A Neat Trade for Libyans?

May 30 2011

As Russia the other day boldly shifted course on Libya, to a track parallel to NATO's, president Dmitri Mdevedev announced the dispatch of an envoy to tell Muammar Gaddafi that, really and truly, he had to "go."

According to the Russian leader, if the colonel steps down voluntarily, “then we can discuss how to go about it, what country might take him in, on what terms, what he can keep and what he must lose.” Medvedev said that Russia would not be the country that takes Qaddafi. According to the president, the global community no longer sees Qaddafi as the recognized leader of Libya.

What he can keep? Recent statements, especially the G8 agreement that came along with Moscow's decision, stipulate that the government, the whole system, is just as illegitimate as HE is. HE will have to leave, and what? Keep the system, take it with him? What do the people get to keep, IN LIBYA? Free health care? Universal education, even abroad? Almost ridiculous subsidies, high literacy, free houses, almost free gas, and so on? A sense that the revolution they've struggled on for decades against massive outside frustration was worth it? Was ever respected in the slightest? Highest living standards in Africa? Zero IMF debt? No foreign military bases?  

Supporting nationalist-separatist-terrorist causes abroad that, right or wrong, usually lost, only making enemies of the winners? Getting framed for planes they never blew up and lady cops they never shot? Smothered under sanctions and an air embargo, vilified worldwide, misunderstood and marginalized? Occasionally bombed? Yes, all that too could stop if the regime changes in the "right" direction. Who controls the switch? 

And if that happens, the best and most unusual things achieved by Gaddafi's Green Book revolution will be destroyed, irreplaceably - the good along with the bad, the baby with the bathwater. It's quite a bit like loss of biodiversity, and in an age of failures enough all around, we should not rush to stamp out anything prematurely. But that's just what the world is being panicked into doing. It was supposed to be a blitzkrieg, a fait accompli, and done weeks ago, too late now, sorry. But it has been delayed. Libya had some life in it still. The colonel still survives assassination attempts (what's he on now, number 30? all denied?) And now we have some time we weren't supposed to have, to reflect on these things a bit. Let's do that, huh? 

And for Libya, as Libyans have known it, this is to be destroyed now, all of a sudden (and possibly replaced but no guarantees) in exchange for what? They can have "free market" reforms, and free elections, to vote at intervals for people like Sarkozy or, if they want "change," an Obama. They'll have innovative synergies with foreign oil companies. They can form political parties, like the two we have in America, both sitting mute and co-opted and willfully blind as Wall Street rapes another nation with its Big White House and that machine's attached weaponry.

The Libyan people, post-Gaddafi, will have no more internationally recognized right to protest their way to regime change. It's a one-time thing, if it works right. Once the option of voting is there (and they'll become disappointed, eventually), that removes the whole premise why they chose to support this revolt. Democracy instead of dictatorship is the formula, and it's simple to test if you qualify - are there elections for the top leader in your country? Once you have that, and it's hijacked by shadowy entities that control both/all parties, it's back to lock-down mode. No matter how repressive things get, how little each election changes it, you're expected to wait again 'til election day.

Here in the US, in case the people in Benghazi don't know it, we get arrested and sent away a long time for mobbing police stations to seize weapons to overthrow the government. It's just not something you do.

All the groups that got even close to what the "protesters" of Libya did in February have often suffered "crimes against humanity" type fates - women and children burned alive in a bunker, a mother shot by a sniper holding her baby, protesters gunned down "on accident," group HQs firebombed by helicopter, assassinations, car bombs, disappearances ... True stories, if debated on all sides down the line, and that's only north of the Rio Grande. Get to Latin America, and your blood will chill at the depths of abuse carried out in the name of capitalist control such as that coming to Arab (colored) Libya.  It's consistent enough to trouble anyone, and truer at least than the parade of slurs against Gaddafi's Libya down the years.

There is no United States to our Libya, no superpower capable of framing us, of stealing our money, of bombing us into submission. But you, Libya as Libyans know it, will submit, or be destroyed. Or maybe, if you're lucky and smart, you will find a third way. NATO ain't handing it to you. 

And finally, "Free Libya" might even get to host the US-created Africom forces used for the next national rescue in Africa. There are a few scattered holdouts left. Eritrea? Zimbabwe? North Sudan? Tunisia if they get screwy again? "But I was not a Libyan, so I did nothing..."

Sounds like a neat trade to me.  Too bad no one's asking the Libyan people if they want it. This clumsy dance of wills between the NATO pirate gang and the rigid regime is to blame. NATO initiated it without consent by taking sides in a civil war they helped set up (collective defense equates with collective offense, and all are guilty, by post facto support, of France's criminal machinations against Libya). They know the steps and the music to be played, and they always lead. The colonel, or whoever is in charge of the trailing, reeling nation of Libya, could only benefit the nation now by ending the dance, one way or another. As long as it stays mechanical and destruction oriented like it is, NATO wins. That's their turf.