I wonder.

I think the US has one knob to turn, the level of foreign aid.  Presumably pinching it off would have leave him at the mercy of his population, but that would have had other effects which might not be desirable to the US.

Now, I do know that the US is not alone in this kind of policy....the UK indulged in it quite fully when it was able to. But I do wonder about the idea of supporting a repressive regime because it suits us. We supported the Shah...that went well. We sponsored Sadam until it was perceived that the balance between advantage and disadvantage tipped. That also went well. Mugabe, 'our' man until he was seen for what he really was.Another one that has not gone at all well. I could go on.

While we are busy seemingly creating balance, the people of those countries are badly dealt with. Our help, keeping our creatures in or getting them out, either way the ordinary folk suffer.

This time round, we are in danger of seeing a 'moderate' Islamic government come in which will be hostile to Israel. So, will the question of turning off the support tap before the pressure elsewhere blew the entire boiler up be genuinely examined and above all, learned from? Perhaps we just interfere much too damned much.

Mike

    The more realistic the scenario the more your preferred options will resemble the options the gov't is actively considering. Critics talk about how "Obama is just like Bush". Either Obama is just like Bush or circumstances reduce ideological differences. I think it's the latter in most cases.

    Which is it, we interfere too damn much or too damn little? You see, you can't win this game.

Quote from: drogulus on January 29, 2011, 07:21:41 AM
     Like Karzai?

I think that a large part of his problem was being appointed leader of a fundimentally ungovernable country. I know it looks disingenuous to keep repeating this, and I don't mean to be, but Egypt offers much more potential than Afghanistan.

Quote from: knight on January 29, 2011, 08:35:11 AM
Now, I do know that the US is not alone in this kind of policy....the UK indulged in it quite fully when it was able to. But I do wonder about the idea of supporting a repressive regime because it suits us. We supported the Shah...that went well. We sponsored Sadam until it was perceived that the balance between advantage and disadvantage tipped. That also went well. Mugabe, 'our' man until he was seen for what he really was.Another one that has not gone at all well. I could go on.

I'm not sure these are all "our" fault.  These countries find themselves a critical spots in the world and we have to deal with who ever is in power there.  If they were in non-critical spots in the world, events would generally be the same, but they would be hacking each other with machetes, rather than armored personnel carriers and tear gas canisters.

   

Quote from: Scarpia on January 29, 2011, 01:51:13 PM
I'm not sure these are all "our" fault.  These countries find themselves a critical spots in the world and we have to deal with who ever is in power there.  If they were in non-critical spots in the world, events would generally be the same, but they would be hacking each other with machetes, rather than armored personnel carriers and tear gas canisters.

     And here it comes....we gave them the weapons. Why? So the people we give them to would feel secure enough not to use them, so they wouldn't get them from someone else, so they would be dependent on us. And Egypt has kept the cold peace with Israel.

     

Quote from: Scarpia on January 29, 2011, 01:51:13 PM
I'm not sure these are all "our" fault.  These countries find themselves a critical spots in the world and we have to deal with who ever is in power there.  If they were in noncritical spots in the world, events would generally be the same, but they would be hacking each other with machetes, rather than armored personnel carriers and tear gas canisters.

Yes, but it seems we mainly intervene when it is to ensure our advantage. It can be dressed up as helping the locals, but in the instances I listed, what happened has been disaster and worse than what was there already. People hack one another up day and daily. I agree, no easy solutions.

No one has ever successfully invaded Afghanistan. The terrain and the culture are both basically intractable. It may have been unethical, but plain flat out bribes to encourage the people we wanted to do or stop doing things would quite possibly have had a better effect and without all the deaths of soldiers we have endured in our forces. It would probably also have cost less. Unethical, yes, but our policies are anyway.

Egypt has indeed kept the peace with Israel for quite some time. Perhaps we will now see a worse backlash there than we can 'control' and mainly due to supporting, and in effect enabling suppression of an exceptionally poor population. Of course, we never asked him to act that way, but we kept the perpetrator in power.

There is a middle class in Egypt and it has substantially separated itself out from the mass of the population. So there have been chances for some people. As there always are, no matter how bad a government is.

No doubt foreign policy is complex. There are always so many hot spots that it must be a relief to just leave some clients alone with their subsidies if they are managing to keep things quiet. But it does not make for an ethical way of behaving and it demonstrably leads to ultimate hostility against the supposed foreign puppet masters.

If Islam has been demonised in the West, the US has provided a lot ammunition for it to be demonised in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent. A chicken and an egg.

Mike

What Mike said.

Quote from: knight on January 29, 2011, 10:56:05 PM
Yes, but it seems we mainly intervene when it is to ensure our advantage. It can be dressed up as helping the locals, but in the instances I listed, what happened has been disaster and worse than what was there already. People hack one another up day and daily. I agree, no easy solutions.

No one has ever successfully invaded Afghanistan. The terrain and the culture are both basically intractable. It may have been unethical, but plain flat out bribes to encourage the people we wanted to do or stop doing things would quite possibly have had a better effect and without all the deaths of soldiers we have endured in our forces. It would probably also have cost less. Unethical, yes, but our policies are anyway.

Egypt has indeed kept the peace with Israel for quite some time. Perhaps we will now see a worse backlash there than we can 'control' and mainly due to supporting, and in effect enabling suppression of an exceptionally poor population. Of course, we never asked him to act that way, but we kept the perpetrator in power.

There is a middle class in Egypt and it has substantially separated itself out from the mass of the population. So there have been chances for some people. As there always are, no matter how bad a government is.

No doubt foreign policy is complex. There are always so many hot spots that it must be a relief to just leave some clients alone with their subsidies if they are managing to keep things quiet. But it does not make for an ethical way of behaving and it demonstrably leads to ultimate hostility against the supposed foreign puppet masters.

If Islam has been demonised in the West, the US has provided a lot ammunition for it to be demonised in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent. A chicken and an egg.

Mubarak became president because his predecessor was gunned down by Islamic radicals in his own army at a parade.  You are suggesting that Egypt would be a pleasant place if the US had washed its hands of the matter at that point?  Benign neglect would allow Egypt to blossom as it did no so many other places, like Somalia and Sudan? 

Somewhere along the 28 year journey, I imagine there would have been points when the merry-go-round would have halted and given the Egyptians the opportunity to replace their increasingly repressive government. But it was sustained and strengthened with help from outside. I know why, but it was to at least the probable detriment of its citizens and if they did at all well out of it, that was collateral fortune.

In view of the supposedly stable situation between Egypt and its neighbours, what arms was it that the US was subsidising year on year? I don't think it was much that could help eliminate the Islamic extremists. That was done in a very elementary way; hunting them.

Well up the Nile we called into the small town of Esna. For the only occasion we had a guide, insisted upon as there had been some Islamic action further down the Nile about six weeks before. My 10 year old had an upset stomach. Just as we were about to be bundled into the minibus I explained my son's pretty much instant need for a toilet. The reply was...too bad there are no toilets here. I pressed very firmly for an alternative answer and said if there was nothing available, he would have to go in the gutter. But I needed a delay to help his discomfort.

Furious, the guide marched us about 50 yards to the police station. A short but intense discussion took place. We were ushered into a large room. In the middle of it was a large hole in the concrete floor. The sides of the hole were encrusted with shit. I had to hold onto my son so he did not disappear down the hole and spent some time looking round the room.

There were thick metal rings and sets of manacles on the walls. There were large hooks drilled into the ceiling. There were stains all over the room, the floor and up the walls. I drew my own conclusions over what took place in this room. Conclusions that were strengthened by stories told by locals about people simply being taken away at night and eventually reappearing badly injured. I had not asked for the stories and did not mention my visit to a police station.

We have been busy upholding the setup that sanctioned the kind of brutal treatment that surfaces as news in the West now and then, but which in truth seemed to be a day and daily occurrence. All those years of institutionalising brutality by its government, it will be all the more difficult to realign these police if a new government does come in with other ideas. These men will not just go away quietly. We have the lesson of a parallel set of events in Iraq.

Mike

What you are describing is very disturbing.  But has involvement of the US and other western nations tended to increase or diminish such things?  I don't know.

I agree Scarps...don't know, but we were involved through propping it all up. I guess that is my point. It would be good to think that where we do get involved we moderate these kinds of excesses; but realpolitik means we are more interested in trying to keep the larger pieces of the jigsaw in place and I understand that; I just don't like it.

Mike

Really, a disturbing sight. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/d8nH3JuBd4s

That man always disturbs me. They ought to be out with banners to get rid of him.

Mike

Quote from: knight on January 30, 2011, 01:10:26 PM
That man always disturbs me. They ought ot be out with banners to get rid of him.

Mike

Let me put it this way: I wouldn't mind as much, really, if it were Hawass damaged.

Yes, a glass case somewhere obscure on the third floor....stuffed and mounted with his mouth open...as usual. The man is a disgrace. Who knows, new regime, new director of antiquities.

Mike

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=12809843

That fruit seller has a lot to answer for :P

In the main square in Cairo where the protests are concentrated, they are organising a three day football tournament and have invited the army officers to put forward a team.

A very unusual revolution.

But there is no direction evident, just a groundswell that has one aim and no idea of what to do even if that is fufilled.

Mike

I understand that brutality by the security forces has been a problem, but what is the problem that removal of Mubarak will solve?  Economic reform under Mubarak seems to be working, the economy is growing despite the global recession, and measures of income inequality give Egypt rather good marks, comparable to the UK, more equality than in the US.   Is Mubarak really an obstacle to the economic aspirations of Egyptians?  The most obvious result of the protest so far is a complete halt of economic activity and frantic evacuation of tourists.  That doesn't sound good to me.
 
I also hear Obama telling Mubarak not to run for another term.  Not that I am a fan of Mubarak, what what business is it of Obama's?

He can see what way the wind is blowing and does not want to be caught any further beyond the wrong side of the tide. At best he plays catch-up for the US. At worst it loses its base of influence because it is seen as part of the old machinery.

If the US had felt so very strongly about the rights of the Egyptian people, it could have said so, publically and forcably long before it has been so conspicuously caught on the hop.

As to economic activity; they have created a disproportion between a substantial sector of people being educated and a comparative lack of opportunity for that education. Also, the seeming prosperity and the education nevertheless only reaches a small proportion of the population, and that, within the cities. The main issues have been suppression and corruption, age old and it seems the example of Tunisia has come at a time when their endurance is exhausted.

But yes; no one is going to make the garden grow any time soon. A small while and the factions will emerge and grow.

Mike

Quote from: knight on February 01, 2011, 12:13:20 PMAlso, the seeming prosperity and the education nevertheless only reaches a small proportion of the population, and that, within the cities.

The numbers do not support this.  The Gini index, which measures income inequality, is 34.4 .  The UK is 34.0, the US is 45.0.  The higher the number the more inequality (0 means everyone has the same income, 100 means one person has all the money).

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html?countryName=Egypt&countryCode=eg&regionCode=af&rank=90#eg

Well, it makes no sense to me in terms of the sheer poverty I know exists on a large scale.

None at all.

In the UK there are government handouts, they are scant in Egypt.

The Egyptian unemployment rate in 2009 was 9.4, an increase over the earlier year. It is 7,0 in the UK, higher than it was in 2009. I am not sure the stats get us anywhere, I doubt they really measure like with like.

In Egypt the norm is still a one wage per married couple. Not so in Europe. The families are bigger in Arab states than in Europe with more children per couple.

Mike

Quote from: knight on February 01, 2011, 01:25:21 PM
Well, it makes no sense to me in terms of the sheer poverty I know exists on a large scale.

None at all.

In the UK there are government handouts, they are scant in Egypt.

The Egyptian unemployment rate in 2009 was 9.4, an increase over the earlier year. It is 7,0 in the UK, higher than it was in 2009. I am not sure the stats get us anywhere, I doubt they really measure like with like.

In Egypt the norm is still a one wage per married couple. Not so in Europe. The families are bigger in Arab states than in Europe with more children per couple.

Mike

Well, the numbers may not be accurate in Egypt.

Quote from: Lethe on January 29, 2011, 01:30:17 PM
I think that a large part of his problem was being appointed leader of a fundimentally ungovernable country. I know it looks disingenuous to keep repeating this, and I don't mean to be, but Egypt offers much more potential than Afghanistan.

     Yes, it does. For one thing Egypt has been a country with a national identity for thousands of years.

Quote from: Scarpia on February 01, 2011, 11:42:05 AM

 
I also hear Obama telling Mubarak not to run for another term.  Not that I am a fan of Mubarak, what what business is it of Obama's?

     My guess is that we are talking to the military and (I hope) the Muslim Brotherhood. We intend to arrange a "soft landing", a transition with minimal violence. And we want real elections. Once again, we are supposed to intervene if we can help, but we can't intervene because it isn't our business. Which is it? If it really isn't our business why bother worrying about Egypt? Because it affects us? Then it's our business.

Quote from: drogulus on February 01, 2011, 01:47:13 PMMy guess is that we are talking to the military and (I hope) the Muslim Brotherhood. We intend to arrange a "soft landing", a transition with minimal violence. And we want real elections. Once again, we are supposed to intervene if we can help, but we can't intervene because it isn't our business. Which is it? If it really isn't our business why bother worrying about Egypt? Because it affects us? Then it's our business.

Creating the impression that we consider ourselves puppet masters in Egypt doesn't sound like a good idea, at this point.

Quote from: Scarpia on February 01, 2011, 01:55:36 PM
Creating the impression that we consider ourselves puppet masters in Egypt doesn't sound like a good idea, at this point.

     I understand that. If we don't advise Mubarak to go we are one kind of puppet master, if we advise him to fight to stay we are another kind, and if we really, improbably, don't say anything we are really showing that our commitment to democracy is a sham, a cover for our interests. So, let's seek the best outcome and resign ourselves to being interpreted in various ways. Sec. Clinton, as expected, is doing it right, talking about what's good for Egyptians, seeking a nonviolent solution, and not tipping our hand.

Quote from: Scarpia on February 01, 2011, 01:06:23 PM
The Gini index, which measures income inequality, is 34.4 .  The UK is 34.0, the US is 45.0.  The higher the number the more inequality (0 means everyone has the same income, 100 means one person has all the money).

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html?countryName=Egypt&countryCode=eg&regionCode=af&rank=90#eg

This index if taken in abstracto, without any reference to the actual amount of incomes, is misleading anyway ---  because a country with a relative equality of miserable incomes fares way worse than one with a greater income inequality but with larger incomes than the first. Proof: Romania has a better Gini index than France, UK, Switzerland or US, yet I leave it to you guessing where the living standard is much worse.

The old man with the cigar nailed it long ago: The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Looks like either the police or authorities are now encouraging people to attack the protesters, presumably as a prelude to trying to remove them. Several news orgs are reporting that some of those people have admitted that they are being paid to do it.

Edit: Yemen (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0202/Yemen-s-Saleh-agrees-not-to-run-again.-Is-that-good-enough-for-protesters)

Quote from: knight on February 01, 2011, 01:25:21 PM
The Egyptian unemployment rate in 2009 was 9.4, an increase over the earlier year. It is 7,0 in the UK, higher than it was in 2009. I am not sure the stats get us anywhere, I doubt they really measure like with like.

That can't be right... those are both small numbers. Maybe the UK numbers are right, but that was smaller than I thought it would be. I'm sure the numbers for Egypt are way off.

Where I live (Florida), the unemployment rate is 12.2%, and in my county 12.5%- though it isn't too bad because there are a couple of counties, such as the one right next to me at 14-15.7%. It can't be that much worse than Egypt...

Greg, I assume the odd number for Egypt excludes most wives, who stay at home. In the US many wives will be registered as unemployed. We don't know the basis for constructing the figures, but they look very low to me too.

Mike

Quote from: Lethe on February 02, 2011, 04:08:15 AM
Looks like either the police or authorities are now encouraging people to attack the protesters, presumably as a prelude to trying to remove them. Several news orgs are reporting that some of those people have admitted that they are being paid to do it.

That seems to be the strategy, I see a report that Egypt state television is warning protesters to evacuate the square. 

Very depressing, but I did suggest that all those brutalised policemen would not just melt into the night.

