It is amazing how events in international affairs that would have been easily and accurately understood decades ago are now surrounded by obfuscation and misunderstanding. Such is the case with Libya and the U.S. role there. Forget Obama's Cairo speech and all that bowing, apologizing, appeasing, and empathy. All of it is meaningless now.
The
facts are clear. Along with its NATO allies, the United States helped
overthrow the dictatorship of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya and installed a
new regime. This government, non-Islamist, technocratic, and led by
defected old regime politicians or former exiles, won the election and
is now in power.
What
does this mean? Simple. Libya is now a U.S. client state. In the eyes
of many Arabs and Muslims—especially the radicals but not just
them—Libya is now an American puppet state. Most important of all it is
not an Islamist Sharia state. The revolutionaries—a group including the
Muslim Brotherhood, radical small groups, and the local al-Qaida
affiliates--want to change that situation.
How
do you do that? One way is to attack the regime’s institutions,
including raiding police stations to get weapons. Another way is to
assassinate officials. A tempting way to build popular support is to
murder Americans.
The killing of the
ambassador and five other Americans (a Foreign Service reserve officer,
two bodyguards, and two Marines) has nothing to do with a video made in
California. It has everything to do with the Libyan Islamist revolution.
This revolution will go on for years and will become increasingly
bloodier. It is nothing short of amazing that U.S. leaders don’t seem to
recognize this.
Let’s sum it up in a slogan:
Bush
occupied Iraq and Afghanistan; Obama occupied Libya and killed Usama
bin Ladin. Have no doubt that the revolutionaries—including the Muslim
Brotherhood—and a lot of others view Obama as just as bad as Bush.
Obama’s attempts at appeasement have further convinced them that America
is finished and easily bullied. In his speech of September 2010 calling
for revolution in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammad al-Badi
explicitly said that.
In
Iraq, a combination of factors has defused the situation directly,
though resentments born years ago still are part of the package of
genuinely popular but also Jihadi-stimulated anti-Americanism. The surge
won the war and the long-planned withdrawal was implemented by Obama. A
government exists which is hardly a model of democracy but sufficiently
stable for the foreseeable future. The Sunni have basically given up
trying to take over the country; the central government accepts the
Kurds having a de facto state in the north. A lot of people are still
being murdered by terrorism.
Afghanistan,
because it isn’t an Arab country, has a relatively small impact in the
Arabic-speaking world and eventually the U.S. forces will withdraw from
there as well. The Taliban, treacherously aided by forces including
official government agencies in Pakistan, will go on trying to overthrow
the U.S.-sponsored government and might succeed. But that’s a problem
for the future.
As
for bin Ladin, obviously his death is a cause for al-Qaida to seek
revenge. But, of course, they’d be attacking Americans and U.S.
installations even if he was still alive. It’s a myth that al-Qaida has
been defeated. Precisely because it is so decentralized, the group’s
local affiliates are quite active in North Africa, Yemen, Egypt
(especially the Sinai Peninsula for the first time ever), the Gaza
Strip, and increasingly in Syria.
Others
who are not al-Qaida and never saw bin Ladin as their leader will
opportunistically use the U.S. killing of the September 11 architect to
stir up anger. They will also use inevitable periodic incidents like
this You-Tube video. There will always be more such incidents. Jihadis
are surfing the Internet looking for some obscure incident or writing to
promote. That’s what happened with the video, which some of them
translated into Arabic and widely circulated. And when there is no real
such incident the revolutionaries will fabricate one, as they have been
doing against Israel for decades.
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Aside
from everything else, Libya has two special factors. First, it is beset
by tribalism and regionalism which create a complex web of conflicts.
Despite its oil wealth, this factor makes Libya extremely hard to
govern. Some tribal and regionalist forces will remain interest groups;
others will adopt a revolutionary Islamist ideology. There is no way of
resolving these issues. Any Libyan government will have to go for
massive repression—which Qadhafi did and the current government won’t—or
engage in a constant juggling game.
In
Iraq, a major plus for achieving a stable regime was the common
interest of Shias—though they quarreled endlessly among themselves—in
sticking together to keep the Sunnis from massacring them and reclaiming
power. The Kurds, while claiming autonomy, were also a stabilizing
force. No such powerful political glue exists in Libya.
Second,
the regime is very badly infiltrated—far more than Iraq or
Afghanistan—by revolutionary Islamist elements. Extremists did a lot of
the fighting against Qadhafi and picked up a lot of arms. One of the
most popular and important army commanders is the former head of the
Libyan al-Qaida affiliate. Anything that the U.S. government tells its
Libyan counterparts—where the ambassador or embassy staff is located,
for example—will quickly be passed on to the terrorists.
Of
course there are many Libyans, probably a majority, who don’t want a
radical Sharia state. Some of them attacked the headquarters of an
Islamist militia they blamed for killing the Americans and forced out
the radicals. “I am sorry, America,” one man said. “This is the real
Libya.” But like those who are more moderate in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq
such people have a real fight on their hands and they are not
necessarily the better organized, better-armed side.
All
of this is a nightmare. The United States is only at the start of a
nasty conflict in Libya which is going to be very anti-American. It is
shocking that there is so little recognition of that fact and an
apparently sincere belief that all the problems there are due to a
You-Tube video. Having a big problem is bad enough; refusing to
recognize that one has a bad problem is potentially fatal.
Note: Remember the old argument that the Arab-Israel or Israel-Palestinian conflict was the centerpiece of the region; all the Arabs cared about, and what they judged the West by? Now there are a dozen other issues more important to the extent that this cannot even be hidden by the Western mass media and "experts."
Note: Remember the old argument that the Arab-Israel or Israel-Palestinian conflict was the centerpiece of the region; all the Arabs cared about, and what they judged the West by? Now there are a dozen other issues more important to the extent that this cannot even be hidden by the Western mass media and "experts."
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