Thoughts on No-Fly Zone

Right, I haven’t written a proper post in a while now. I thought I’d share my thoughts on the whole situation in Libya. I don’t pretend to have the answers, I don’t. My thoughts are actually a little confused. I don’t think there’s any easy answer. I’ve been reading articles, blog posts, and tweets that are completely sure of their position, whether for or against the international community’s intervention. I can’t understand how anyone can be this secure in their position. The arguments on both sides seem to have some validity, and I think that we cannot dismiss them without properly thinking through them.

I have watched, along with millions, if not billions, the horror that Gaddafi unleashed on his people. What started as a series of peaceful protests over a month ago, turned very quickly into a bloody repression. This forced the population to take arms and turn the peaceful revolution into an armed insurrection. Now don’t get me wrong, I think this is absolutely morally justified. In fact, I’d argue that not taking arms in front of such violent state repression is the immoral thing to do. So anyway, we saw those brave people take city after city, some in the West, but mainly in the East. After a while the rebels (by the way using the word rebel isn’t dismissive or undermining of the revolution. The word rebel is a good description of what the revolutionaries are. To rebel against oppression is good) started organising themselves and advancing on Gaddafi forces and liberating town after town.

However, Gaddafi then unleashed his military might on the free people of Libya. It was a horrible sight to see the relentless violence unleashed by Gaddafi and his forces on the people of Libya. It was clear that Gaddafi was advancing and that the momentum had shifted towards him. The big rebel strongholds of Misurata and Benghazi were under threat. I was horrified, as were most people. If Gaddafi survived this revolution then the rest of the embattled dictators would use him as an example and would use disproportionate violence in order to survive the various revolutions sweeping through the Arab World at the moment. I therefore was begrudgingly in favour of a No-Flay Zone (NFZ) and help from the international community.

Now I am an internationalist and I believe that when a people is suffering it is incumbent on all of us to help them. I am also not a pacifist and I do believe that armed conflict is sometimes necessary. I am also aware that the West in general, and each country in particular, is an imperialist force. I know that they have used humanitarian excuses before, and will again, in order to mask imperialist actions that allow for them to extend their grip on the natural resources of people and on to subjugate people who want to be free. Therefore my position on the enforcement of a NFZ isn’t an easy one to take. On the one hand, the People of Libya need help and must be protected from the insanity of a dictator. On the other hand, to think that the West’s actions are innocent and are only motivated by wanting to help people is clearly naive.

It is interesting to note for example that the West was very keen to help the people of Libya but are conspicuously silent about the people of Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi. It is interesting to note that the deaths arrests and repression in Ivory Coast or Senegal are completely ignored. I am not even going to mention the complete lack of action when it comes to Palestine and its continued oppression by the zionist entity (Except I did just mention it). The point is that the West is clearly trying to get a Western friendly state in Libya that would allow them to get a slice of the giant oil cake that is Libya.

There is also the fact that by using the West the Libyan revolution can be seen as tainted. I see these arguments and I understand their validity. The problem is that there are still people dying and that doing nothing would have potentially have led to another Rwanda. Gaddafi is insane and he would have murdered his people in their thousands, if not tens of thousands, to remain in power. So I find myself in this morally ambiguous position where on the one hand I want the world to act in order to protect the people of Libya, but I also don’t want them to act, because that would be another imperialistic move by the West.

I don’t think there are easy answers to this situation. People who are sure of their position on either side seem to me to be a little too entrenched in an ideological paradigm. I think it is important to realise that the West is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, nor that doing nothing would have been the better option. I am quite happy that the action was taken through the UNSC rather than by a unilateral, or even multilateral, decision by the West. I like that it wasn’t a unanimous resolution. It is important to see that many nations are uncomfortable with this action. I’m hoping that this means that the action will not be able to go too far. I’m hoping that there will be checks and balances forcing them not to get too carried away.