Mike

Quote from: knight on February 03, 2011, 12:25:31 PM
Very depressing, but I did suggest that all those brutalised policemen would not just melt into the night.

Well, clearly there are many in Egypt who benefit from the status quo, an who will not sit idly by and watch it being dismantled.  If someone replaces Mubarack and the state institutions remain intact not much will change.  To change those state institutions may require more than chanting, as we have seen. 

Egypt's Mubarak 'may stand down' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12421000)

Quote from: Lethe on February 10, 2011, 09:41:17 AM
Egypt's Mubarak 'may stand down' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12421000)

The question of the day, is it democracy or is it a military coup?

Both, it seems (they still seem to love those guys).

Either way, I think that the US and Europe's cowering attitude to this has been pretty dreadful - at some point you must put up or shut up. All this "we're such pragmatic grownups" attitude is quite feeble and symptomatic of the weakening ability of the west, so afraid of its own ideals (see: China), to have any effect on the rest of the world save to try to keep them down. Watching the dodderings of the Obama government standing slack-jawed as people around the world are reminded on a daily basis about the torturer that they have been best pals with has been car-crash TV.

All the "scary Islamists" talk I can't buy into. This status quo is what has left the middle east spinning its wheels - if you refuse to risk grasping the potential benefit of change (with emphasis on the risk) when it is gifted to you on a plate then the US administration is failing to be seen to be any better than the leadership in Russia and China, which it regularly criticises for amoral foreign policy. It is a "risk" encouraging a democratic revolution, but it's an equal "risk" propping up these dictators until they decide not to play ball. The difference between this flash of anti-despot sentiment and supporting a regime which is 'awful, but not too awful', is that the former with support can create something good, the latter with support cannot. I can't think of many "protective" tin-pot dictatorships that the US has previously supported that has ended in a stable and successful nation.

Regardless of how Americans view him, Obama remains an inspirational figure throughout much of the world - his support or indifference could be key in how the aftermath of this pans out. He is an intelligent man who realises that the promise of freedom is extremely catching, I wonder why when faced with such promise for the whole region he still holds. Does he really feel that the way things were before were heading in the right direction?

Lethe,

Two things:

You're absolutely correct that the fear of Islamists here is overblown. This revolution is not run by the Muslim Brotherhood. This article sums it up nicely:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/opinion/03atran.html

Secondly, you overestimate the draw of Obama's persona here. Yes, his speech in Egypt a few years ago was warmly received, but it went to the old regime, implicitly approving of Mubarak. With its history of involvement in Egypt and propping up Mubarak, one of the wors things the US can do at this point is to make it seem like it supports the opposition all too heartily. It will undermine their credibility and appeal to the general Egyptian populace. The whole point is that they want to be free of control by foreign-backed potentates, and anything that smells of such associations will be immediately suspect.

Good point on Obama. There was a fun statement in the news just now, somewhat tongue in cheek, that Obama's comments today were him seeking to be found "on the right side of history". I would like to think that privately before today he was rooting for the protestors, but I fear that office may have turned him into a more fearful individual.

Quote from: Lethe on February 10, 2011, 10:50:57 AM
Good point on Obama. There was a fun statement in the news just now, somewhat tongue in cheek, that Obama's comments today were him seeking to be found "on the right side of history". I would like to think that privately before today he was rooting for the protestors, but I fear that office may have turned him into a more fearful individual.

Well, it's not necessarily fear, as it is hardnosed realism. Support the protesters too openly and you a) make the Egyptians second guess the genuiness of the uprising, thinking it may all be another Western ploy to dominate them again (this, in a sense happened in Serbia, where shortly after Milosevic was deposed, Albright's eccessive bragging about her (overblown) role in the revolution turned the population against the democrats. A little later Djindjic was slain and the nationalists are still extremely powerful.), and b) you could freak the Israelis out sufficiently that they end up doing something stupid. Fail to offer support and you look like a) a hypocritical fool and b) may lose what economic interests you may have in Egypt by antagonizing any potential new regime. There simply is no clear cut good way of positioning yourself in this one as the US, given it's past history in the region.

And....(drumroll please)....He's staying.   >:(

Quote from: Scarpia on February 10, 2011, 12:16:19 PM
And....(drumroll please)....He's staying.   >:(

This is going to have a Ceaucescu style ending.

An interesting tidbit, the Presidential Palace where Mubarak is hold up is apparently in the Northern Suburbs of Cairo, far from the site of the demonstrations.  Presumably the security forces are keeping the protesters far away. 

Quote from: Mensch on February 10, 2011, 12:46:33 PM
This is going to have a Ceaucescu style ending.

    I don't think so. Mubarak isn't seen as a monster, just a fairly typical Arab autocrat, and far from the worst of the kind. No one compares him to Saddam Hussein or Hafez al-Assad. The younger generation is less tolerant of his paternalism. They want to join the modern world.

    One thing to note from the demonstrations is the almost complete absence of Islamism. The slogans and statement are all connected to freedom, modernization, and Egyptian patriotism. This is a good sign. At first I thought the Muslim Brotherhood was running a Khomeini-style subterfuge, a maskarova for the media. But no, the beards are outnumbered by a huge margin, as the cameras show. I think the MB has been swept along by events just like everyone else.

     
      Kenan Malik has a piece in the _{(http://static.guim.co.uk/static/99214/zones/comment/images/logo.gif)}:

      The Muslim Brotherhood may gain power in Egypt by default (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/31/egypt-secular-protests)

      In short, he says:

     Secular regimes across the Arab world have unleashed the dogs of militant religion in an effort to keep in check leftwing radicals – only to be savaged themselves by the beasts they have let loose. "By making concession after concession in the moral and cultural domains", the French sociologist Gilles Kepel  has observed, governments in Muslim countries "gradually created a reactionary climate of "re-Islamisation". They sacrificed lay intellectuals, writers, and other "westernised elites" to the tender mercies of bigoted clerics, in the hope that the latter, in return, would endorse their own stranglehold on the organs of state.

      This is exactly right.

     (http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/1/31/1296497198172/Protesters-in-Egypt-007.jpg)

     See, no beards! (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif) *

     _{* You know, the big puffy evil ones}

Quote from: drogulus on February 10, 2011, 07:42:21 PM
    I don't think so. Mubarak isn't seen as a monster, just a fairly typical Arab autocrat, and far from the worst of the kind. No one compares him to Saddam Hussein or Hafez al-Assad. The younger generation is less tolerant of his paternalism. They want to join the modern world.

I think you underestimate just how hated his police and security apparatus are and how much they have brutalized the population over the years. If Mubarak doesn't see the wisdom of going quietly, this may very well have a bloody ending for him.

Quote from: drogulus on February 10, 2011, 07:42:21 PM
    One thing to note from the demonstrations is the almost complete absence of Islamism. The slogans and statement are all connected to freedom, modernization, and Egyptian patriotism. This is a good sign. At first I thought the Muslim Brotherhood was running a Khomeini-style subterfuge, a maskarova for the media. But no, the beards are outnumbered by a huge margin, as the cameras show. I think the MB has been swept along by events just like everyone else.

Absolutely correct. See the article I linked above.

Quote from: drogulus on February 10, 2011, 07:42:21 PM
    I don't think so. Mubarak isn't seen as a monster, just a fairly typical Arab autocrat, and far from the worst of the kind. No one compares him to Saddam Hussein or Hafez al-Assad. The younger generation is less tolerant of his paternalism. They want to join the modern world.

He has maintained a "state of emergency" for 30 years which allows the police to detain and torture people at will, which is taken advantage of with alacrity, I understand.  Egypt also has (I have read) an economy where economic opportunity is limited to the cronies of the ruling class.  I don't see that as "paternalism."

In other news, Mubarak has stepped down and handed power over to the military.

I doubt he ever saw reason even at the end, he must have known that if he remained his most likely options would to be either deposed by the military or killed. If he could continue to rule unharried I am sure that he would (which in a way vindicates a military with at least some claws). In one respect it's good that he stalled so long, as it's ruined any chance he has to spin himself as the good guy. 30 years wasted in 3 weeks of foolish behaviour :)

Best of luck to the Egyptians in the next few months - they deserve a better-run and happier country with the guts so many of the protestors have shown.

Quote from: Lethe on February 11, 2011, 08:29:46 AM
I doubt he ever saw reason even at the end, he must have known that if he remained his most likely options would to be either deposed by the military or killed. If he could continue to rule unharried I am sure that he would (which in a way vindicates a military with at least some claws). In one respect it's good that he stalled so long, as it's ruined any chance he has to spin himself as the good guy. 30 years wasted in 3 weeks of foolish behaviour :)

Best of luck to the Egyptians in the next few months - they deserve a better-run and happier country with the guts so many of the protestors have shown.

Got off easier than his predecessor. 

What a fantastic day for the poeple of Egypt.

Egyptians will celebrate February 11 the way US citizens celebrate July 4.  It is an amazing day--the success of a nonviolent revolution.

I hope the dream can be sustained and that it all goes well for them.

Mike

I do, too.  They have a big job ahead.  Somehow they have to retool the civil service so that it actually serves the people, and get rid of as much fraud, corruption, and especially abuse as possible.  And create jobs and opportunities, especially for the poorest people, who have had few opportunities for a long time.  I think an Egyptian equivalent of the CCC would be a great idea--I'd contribute to that!

Quote from: Scarpia on February 11, 2011, 07:49:10 AM
He has maintained a "state of emergency" for 30 years which allows the police to detain and torture people at will, which is taken advantage of with alacrity, I understand.  Egypt also has (I have read) an economy where economic opportunity is limited to the cronies of the ruling class.  I don't see that as "paternalism."

     I was speaking in comparative terms.

     I'm cautiously optimistic. People power revolutions* are a new phenomenon in the Arab world, and it may be a sign that a profound change along generational lines will produce a better future. I wonder if Mubarak will be allowed to stay in Sharm el-Sheikh. That would be a very good sign.

     _{* I know it's a military coup, but driven from below. The military didn't want to do it, which is also a good thing.}

Crazy how I saw this happen live. I've seen other stuff live, such as the plane crashing into the WTC and Dale Earnhardt dying, even though I don't watch much TV.
They were interviewing some guy, and all of a sudden you could hear a huge sound coming from the crowd, and that's when it happened.

Protests spread to Libya (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/02/16/muslim.world.unrest/?hpt=Sbin)

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on February 16, 2011, 09:32:10 AM
Protests spread to Libya (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/02/16/muslim.world.unrest/?hpt=Sbin)

Now, I had mixed feelings about Mubarak (although thirty years in power is more than enough even for the most benevolent and liberal dictator --- not that he was one such) --- but I'm eagerly waiting for Gaddafi's fall.  ;D

I saw a report that in the midst of celebrations of Mubarak's departure, an American Television reporter was attacked, sexually assaulted and brutally beaten by a mob of Egyptian men.   Not all beauty and light there. 

Quote from: Scarpia on February 16, 2011, 10:07:57 AM
I saw a report that in the midst of celebrations of Mubarak's departure, an American Television reporter was attacked, sexually assaulted and brutally beaten by a mob of Egyptian men.   Not all beauty and light there.

Those were Mubarak's goons, who deliberately targeted foreign press.

Quote from: Mensch on February 16, 2011, 10:14:12 AM
Those were Mubarak's goons, who deliberately targeted foreign press.

Who the goons were is unclear.  CBS reports she was rescued by a detachment of Egyptian Army soldiers and some Egyptian women. 

Such wonderful allies the west have. Even Iran didn't shoot and grenade protesters with live rounds.

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=208654

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12495733

QuoteUK Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the violent clashes, calling on Bahrain's government to "exercise restraint".

Good ol' Chamberlain would have been very proud of this sign of continuity in the excellent British diplomacy.  ;D

These protests are showing the braveness of everyday people and how pathetic domineering dictators are. After killing their own population the Bahrain monarchy are now whining about "dialogue". The funerals they caused became rallying points, it's clear that they are signing their own resignation notes.

Security Forces in Bahrain Open Fire on Mourners (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19bahrain.html?src=me)

Bahrain crown prince calls for dialogue (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/18/us-bahrain-crownprince-idUSTRE71H4OR20110218)

Yemen Protests Kill Four in Largest Demonstration Yet (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-18/yemen-protests-kill-four-in-largest-demonstration-yet.html)

Dozens dead in Libya anti-government unrest  (http://www.channel4.com/news/dozens-dead-in-libya-anti-government-unrest)

All the western allies of these worms can muster is "concern" - so much effort involved there. The British involvement in Bahrain especially is nothing to do with geopolitical "security", it's about the government choosing the invest in repressive regimes at the cost of more "risky" democracies in the second world. Looks like the poisonous choice wasn't as secure as they thought.

In more immediately positive news:

Egypt Celebrates Mubarak's Fall From Power  (http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Egypt-Millions-Of-Egyptians-Rally-To-Celebrate-President-Hosni-Mubaraks-Fall-From-Power-A-Week-Ago/Article/201003315936373?lpos=World_News_Top_Stories_Header_2&lid=ARTICLE_15936373_Egypt%3A_Millions_Of_Egyptians_Rally_To_Celebrate_President_Hosni_Mubaraks_Fall_From_Power_A_Week_Ago)

Libya seems to the the first to try outright slaughter to put this down, but the protests are growing, as are defections.

Libya: mutiny as death toll nears 200 (http://www.channel4.com/news/libya-massacre-as-death-toll-tops-100)

Libya protesters seize streets, Bahrain mood eases (http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/world/Libya+protesters+seize+streets+Bahrain+mood+eases/4316428/story.html)

Hahahaha oh lawdy, apparently Gaddafi may have fled the country.

Libya protests spread and intensify  (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/2011221133557377576.html)

Libya Violence Deepens as Protestors Claim Control of Second-Largest City (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-20/libyan-revolt-widens-as-attacks-on-protesters-draw-condemnation.html)

Edit: not settled with merely being evil, the regime now seem to be grabbing the chance with both hands to create Guernica part 2. Why be minor league sub-humans when you can try to compete for the all-time record.

Seems good and bad at the same time. Gaddafi is crazy, but as was mentioned, if Libya is a tribal nation, how are they ever going to agree on some type of system of government if they are so fundamentally different from each other? A Civil War wouldn't be good, either (hopefully it doesn't come to that, though)...

Quote from: Greg on February 21, 2011, 11:01:31 AM
Seems good and bad at the same time. Gaddafi is crazy, but as was mentioned, if Libya is a tribal nation, how are they ever going to agree on some type of system of government if they are so fundamentally different from each other? A Civil War wouldn't be good, either (hopefully it doesn't come to that, though)...

I think the most likely future for Libya and the other sites of present unrest is a period of chaos where people literally starve to death, followed by the ascension of a tyrant that will make people remember Qaddafi as the Moses of his time.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on February 21, 2011, 11:06:08 AM
I think the most likely future for Libya and the other sites of present unrest is a period of chaos where people literally starve to death, followed by the ascension of a tyrant that will make people remember Qaddafi as the Moses of his time.

Man, didn't know it was possible to get more pessimistic than me...
then again, you are being realistic. Sometimes people get the two confused, because often reality really is that bad.

Quote from: Greg on February 21, 2011, 11:08:46 AM
Man, didn't know it was possible to get more pessimistic than me...
then again, you are being realistic. Sometimes people get the two confused, because often reality really is that bad.

Libya has the highest human development index in Africa.  I'm willing to bet that in 10 years it will be another Sudan. 

I think the only way they will get rid of Gaddafi is to kill him: he is different from the other endangered rullers who are more likley to go rather than kill their own people in large numbers.

Mike

I think the second he asked fighter jets to strafe civilians he pretty much lost the right to be treated like other humans. But in his case, I would much prefer the humiliation of jail.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on February 22, 2011, 02:24:49 PM
I think the second he asked fighter jets to strafe civilians he pretty much lost the right to be treated like other humans. But in his case, I would much prefer the humiliation of jail.

That would leave open the possibility of an escape and comeback attempt.  ;D

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on February 22, 2011, 02:24:49 PM
I think the second he asked fighter jets to strafe civilians he pretty much lost the right to be treated like other humans. But in his case, I would much prefer the humiliation of jail.

