Libya: should anything be done?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yes, arm the "rebels" (Mujahideen?). Arm rebels today in the fight against an oppressor, and then tomorrow get accused of funding terrorism.

Damned if you do - damned if you don't. We should let Qadafi and the rebels fight it out on their own, just like we should have let the Afghans fight it out with the Soviets on their own. Heck it's even more persuasive when it comes to Libya, because we're not responding an outside aggression against Libya as we were with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Funny how the folks who make the claim that "we armed bin Laden" or "bin Laden was our guy in Afghanistan" don't seem to see the parallel in funding Libyan "rebels" now....

The fact that we don't know squat about the rebels is a key reason why we should have as little to do with them as possible. Reports are that AQ and Hezbollah presence in their ranks is small, but present nevertheless.

[Coito ergo sum]

Yes, arm the "rebels" (Mujahideen?). Arm rebels today in the fight against an oppressor, and then tomorrow get accused of funding terrorism.

Damned if you do - damned if you don't. We should let Qadafi and the rebels fight it out on their own, just like we should have let the Afghans fight it out with the Soviets on their own. Heck it's even more persuasive when it comes to Libya, because we're not responding an outside aggression against Libya as we were with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Funny how the folks who make the claim that "we armed bin Laden" or "bin Laden was our guy in Afghanistan" don't seem to see the parallel in funding Libyan "rebels" now....

The fact that we don't know squat about the rebels is a key reason why we should have as little to do with them as possible. Reports are that AQ and Hezbollah presence in their ranks is small, but present nevertheless.

"Reports" can mean anything from well-confirmed facts to "bullshit spewed by politicians who don't know dick." We just don't know.

[sandinista]

Yes, arm the "rebels" (Mujahideen?). Arm rebels today in the fight against an oppressor, and then tomorrow get accused of funding terrorism.

Damned if you do - damned if you don't. We should let Qadafi and the rebels fight it out on their own, just like we should have let the Afghans fight it out with the Soviets on their own. Heck it's even more persuasive when it comes to Libya, because we're not responding an outside aggression against Libya as we were with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Funny how the folks who make the claim that "we armed bin Laden" or "bin Laden was our guy in Afghanistan" don't seem to see the parallel in funding Libyan "rebels" now....

You say that like somehow you think the US should have armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. "Make the claim"? The US DID arm and train Bin Laden, what do you mean "claim"?

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/afghan.htm

[Coito ergo sum]

Yes, arm the "rebels" (Mujahideen?). Arm rebels today in the fight against an oppressor, and then tomorrow get accused of funding terrorism.

Damned if you do - damned if you don't. We should let Qadafi and the rebels fight it out on their own, just like we should have let the Afghans fight it out with the Soviets on their own. Heck it's even more persuasive when it comes to Libya, because we're not responding an outside aggression against Libya as we were with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Funny how the folks who make the claim that "we armed bin Laden" or "bin Laden was our guy in Afghanistan" don't seem to see the parallel in funding Libyan "rebels" now....

You say that like somehow you think the US should have armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. "Make the claim"? The US DID arm and train Bin Laden, what do you mean "claim"?

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/afghan.htm

Yawn - bin Laden wasn't the current iteration of bin Laden from 1979 to 1988. The people who "claim" that "we armed bin Laden" pretend that he was the leader then that he was in the late 1990s and in 2001. He went to Afghanistan fresh out of college, and wasn't the global leader that he later became. Final Soviet troop withdrawal was in May of 1988. The US involvement in providing arms, along with some western European countries, China, some Arab countries, occurred during the Soviet occupation and was instrumental in driving them out.

Of course the US funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and with good reason. The Soviets had invaded and we wanted to take action to make their conquest difficult. We achieved that goal and more. I see the decision to arm the Afghans against the Soviets to be a strategic decision, and arguments can be made on both sides of that. I certainly see the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as something the US had to seriously consider opposing. We used the tools we had. Sure, the US funded the Mujahideen - so what? The fact that an obscure fellow named bin Laden eventually became the monster he became doesn't change the rightness of the action then.