It’s not a simple moral and political position. I am happy that people have been spared the violence that was clearly coming their way. But I’m also weary of any military action by the West on any developing country. I’m hoping that this will mean that the people of Libya can now start protesting again and forcing Gaddafi out using their own resources. I am hoping that through both military and peaceful means the people of Libya will be able to liberate themselves from the tyrannical rule of Gaddafi. I will however keep my eyes open and will not give the West a free hand in their actions in Libya. Long live the revolution.

Sorry

I’m sorry but I cannot write a proper post today. I’m quite ill and I’m also trying to work. It’s not the best situation but I’m trying. I have a lot to talk about though and will hopefully get to it soon. Between Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen, as well as the again shameful veto of the US at the security council, there’s a lot to talk about. The army in Bahrain shot more people, the East of Libya seems to have been liberated by people at great cost, and in Yemen pro-government thugs threw a hand grenade at pro-democracy protesters. Things seem to be accelerating in all three countries. There was also a vote at the UN security council for a resolution that condemns israeli settlements, which are already illegal under international law. The resolution was based on language used by the US. However, as is customary, the US vetoed the resolution. I really don’t see what the role of the PA is anymore. They just need to disband it and turn the struggle into a fight for the one-state solution. It is really the only way forward. Anyway, my head is killing me so I will stop now and try to work. Bye lovely readers (See I’m so ill I don’t even have the energy to insult you). See you tomorrow.

Weird Night

So I had promised that I would update last night’s blog if I didn’t sleep. The problem is that I slept early but had a very bad night that involved me waking up many times and spending most of the night in that weird not asleep but not awake state. I think that in fact I have forgotten how to sleep. I think I need to retrain my body to sleep properly. It’s weird to think that this is what has happened to me. I really need to sort out my sleep sooner rather than later. The point is I woke up around 10 and had a few errands to run, and some things to do before I could attend to my blog. But here I am now and ready to write. I toyed with the idea of editing yesterday’s post because it was such a short and useless post. But then decided to be lazy and just write a new post.

So yesterday was an alright day. I woke up a bit late and so didn’t go to uni too early. I had my classes in the afternoon, and was kind of looking forward to them. So I ate lunch and made my way there. The classes were okay, but they were incredibly tiring. I don’t remember feeling quite as tired as I did after this set of classes for a long time. The students did participate, but I had to talk a lot. I needed to make some points that weren’t going to be made by the students, because most of them would not have known these things independently. So I talked and talked and then talked some more.

I was very proud of myself though. We’re working on The Wretched of the Earth, a book by Frantz Fanon on colonialism. It is considered quite a seminal work in postcolonial studies. So I had to explain the idea of violence and make the students try to consider the question of whether there is moral equivalency between violence used by the colonisers and violence used by the colonised. So while doing that I kept referring to colonisation as the occupation and kept talking about dividing the land between the occupiers and occupied and preventing the natives from going back to their land. I also referred to apartheid and made a few cryptic references to modern manifestations of apartheid. The thing is I can’t be too direct and speak about Palestine.

But it seemed that the message was getting through. I asked what they thought. Can one make a strict comparison between these two types of violence? and is violence justified sometimes? Most of them seemed to argue that one cannot see both sides as morally equivalent. The also kept referring to, what they called, the fake idea of objectivity. They meant by this, the fact that many times the media would say things like we are presenting both sides of the story and letting people decide. They said that just because there are two side to a story, it doesn’t mean that they are both valid. It is important, they argued, that the media points out that one of the sides is wrong. One of them even used the Holocaust as an extreme example. They said that while the Nazis had a side to the story as well, that side was completely invalid, and that there is no need to even present it. One of them also pointed out that Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist before becoming the global icon that he is today.

This whole thing made me happy, but as I said really exhausted me. I went back home and got ready to go out with friends for dinner. A friend is here for a short time and we all want to see her as much as we can. So we went to a Greek restaurant in town. We’ve been there many times before. It was excellent. The food, the company, and the lovely Kio beer. However, it was clear that I wasn’t the only one to feel this tired and we all left quite early after dinner. That’s when I wrote the message yesterday, it would be wrong to call it a post really. So there you go, from now on my blog posts will happen during the day, rather than in the evening. Hopefully this will mean that I don’t have to rush at 23:40 to write something.