Yes. Big kudos to the pilots who refused and flew to Malta.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Libya---Air/Dassault-Mirage-F1ED/1871072/L/

Quote from: Mensch on February 23, 2011, 10:39:31 AM
Yes. Big kudos to the pilots who refused and flew to Malta.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Libya---Air/Dassault-Mirage-F1ED/1871072/L/

And shame on whoever sold Gaddafi the jets (Mirage-F1E, who'd have guessed  ::) )

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on February 23, 2011, 10:45:41 AM
And shame on whoever sold Gaddafi the jets (Mirage-F1E, who'd have guessed  ::) )

Well, no surprise there... The Mirages are from the 80s (and superbly maintained by the looks of it), but the French wined and dined Qaddafi even a couple of years ago in Paris, even letting him pitch his tent in the gardens of a palais in the middle of the city, all in the hopes of a lucrative helicopter deal. He ended up buying only a couple of Airbuses for his new airline "Afriqiyah" (Qaddafi considers himself the king of Africa), one A330 of which promptly crashed last year for no good reason, all because the lazy tower controllers in Tripoli didn't want to inconvenience themselves by opening another runway and instead let the plane land on a runway with no ILS against the blinding light of the rising sun. Anyway, Sarko and company look pretty stupid right now.

Not that the US hasn't found itself in worse positions.   ???  (http://wikiflex.wikispaces.com/file/view/rumsfeld-hussein.jpg/134775881/rumsfeld-hussein.jpg)

The brilliantly useful international "community" can't even agree that a no-fly zone would be handy to stop this guy bombing civilians.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 01, 2011, 11:42:31 AM
The brilliantly useful international "community" can't even agree that a no-fly zone would be handy to stop this guy bombing civilians.

It is easy to forget the Colin Powell rule, "You break it, you own it."

     The international community can't implement a no-fly zone on its own. They would be making war in the name of freedom and human rights. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/shocked.gif) They need cover that only the U.N. can provide, but won't. Can you imagine getting a resolution through the Security Council? Hah!

     The E.U. won't do it. NATO could do it, because then the U.S. would be "forcing them". In reality the Lilliputians will be invited to join in if Gulliver decides to act. Appearances must be saved. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/tongue.gif) But that does raise the interesting question of how the Europeans will explain their fecklessness if the U.S. decides not to act. I almost want Obama to hold back long enough to see......ah, but power entails responsibility, so we can't do that. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/sad.gif)

     Still, it's remarkable how much readier Europeans are to jettison Qaddafi than they were with Mubarak. I chalk that up to A) lessons learned and B) Lockerbie.

     (http://wikiflex.wikispaces.com/file/view/rumsfeld-hussein.jpg/134775881/rumsfeld-hussein.jpg)

      On the positive side, Rummy got rid of him. Sure, he didn't have those weapons, but Qadaffi doesn't have them either. So now, finally, at last, it's OK to liberate a country from an evil dictator even if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. Gee, that's what I thought all along! (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/grin.gif)

Quote from: drogulus on March 02, 2011, 08:48:49 PM
     Still, it's remarkable how much readier Europeans are to jettison Qaddafi than they were with Mubarak. I chalk that up to A) lessons learned and B) Lockerbie.

I think also that Mubarak was a faceless automaton who got things done - Gaddafi's ridiculous Berlusconi-meets-Castro posing makes him difficult to be seen to endorse.

Edit: Gadhafi's regime now subject to war crimes probe (http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110303/libya-gadhafi-protests-fighting-110303/20110303/?hub=CalgaryHome)

     There's an interesting article in (http://unitedfeatures.com/images/hires/2nr_hires.jpg) about the spread of democracy.

     The Fourth Wave
Where the Middle East revolts fit in the history of democratization—and how we can support them.
(http://www.tnr.com/article/world/85143/middle-east-revolt-democratization)

     It begins:

    Carl Gershman
    March 14, 2011 | 12:00 am

Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote that all the great events of the past 700 years—from the Crusades and English wars that decimated the nobles, to the discovery of firearms and the art of printing, to the rise of Protestantism and the discovery of America—had the ineluctable effect of advancing the principle of equality. Political scientist Samuel Huntington went further and identified several historical waves of democratization. The First Wave began with our own revolution in 1776, which was quickly followed by the French Revolution. The Second Wave followed the victory of the Allies in World War II.

The Third Wave, according to Huntington's thesis, was a global process that began in 1974 with the fall of the military government in Portugal and the death in 1975 of Francisco Franco, followed in both countries by successful democratic transitions. It then spread to Latin America, Asia, Central Europe and Africa, with the number of countries judged to be democracies in the Freedom House annual surveys more than tripling from 39 in 1974 to a high of 123 in 2005. This wave was the result of several factors, including economic growth, the spread of democratic values that undermined the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes, policy changes in Europe and the United States, and the demonstration effect of earlier transitions that Huntington called "snowballing." To this thesis, Huntington also added the idea of "reverse waves," or reactions against democratic progress, the first being the rise of fascism and communism in the 1920s and '30s, and the second the resurgence of authoritarianism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia in the 1960s and '70s.

So according to Mr. Huntington --- or is it Mr. Gershman misinterpreting / misquoting him? --- the fall of the Central and Eastern European Communist regimes in 1989 is not significant and momentous enough to deserve a wave of its own.   ???

Or is it a mere belated aftershock of Franco's death?  ;D

As for the rest of the article, it boils down to this: it wouldn't be good if the things went bad and it wouldn't be bad if the things went good.  ;D

Quote from: Eusebius on March 15, 2011, 12:38:24 AM


As for the rest of the article, it boils down to this: it wouldn't be good if the things went bad and it wouldn't be bad if the things went good.  ;D

      I didn't get that. What I got was that the thesis that democratic values are Western and can't be imported looks a bit shaky (not for the first time, but once again). This is the decisive moment. If we let these movements be crushed we'll regret it. Who are we storing up credit with that makes this betrayal worthwhile? The Saudis, the Gulfies? No, it doesn't make sense to oppose the future to hold on to a dying order. Besides, if we don't support the rebels that merit our support isn't it likely that when the revolution succeeds a few years later we'll be worse off? I'm afraid the next time they won't want our help. Would that be better?

Quote from: drogulus on March 15, 2011, 07:37:26 PM
      the thesis that democratic values are Western and can't be imported looks a bit shaky (not for the first time, but once again).

A thesis supported by Mr. Huntington himself.  ;D

It all depends on what you mean by "democratic values".

Quote
This is the decisive moment. If we let these movements be crushed we'll regret it. Who are we storing up credit with that makes this betrayal worthwhile? The Saudis, the Gulfies? No, it doesn't make sense to oppose the future to hold on to a dying order. Besides, if we don't support the rebels that merit our support isn't it likely that when the revolution succeeds a few years later we'll be worse off? I'm afraid the next time they won't want our help. Would that be better?

Let's take the case of Libya. Do you advocate immediate military intervention in order to overthrow Gaddafi?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12781009

Possibly too late though.

Shootan tiem nao

Link (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/-France-fires-on-Libyan-military-vehicle/articleshow/7745302.cms)

Lessons dictators could learn from Gaddafi:

1. If given an option to stop doing the actions which are prompting an invasion of your country, don't kid yourself that you can continue to do them on the sly in a high technologial and media-driven world.

2. Don't fall under the misapprehension that all western governments are war-shy and decadant. A good, short war is a great way to boost the political fortunes of an incumbent government.

3. Don't use "tough guy" violent rhetoric which can be used by the would-be attacking western forces to demonstrate to their own populations how brutal and sadistic you are.

4. Don't run PR campaigns claiming that civilians are being murdered while simultaneously claiming to be intending to arm every Libyan, therefore bring them all into close into "enemy combatant" legal territory.

5. Stop breathing through your goddamn mouth, it makes you look like a diagnosed moron.

Quote from: Eusebius on March 16, 2011, 01:35:57 AM
A thesis supported by Mr. Huntington himself.  ;D

   Did he think Western values couldn't be exported? I think he'd say that differences between civilizations make it harder.

Quote from: Eusebius on March 16, 2011, 01:35:57 AM
It all depends on what you mean by "democratic values".

I disagree. If I mean one thing by it and a Libyan thinks it means something else it still works. By now even the people of the Middle East and North Africa have figured out that Islamic Republic and Peoples Republic are not equivalents to what they're striving for. That is, this generation of dissidents has seen the results of confusing the different phenomena. The protesters appear to be aware of how democratically inspired revolutions are highjacked. Maybe they can prevent it from happening now. They need to be given a chance.

Quote from: Eusebius on March 16, 2011, 01:35:57 AM
Let's take the case of Libya. Do you advocate immediate military intervention in order to overthrow Gaddafi?

     Of course I did support that when it looked like it might not happen. Yes, I support the actions being taken. Obama deserves credit. He didn't want to do this. Like Big Bill C. he obviously loathed the military. But also like BB C. he's the kind of person who learns from experience. When Obama ponders events he doesn't just play for time. He can change his mind.

Bombs exploding always makes a good impression on the TV news.  Assuming Qadaffi is toppled, it is unclear that the result will be a more livable country.   Presumably some military commander left standing will take over, which is more or less how Qadaffi got into power.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 20, 2011, 08:21:51 AM
Bombs exploding always makes a good impression on the TV news.  Assuming Qadaffi is toppled, it is unclear that the result will be a more livable country.   Presumably some military commander left standing will take over, which is more or less how Qadaffi got into power.

     Each war is messy and terrible in its own way. There aren't many "lessons of Vietnam" that are universally valid, and that applies to lessons derived from Rwanda, Iraq, and Afghanistan, too. So we act knowing that, because at some point the costs of inaction appear even greater.

     I'm not as worried by bombs making an impression on TV. It's an effect, but not a cause. Try to imagine Obama or Bush or Clinton thinking that bombs would make an impression and ending the analysis there. That doesn't seem right to me. Of course it's possible, I suppose, to start a war merely to "send a message", though it's more likely that's an intended effect along with other more pressing concerns like acting before Benghazi falls and the moment is lost.

Quote from: drogulus on March 20, 2011, 08:38:24 AMI'm not as worried by bombs making an impression on TV. It's an effect, but not a cause. Try to imagine Obama or Bush or Clinton thinking that bombs would make an impression and ending the analysis there. That doesn't seem right to me. Of course it's possible, I suppose, to start a war merely to "send a message", though it's more likely that's an intended effect along with other more pressing concerns like acting before Benghazi falls and the moment is lost.

I was speaking of the superficial impression of the explosions with respect to the public, not with respect to the leaders (in particular Obama) who are directing the attack.

I suspect it is at root a tribal thing there and if Qaddafi is dislodged whoever takes over will treat Qaddafi's people as bad as he is treating his adversaries.  We are wasting a lot or ordinance to make bomb craters.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 20, 2011, 04:32:12 AM
Lessons dictators could learn from Gaddafi:
[...]

And which Gaddafi himself could have learned from Saddam Hussein.  ;D

But I wonder: if the goal of the bombings is to stop a dictator from murdering his own people, does this mean that Sarkozy, Obama and Cameron are willing to bomb each and every country whose governmental army or government-backed militiamen kill innocent civilians along armed revolutionaries?  ???

Libya seems to kind of be a one-off. It is close enough to Europe and has enough history there for this to have been able to be forced through. It was also politically convenient as well.

Ideally every despicable regime should get a good military kick in the teeth - not an overthrow, just a good, cheap, airborne humiliation - but the unintended consequences are a pain, and some of the governments are on the UN security council are proudly amoral. Plus, of course, there is the matter of defining 'despicable'. Gaddafi has practically no allies left on the entire planet, and yet the air blockade was still almost a no-go before extensive lobbying from the three involved western powers, so the situation for the other murderous dictators of the planet is secure.

I really like this Libya action though. The hypocrisy of the west has been exposed even more remarkably than usual over the past few months in its "democracy sure is nice, but hnngg, I'd rather they were still under brutal but quiet repression" hand-wringing. A more morally proative Europe would be a good thing given its general laid-back cowardice of recent years. It will piss some people off, but if you don't stand up for what you believe in, then your ideals are not worthy of respect.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 07:27:55 AMIdeally every despicable regime should get a good military kick in the teeth - not an overthrow, just a good, cheap, airborne humiliation

How on earth is that ideal?  And who determines what constitutes a "despicable regime"?  Is it you?

Surely North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, and Zimbabwe are despicable regimes.  Using your ideal, they should all be bombed, yes?  To what end, may I ask?  How many dead civilians would you find acceptable?  Or do you really believe in "smart bombs"?  We could presumably start letting loose with cruise missiles and sorties pretty quick since we (meaning the US and only the US, let's be honest) have a global military capacity.  Hell, why not?

And what of other countries?  Is Iran despicable enough, or are they just this side of being bombed?  Is Russia really democratic enough?  Really, they send troops to little neighboring countries, or to internal provinces, and squash uprisings.  Just how despicable are they?  What of China?  It's not democratic.  It engages in some questionable activities in Tibet and Xinjiang.  Should Shanghai or Beijing be bombarded as a result?  I'm very interested in the despicable index you use to determine which countries get bombed.

Yawn, here we go with more cruise-missile humanitarianism while the US and its pals sink into a nightmare of debt. Our leaders seem even crazier than usual!

Quote from: Eusebius on March 21, 2011, 05:36:13 AM
But I wonder: if the goal of the bombings is to stop a dictator from murdering his own people, does this mean that Sarkozy, Obama and Cameron are willing to bomb each and every country whose governmental army or government-backed militiamen kill innocent civilians along armed revolutionaries?  ???

There has been a civil war going on in the Congo for several years which has killed something around 5 million people. Yet I never hear anyone demand intervention there. I'm sure you can multiply examples.

Quote from: Todd on March 21, 2011, 07:42:27 AM
How on earth is that ideal?  And who determines what constitutes a "despicable regime"?  Is it you?

Surely North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, and Zimbabwe are despicable regimes.  Using your ideal, they should all be bombed, yes?  To what end, may I ask?  How many dead civilians would you find acceptable?  Or do you really believe in “smart bombs”?  We could presumably start letting loose with cruise missiles and sorties pretty quick since we (meaning the US and only the US, let’s be honest) have a global military capacity.  Hell, why not?

And what of other countries?  Is Iran despicable enough, or are they just this side of being bombed?  Is Russia really democratic enough?  Really, they send troops to little neighboring countries, or to internal provinces, and squash uprisings.  Just how despicable are they?  What of China?  It’s not democratic.  It engages in some questionable activities in Tibet and Xinjiang.  Should Shanghai or Beijing be bombarded as a result?  I’m very interested in the despicable index you use to determine which countries get bombed.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 07:27:55 AM
Plus, of course, there is the matter of defining 'despicable'.

^That was included as what I hoped would be seen as an acknowledgement that it an impossible scenario and an abstract musing. The world is not ideal, and I don't have utopian delusions of any absolutes. I don't consider a single "western" nation to be anywhere approaching perfect, let alone other even more compromised but still reasonably functional nations. But there is also clearly a line between "you have serious issues" and "basket case". Burma, North Korea, DR Congo, Zimbabwe - the only reason those nations are stuck where they are is due to protection by neighbours who wish to exploit them or save face.

If, say, Burma was not supported by the Chinese government, a tactical scenario would be imaginable. Governments like that don't give up on their own, as they begin to feel invincible - as did Gaddafi - but all it took was two sessions of aerial assaults to send his troops running for the hills, and this wasn't even with a mandate to remove him. A little push can be useful and infinitely less ridiculous than a war like Iraq. It depends on the location. Somewhere like southern Africa would work differently, but just leaving intolerable things be is not the "responsible" way to go about things, it remains amoral IMO, full-stop.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 08:15:58 AMIf, say, Burma was not supported by the Chinese government, a tactical scenario would be imaginable.

But what does this mean?  Why should the US or any other country bomb the junta there?  What national interests are involved?  What "world" interests?  Okay, so such a calculation is "amoral."  How is engaging in war moral?