My point in my last comment is that arming the Libyan "rebels" now is analogous to arming the Afghan rebels then. So, for all the folks that scream and yell about how awful it was that the US armed Afghanis so that they could fight the Soviets, it makes me wonder why they don't see the parallel.

[sandinista]

Yes, arm the "rebels" (Mujahideen?). Arm rebels today in the fight against an oppressor, and then tomorrow get accused of funding terrorism.

Damned if you do - damned if you don't. We should let Qadafi and the rebels fight it out on their own, just like we should have let the Afghans fight it out with the Soviets on their own. Heck it's even more persuasive when it comes to Libya, because we're not responding an outside aggression against Libya as we were with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Funny how the folks who make the claim that "we armed bin Laden" or "bin Laden was our guy in Afghanistan" don't seem to see the parallel in funding Libyan "rebels" now....

You say that like somehow you think the US should have armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. "Make the claim"? The US DID arm and train Bin Laden, what do you mean "claim"?

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/afghan.htm

Yawn - bin Laden wasn't the current iteration of bin Laden from 1979 to 1988. The people who "claim" that "we armed bin Laden" pretend that he was the leader then that he was in the late 1990s and in 2001. He went to Afghanistan fresh out of college, and wasn't the global leader that he later became. Final Soviet troop withdrawal was in May of 1988. The US involvement in providing arms, along with some western European countries, China, some Arab countries, occurred during the Soviet occupation and was instrumental in driving them out.

Of course the US funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and with good reason. The Soviets had invaded and we wanted to take action to make their conquest difficult. We achieved that goal and more. I see the decision to arm the Afghans against the Soviets to be a strategic decision, and arguments can be made on both sides of that. I certainly see the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as something the US had to seriously consider opposing. We used the tools we had. Sure, the US funded the Mujahideen - so what? The fact that an obscure fellow named bin Laden eventually became the monster he became doesn't change the rightness of the action then.

My point in my last comment is that arming the Libyan "rebels" now is analogous to arming the Afghan rebels then. So, for all the folks that scream and yell about how awful it was that the US armed Afghanis so that they could fight the Soviets, it makes me wonder why they don't see the parallel.

Yawn? yawn what? You are over the top with revisionist history. wow.

Some Real History

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who comprised only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government that replaced him proved to be autocratic, mismanaged, and unpopular. It in turn was forced out in 1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential palace, and after factions of the army intervened on the side of the demonstrators.

The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces came into office. “It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA blamed the USSR for it,” writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project in Afghanistan at about that time.

The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives were started and price reductions on some key foods were imposed.

The government also continued a campaign begun by the king to emancipate women from their age-old tribal bondage. It provided public education for girls and for the children of various tribes.
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that under the Taraki regime Kabul had been “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs—-in the 1980s, there were seven female members of parliament. Women drove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of university students were women.”

The Taraki government moved to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy. Until then Afghanistan had been producing more than 70 percent of the opium needed for the world’s heroin supply. The government also abolished all debts owed by farmers, and began developing a major land reform program. Ryan believes that it was a “genuinely popular government and people looked forward to the future with great hope.”

But serious opposition arose from several quarters. The feudal landlords opposed the land reform program that infringed on their holdings. And tribesmen and fundamentalist mullahs vehemently opposed the government’s dedication to gender equality and the education of women and children.

Because of its egalitarian and collectivist economic policies the Taraki government also incurred the opposition of the US national security state. Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA, assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers.

A top official within the Taraki government was Hafizulla Amin, believed by many to have been recruited by the CIA during the several years he spent in the United States as a student. In September 1979, Amin seized state power in an armed coup. He executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the military.

It should be noted that all this happened before the Soviet military intervention. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly admitted--months before Soviet troops entered the country--that the Carter administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the CIA-backed mujahideen against schools and teachers in rural areas.

