I agree. The UN SC needs to get on this right away. Libya could well end up being a humanitarian disaster that will destabilize not just North Africa but also Southern Europe.
Its interesting that Gaddafi is blaming Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda for the unrest in Libya. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41753687/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa [rquoter]BENGHAZI, Libya — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on Thursday blamed the uprising in his country on al-Qaida followers who give young Libyans hallucinogenic pills in their coffee to get them to revolt. In a rambling phone call to Libyan state TV, Gadhafi said those revolting are "loyal to bin Laden ... This is al-Qaida that the whole world is fighting." Al-Qaida militants are "exploiting" teenagers, giving them "hallucinogenic pills in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe," the embattled leader said[/rquoter]
He may be willing to, but many of his military people are refusing to carry out his orders. They clearly haven’t completely turned on him yet, because he’s still clinging to power, but I think that would probably be the best way out of this. There really is no magic solution where some foreign power sweeps in and makes it all better. See Iraq and Afghanistan, and maybe Somalia as well, as examples. Other countries can help, and I’m sure that like in Egypt there are talks going on behind the scenes, perhaps with certain high ranking military people, but like in Egypt this must be led by the people of Lybia. This has to be the people’s victory, otherwise who steps into the power vacuum? It’s far from over in Egypt but by their actions the people have claimed a huge amount of power now, and they know it and they’re very invested in the idea of making their country better. If the army tries to hold onto too much power “the people know the way back to the square”. In Iraq and Afghanistan, otoh, the people are not empowered to anywhere near the same degree, because those weren’t the people’s revolutions. In Iraq there’s sort of a second revolution happening now where the people are kind of uniting to kick out the Americans, but it’s now 8 years after Saddam Hussein and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and many billions of dollars spent, not to mention the loss of productivity and other financial and cultural losses the country has suffered. It’s good to work through the different scenarios and think about the different possibilities. -If some foreign power came in and took out Gaddafi and his inner circle right now, what would happen? Who would step into the power vacuum? Where would Libya be a year from now? -If some foreign power had done the same thing before the people had taken to the streets, what would have happened? What would the people’s reaction have been and where would Libya be a year from now? Would the people have been as invested in the revolution? Would Libya have turned into another Iraq? -If the army decides in the next few days that the people are all against Gaddafi and it’s time for them to take him and his inner circle out, what would happen? What would the people’s reaction be and where would Libya be a year from now?
^ Libya 2011 isn't comparable to Iraq in 2002. There wasn't a popular uprising happening at that time. Libya also isn't comparable to Egypt where the army from the beginning took a neutral stance and the leader was someone who had historically been more pragmatic than Gaddafi and also more willing to listen to outside diplomatic pressure. If we were to compare what is happening in Libya now Iraq in 1991 might be more apt as the Southern Shiites and Kurds rebelled following the first Gulf War. The US and international community didn't intervene with the Southern Shiites and they were massacred and following that the UN and stepped in to impose no-fly zones that stopped the massacre of the Shiites and Kurds. One other example that might be good is Haiti in 1994 when US forces convinced Baby Doc Duvalier to leave ahead of an invasion.
I've heard it all now between this and Ahmadinejad criticizing Arab countries for not respecting protesters.
-My scenario #2 is essentially what happened in Iraq, a foreign power coming in before a popular uprising. - I think the army is taking a largely neutral stance. Gaddafi has had to bring in mercenaries to do much of his dirty work and there have been numerous reports of army people refusing to fire on their own people. - I don't think outside diplomatic pressure will help much at this point. I think someone, likely the army, will have to take him out. Iraq in 91 is a good one to look at too, but it was limited to two regions and there wasn't enough internal support at that time to sustain it for very long. If the Americans would have moved in at the time I think that it would have been seen, especially by the Sunnis, as an invasion as much or more than a liberation, as was the case in the later Iraq war.
Obama has done a very good job of not giving him a public target, and Israel has remained almost completely silent. He’s trying to find a villain to blame and to use as a diversion, but all he has left is Al Qaeda, and I don’t think that’s going to work.
I don't think it's such a mystery. They're establishing a structure in Free Libya with a lot of the defecting ministers and military leaders in influential positions. If a foreign power did them the courtesy of taking out Gaddafi, they'd sweep into Tripoli and it would be up to these men to shape what Libya looks thereafter (with some danger of a new dictator). It's pretty much the same scenario as not intervening and having the Free Libya army take Tripoli by themselves, except with less risk that Gaddafi wins in the end. And really, I think the more fighting Libyans have to do, the more power will shift to military commanders and the more likely it will be that Libya gets another dictator instead of a democracy.