That is the sad thing - there is no national interest in it, it has to be from public pressure stemming from an ingrained sense of morality. I suppose western citizens have more free time on their hands, as they tend to hassle their governments more about this kind of thing - and support them equally when they make such gestures (although ill-judged blood baths like Iraq or Vietnam excluded). An example: Germany's government did its usual policy of no action on the Libya crisis, which has actually backfired politically, as a large proportion of its population support the action.

In so far as regional interests go, it's not in China's interest to see Burma become another Thailand, because quite simply it'll raise the prices of Burma's mineral wealth and natural resources, and the population will begin to compete more with China's own workforce. A military attempt to weaken the Burmese regime would be no less immoral than what is being done to it already by its neighbour - even with the brutal aspects of war, it would also be much less callous than the current situation. Obviously, nothing will happen to the Burmese government until perhaps its evil embarasses even China too much and they gently install a dictator of a different sort.

I'm sure that I am being naive, but I just feel it unacceptable to consider the treatment of people in certain countries as something that's sad but unchangable. The west offers all manner of aid to countries, but where a select few are unable to be affected, why put ideals aside and say "poor sods, we tried a little, but aren't going that far" :-\

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 08:33:54 AMeven with the brutal aspects of war, it would also be much less callous than the current situation.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  I'd hesitate to make such a claim.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 08:33:54 AM
That is the sad thing - there is no national interest in it, it has to be from public pressure stemming from an ingrained sense of morality. I suppose western citizens have more free time on their hands, as they tend to hassle their governments more about this kind of thing - and support them equally when they make such gestures (although ill-judged blood baths like Iraq or Vietnam excluded). An example: Germany's government did its usual policy of no action on the Libya crisis, which has actually backfired politically, as a large proportion of its population support the action.

I don't follow you.  I think Germany is on the right side of this thing.  Iraq was actually done "right."  Bomb, then use a military occupation to create conditions where a democracy has a chance to take hold.  Even then it is not clear that the country is much better off, we can only hope that hatred of "Persians" by Iraqis will prevent it from becoming a satellite of Iran and a foreign policy problem for the US.  The trouble is even the US doesn't have the resources to do this sort of thing (our budget catastrophe was worsened by the invasion if Iraq) and who is to say that we are in charge of deciding which regimes are queued for removal.  Bombing and hoping that something good comes out of the resulting chaos is not a good strategy. 

It does make for great TV programming, I'll grant you that.

Their own population (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14926360,00.html) doesn't seem to agree.

I think that the Arab revolutions have changed the game. Iraq was a very outdated way to do things - no matter how good the intentions, or how friendly the country, people don't like to feel that they are occupied or that control is out of their hands. Egypt and Libya have pointed the way to much less dangerous and ruinous ways to enact change - coming from the ground up, not enforced from the top-down. The protests have revealed that even in the most oppressive countries, the desire for something better remains there and only requires a catalyst (providing it's not a rare nightmare state like North Korea or Burma where this is effectively impossible). In Libya the rebels needed some help, but it can be done infinitely more safely and cheaply (compared to Iraq) by an air campaign like is currently in action, and seemingly working well. A few days later and all opposition would be crushed and murdered, but as of now they are protected and Gaddafi's ability to harm them is being whittled down. I think that it's "super neat", but again I must be naive to feel this way.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 21, 2011, 09:05:23 AM
I don't follow you.  I think Germany is on the right side of this thing.  Iraq was actually done "right."  Bomb, then use a military occupation to create conditions where a democracy has a chance to take hold. 

That was never the "right" way. This interventionist attitude comes from a misreading of the aftermath of WWII, where according to lore the US brough democracy to Germany, Japan, etc. through force. Except that in those cases where democracy did indeed blossom (Germany, France etc.), it did so due to the country's own pre-existing civil society and legal system; and in Asia, countries liberated from Japanese rule turned into militarist dictatorships (Korea, Taiwan), while Japan itself was more of a one-party corporatist oligarchy for the longest time. So democracy was in fact not achieved in Asia at the end of WWII through US force. In other words, the idea of bringing democracy to a place through invasion is based on a romantic misreading of the precedent of WWII. It simply has never been done and it basically doesn't work, unless the target country has a pre-existing civil society and legal system that it can fall back upon, and those things can't be developed overnight and not through overt pressure from an outside power of which the population is distrustful. If it doesn't have those pre-requisites, then the extreme circumstances of war and occupation invariably create panic and gloom among the voting population which tends to provide fertile grounds for more extreme movements. In those cases, where lack of civil society is exacerbated by ethnic divisions, the introduction of democracy basically turns into a demographic census, where people vote along ethnic lines. Completely pointless exercise.

That said, if you do want to help fix up a post-war country economically (which is the best thing you can do to support democracy), you don't do it the way the US did it in Iraq, but do it the way the US did it in Western Europe. The difference between then and now is that the European postwar effort was directed by people who grew up in New Deal America, who had faith in the ability of government to organize a large-scale infrastructure of reconstruction which could benefit society at large (in the case of the Marshall Plan, benefitting also American workers who produced all that stuff that got shipped overseas) and had some expertise in doing it; whereas those pimps who ran Iraq afer getting rid of Hussein, basically believe the state to be a problem, so they made deals with unscrupulous outside private sector suppliers who have no stake in either Iraqi or American society and whose main concern is the bottom line not the functioning of Iraqi democracy. Both Iraq and the US ended up being losers. That's the key difference. Private sector investors don't have the stamina for reconstruction in unstable war zones. That has to be a government effort, and it has to be large scale, taking control of all public works and infrastructure, not just security, from day 1.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 21, 2011, 09:05:23 AM
Even then it is not clear that the country is much better off, we can only hope that hatred of "Persians" by Iraqis will prevent it from becoming a satellite of Iran and a foreign policy problem for the US. 

Those who hate the "Persians" are fewer than a third of Iraqis who are of Sunni background. The Kurds can't be bothered and the Shia who are the majority in the south are really quite happy being allied with their Iranian brothers, whom they never really wanted to shoot had Saddam not made them do it.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 21, 2011, 09:05:23 AM
and who is to say that we are in charge of deciding which regimes are queued for removal.  Bombing and hoping that something good comes out of the resulting chaos is not a good strategy. 

The problem is that the whole field of international law on just wars is in a bit if flux since at least the disintegration of the USSR and the proliferation of intranational wars. Under the old system, national sovereignty was sacrosanct. While nation states could ask the rest of the world for help to defend against an outside attacker, a population, or part of a population, of a nation state has no standing to ask for help to protect it against what is supposedly its own state. That began to change with Bosnia and Kosovo, but there are still no worked out rules. Arguably, the Libyan case is a bit clearer since the rebels in Benghazi did in fact ask for support from the world community. We will see how this plays out. At the moment, nobody in the West seems to be in any sort of drivers' seat. We still don't have a system that provides a road map for what to do when a government is shooting its own population and remaining idle bystanders is not morally palatable.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 09:15:10 AM
I think that it's "super neat", but again I must be naive to feel this way.

I wonder if this fits your definition of "super neat": the Arab League, which requested action in the first place, is now upset that their request is actually being taken seriously:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110320/ap_on_re_af/af_libya_arabs

"Humanitarian intervention" means, in plain English, war (y'know, killing people and blowing stuff up)....I don't see anything particulary neat about that.

Quote from: Velimir on March 21, 2011, 09:32:23 AM
I wonder if this fits your definition of "super neat": the Arab League, which requested action in the first place, is now upset that their request is actually being taken seriously:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110320/ap_on_re_af/af_libya_arabs

What matters is that the measure got through and that something could be done. International bitching is inevitable. I don't see how the Arab League's statement can be taken seriously, nor Russia's almost immediate "stop doing exactly what you said you would do and we didn't veto" soundbyte. I can understand an everyday Joe (or Saif) taking war lightly then being shocked at its extent, but the Arab League really have no place to complain about something two days ago they agreed to, even if they try to claim that they didn't fully understand what was happening (and such a miscalculation could only be slight incompetence on their part). I also take that statement with a grain of salt given how diverse opinion in the Arab world is on the matter.

Quote from: Velimir on March 21, 2011, 09:32:23 AM
"Humanitarian intervention" means, in plain English, war (y'know, killing people and blowing stuff up)....I don't see anything particulary neat about that.

I know - doing nothing is easy, it's cheap and doesn't risk you looking bad, but it's not a conclusion that I can accept in this situation.

Edit:

Syria protests spread, authorities pull back (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/21/us-syria-idUSTRE72K4CD20110321)

Army chief deserts Yemen leader (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/56da2086-53ac-11e0-a01c-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1HGFRV6gv)

This movement has to be considered a major and permanent shift in attitudes civilians have towards their governments. Arabs previously appeared to be content with leaders they had no control over, but this has been revealed spectacularly not to be the case. One of the most interesting things is, no matter how many differing ideological factions there are, the words that the protesters keep mentioning are always synonyms of "freedom" and "democracy" (and usually literally those two). It's such a powerful thing to witness, especially from good reporting sources actually embedded rather than skimming over the events: that political freedom is not propaganda from the west, but is in fact an ingrained desire in many cultures which wells up when suppressed ready to explode at a later time.

I find it very difficult to view many images of these protests and feel fear to look at them. Some of the movements will be crushed, some will go bad, but some could flourish. It will be crappy inefficient democracy, perhaps India style or worse, but it could gain a toehold, and this will create a crucial change: a Democratic system will no longer feel disingenuous to wish on Arabs - a western thing - if there is a middle-eastern example which was established by the wishes of the population, the inevitable development and excitement will attract the attention of the population of nearby countries. Most amazingly, nobody saw it coming.

     I don't think there's a problem identifying the despicable regimes, nor a problem choosing who gets to decide to attack them. The ones who want to intervene get to decide to do it. The ones who don't want to do it have the option of opposing it. Why don't they?

Quote from: drogulus on March 21, 2011, 03:22:46 PM
     I don't think there's a problem identifying the despicable regimes, nor a problem choosing who gets to decide to attack them. The ones who want to intervene get to decide to do it. The ones who don't want to do it have the option of opposing it. Why don't they?

Well, there are lots of places that the US is considered despicable, so I guess we are fortunate that they don't have the wherewithal to attack.   ::)

Quote from: drogulus on March 21, 2011, 03:22:46 PMI don't think there's a problem identifying the despicable regimes, nor a problem choosing who gets to decide to attack them. The ones who want to intervene get to decide to do it.

Ah, the law of the jungle.  I guess we should dispense with the UN then.

And just what are the despicable regimes?  Try writing the list from a Russian perspective rather than an American one.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 09:45:05 AMArabs previously appeared to be content with leaders they had no control over

To whom?  The large number of jailed dissidents and opponents imply exactly the opposite of what you write.  Did no one see this coming, or did you not see this coming?  A few weeks ago it would have been hard for many people who don't follow the Arab world closely to fathom what is happening, and that it could happen so quickly, but potentially violent civil unrest was expected by some, not least the governments in the region. 

Quote from: Todd on March 21, 2011, 06:56:57 PM
I guess we should dispense with the UN then.

I agree.

Quote from: Todd on March 21, 2011, 06:56:57 PM


Ah, the law of the jungle.  I guess we should dispense with the UN then.

And just what are the despicable regimes?  Try writing the list from a Russian perspective rather than an American one.

     The despicable regimes are the ones that require no perspective to identify. Incidentally, if you require a perspective to validate your list then people won't take you seriously except as an obstacle. Yes, Russia has a perspective. Does it come with an argument about principle or is it narrowly self-interested? Gosh, that's such a tough question! (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/grin.gif)

     The law of the jungle is what you get when you let the U.N. be your guide. It's the last refuge where good people go to be unaccountable. It's motto should be:

     I'd really like to help but my hands are tied

    The real argument against the Libya action, the one that matters most, is that it might turn into a horrible mess, an expensive failure that discredits humanitarian intervention for years. That's why even though the U.S. is involved in 3 such wars now we still refrain from intervening, as in Sudan, Rwanda, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Lebanon (after 1983), and the list will grow. We can't be everywhere, but that's not a good excuse to be nowhere.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 21, 2011, 09:45:05 AM
One of the most interesting things is, no matter how many differing ideological factions there are, the words that the protesters keep mentioning are always synonyms of "freedom" and "democracy" (and usually literally those two).

I am skeptical that they mean the same things by such terms as we do. When Algeria had an election in the 90s, the Islamist wackos won. When Palestinians had elections, Hamas won. Such were the practical results of democracy in the Middle East. Muslims, strangely enough, want to live under an Islamic government.

QuoteSome of the movements will be crushed, some will go bad, but some could flourish. It will be crappy inefficient democracy, perhaps India style or worse, but it could gain a toehold, and this will create a crucial change:

Much hedging in the above paragraph, as highlighted. It doesn't sound like you're willing to bet on a positive outcome.

Quote from: Velimir on March 21, 2011, 11:20:30 PM
I am skeptical that they mean the same things by such terms as we do. When Algeria had an election in the 90s, the Islamist wackos won. When Palestinians had elections, Hamas won. Such were the practical results of democracy in the Middle East. Muslims, strangely enough, want to live under an Islamic government.

Add Turkey, the most "westernized" Islamic nation: the recent political developments points in the same direction. Ataturk's framework (itself not exactly a model of democracy) is slowly and silently undone.

Quote from: MishaK on March 21, 2011, 09:29:11 AM
That was never the "right" way. This interventionist attitude comes from a misreading of the aftermath of WWII, where according to lore the US brough democracy to Germany, Japan, etc. through force. Except that in those cases where democracy did indeed blossom (Germany, France etc.), it did so due to the country's own pre-existing civil society and legal system; and in Asia, countries liberated from Japanese rule turned into militarist dictatorships (Korea, Taiwan), while Japan itself was more of a one-party corporatist oligarchy for the longest time. So democracy was in fact not achieved in Asia at the end of WWII through US force. In other words, the idea of bringing democracy to a place through invasion is based on a romantic misreading of the precedent of WWII. It simply has never been done and it basically doesn't work, unless the target country has a pre-existing civil society and legal system that it can fall back upon, and those things can't be developed overnight and not through overt pressure from an outside power of which the population is distrustful. If it doesn't have those pre-requisites, then the extreme circumstances of war and occupation invariably create panic and gloom among the voting population which tends to provide fertile grounds for more extreme movements. In those cases, where lack of civil society is exacerbated by ethnic divisions, the introduction of democracy basically turns into a demographic census, where people vote along ethnic lines. Completely pointless exercise.

That said, if you do want to help fix up a post-war country economically (which is the best thing you can do to support democracy), you don't do it the way the US did it in Iraq, but do it the way the US did it in Western Europe. The difference between then and now is that the European postwar effort was directed by people who grew up in New Deal America, who had faith in the ability of government to organize a large-scale infrastructure of reconstruction which could benefit society at large (in the case of the Marshall Plan, benefitting also American workers who produced all that stuff that got shipped overseas) and had some expertise in doing it; whereas those pimps who ran Iraq afer getting rid of Hussein, basically believe the state to be a problem, so they made deals with unscrupulous outside private sector suppliers who have no stake in either Iraqi or American society and whose main concern is the bottom line not the functioning of Iraqi democracy. Both Iraq and the US ended up being losers. That's the key difference. Private sector investors don't have the stamina for reconstruction in unstable war zones. That has to be a government effort, and it has to be large scale, taking control of all public works and infrastructure, not just security, from day 1.

Some excellent points here, but the arguments you made about the impossibility of implementing democracy " unless the target country has a pre-existing civil society and legal system that it can fall back upon, and those things can't be developed overnight and not through overt pressure from an outside power of which the population is distrustful" are equally pertinent for the Marshall Plan. Germany, France, Italy and other European countries at its receiving end were just as Western as the US with respect to the civil society and the legal system (totalitarian experiments notwithstanding), mentality, customs and manners, and certainly did not feel they were overtly pressured by an outside power they distrusted. This is hardly the case with Iraq, Lybia, Egypt or other Arab countries, with their centuries long history of radically different civil and legal systems, mentality, customs and manners and their deep distrust of the "Crusaders", i.e. the Western world.

A "Marshall Plan" for the Arab world sounds great in theory but the probablity of its coming into being is nil.

Quote from: drogulus on March 21, 2011, 07:55:50 PM
     The despicable regimes are the ones that require no perspective to identify.

IOW, there are no despicable regimes.