In late 1979, the seriously besieged PDP government asked Moscow to send a contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters) and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA. The Soviets already had been sending aid for projects in mining, education, agriculture, and public health. Deploying troops represented a commitment of a more serious and politically dangerous sort. It took repeated requests from Kabul before Moscow agreed to intervene militarily.

Afghanistan, Another Untold Story

http://www.michaelparenti.org/afghanist ... ntold.html

[Warren Dew]

I certainly see the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as something the US had to seriously consider opposing.

I think it was more of a win-win proposition for the U.S. in cold war terms. If the Soviet invasion succeeded, Afghanistan wasn't really that important from a geopolitical standpoint anyway. However, by arming the opposition to the invasion, the U.S. could get the Soviets bogged down in a quagmire that could help bring the Soviet empire down - as actually occurred. Basically it was Vietnam in reverse.

The cold war is over, though; there isn't any great enemy of the free world that might be brought down by arming the rebels. Still, arming the rebels would mean they'd have to fight for themselves, which is better than doing the bombing for them as we've been doing. Arming the rebels in addition to continuing the bombing, of course, would be stupid - and only to be expected from a French initiated effort.

[JimC]

The rebels are retreating again...

Seems to be a repeat of the WW2 North African campaign, where the Italians got chased out, the Afrika Corp drove the British back, and the see-saw continued several times...

[Warren Dew]

I just hope the final result doesn't involve a huge landing of American forces in Algeria.

[JimC]

I just hope the final result doesn't involve a huge landing of American forces in Algeria.

Operation Scortch!

[Coito ergo sum]

I certainly see the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as something the US had to seriously consider opposing.

I think it was more of a win-win proposition for the U.S. in cold war terms. If the Soviet invasion succeeded, Afghanistan wasn't really that important from a geopolitical standpoint anyway. However, by arming the opposition to the invasion, the U.S. could get the Soviets bogged down in a quagmire that could help bring the Soviet empire down - as actually occurred. Basically it was Vietnam in reverse.

I've read some material in the past that indicated that the US took action in the late 70s to egg the Soviets on into the invasion, partly by supplying Afghanistan with materials before the invasion. Zbignew Brzinski (sp?), I think, is supposed to have been involved, but he denies it. I am not sure how much truth there is to it. It sounds a lot like all the other conspiracy theories that put the US as the secret, behind the scenes nefarious force on all major events...

The cold war is over, though; there isn't any great enemy of the free world that might be brought down by arming the rebels. Still, arming the rebels would mean they'd have to fight for themselves, which is better than doing the bombing for them as we've been doing. Arming the rebels in addition to continuing the bombing, of course, would be stupid - and only to be expected from a French initiated effort.

From the standpoint of the Democrats -- the party that controls the White House and the Senate - I really don't get what they're claiming is the reason for going in. It's been claimed that it's a humanitarian reason. I could live with that, but these are the same folks that said that humanitarian reasons aren't enough (or real reasons) because there are so many other, worse, humanitarian issues, like Sudan and other African countries, and we just stand by.

Obama acknowledged this conundrum in his speech - and he explained it by simply openly proclaiming that the US intervenes in humanitarian crises when it also perceives a national interest in doing so. What is that national interest here? He didn't specify.

So - I guess I don't know why all the so called "anti-war" groups (save Kucinich and the gang) aren't all up in arms about it and going bat shit crazy. I mean - Obama already just ignored what he said about the President being legally obligated to go to congress BEFORE committing US military forces at all. Now he's basically saying that if the President thinks that a humanitarian crisis (even where there is no hint of WMD, no aggression by the subject government, and no imminent threat to anyone other domestic populations) fully justifies US intervention in and of itself, and that we will in fact intervene if we think it's a manageable effort and furthers our national interest. That - to me - sounds like something every Democrat I've been chatting with for the past 8 years ought to be four square against, and if that same policy was announced by a Republican, they'd be calling for impeachment.

