Keep It Clean -- Libya

Along with many others, including Russia's V. Putin and the African Union,  the Angry Arab has come out strongly against the intervention that is being made mostly by the U.S,. Britain, and France in the  fighting in Libya. 

Angry is a longtime Arab.   I don't find anger to be any kind of a virtue, and also I am a much longer-time something else.   Nevertheless I feel confident in saying that Angry, Putin, and the others have grabbed the sow by the wrong teat on this one for sure, especially when they use rhetoric like Angry's, "Western military intervention in Libya was intended to “legitimize the return of colonial powers to our region."

The regions where Angry Abu-Khalil has now spent the better part of his life are in the U.S. instead of in his native but accursed Lebanon, and lately he has been teaching in the balmy climes of California.   And in the course of that he tends to get on a number of kicks that he pursues with great dedication but while wearing a huge pair of blinders or blinkers or whatever they were called -- those big black flaps that in the old days were put on the sides of horses' heads, I guess to keep them from being distracted by ideas coming in from anywhere other than the desired direction, while they blankly clopped along,  pulling their deadweight loads of baggage, people, and other gear that meant nothing to them.

Just before these revolts started, he posted a list of as many as a dozen Arab countries, a majority of the Arab world, whose leadership, he thought, was on the questionable side.   So his point must be that only Arabs should make those changes.   But in Libya it was beginning to look as if the rebels were only days away from being smashed flat, and soon enough the old tyrannical ways would be back in operation, and those trying to rid Libya if not the world of Gaddafi had greatly hoped for this kind of help, regardless of anti-colonial principles.

In addition, other countries that were never colonial powers were eager to see the U.S. et al impose the no-fly zone, and that was how the U.N. ruling came about.   And I believe that those three western countries are taking the lead mainly because they like the role of being the leaders, plus they're the ones with the equipment, and when you have the military equipment the temptation is always great to use it, especially when you can do so with little risk of backfire.


Pure logic and history says that there's no way that the U.S., Britain, and France have any interest in reinstituting colonialism, in North Africa or anywhere else.  It turned out to be too much trouble, and also lately there's been the resulting blowback of the immigration from the former colonies, in full accordance with Newton's Third Law of Motion.


   But those powers do like the smell of oil, and Libya has a lot of it.   Tunisia has a little, and Egypt even less.   Therefore the U.N. and the West didn't take a hand in those revolutions, and Bahrain, despite the U.S. naval base there, is just too small and so is of little interest, other than that its oil giant immediate neighbor, Saudi Arabia, likes the current leadership there just fine, though, as in the case of Saddam's Iraq, Bahrain is a matter of minority Sunnis lording it over majority Shias, by force.

But Libyans of any stripe would still be eager to sell the oil, and instead there appeared to be a bloodbath in the making, some of which had already been carried out by Gaddafi, and he had vowed to shed a lot more, if the rebels didn't bow to his rule.


So I believe that this intervention was just the West's way of telling Gaddafi to "keep it clean, and let the best man win."   And it should have been have been clear to Putin, Angry, and everyone else that Gaddafi, for decades, has never been the best man.


Were the critics of the intervention content just to let the blood bath go on?  Would that have been good for Arabs in particular?


The U.N. is in place to prevent such things from happening, and it should be applauded for availing itself of this most recent chance to show its stuff.   And this effort is especially convenient for the parties involved, logistically speaking.