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Incidentally, if you require a perspective to validate your list then people won't take you seriously except as an obstacle. Yes, Russia has a perspective. Does it come with an argument about principle or is it narrowly self-interested?

Yeah, right, to be sure an argument about principle could not go hand in hand with self-interest...

QuoteThe real argument against the Libya action, the one that matters most, is that it might turn into a horrible mess, an expensive failure that discredits humanitarian intervention for years.

Iraq did turn into a horrible mess, but just as Gaddafi didn't learn anything from it, so the US and some of its allies seem not to have learned anything from it either.

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We can't be everywhere, but that's not a good excuse to be nowhere.

Incidentally, where you are there is also oil, natural gas or mineral resources. Seems like the best places to be are those that require no perspective to identify.  ;D

Some interesting "perspectives".  ;D

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/03/no-debate-and-no-objective-obama-enters-war# (http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/03/no-debate-and-no-objective-obama-enters-war#)

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/21/lind_libya_war/index.html (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/21/lind_libya_war/index.html)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/03/at_the_end_of_last.php (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/03/at_the_end_of_last.php)

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/03/rhetoric_intervention (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/03/rhetoric_intervention)

Quote from: Eusebius on March 22, 2011, 02:35:28 AM

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/21/lind_libya_war/index.html (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/21/lind_libya_war/index.html)

Lind is right on, as he often is.

I find it hard to believe that this Obama character ever (1) taught constitutional law at a major university; (2) was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Funny world we live in, eh?

Quote from: Velimir on March 22, 2011, 02:51:00 AM
I find it hard to believe that this Obama character ever (1) taught constitutional law at a major university; (2) was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Why not? He promised a "change we can believe in" --- and voila: he changed visibly.  ;D

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/21/what_intervention_in_libya_tells_us_about_the_neocon_liberal_alliance (http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/21/what_intervention_in_libya_tells_us_about_the_neocon_liberal_alliance)

Walt hits the nail with these 2 paragraphs, which I think are worth quoting in full:

The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power -- and especially its military power -- can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America's right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.

So if you're baffled by how Mr. "Change You Can Believe In" morphed into Mr. "More of the Same," you shouldn't really be surprised. George Bush left in disgrace and Barack Obama took his place, but he brought with him a group of foreign policy advisors whose basic world views were not that different from the people they were replacing. I'm not saying their attitudes were identical, but the similarities are probably more important than the areas of disagreement. Most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire, it seems, and it doesn't really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.

A personal note. As it happens, I've been acquainted quite closely with some members of Washington's think-tank and policy-making world. The disconnect of some of these people from the real world is astounding. I knew a guy who built a career as an "expert" on a certain Middle Eastern country despite the fact that he didn't know its language, had never been there, and had hardly any contacts there. He is not an exceptional case. The making of policy has hardly anything to do with knowledge about a region, or the objective situation there. In fact, those who have genuine knowledge are typically sidelined, as happened just before the Iraq war.

"Ignorance is strength!"

Quote from: Todd on March 21, 2011, 07:04:35 PM
To whom?  The large number of jailed dissidents and opponents imply exactly the opposite of what you write.

I was referring to the everyday people, not a small minority of political 'radicals' (by the standards of the government that imprisoned them, natch). The everydays who go about their jobs and don't complain. Few westerners looking from such a remote perspective (such as myself) could have really guessed at how intolerable they found their leaders. The silence seemed more like tacit acceptance.

Quote from: Todd on March 21, 2011, 07:04:35 PM
Did no one see this coming, or did you not see this coming?

Basically any commentator on this subject - reporters who have been following individual countries for years, etc - all say that this is unprecedented. Everybody from journalists to the American government thought Egypt was the most stable country in the middle east (although Saudi Arabia comes close). Everybody thought that Arab countries were so diverse that movements like this would always be dissident and localised. I don't get how anybody could've even guessed about the sweeping extent and flash-fire nature of these events, although feel free to offer some examples.

Quote from: Velimir on March 21, 2011, 11:20:30 PM
Much hedging in the above paragraph, as highlighted. It doesn't sound like you're willing to bet on a positive outcome.

It's realism, I guess. There's a big difference between the potential that excites me and seeing countless things like this go bad. But I do feel that this movement is the best chance for change for a long time precisely because it's so infectious - it doesn't rely on laborious chipping away at individual despots, the opposition it causes can materialise out of nowhere within days.

Also "positive outcome" is hard to gauge given the diversity of the countries involved - Egypt to Yemen. I do feel that a lot of good will come of this, as well as plenty of bad, although I've yet to see many concrete examples of the latter. Expecting everthing to go magically well is what went wrong with Iraq. People can become frustrated by slow transitions in Egypt, but the population now know that civil disobedience is an option - and that is a key historical differentiation between western and some dictator states: western populations don't feel the need to "respect" their governments, and view their transitory nature as being a positive thing. Some in countries like Libya still genuinely believe that to even criticise the leader is to insult the country. Undermining "love" for the leadership, and encouraging criticism and analysis is a core requisite for democracy to work, as it allows for poor judgements to be pressured into correction - the key basis for a democracy is being able to tell the leaders "stop this idea, it sucks" without reasonably expecting them to shoot at you with tanks for doing so (which is where western intervention in Libya comes in - talk about a "don't be a prick" warning to other countries?)

Quote from: Stephen M. Walt
Most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire, it seems, and it doesn't really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.

Addicted to empire --- that's an excellent and accurate description. Now, mutatis mutandis, it bears a striking similarity with the process Theodor Mommsen described so vividly and in a delightful prose in its Roman History: how a small Republic founded on virtue, self-restraint and frugality gradually became --- more by the inexorable logic of the "snowball" and "unintended consequences" than by design --- a hedonistic, expansive and greedy empire.

Still shelling cities. Stay classy, Gaddafi.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 22, 2011, 05:32:47 AM
Still shelling cities. Stay classy, Gaddafi.

Wait a minute! Didn't some US general in charge of the operations make known to the world yesterday that the bombings were "very effective"? Then how come Gaddafi can still shell cities?

Quote from: Eusebius on March 22, 2011, 05:38:48 AM
Wait a minute! Didn't some US general in charge of the operations make known to the world yesterday that the bombings were "very effective"? Then how come Gaddafi can still shell cities?

Er...does anyone know who our allies are in Libya? I mean, who precisely are we supporting here? Doubtless there are loads of Jeffersonian democrats, adherents to limited government, and scrupulous separators of mosque and state holed up in Benghazi (or wherever they are). Have we identified them yet?

Quote from: Velimir on March 22, 2011, 05:52:12 AM
Er...does anyone know who our allies are in Libya? I mean, who precisely are we supporting here? Doubtless there are loads of Jeffersonian democrats, adherents to limited government, and scrupulous separators of mosque and state holed up in Benghazi (or wherever they are). Have we identified them yet?

Never ever let common sense, realism and cautiousness stay in the way of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" --- even if you end up having the wrong "friend", he'll have plenty of enemies as well.  ;D

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 05:38:48 AM
Wait a minute! Didn't some US general in charge of the operations make known to the world yesterday that the bombings were "very effective"? Then how come Gaddafi can still shell cities?

Human shields. The mandate is to establish a no fly zone, and that was fully successful - that statement is just PR. The no fly zone is the easy part. Technically and legally they are not supporting the rebels, and to keep up that appearance will be the main challenge.

Clearly outside of mandates it is highly desirable that Gaddafi goes, and as a result there is a theoretical desire for the rebels to succeed in fighting his forces off. What the air forces can do is destroy supply chains and hope that the rebels are able to take care of the forces currently in or near the cities.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 22, 2011, 06:19:46 AM
it is highly desirable that Gaddafi goes

For whom?

Quote
and as a result there is a theoretical desire for the rebels to succeed in fighting his forces off. What the air forces can do is destroy supply chains and hope that the rebels are able to take care of the forces currently in or near the cities.

I join Velimir: who are these rebels? What do they stand for? What do they really want? What warranty do they offer they'll not be just as bad or even worse than Gaddafi? Is the US prepared to face and join a full-fledged civil war on the ground in order to secure their victory? Hope has never made a wish came true unless backed by action.  ;D

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 06:26:37 AM
I join Velimir: who are these rebels? What do they stand for? What do they really want? What warranty do they offer they'll not be just as bad or even worse than Gaddafi? Is the US prepared to face and join a full-fledged civil war on the ground in order to secure their victory? Hope has never made a wish came true unless backed by action.  ;D

They don't stand for anything other than the deposition of Gaddafi, because they aren't a unified movement with any fixed ideology - none of the protest movements have been.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 06:26:37 AM
Is the US prepared to face and join a full-fledged civil war on the ground in order to secure their victory?

No country is, and nobody would support their country doing it.

For somebody who just decried the concept of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend", you seem quite content with the idea of Gaddafi's tyranny continuing just in case something happens to come along that might be even worse.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 22, 2011, 06:44:38 AM
They don't stand for anything other than the deposition of Gaddafi.

Reminds one about how the "Afghan Freedom Fighters", i.e. the Mujaheedin / Taliban, stood for nothing else than the deposition of Najibullah, or how Trotsky stood for the deposition of Stalin --- this didn't make them Jeffersonian democrats.  ;D

Quote
For somebody who just decried the concept of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend", you seem quite content with the idea of Gaddafi's tyranny continuing just in case something happens to come along that might be even worse.

Gaddafi is a tyrant whose downfall I clearly stated I could hardly wait for, see a few pages above. But I am not convinced that the best way to achieve it is by repeating the errors of the past.  ;D

Actually, have you ever been to Lybia? I haven't. How do we know then which percentage of the people really hate Gaddafi and which percentage really support him?

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 22, 2011, 06:19:46 AM
Human shields. The mandate is to establish a no fly zone, and that was fully successful - that statement is just PR. The no fly zone is the easy part. Technically and legally they are not supporting the rebels, and to keep up that appearance will be the main challenge.

Clearly outside of mandates it is highly desirable that Gaddafi goes, and as a result there is a theoretical desire for the rebels to succeed in fighting his forces off. What the air forces can do is destroy supply chains and hope that the rebels are able to take care of the forces currently in or near the cities.

And where will Libya be with supply chains disruption, oil industry shattered, and "rebels" running things and seeking to exterminate Qadaffi loyalists to consolidate power?   I feel it is highly likely that when the dust clears the country will be much worse off and whoever ends up in power will have the population thinking of Qaddafi rule as the golden age for Libya.  Reform comes from within a country, not from a foreign invader.  The soon Obama turns this campagn over to the EU the better.  Before long combat in Libya will be between the French in the British.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 22, 2011, 07:00:10 AM
I feel it is highly likely that when the dust clears the country will be much worse off and whoever ends up in power will have the population thinking of Qaddafi rule as the golden age for Libya. 

Much as I dislike Gaddafi, I would like to be pointed to a really fair and accurate assessment of his achievements --- if any -- in creating a better country than that which he found when taking power 40 years back. Anyone knows a trustworthy source?

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 06:55:18 AM
Actually, have you ever been to Lybia? I haven't. How do we know then which percentage of the people really hate Gaddafi and which percentage really support him?

Me neither. This is definitely something that makes Libya stand apart from some of the other countries where these actions took place. Gaddafi's propaganda machine portrays him as a kind of everyday freedom fighter, opposed to an aloof royal. A lot of the population buy into that, which is why this seeming journey towards a status quo or potential partition is rearing its head: a lot of people are happy to be ruled by him so long as they don't question him and he doesn't decide to shoot them. The other guys - I'm on the side of keeping them safe providing it can be done relatively clinically.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 22, 2011, 07:00:10 AM
And where will Libya be with supply chains disruption, oil industry shattered, and "rebels" running things and seeking to exterminate Qadaffi loyalists to consolidate power?   I feel it is highly likely that when the dust clears the country will be much worse off and whoever ends up in power will have the population thinking of Qaddafi rule as the golden age for Libya.  Reform comes from within a country, not from a foreign invader.  The soon Obama turns this campagn over to the EU the better.  Before long combat in Libya will be between the French in the British.

You keep saying that about all of these protests, dire warnings of doom ;) So little gets done without idealism, and so much of what is worthwhile in life demands risk. Your mention of "reforms from within" is partly what makes this different from Iraq. Iraq was all about arbitrarily removing a loathed ruler and no regard for any other factors. Libya is about crippling his ability to commit human rights abuses as cheaply and effectively as possible - no messy ground wars.

It's still blatently idealistic intervention, but it's less dangerous all-round, and the local perception that this is as much about self-determination of a group of people than simply an imperialist fancy should make it a lot easier to establish hearts and minds in the areas under rebel administration.

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 22, 2011, 07:11:29 AM
a lot of people are happy to be ruled by him so long as they don't question him and he doesn't decide to shoot them.

But that pretty much describes the situation of most people along most of the recorded history --- panem et circenses being its Western incarnation until very recently.  Nothing peculiarly Lybian here.   :)

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The other guys - I'm on the side of keeping them safe providing it can be done relatively clinically.

That's precisely the problem: it can't, period.

Quote
It's still blatently idealistic intervention, but it's less dangerous all-round, and the local perception that this is as much about self-determination of a group of people than simply an imperialist fancy should make it a lot easier to establish hearts and minds in the areas under rebel administration.

Self-determination with military foreign aid? An oxymoron if there ever has been one.  ;D

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 22, 2011, 07:11:29 AMYou keep saying that about all of these protests, dire warnings of doom ;) So little gets done without idealism, and so much of what is worthwhile in life demands risk. Your mention of "reforms from within" is partly what makes this different from Iraq. Iraq was all about arbitrarily removing a loathed ruler and no regard for any other factors. Libya is about crippling his ability to commit human rights abuses as cheaply and effectively as possible - no messy ground wars.

Iraq also had its internal rebellions, which were put down by Hussein, and its horrific civil war after the US invasion, which was put down by bring in another 60,000 US troops and bribing Sunni groups with cash that al Qaeda countn't match.  Iraq with the "shock and awe" aerial display and no invasion would have been worse than Hussein and worse than what they have now.

The faster Obama hands off this ill conceived adventure to France and Britten the better.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 01:36:50 AM
Some excellent points here, but the arguments you made about the impossibility of implementing democracy " unless the target country has a pre-existing civil society and legal system that it can fall back upon, and those things can't be developed overnight and not through overt pressure from an outside power of which the population is distrustful" are equally pertinent for the Marshall Plan. Germany, France, Italy and other European countries at its receiving end were just as Western as the US with respect to the civil society and the legal system (totalitarian experiments notwithstanding), mentality, customs and manners, and certainly did not feel they were overtly pressured by an outside power they distrusted. This is hardly the case with Iraq, Lybia, Egypt or other Arab countries, with their centuries long history of radically different civil and legal systems, mentality, customs and manners and their deep distrust of the "Crusaders", i.e. the Western world.

I don't think "cultural similarity" matters, however you would measure that. For one thing, France and Germany have legal systems that are extremely different from that of the US. India's legal system (English style common law) is more similar to that of the US than Germany's or France's (civil law - Prussian Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch and French Code Napoleon, respectively). The US has more in common with some African and Asian members of the British Commonwealth than with Europe, as regards civic institutions and legal systems. What *does* indeed matter is the attitude of the more powerful outsider towards the post--conflict country, i.e. in the case of Western Europe, the white Americans in charge felt a certain cultural affinity towards the Germans and French from whose countries their own ancestors derived, whereas they treated the Koreans, Taiwanese and Japanese with overt racism and a sense of superiority. It's to a degree similar with the US treatment of the Arab world, especially post-9/11 among conservatives. That attitude doesn't bode well for a welcoming reception of even well intended advice. In that respect you're right.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 01:36:50 AM
A "Marshall Plan" for the Arab world sounds great in theory but the probablity of its coming into being is nil.

A Marshall plan for any part of the world has a probability of nil at the moment, because everyone is obsessed with deficit cutting (because we lived beyond our means during good times and allowed too much graft and waste) and belief in the power of collective large-scale public infrastructure projects with long term dividends but high startup costs is zero. That will have to change, not just for the good of the Arab world. Japan is showing us what havoc an inadequate, outdated energy infrastructure can wreak even in a highly developed country. We can't afford to keep pushing the ball down the road, while continuing to overtax our outdated 70-year old grids, 40-year old powerplants and 100-year old railway lines, or our pothole-strewn highways, if we want to have a successful future, especially in light of diminshing finite resources. The whole world needs a Marshall Plan and Brazil, China and India are neither in the position to fill the void, nor should they necessarily be trusted even if they could.