[Coito ergo sum]

Yes, arm the "rebels" (Mujahideen?). Arm rebels today in the fight against an oppressor, and then tomorrow get accused of funding terrorism.

Damned if you do - damned if you don't. We should let Qadafi and the rebels fight it out on their own, just like we should have let the Afghans fight it out with the Soviets on their own. Heck it's even more persuasive when it comes to Libya, because we're not responding an outside aggression against Libya as we were with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Funny how the folks who make the claim that "we armed bin Laden" or "bin Laden was our guy in Afghanistan" don't seem to see the parallel in funding Libyan "rebels" now....

You say that like somehow you think the US should have armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. "Make the claim"? The US DID arm and train Bin Laden, what do you mean "claim"?

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/afghan.htm

Yawn - bin Laden wasn't the current iteration of bin Laden from 1979 to 1988. The people who "claim" that "we armed bin Laden" pretend that he was the leader then that he was in the late 1990s and in 2001. He went to Afghanistan fresh out of college, and wasn't the global leader that he later became. Final Soviet troop withdrawal was in May of 1988. The US involvement in providing arms, along with some western European countries, China, some Arab countries, occurred during the Soviet occupation and was instrumental in driving them out.

Of course the US funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and with good reason. The Soviets had invaded and we wanted to take action to make their conquest difficult. We achieved that goal and more. I see the decision to arm the Afghans against the Soviets to be a strategic decision, and arguments can be made on both sides of that. I certainly see the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as something the US had to seriously consider opposing. We used the tools we had. Sure, the US funded the Mujahideen - so what? The fact that an obscure fellow named bin Laden eventually became the monster he became doesn't change the rightness of the action then.

My point in my last comment is that arming the Libyan "rebels" now is analogous to arming the Afghan rebels then. So, for all the folks that scream and yell about how awful it was that the US armed Afghanis so that they could fight the Soviets, it makes me wonder why they don't see the parallel.

Yawn? yawn what? You are over the top with revisionist history. wow.

Some Real History

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who comprised only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government that replaced him proved to be autocratic, mismanaged, and unpopular. It in turn was forced out in 1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential palace, and after factions of the army intervened on the side of the demonstrators.

The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces came into office. “It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA blamed the USSR for it,” writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project in Afghanistan at about that time.

The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives were started and price reductions on some key foods were imposed.

The government also continued a campaign begun by the king to emancipate women from their age-old tribal bondage. It provided public education for girls and for the children of various tribes.
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that under the Taraki regime Kabul had been “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs—-in the 1980s, there were seven female members of parliament. Women drove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of university students were women.”

The Taraki government moved to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy. Until then Afghanistan had been producing more than 70 percent of the opium needed for the world’s heroin supply. The government also abolished all debts owed by farmers, and began developing a major land reform program. Ryan believes that it was a “genuinely popular government and people looked forward to the future with great hope.”

But serious opposition arose from several quarters. The feudal landlords opposed the land reform program that infringed on their holdings. And tribesmen and fundamentalist mullahs vehemently opposed the government’s dedication to gender equality and the education of women and children.

Because of its egalitarian and collectivist economic policies the Taraki government also incurred the opposition of the US national security state. Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA, assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers.

A top official within the Taraki government was Hafizulla Amin, believed by many to have been recruited by the CIA during the several years he spent in the United States as a student. In September 1979, Amin seized state power in an armed coup. He executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the military.

It should be noted that all this happened before the Soviet military intervention. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly admitted--months before Soviet troops entered the country--that the Carter administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the CIA-backed mujahideen against schools and teachers in rural areas.

In late 1979, the seriously besieged PDP government asked Moscow to send a contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters) and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA. The Soviets already had been sending aid for projects in mining, education, agriculture, and public health. Deploying troops represented a commitment of a more serious and politically dangerous sort. It took repeated requests from Kabul before Moscow agreed to intervene militarily.