I don't think you understand the political structure Guddafi had created. There was no well defined hierarchy in the military. He had created many different groups with different functions, nobody had more power or control than their role required. His family was essentially the head of the snake with many different bodies reporting to them. That's why there is chaos, he planned it to be like this, it gives him the stongest chance of survival. This does not mean Western powers should come in and put their puppet government in place....beacause that's exactly what will happen. These people need to solve their own problems. Obviously this will come at a great cost and might not even lead to democracy. But the people's fight will be in vain if a foreign power comes and "sets things right".
That may be a fair statement -- I'm not exactly an expert on Libya. I'm not sure what you think is wrong in what I predict though.
I wasn't pointing anything wrong with your prediction, just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on why your theory is the most unlikely of scenarios.
This is all good stuff. If some foreign power would have decided that Gaddafi was a bad guy and came in and took him out before the popular uprising, however, none of that would have been in place, and it probably wouldn’t have happened. The process of the different groups coming together and cooperating to overthrow a dictator establishes a unity, and an identity, to go forward with. Think about how important the American Revolution was to formation of the American identify. And consider again what happened in Egypt. Because it was a people’s revolution - and note the the people were made up of a number of very different groups who came together and established a unified front - the people have more power than the military now. I’m sure there are leaders in the military who would like to step in and govern, and get wealthy, the way Mubarak did, but they now know that if they do that the people will take to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, and they can’t defeat that. If, otoh, if a foreign power had come in and taken Mubarak out before the uprising, the power of the people would not have been established. Nobody believed they could do what they did until they actually did it, and now they know, and the military knows, that they can do it, and that they can do it again if need be. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be any foreign involvement, but the involvement has to be in a support role. It has to be a people’s revolution, like it was Egypt. It doesn’t have to unfold in exactly the same way, but the people have to be similarly empowered in the end. If they aren’t I think it’s very likely that another dictator will emerge and pick up where Gaddafi left off, because the people will not have established that they have the power to stop that from happening. On the fence through all of this is the military, watching and wondering which master they should serve, the people, the current dictator, or a new dictator. The people have to win in order for the military to decide that they are the master they should serve. But if the win is seen to have occurred largely because some foreign power came in and took out the old dictator, have the people really won? That foreign power is going to turn around and leave at some point, and then where does that leave the people? A real revolution has to end up with the people being empowered, and foreign governments who what to help have to figure out how to do that without usurping the people's power.
Agreed. I don't think things will go well in Libya after MG is gone, but that's better than him hanging on. If there is military intervention, those countries contributing troops will become responsible for the chaos afterwards.
For a while now I've been hearing weird thoughts from people around me about all these protests. Now I've found this video that's apparently going viral, I understand what they're thinking. <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZMKL1M6a-Xs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Needless to say, I think it's hilarious. It's your typical conservative who likes to appear modern to attract the younger crowd.
Even if foreign governments don't interfere, how long will the unity last when the common enemy is gone? You might be disappointed.
Could North Korea be next? http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_638328.html Isolated protests break out in North Korea SEOUL - SMALL pockets of unrest are appearing in North Korea as the repressive regime struggles to feed its people, South Korean media reported yesterday. The mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo reported that scores of people in Jongju, Yongchon and Sonchon in North Pyongan province last week caused a commotion two days ahead of leader Kim Jong Il's Feb 16 birthday. A North Korean source told Chosun Ilbo that the protesters fashioned makeshift megaphones out of newspapers and shouted: 'We can't live! Give us electricity! Give us rice!' 'At first, there were only one or two people, but as time went by more and more came out of their houses and joined in the shouting,' the source added. The newspaper said that the North Korean secret police subsequently investigated the incident but failed to find out who had started the commotion. 'When such an incident took place in the past, people used to report their neighbours to the security forces, but now they're covering for each other,' the source said.
It would be great, but I strongly doubt it. They are even more isolated from the rest of the world than anyone else. And the people even more brainwashed.
Exactly. They most likely have no idea about what's going on in the Middle East and Africa. This is probably due to not receiving rations before Kim Jong-Il's birthday, which is apparently one of the few days a year people are given meat.