Quote from: drogulus on March 21, 2011, 07:55:50 PMYes, Russia has a perspective. Does it come with an argument about principle or is it narrowly self-interested?

We can't be everywhere, but that's not a good excuse to be nowhere.

The implication of the first line is that the US acts on principle and not (solely) narrow self interest.  I'm not convinced this is the case.  I also don't know if it should be the case.  Pursuing some vague "principle" can lead to unending warfare.

The second statement is also the call of the manipulative cynic.  How, for instance, could a small US intervention in Rwanda have made things go any more wrong there? 

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 22, 2011, 04:18:37 AMBasically any commentator on this subject - reporters who have been following individual countries for years, etc - all say that this is unprecedented. Everybody from journalists to the American government thought Egypt was the most stable country in the middle east (although Saudi Arabia comes close). Everybody thought that Arab countries were so diverse that movements like this would always be dissident and localised. I don't get how anybody could've even guessed about the sweeping extent and flash-fire nature of these events, although feel free to offer some examples.

What's happening is largely unprecedented, though prior upheavals fostered by imperials powers to other ends have occurred, and the speed has been both amazing and alarming.  There's no doubt of that.  There is doubt, at least in my mind, as to whether the people of Egypt and Tunisia, and other countries, will really end up better off.  I certainly hope they do.  I won't be surprised if they don't.

As to Egypt and Saudi Arabia being stable, well, I don't follow the Middle East in great detail, but even I knew that Egypt faced a variety of problems, including economic or demographic (eg, a huge youth population and extremely high unemployment), and that it suppressed dissidents of all types.  That is not a stable situation.  Saudi Arabia is apparently harsher yet, but they also dole out goodies more freely, and have done so in a more accelerated way in the past few weeks.  Maybe the House of Saud can reform the political and economic structure of the country sufficiently to prevent another revolution.  Maybe not.

One thing I'm hoping can be averted is yet more war.  I don't care if it is endless civil wars or some type of regional war, by which I mean a war between Israel and various Arab states.  Some of the international "stability" that existed in the region is gone, or has at least eroded, and this may not lead to peace. 

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 07:30:41 AMA Marshall plan for any part of the world has a probability of nil at the moment, because everyone is obsessed with deficit cutting....The whole world needs a Marshall Plan and Brazil, China and India are neither in the position to fill the void, nor should they necessarily be trusted even if they could.

There can be no Marshall Plan in the current world because the necessary conditions do not exist.  The US did not undertake the policy out of the kindness of its collective heart, it did it for strategic reasons.  There is nothing in the current world anything like what existed in the late 40s.  The whole world does not need a Marshall Plan, either; that is grandiose imperial thinking to make even someone like Cecil Rhodes shudder.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 07:30:41 AM
I don't think "cultural similarity" matters, however you would measure that. For one thing, France and Germany have legal systems that are extremely different from that of the US.

Correct, but the assumptions behind these systems are the same. Could you say that the assumptions behind the US legal system and that of Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Lybia are the same?

Quote
India's legal system (English style common law) is more similar to that of the US than Germany's or France's (civil law - Prussian Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch and French Code Napoleon, respectively).

That's particularly interesting, because India's legal system is nothing else than a colonial inheritance --- do I need to remind you how horrified were the English colonial authorities by the Indian practices prior to the English common law being literally forced upon the Indians?

Quote
The US has more in common with some African and Asian members of the British Commonwealth than with Europe, as regards civic institutions and legal systems.

Oh sure: the Liberian constitution is basically a copy of the US one. Yet the two countries are galaxies apart.

Quote
What *does* indeed matter is the attitude of the more powerful outsider towards the post--conflict country, i.e. in the case of Western Europe, the white Americans in charge felt a certain cultural affinity towards the Germans and French from whose countries their own ancestors derived,

Are you being serious?  :o

White Americans in charge of Western Europe? Then what were Adenauer and de Gaulle? Some bushmen puppets of their WASP masters?

This is colonial arrogance at its best and purest and I'm flabbergasted by your adopting it.  ???

Quote
A Marshall plan for any part of the world has a probability of nil at the moment, because everyone is obsessed with deficit cutting (because we lived beyond our means during good times and allowed too much graft and waste) and belief in the power of collective large-scale public infrastructure projects with long term dividends but high startup costs is zero. That will have to change, not just for the good of the Arab world. Japan is showing us what havoc an inadequate, outdated energy infrastructure can wreak even in a highly developed country. We can't afford to keep pushing the ball down the road, while continuing to overtax our outdated 70-year old grids, 40-year old powerplants and 100-year old railway lines, or our pothole-strewn highways, if we want to have a successful future, especially in light of diminshing finite resources. The whole world needs a Marshall Plan and Brazil, China and India are neither in the position to fill the void, nor should they necessarily be trusted even if they could.

Nothing to disagree with here.

Where did Qaddafi get all those nice tanks and attack aircraft anyway.  Defense manufacturers get to sell him the hardware, then get to sell the hardware used to blow it up.  A win-win situations, no?

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 07:45:24 AM
The implication of the first line is that the US acts on principle and not (solely) narrow self interest.  I'm not convinced this is the case.  I also don't know if it should be the case.  Pursuing some vague "principle" can lead to unending warfare.

This is of course common sense, a rarity among policy-makers, it seems. A war based on narrow self interest will surely have an end: either the interested party achieves it, or the other party is strong enough to resist ---in either case, a peace will sooner or later be established. But a war based on principles will never end, especially when the two parties disagree completely as to what principles are to prevail.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 22, 2011, 07:58:25 AM
Where did Qaddafi get all those nice tanks and attack aircraft anyway. 

Ask Monsieur Sarkozy. It is he who received Gaddafi in Paris with the highest honors and allowed him to mount his tent at the Louvre --- aiming precisely at selling him weapons.

Hypocrisy, thy name is politics.  ;D

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 08:03:12 AM
Ask Monsieur Sarkozy. It is he who received Gaddafi in Paris with the highest honors and allowed him to mount his tent at the Louvre --- aiming precisely at selling him weapons.

Hypocrisy, thy name is politics.  ;D

Obama also had to suspend an impending sale of military hardware at the beginning of the crisis.   

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 22, 2011, 08:05:00 AM
Obama also had to suspend an impending sale of military hardware at the beginning of the crisis.

Voila! Humanitarianism in action.  ;D

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 22, 2011, 08:05:00 AMObama also had to suspend an impending sale of military hardware at the beginning of the crisis.

Yes, but that's because we thought Qaddafi had changed.  He gave up his WMD and helped us hunt down terrorists.  He no doubt needed those weapons to kill members of al-Qaeda.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 08:07:16 AM
Yes, but that's because we thought Qaddafi had changed.  He gave up his WMD and helped us hunt down terrorists.  He no doubt needed those weapons to kill members of al-Qaeda.

:D

One can say whatever one wants about this guy, and I dislike him a lot (not least for his repugnant physical appearance) --- but that he was just as shrewed and clever as to be able to manipulate the West for years (after Lockerbie, mind you) nobody can deny.  ;D

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 08:07:16 AM
Yes, but that's because we thought Qaddafi had changed.  He gave up his WMD and helped us hunt down terrorists.  He no doubt needed those weapons to kill members of al-Qaeda.

You left off the smiley.   ;D

This policy that all sins are forgiven if you say something bad about bin Laden doesn't seem to work well.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 22, 2011, 08:15:01 AMThis policy that all sins are forgiven if you say something bad about bin Laden doesn't seem to work well.

I am shocked to read this.

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 22, 2011, 08:15:01 AM
This policy that all sins are forgiven if you say something bad about bin Laden doesn't seem to work well.

Lip-servicers of the world, unite!  ;D

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 07:52:12 AM
There can be no Marshall Plan in the current world because the necessary conditions do not exist.  The US did not undertake the policy out of the kindness of its collective heart, it did it for strategic reasons.  There is nothing in the current world anything like what existed in the late 40s.  The whole world does not need a Marshall Plan, either; that is grandiose imperial thinking to make even someone like Cecil Rhodes shudder.

The US did it then out of strategic reasons, but also for its own profit. The Marshall Plan was the ideal means of keeping full employment when a large military of conscripts was about to be demobilized when the war ended, potentially throwing a huge number of workers into an economy that couldn't absorb it. The Marshall Plan and the GI Bill alleviated that problem massively. We tend to forget these days that when Truman promulgated the Truman Doctrine, arguing that Communists must be deterred in greece, where an open civil war was going on, there was scant interest and little support for containment of Communism, despite its strategic appeal, because the country had no interest in the expense of it when a long war had just ended. It wasn't until Marshall added the Marshall plan and explicitly sold it to the public and policy makers as a policy that combines strategic interest with explicit economic self-interest that public and political opinion turned in favor of supporting Europe.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 07:53:28 AM
Correct, but the assumptions behind these systems are the same. Could you say that the assumptions behind the US legal system and that of Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Lybia are the same?

Broadly speaking the assumptions behind most legal systems are the same. The assumptions matter less than the organizational structure, the distribution of responsibilities and burden of proof, etc. The US-Anglo civil law systems are really a different universe compared to the continental European civil law systems. You overestimate the differences with "non-Western" cultures and underestimate the differences among "Western" systems. E.g. France's constitution explicitly focuses on equality, Germany's on "human dignity", two concepts completely foreign to US law.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 07:53:28 AM
That's particularly interesting, because India's legal system is nothing else than a colonial inheritance --- do I need to remind you how horrified were the English colonial authorities by the Indian practices prior to the English common law being literally forced upon the Indians?

As are continental European systems a colonial inheritance from Roman imperial rule. So? I'm sure the old Germans and Gauls didn't much appreciate that at the time either.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 07:53:28 AM
Oh sure: the Liberian constitution is basically a copy of the US one. Yet the two countries are galaxies apart.

I was speaking about in practice, not on paper. On paper most countries are "democracies" with "elected" leaders.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 07:53:28 AM
Are you being serious?  :o

White Americans in charge of Western Europe? Then what were Adenauer and de Gaulle? Some bushmen puppets of their WASP masters?

Maybe I was unclear. What I mean to say is that while the US is an ethnically diverse country, it was a country ruled by whites in the 40s/50s, and it was whites with a European background who worked on the reconstruction effort in Europe, and who hence felt a kinship to the Europeans they were helping, which was not the case in Japan or Korea, where those same white Americans felt no connection to Asians, whom many of them regarded as rather barbaric, as evidenced also by the much greater brutality displayed by US troops in the Korean War and later Vietnam vs. their behavior in Europe. I don't really think that is very controversial.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 08:33:15 AMThe US did it then out of strategic reasons, but also for its own profit. The Marshall Plan was the ideal means of keeping full employment when a large military of conscripts was about to be demobilized when the war ended, potentially throwing a huge number of workers into an economy that couldn't absorb it. The Marshall Plan and the GI Bill alleviated that problem massively. We tend to forget these days that when Truman promulgated the Truman Doctrine, arguing that Communists must be deterred in greece, where an open civil war was going on, there was scant interest and little support for containment of Communism, despite its strategic appeal, because the country had no interest in the expense of it when a long war had just ended. It wasn't until Marshall added the Marshall plan and explicitly sold it to the public and policy makers as a policy that combines strategic interest with explicit economic self-interest that public and political opinion turned in favor of supporting Europe.

I'm very well aware of the history of the Marshall Plan.  That's why it cannot (and should not) happen today.  What spectre out there today is the equivalent of the USSR?  It cetainly is not even the most militant of militant Islamists.  The most talented demagogue around can't convince even the slowest observer that there is a potentially real existential threat to the US, and that we should build up other parts of the world to stand as a bulwark against said threat.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 08:43:15 AM
I'm very well aware of the history of the Marshall Plan.  That's why it cannot (and should not) happen today.  What spectre out there today is the equivalent of the USSR?  It cetainly is not even the most militant of militant Islamists.  The most talented demagogue around can't convince even the slowest observer that there is a potentially real existential threat to the US, and that we should build up other parts of the world to stand as a bulwark against said threat.

The Marshall Plan's main objective was not necessarily stopping communism, but rebuilding the European economy and tying it to US economic interests for the long term, while preventing widescale unemployment in the US when the WWII army was demobilized. You don't need an enemy to make such an effort. What you do need is a mindset that accepts that organized public effort can accomplish such a big task, rather than the current belief that the private sector can solve everything. The private sector has too short of an attention span and too jittery investors to do it.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 09:09:03 AMThe Marshall Plan's main objective was not necessarily stopping communism, but rebuilding the European economy and tying it to US economic interests for the long term, while preventing widescale unemployment in the US when the WWII army was demobilized. You don't need an enemy to make such an effort. What you do need is a mindset that accepts that organized public effort can accomplish such a big task, rather than the current belief that the private sector can solve everything. The private sector has too short of an attention span and too jittery investors to do it.

This is an interesting revision of history. 

It was deemed necessary to rebuild Europe to prevent it from falling to Communism.  The offer of funding to the Soviet Union was a nice, cynical touch to the proceedings.  There were always additional objectives, like building markets for US companies to boost employment and opening capital markets to the one country with fully functioning commercial and investment banks (with both objectives also being served by Bretton Woods), but preventing the spread of Communism was always one of the main objectives.  It helps that the ultimately circular funding of the Dawes Plan displayed the fundamental weakness of such schemes in the 20s, so policy makers knew that something different was needed in the 40s and 50s. 

I'm not quite sure what the private sector has to do with any of this.  No investor would take on that scale and type of risk, at least without explicit loss coverage by the federal government.  I'm not certain who believes the private sector can solve everything today.  Who, for instance, believes the private sector can eradicate polio?  Who even believed contractors could rebuild Iraq without the US government?  There were and are a lot of private companies profiting from reconstruction, but that's with a lot of public funding. 

I'm not sure how any of this translates into a need for some type of global Marshall Plan, as you mentioned earlier.  How many war ravaged lands outside of the Middle East are strategically important to the US, and how many of them offer sizeable enough markets for US companies to justify huge outlays?  There is no need for a new version of the Marshall Plan.  Smaller aid packages, sure, but that's quite a bit different.  An enemy may not be needed to make such an effort, though it usually helps, but an ROI sure the hell is needed, even if it's a public project. 

I think we have sufficiently derailed this thread already... but just a few answers...

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 09:43:38 AM
This is an interesting revision of history. 

It was deemed necessary to rebuild Europe to prevent it from falling to Communism.  The offer of funding to the Soviet Union was a nice, cynical touch to the proceedings.  There were always additional objectives, like building markets for US companies to boost employment and opening capital markets to the one country with fully functioning commercial and investment banks (with both objectives also being served by Bretton Woods), but preventing the spread of Communism was always one of the main objectives. 

Look at the public's and Washington's reaction to a) the Truman doctrine speech, and b) the later Marshall Plan speech. The Marshall Plan was all about finding a way for the US to profit from what the Truman doctrine tried to accomplish by mainly military means, but for which there was insufficient public and political support. This isn't revision, it's a matter of public record. The Truman doctrine came before the Marshall Plan and it went nowhere until the Marshall Plan came around, because the Truman doctrine by itself offered no material benefits for a war-weary population. The communist bogeyman was convenient, but the incentives for rebuilding Europe would have been there even without the Communist threat. And again, the communist bogeyman was insufficient to rally support for the Truman doctrine. The US population in 1945-1947 had no interest in, and no appetite to fight, communism. In hindsight it seems like communism was the overarching great threat, and it may indeed have seemed that way to some policymakers at the time, but for the population at large it wasn't even on the radar. That changed only after 1947. You also underestimate the massive problem that a demobilzed WWII military would have meant to the US economy absent some economic program to absorb all those thousands of new workers recently discharged from the military (as I said before, the GI bill also helped absorb many of those as well).