Afghanistan, Another Untold Story

http://www.michaelparenti.org/afghanist ... ntold.html

I think our disconnect is that you are asserting that the US armed and trained "bin laden" personally but the things you cite do not support that assertion. My assertion is that, yes, the US armed and trained Muslim Mujahideen to fight against the Soviets, and arguably rightly so. However, bin Laden was not the player in 1980 or 1985 that he was in 1998 and onward. He was a fresh out of college fanatic. To suggest that the CIA trained Mujahideen in general is not the same as saying that they trained bin Laden in particular.

Maybe they did. I'm willing to be educated. But, to date I haven't seen any evidence of what the US did for bin Laden from 1980 to 1988. I have seen evidence that the US supplied weapons and training to the Mujahideen in general during that time. That much I agree with.

So, I'm not sure if we actually disagree or if it's just a question of interpretation.

I'm really trying to not make every exchange of ours a fight. I respect your consistent opposition to the recent wars because you appear to at least apply the same standard to each one. I disagree with you about many things, which is fine. Perhaps with further conversation we will be able to see each other's views in different lights. I heard a speaker the other day whose name escapes me discuss the fact that quite often humans view people who disagree with them as one of two things, either evil or stupid, but the reality is that most of the time that's not the case. We're often just coming from different premises and different understandings of what the facts are.

Consider that an olive branch.

[Gawd]

Why does America do everything half assed? They bomb Libya with hundreds of missiles, obviously pissing off Ghadaffi, and don't have the sensibility to kill him. Yah know, the moment you rain hundreds of missiles on a country, it doesn't make you any more of an ass if you just kill the leader.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yes, arm the "rebels" (Mujahideen?). Arm rebels today in the fight against an oppressor, and then tomorrow get accused of funding terrorism.

Damned if you do - damned if you don't. We should let Qadafi and the rebels fight it out on their own, just like we should have let the Afghans fight it out with the Soviets on their own. Heck it's even more persuasive when it comes to Libya, because we're not responding an outside aggression against Libya as we were with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Funny how the folks who make the claim that "we armed bin Laden" or "bin Laden was our guy in Afghanistan" don't seem to see the parallel in funding Libyan "rebels" now....

The fact that we don't know squat about the rebels is a key reason why we should have as little to do with them as possible. Reports are that AQ and Hezbollah presence in their ranks is small, but present nevertheless.

"Reports" can mean anything from well-confirmed facts to "bullshit spewed by politicians who don't know dick." We just don't know.

Yes, and that's exactly my point. In the absence of knowledge, any decision to act is ipso facto ill-informed. However, the reports I'm referring to emanates from the military head of NATO. Whether that affects their credibility is something you should decide for yourself.

[DRSB]

"I don’t know Libya, but my gut tells me that any kind of decent outcome there will require boots on the ground — either as military help for the rebels to oust Qaddafi as we want, or as post-Qaddafi peacekeepers and referees between tribes and factions to help with any transition to democracy. Those boots cannot be ours. We absolutely cannot afford it — whether in terms of money, manpower, energy or attention. But I am deeply dubious that our allies can or will handle it without us, either. And if the fight there turns ugly, or stalemates, people will be calling for our humanitarian help again. You bomb it, you own it.

Which is why, most of all, I hope President Obama is lucky. I hope Qaddafi’s regime collapses like a sand castle, that the Libyan opposition turns out to be decent and united and that they require just a bare minimum of international help to get on their feet. Then U.S. prestige will be enhanced and this humanitarian mission will have both saved lives and helped to lock another Arab state into the democratic camp.

Dear Lord, please make President Obama lucky."

Whole opinion here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/opini ... f=homepage

[Warren Dew]

I like this quote from Obama:

“I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

So I guess the humanitarian reason for going after Qadafi isn't the limited amount of shooting at civilians that he's actually done, which seems to be less than Bahrain and Yemen; it's the slaughter and mass graves that Obama thinks he might cause in the future if he's not stopped.

I guess that theory has the advantage that it can't be disproved. However many people the U.S. kills in Libya, Obama can always claim that Qadafi would have killed more.