EDIT: a pertinent quote from the Marshall Plan speech at Harvard in 1947:

QuoteThe remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. The manufacturer and the farmer throughout wide areas must be able and willing to exchange their products for currencies the continuing value of which is not open to question.

Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

Read the text. (http://www.oecd.org/document/10/0,3343,en_2649_201185_1876938_1_1_1_1,00.html) There is not a single mention of deterring communism. It's all about economic necessities and preventing further economic misery that would affect the US economy as well.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 09:43:38 AM
Who even believed contractors could rebuild Iraq without the US government?

Apparently, many of the individuals who ran the CPA quite honestly did believe that, as unbelievable as that sounds. They were that doctrinaire.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 09:43:38 AM
I'm not sure how any of this translates into a need for some type of global Marshall Plan, as you mentioned earlier.  How many war ravaged lands outside of the Middle East are strategically important to the US, and how many of them offer sizeable enough markets for US companies to justify huge outlays?  There is no need for a new version of the Marshall Plan.  Smaller aid packages, sure, but that's quite a bit different.  An enemy may not be needed to make such an effort, though it usually helps, but an ROI sure the hell is needed, even if it's a public project.

I think Afghanistan and other recent issues have shown that many seemingly unimportant countries have the potential of seriously destabilizing the world economy if unsustainable political conditions are left unchecked for too long and if the population is left outside of the world economy for too long. A large scale international investment effort with a real commitment towards development would help not only Arab post conflict states but many sub-saharan African states as well, and it would benefit Western economies as well, all of which are suffering from the economic downturn still. At present, the vacuum is left to the Chinese and in some cases the Saudis, both of which have often less humanitarian interests and whose long-term influence may not benefit either the locals or the rest of the world. A wealthier more stable country is a better trading partner and that creates jobs. The ROI sure as hell is there, it may just take a while to realize, just as it was in postwar Europe and Japan. There are no benefits whatsoever to be derived from leaving a country in an underdeveloped state with an unstable government. Whatever you can do to effectively improve that situation will bring some sort of ROI.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 10:43:01 AMbut the incentives for rebuilding Europe would have been there even without the Communist threat.

I think Afghanistan and other recent issues have shown that many seemingly unimportant countries have the potential of seriously destabilizing the world economy if unsustainable political conditions are left unchecked for too long and if the population is left outside of the world economy for too long.

The first statement is contrafactual, and can be neither proven nor disproven.  The reality is that there was a Communist threat, or at least a perceived threat.  Rebuilding Western Europe was seen as a way to keep it from becoming like Eastern Europe.  The timing of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan only reinforces this: if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Your example of Afghanistan is not a good one, and it certainly isn't a good analogy for other countries in, say, sub-Saharan Africa.  Afghanistan has been a strategically important country in Central Asia for centuries.  Empires in centuries past have fought wars in it and over it.  It offers passes into and out of the sub-continent.  That's one of the reasons why Pakistan started trying to install and back the Taliban in the 90s.  It is a unique country with a unique set of challenges.

Your concluding paragraph contains a bit of wishful thinking.  The Arab world and Africa are small and poor economically.  They aren't even remotely as economically significant as Western Europe and Japan were in the 40s.  That's like comparing apples and dump trucks.  The idea that "investing" in these regions - and throw in Southeast Asia and the poorer parts of South America, too - will have any impact on the current economic recovery is absolutely wrong.  These countries are poor and underdeveloped for myriad reasons, including hideous governance, that will not be and cannot be fixed in a few years time.  It will take many years, in some cases decades, to establish proper political and economic systems to create economically significant nations, and that's presuming they can be established.  I have no problem with the US contributing to economic development programs, but the idea that a large sustained effort will somehow magically transition these countries into something more modern is just wrong.  You yourself had mentioned somewhere else the fallacy of the US establishing democracy in post-war countries, but here you suggest we try creating, what, efficient, regulated capitalist economies, presumably with democratic governments to boot, where the underlying institutions do not exist?  As to lingering neo-con (and others') concerns that continued economic stagnation in such countries will create failed states where groups like al-Qaeda can operate, well, as Obama has shown, it's not to hard to order drone attacks and cruise missile attacks at will.  I do not see any justification for a large scale economic intervention in the developing world.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
The first statement is contrafactual, and can be neither proven nor disproven.  The reality is that there was a Communist threat, or at least a perceived threat.  Rebuilding Western Europe was seen as a way to keep it from becoming like Eastern Europe.  The timing of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan only reinforces this: if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Did you even bother reading the speech I linked? Marshall quite clearly speaks of the harm that would be done to the US economy by leaving Europe in poverty. Communism was secondary to the Marshall Plan. I never denied that communism played *a* role in the marshall plan, but the economic incentives speak for themselves and those incentives can be realized elsewhere as well.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
Your example of Afghanistan is not a good one, and it certainly isn't a good analogy for other countries in, say, sub-Saharan Africa.  Afghanistan has been a strategically important country in Central Asia for centuries.  Empires in centuries past have fought wars in it and over it.  It offers passes into and out of the sub-continent.  That's one of the reasons why Pakistan started trying to install and back the Taliban in the 90s.  It is a unique country with a unique set of challenges.

Nobody denies the uniqueness of *every* country, least of all me. But you underestimate the strategic importance of other African coutries over which wars were and are still fought, you just know less about them. As I said, China is very active in Africa these days, while the West ignores the opportunities at its own peril. The Chinese know the strategic importance and they take a longer term view.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
Your concluding paragraph contains a bit of wishful thinking.  The Arab world and Africa are small and poor economically.

Regarding the Arab world, that is not true. Regarding Africa, it depends which Africa you are talking about. There are quite significant economies like Nigeria and rather "unimportant" ones. In no case, does that however mitigate against enabling greater prosperity which would then create more important economies with more economic opportunities for everyone involved. In all cases, you are talking about economies that aren't at their full potential, which also means that you are missing potential trading partners who could buy stuff and therefore bring jobs to your own population.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
They aren't even remotely as economically significant as Western Europe and Japan were in the 40s.

You seem to be thinking more of present day Europe and Japan. Large parts of 1940s Europe were total backwaters then, e.g. Portugal, Greece.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
That's like comparing apples and dump trucks.  The idea that "investing" in these regions - and throw in Southeast Asia and the poorer parts of South America, too - will have any impact on the current economic recovery is absolutely wrong.  These countries are poor and underdeveloped for myriad reasons, including hideous governance, that will not be and cannot be fixed in a few years time.

Actually, the main reasons are a combination of the legacies of colonialism, including support for cronyist oligarchies; import tarrifs that prevent the import of cheaper 3rd world agricultural products to the west, while dumping subsidized western agricultural products on 3rd world markets, which makes it economically undesirable for local famers to go into farming crops to feed the local population, thus resulting in a few wealthy farmers controllling a market in luxury items for export to the West (coffee, cocoa, tropical fruits), while other languish in barely survivable susbistence farming; combined with the stupid policies of the IMF and the World Bank which provide loans but don't really effectively look at what the money is spent on, while insisting on monetarist policies that the borrower country can't afford to inflict on its population. It's a total mess. Compare with the Marshall Plan which delivered actual machinery needed for development and provided expertise and know-how, rather than just providing money and leaving it to local strongmen to be spent. Nothing that you have said in any way demonstrates that Marshall-plan style aid would be less successful, let alone more detrimental in poorer countries. I fail to see how providing agricultural machinery and improving infrastructure directly, rather than providing loans and leaving it to local leadership to spend, would be harmful in any way. Of course we do need to revamp the vastly unfair international trade system...

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
It will take many years, in some cases decades, to establish proper political and economic systems to create economically significant nations, and that's presuming they can be established.   I have no problem with the US contributing to economic development programs, but the idea that a large sustained effort will somehow magically transition these countries into something more modern is just wrong.

It took decades in Europe, too. Aside from France and Germany, most of the other countries were basket cases for decades. Need I remind you of Italy, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Greece, etc. The first waves of "Gastarbeiter" in 50's economic miracle Germany came from Italy, Greece and Portugal because economic opportunities there were so few. Even Austria was so poor outside of Vienna that someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't wait to emigrate. You're looking at Europe either through a very rosy-colored rear view mirror, or you're just talking about Germany and France. The rest really wasn't all that hot.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
You yourself had mentioned somewhere else the fallacy of the US establishing democracy in post-war countries, but here you suggest we try creating, what, efficient, regulated capitalist economies, presumably with democratic governments to boot, where the underlying institutions do not exist? 

I was talking about the fallacy of imposing democracy through force where no prior civil and legal institutions exist. Democracy and war are inherently incompatible. Any nation at war tends to limit democracy and war hinders the development of democratic institutions where none existed before. The antagonism of war creates an antagonistic population, and the destruction and hardship of war create fear and uncertainty, all of which combine to dissuade thoughtful constitutional processes that could yield a stable democratic nation. That is certainly not the case with development programs. You are jumping to conclusions and comparing very different things. And I don't at all deny that it will take decades. That's precisely why a concerted public effort is needed for which the private sector has no patience.

Quote from: Todd on March 22, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
As to lingering neo-con (and others') concerns that continued economic stagnation in such countries will create failed states where groups like al-Qaeda can operate, well, as Obama has shown, it's not to hard to order drone attacks and cruise missile attacks at will.  I do not see any justification for a large scale economic intervention in the developing world.

The justification, as I said, is that if we don't help, you breed poverty and instability. At best you invite someone else (Saudi, China) to "help" who might have counterproductive agendas. Don't forget that the Saudis funded the Mujaheddin and the Taliban as well and were often more important to their well being than the Pakistan. Don't forget the influence Iran plays in South Iraq, in Lebanon, in Palestine, all of which were more or less abandoned by the West, because policymakers like yourself saw no justification on wasting funds on such seemingly insignificant economies. Those vacuums get filled and others see the strategic importance we may not see. The result is changed regional dynamics that benefit less benevolent regimes. We do this at our peril. To say that Marshall Plan aid was an immense success in poor smaller European Nations, but cannot work in underdeveloped nations amounts to cultural relativism at best.

The Libyan regime is getting stranger and stranger. Their PR campaigns are reminding me of Iraq's Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.

I just watched a (UK) Channel 4 new reporter being taken with various others out of their hotels to be shown "evidence" of civilian casualties. First they were taken to a large, empty town square where they were in short time mobbed by green-wearing government supporters. Then they were taken to a bombed warehouse with several burnt-out trucks with mounted racks of missile launchers and their minder launched into a lecture about this being the spilling of "Libyan civilian blood". No corpses were shown, because evidently there aren't any. He ended with a smug air of satisfaction at having delivered unshakable evidence to the world based simply on his conviction in his own lies. They claim that Gaddafi is eratic, but he's nothing compared to the lunatics who work for him.

If it wasn't so serious, this would be amusing.

It also seems that the rebels are still without a fixed leadership, but are doing reasonably well in engagements they are having with the Libyan armed forces. It seems that outside of the elite units, their army isn't trained particularly well.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 08:33:15 AM
Broadly speaking the assumptions behind most legal systems are the same.

Agreed without any doubt, but this does not account for the different legal systems that history has witnessed. I ask you two specific questions: (1) which legal system would you rather live in, US / German / French (differences notwithstanding) or Sharia? and (2) why?

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The assumptions matter less than the organizational structure, the distribution of responsibilities and burden of proof, etc.

Once again, I agree completely.

But I can't help asking why is it that the things that really matters, i.e. "the organizational structure, the distribution of responsibilities and burden of proof, etc" are much more satisfactory in the US / Germany / France / [insert whatever European nation you want] than in Saudi Arabia / Iran / Yemen / Lybia / [insert whatever Muslim nation you want] ?

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The US-Anglo civil law systems are really a different universe compared to the continental European civil law systems. You overestimate the differences with "non-Western" cultures and underestimate the differences among "Western" systems. E.g. France's constitution explicitly focuses on equality, Germany's on "human dignity", two concepts completely foreign to US law.

You are playing word games, which is fine with me --- at the end of the day, you're a lawer and this is your daily bread --- be it said without any any disrespect for lawyers, and Shakespeare notwithstanding. But I ask you one more specific question: where would you rather practice your trade (and enjoy the benefits thereof): in US / Germany / France / [insert whatever European nation you want] or in Saudi Arabia / Iran / Yemen / Lybia / [insert whatever Muslim nation you want] ?

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As are continental European systems a colonial inheritance from Roman imperial rule. So? I'm sure the old Germans and Gauls didn't much appreciate that at the time either.

The old Germans and Gauls are long since extinct and so are their religious / tribal practices ---- hardly the case with Indian / Arab peoples.

Quote
I was speaking about in practice, not on paper. On paper most countries are "democracies" with "elected" leaders.

My point exactly. Feel free to show me an African country that is more on a par with US in terms of social, economical, political and legal reality than an European country.

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Maybe I was unclear. What I mean to say is that while the US is an ethnically diverse country, it was a country ruled by whites in the 40s/50s, and it was whites with a European background who worked on the reconstruction effort in Europe, and who hence felt a kinship to the Europeans they were helping,

Living an ethnically diverse country would have come as a big surprise to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, presidents during whose terms the political /economical supremacy of the White race of European origin was taken as granted.

Now, if what you mean is that (1) immediately after WWII there was no essential, background-ish (is that a word?) and insurmountable opposition between the mentality, customs and manners of the US and the Western European countries ; (2) the US policy-makers felt that helping Western Europe to recover economically and to build its own political / social / economical institutions was in no way opposed to US interests, on the contrary, it only strengthened them; (3) the Western European countries (far left excepted) did not feel in any way that the Marshall Plan subjected them to US economical and political colonialism; and (4) both US and Western Europe saw this development as only too natural and beneficent for each party involved --- then I completely agree with you.

But then again, I ask you a specific question: show me the Arab / Muslim country which qualifies for the above.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AM
the Marshall Plan which delivered actual machinery needed for development and provided expertise and know-how, rather than just providing money and leaving it to local strongmen to be spent.

Are you implying that there were no German, French, Italian, Dutch, Belgian or British businessmen / engineers / technicians / whatever/... left in post-WWII Europe? Are you implying that Europe was just  a "waste land" where the US engaged in a succesful nation-buliding, exclusively providing know-how and expertise?

If you are not, then what's your point? I don't get it at all.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 11:58:29 AM
Agreed without any doubt, but this does not account for the different legal systems that history has witnessed. I ask you two specific questions: (1) which legal system would you rather live in, US / German / French (differences notwithstanding) or Sharia? and (2) why?

I'll give you a lawyer's answer: depends.  ;) If you're a guilty criminal, for example, the US gives you a lot more rights in the guilt phase of the trial. It's great to be in the US system at that time under those circumstances. But once they find you guilty, you'd be much better off in continental Europe, where the point of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation, while in the US the main objective is retribution and providing a steady flow of customers for the prison-industrial complex, so in the US you would get slammed with a draconian and disproportionate sentence. If I'm a business person looking for the least obstacles to starting a business, the US is attractive. On the other hand, US securities laws and tax code and contract law are so complex, that my transaction costs and lawyers fees would be vastly lower in Europe, though in Europe labor laws are stronger making the labor force more expensive. But all of these are political and economic considerations. Sharia gets a bad rap, really. Of course it is completely inadequate from a modern human rights perspective, but the use of local judges (Qadis) for resolution of small claims disputes is really much more efficient and not that much worse often than what we have in the West. Remember also that women's rights (another major criticism of Sharia) is a postwar development in the West. Most of the criticisms against Sharia existed in the West not that long ago in some form as well.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 11:58:29 AM
The old Germans and Gauls are long since extinct and so are their religious / tribal practices ---- hardly the case with Indian / Arab peoples.

But their ancestors happily use a legal system based on the Roman legal system and don't feel animosity against Rome anyway. I doubt that in a few generations pragmatic Arabs and Indians will not recognize the benefits of at least some aspects of the legal system left behind by their former colonizers. You have to look at these things over time, rather than simply comparing snapshots from dissimilar points in a given society's development.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 11:58:29 AM
My point exactly. Feel free to show me an African country that is more on a par with US in terms of social, economical, political and legal reality than an European country.

South Africa is not really that far off, actually. It's certainly not significantly worse than some poorer European countries were around the late 50s for example. A lot of potential there. Even some countries like Ethiopia are making a decent amount of progress. And that is with a lot of systemic obstacles in their way, mind you!

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 11:58:29 AM
Living an ethnically diverse country would have come as a big surprise to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, presidents during whose terms the political /economical supremacy of the White race of European origin was taken as granted.

Now, if what you mean is that (1) immediately after WWII there was no essential, background-ish (is that a word?) and insurmountable opposition between the mentality, customs and manners of the US and the Western European countries ; (2) the US policy-makers felt that helping Western Europe to recover economically and to build its own political / social / economical institutions was in no way opposed to US interests, on the contrary, it only strengthened them; (3) the Western European countries (far left excepted) did not feel in any way that the Marshall Plan subjected them to US economical and political colonialism; and (4) both US and Western Europe saw this development as only too natural and beneficent for each party involved --- then I completely agree with you.

But then again, I ask you a specific question: show me the Arab / Muslim country which qualifies for the above.

That's not what I meant at all.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AM
Did you even bother reading the speech I linked?

I've read the speech several times.  There is more to the policy than the speech. 

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AM
Nobody denies the uniqueness of *every* country, least of all me. But you underestimate the strategic importance of other African coutries over which wars were and are still fought, you just know less about them. As I said, China is very active in Africa these days, while the West ignores the opportunities at its own peril. The Chinese know the strategic importance and they take a longer term view.

Even when you are wrong and choose a very poor analogy, you can't admit it. 

I'm aware of Chinese involvement in Africa, and various wars, but they are not nearly as strategically significant as you are trying to make them out to be.  Contrary to the impression you are trying to make, you are not an expert on this either, hence the nicely vague phraseology you use.  Stop trying to pretend as though you are an expert on Africa and foreign relations in the continent.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AMRegarding the Arab world, that is not true.

It is true.  The entire Arab world's GDP is roughly one mid-sized European country.  They are economically small and poor. 

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AMRegarding Africa, it depends which Africa you are talking about.

There are economies of various sized in Africa.  They all share two things in common: they are small and poor.  Nigeria is huge in terms of population, but in terms of GDP and GDP per capita, it's very poor.  Africa as a whole is even poorer than the Arab countries.  Really, this data is readily available on the net. 

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AMYou seem to be thinking more of present day Europe and Japan. Large parts of 1940s Europe were total backwaters then, e.g. Portugal, Greece.

Nope, I was referring to post-war Western Europe primarily, but even Japan.  Yes, there were smaller countries, but the big ones mattered most, and the large ones were vastly more important to the US then than all of Africa today.  Most of the Arab world today is economically and strategically important only because of oil.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AMActually, the main reasons are a combination of the legacies of colonialism

That becomes less true with each succeeding year and decade.  You have done nothing to show that Marshall Plan-style aid would be successful. 

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AMIt took decades in Europe, too.

Then explain again how this helps resolve the economic downturn.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AMYou are jumping to conclusions and comparing very different things.

No, that's not true at all.   Establishing political and economic systems are quite different, but both rely on certain things like the rule of law, and for economic activity, enforcement of property rights is essential at some point.  If a nation does not have the appropriate established institutions, they will not appear because of aid.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 11:50:46 AMThe justification, as I said, is that if we don't help, you breed poverty and instability.

What grandiose visions you have.  If the US doesn't dole out copious aid, the resulting poverty and instability are at least partly attributable to the US.  And if we don't help, then a nation, presumably evil, like China may help.  Well, not help, because they have a counterproductive agenda.  Which is what, exactly?  Something that doesn't align with your opinions? 

Not all countries are equally important to the US, or any other country for that matter.  It is pure fiction to pretend as though they are, or that pouring large sums of money into them in a new Marshall Plan will work because it worked 70 years ago on a different continent with a different history and a different set of strategic and economic concerns.

Quote from: MishaKSouth Africa is not really that far off, actually.

Interestingly enough, I have close relatives living in Johannesburg. So there we are.

First: South Africa has been for decades an apartheid country --- the legal, political, economical, social and cultural arrangements were exclusively White-ish, i.e. European: a mixture of English and Dutch practices which completely excluded native peoples form having any influence on how the country was ruled.

Second: years after the apartheid system was undone, South Africa has been on a very steep slope of rampant criminality and economic decline --- White neighborhoods being physically and weaponly separated from Black ones.

Frankly, you could have hardly found a worse example to back your case.  I mean: India, South Africa --- these are countries that have been strongly and indelibly marked by Western values. Presenting them today as some sort of succesful non-Western stories is completely disingenuous ;D

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 12:46:05 PM
First: South Africa has been for decades an apartheid country --- the legal, political, economical, social and cultural arrangements were exclusively White-ish, i.e. European: a mixture of English and Dutch practices which completely excluded native peoples form having any influence on how the country was ruled.

You think I don't know that? Spain, Portugal and Greece were dictatorships after WWII.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 12:46:05 PM
Second: years after the apartheid system was undone, South Africa has been on a very steep slope of rampant criminality and economic decline

The numbers disagree with you: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/nft/2006/soafrica/eng/pasoafr/sach2.pdf

In fact productivity was declining under Apartheid. Look, I'm not saying it's rosy. I'm saying it's no worse than some smaller European nations in the 50s, which are doing very well today, so there is no inherent reason to believe a country like SA couldn't do very well in a few decades time likewise.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 12:46:05 PM
--- White neighborhoods being physically and weaponly separated from Black ones.

...just like the US in the 40s and 50s.  ::) You all are forgetting that countries develop. You are looking at snapshots from dissimilar moments in time and declaring an underdeveloped nation essentially incapable of reaching the level of a developed nation because you're forgetting how bad some things were in the past.

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 12:46:05 PM
Frankly, you could have hardly found a worse example to back your case.  I mean: India, South Africa --- these are countries that have been strongly and indelibly marked by Western values. Presenting them today as some sort of succesful non-Western stories is completely disingenuous ;D

I did not present them as "non-Western" success stories (I actually also didn't mention India in that context at all). The whole concept of Western vs. non-Western is one I don't find very helpful at all in this globalized world. I didn't use that terminology. All countries these days are indelibly marked by their interaction with the West, Islamic societies included. You can't find an isolated prototypical case that preserves some sort of "pure" indigenous system. It doesn't exist. For the same reason, the claims of cultural difference are vastly exaggerated and amount to the worst kind of cultural relativism. Yes, there are different circumstances, and one must tailor assistance to the situation, but the culture in and of itself is no reason why a Marshall Plan would not work.

Things are warming up a bit for my impending visit to Syria. I am watching the Foreign Office website and they remain phlegmatic about the deaths in the southern city of Deraa. I gather it is currently sealed off. Journalists have been refused Syrian visas for the last month or so.

I am due to fly to Damascus in the second week of April. It could be an interesting time for a visit. I was there six months ago. People then did not discuss politics casually. I guess now it will be utter silence or perhaps occasionally an outpouring. I am going back to the same small hotel which has, in the interim, lost most of the staff I chatted to.

I wrote about the visit here.......

http://themirrorandthelamp.blogspot.com/2011/02/jordan-syria-2010.html

Mike

Quote from: Il Conte Rodolfo on March 22, 2011, 06:26:37 AM
I join Velimir: who are these rebels? What do they stand for? What do they really want? What warranty do they offer they'll not be just as bad or even worse than Gaddafi?

It appears we are starting to get some clarity on this. Lots of jihadists and tribalists:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/eastern-libyas-tribes-jihadism-did-u-s-consider-its-own-libya-intel/?singlepage=true

I'm shocked, shocked I tell ya! I expected they'd be pro-Western freedom fighters who had read the Federalist Papers and Locke's treatises on government and been inspired thereby.

Seriously - has the US ever entered a military action before without even knowing who its allies are? The situation is almost surreal.

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 01:55:32 PM
Spain, Portugal and Greece were dictatorships after WWII.

Now it's my turn to be lawyer-ish.  :)

Actually, the dictatorships in the Iberian peninsula predate WWII --- by a few months in Spain and by some 13 years in Portugal.

Greece, excepting the Metaxa regime of 1936-41, was no dictatorship until more than 20 years after WWII ended.

Quote
Look, I'm not saying it's rosy. I'm saying it's no worse than some smaller European nations in the 50s, which are doing very well today, so there is no inherent reason to believe a country like SA couldn't do very well in a few decades time likewise.

Agreed in theory. But based on direct and involved testimonies, it seems to me that things have actually worsened compared to the apartheid period, especially in regard to the safety of people and their property.

Quote
Yes, there are different circumstances, and one must tailor assistance to the situation, but the culture in and of itself is no reason why a Marshall Plan would not work.

This is all great in theory. If and when a MP for Africa / Arab world will be started, we'll see how it works. (si Dieu nous prete vie :) ).

Quote from: MishaK on March 22, 2011, 12:24:51 PM
I'll give you a lawyer's answer: depends.  ;) If you're a guilty criminal, for example, the US gives you a lot more rights in the guilt phase of the trial. It's great to be in the US system at that time under those circumstances. But once they find you guilty, you'd be much better off in continental Europe, where the point of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation, while in the US the main objective is retribution and providing a steady flow of customers for the prison-industrial complex, so in the US you would get slammed with a draconian and disproportionate sentence. If I'm a business person looking for the least obstacles to starting a business, the US is attractive. On the other hand, US securities laws and tax code and contract law are so complex, that my transaction costs and lawyers fees would be vastly lower in Europe, though in Europe labor laws are stronger making the labor force more expensive. But all of these are political and economic considerations.

Great survey, but I think you forgot something:  both in US and Europe the trade of lawyer is the backbone of the legal system, and a very lucrative one. :)

Now could you extend the comparison to an Arab country of your choice?

Quote
Remember also that women's rights (another major criticism of Sharia) is a postwar development in the West.

At least concerning the right to vote, it has been granted to women in one form or another before WWII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_suffrage#18th_century).

Interesting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/21/AR2011032102887.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/21/AR2011032102887.html)

http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2011/03/22/a-foolish-and-unconstitutional-war/ (http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2011/03/22/a-foolish-and-unconstitutional-war/)

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/22/libya/index.html (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/22/libya/index.html)

Yes, it seems to me that we've seen this movie before - and more than once:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/20/libya-iraq

Quote from: Velimir on March 23, 2011, 01:08:55 AMLots of jihadists and tribalists:

What?  In Northern Africa?  I do not believe it.

Clearly it makes sense for the US to ally itself with the Libyan rebels and overthrow Qaddafi and finally bring a semblance of peace and stability to region.

The ironies of history march on

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-prisoners-20110324,0,5389027,full.story

An excerpt from the above LA Times article:

For a month, gangs of young gunmen have roamed the city, rousting Libyan blacks and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa from their homes and holding them for interrogation as suspected mercenaries or government spies.

Our previous president, the loudly Christian George W. Bush, left an interesting legacy in Iraq. The Iraqi Christian community, which had lived there since ancient times, is now mostly gone - destroyed and dispersed by the war.

Our first black president, Barack Obama, is now creating an interesting legacy in Libya: facilitating the ethnic cleansing of blacks from an African country.

More proof (as if it were needed!) that neoconservatism is a mental illness:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/party-freedom_554820.html

This stuff is beyond parody.

Quote from: Velimir on March 24, 2011, 02:11:35 AM
More proof (as if it were needed!) that neoconservatism is a mental illness:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/party-freedom_554820.html

:o

Quote
This stuff is beyond parody.

Frankly, after the first two paragraphs I thought it was a parody, but then my eyes caught the name of the author and everything was settled.  ;D

I do wonder: do these guys, in the privacy of their home and in the (presumably) full possesion of their mental faculties and moral conscience, really believe what they say / write?  ???

     (http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/themes/tnr/images/tnr_sm.gif)

     Necessary and Sufficient

     The case against Libyan intervention is philosophically flawed.

     William Galston
     March 24, 2011 | 12:00 am

Writing in 1977 on the topic of humanitarian interventions, a noted political philosopher had this to say:

"[W]hen a government turns savagely upon its own people, we must doubt the very existence of a political community to which the principle of self-determination might apply. ... When a people are being massacred, we don't require that they pass the test of self-help before coming to their aid. It is their very incapacity that draws us in. ... Any state capable of stopping the slaughter has the right, at least, to try to do so."

Returning to this topic in 1999, he observed that "the greatest danger most people face in the world today comes from their own states, and the chief dilemma of international politics is whether people in danger should be rescued by military forces from the outside." The problem, he argued, is not that individual states are prone to engage in such interventions, but the reverse: There have been "a lot of unjustified refusals to intervene." It is, he said, "more this neglect of intervention [by individual nations] than any resort to it that leads people to look for a better, more reliable, form of agency." And he offered a number of reasons why humanitarian interventions conducted under U.N. auspices might well meet this standard.

I agree with this distinguished scholar, who is (as you may have guessed) Michael Walzer. And that is why I disagree with his recent critique for TNR of our intervention in Libya.

     Read the rest. (http://www.tnr.com/print/article/politics/85676/libya-philosophy-war-intervention)

Quote from: drogulus on March 24, 2011, 01:06:41 PM
The case against Libyan intervention is philosophically flawed.

People who write articles like this would be better employed scrubbing toilets.  The decision to slaughter people has nothing to do with philosophy.   The only justification for the decision to slaughter people is the likelihood that even more people, and more innocent people, will be slaughtered if nothing is done.   

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on March 24, 2011, 01:27:44 PM
People who write articles like this would be better employed scrubbing toilets.  The decision to slaughter people has nothing to do with philosophy.   The only justification for the decision to slaughter people is the likelihood that even more people, and more innocent people, will be slaughtered if nothing is done.   

      Excellent philosophy, and quite useful, though you have to take it as given that preventing the deaths of innocents is a worthy goal when so many innocents are sure to die as a consequence of the action. But that's why you have to argue cases. And you have to remember that at the minimum the justification for good philosophy is to counter bad philosophy.

     More from TNR

     Berlin Ghosts

     Why Germany was against the Libya intervention.

     Jeffrey Herf
     March 24, 2011 | 10:08 am

     It may have come as a surprise to many people that Germany—the lynchpin of the NATO alliance on the European continent and a close ally of the United States since 1949—voted to abstain from the U.N. resolution authorizing force against Muammar Qaddafi. The country was a staunch advocate of humanitarian intervention in the Balkans, and it is most definitely not led by a government of leftists who are given to denunciations of American imperialism. Indeed, Chancellor Merkel's affinity for American values is so pronounced that President Obama recently awarded her our highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why, then, has Germany been so adamant in its opposition to the Libya intervention?


     Read the rest (http://www.tnr.com/print/article/world/85702/germany-libya-intervention-qaddafi-merkel)

Quote from: Velimir on March 24, 2011, 02:11:35 AM
More proof (as if it were needed!) that neoconservatism is a mental illness:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/party-freedom_554820.html

This stuff is beyond parody.

     Yes, but is there anything in the piece that you disagree with? Or I should say, that you can disagree with? (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/cheesy.gif)

     Kristol is making a partisan point so he widens the gap between Republicans and Democrats, but the basic point that Obama has overcome his neurasthenic inheritance as a liberal Democrat to make the right choice is hard to argue with. But no, the Republicans have not been the party of freedom in a unique way. Both parties have mixed records on that score.

Quote from: drogulus on March 24, 2011, 07:30:51 PM
     Kristol is making a partisan point so he widens the gap between Republicans and Democrats, but the basic point that Obama has overcome his neurasthenic inheritance as a liberal Democrat to make the right choice is hard to argue with.

It is extremely easy to argue with, if you think it isn't the right choice in the first place.

But don't listen to me. Here, Adam Garfinkle in The American Interest analyzes all the ways in which this action is (or could go) wrong:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/middleeast/2011/03/22/down-the-rabbit-hole/

Quote from: drogulus on March 24, 2011, 02:02:02 PM
      Excellent philosophy, and quite useful, though you have to take it as given that preventing the deaths of innocents is a worthy goal when so many innocents are sure to die as a consequence of the action. But that's why you have to argue cases. And you have to remember that at the minimum the justification for good philosophy is to counter bad philosophy.

You scorned philosophy no end in other threads --- now you suddenly have become enamored of it.  ;D