An Interventionist Far-Left?

Congratulations are in order to some of the people over at Workers' Liberty for a number of the articles they have put up over the past few weeks regarding the situation in Libya and the question of Western intervention. They follow an ideology I regard as hostile to liberal democratic ideals, and they are probably rather hostile, to my centre-left New Labourish beliefs, but nevertheless, they have written some logical, realistic, principled and excellent articles over the last few days, although I don't agree with everything they write. I'll bring a couple to my readers attention.

The first was their excellent take-down of George Galloway and his coddling up to Arab dictators while criticizing the West for doing the same. George Galloway is a target of the right and the Harry's Place-type left almost ad nauseam, but much less frequently, as far as I'm aware a target of the far left. Which makes it all the more satisfying and refreshing to see a far left group take him down so thoroughly and completely.

It starts with a nice collection of hypocrisies and shocking statements by Galloway:

Galloway tells the same anecdote on the “Respect” website:

“Last week at a breakfast in Dubai, an Englishman munching his halal sausages said: ‘Your mate’s getting a hard time in Libya isn’t he?’ – though YouTube is groaning with films of me denouncing Gaddafi over many years. Of course, he could have been getting his Arab dictators mixed up, or – worse – confusing me with Tony Blair.” (2)

It’s easy to understand why Galloway is so justifiably worked up about this kind of thing.

Given the price of a suite in Dubai’s “One and Only Royal Mirage Hotel”, you shouldn’t have to put up with having your breakfast soured by a sausage-munching Englishman who can’t tell one dictator from another.

The sausage-muncher should have known that when Galloway uttered the immortal words, “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability and I want you to know that we are with you, until victory, until Jerusalem,” it was at a meeting with Saddam Hussein, not Muammar Gaddafi.

The sausage-muncher should have known that when Galloway wrote that a military commander who had seized power in his country in an army coup “seems an upright sort to me and should be given a chance,” he was referring to Pakistan’s General Musharraf, not Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.

The sausage-muncher should have known that when Galloway joked with a dictator’s son about Cuban cigars, weight loss and hair loss, and promised him, “we’re with you, till the end,” he was socialising with Uday Hussein, not Saif Gaddafi.

The sausage-muncher should have known that when Galloway praised a Middle East dictatorship as “the last Arab country, the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs,” praised its ruler as “the last Arab ruler,” and told the victims of the dictatorship that they were “a free people,” he was speaking of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, not Gaddafi’s Libya. (3)

The sausage-muncher should have known that when Galloway referred to a country in the grip of a reactionary dictatorship for the past three decades as a country which “has only been a democracy for thirty years but (which) has come a long way in that thirty years,” he was referring to the Iran of the mullahs, not to Gaddafi’s Libya.

The sausage-muncher should have known that when the London School of Economics accepted a donation from the Gaddafi Foundation, this was a bad thing and justifies Galloway’s recent quip about the “Libyan School of Economics”, but when the same Gaddafi Foundation made a donation of a hundred lorries to Galloway’s last “Viva Palestine” convoy, this was something to be welcomed. (4)

It goes on to make a rather excellent and perceptive distinction of which principles Galloway uses to determine which "unconscionable thugs and criminals" (in the oh-so-memorable words of Christopher Hitchens) are worthy of Galloway's praise: "achievements" and "anti-imperialism":

The criterion of ‘anti-imperialist struggle’ is easiest understood by contrasting what Galloway has had to say about Gaddafi (not his “mate”) with what he has had to say about Al-Assad (a man of “dignity”).

According to Galloway, speaking in 2008, Gaddafi was “just another Arab dictator” because he had abandoned the ‘anti-imperialist struggle’:

“Gaddafi has betrayed everything and everybody. He turned away from the justified struggle of the Arab people against Zionist occupation and against imperialist domination of the region. He has lost any respect which any struggling people had for him. …”

“I think this is all a tragedy. Gaddafi was always strange, but in the past he took an Arab stance, even if it was more in words than in deeds. But now he is just like all the rest. … He was terrified of American power. But he should have waited because the uprising in Iraq has broken the American power.”

“Gaddafi surrendered to America when he saw Saddam fall but before the Iraqi people rose. If he had waited just one year he would have seen that in every street of Iraq the Arab resistance is defeating the occupation. He lost confidence and faith in the Arabs long ago.” (5)

By contrast, according to Galloway in 2005, Syria was “lucky to have Bashar Al-Assad as her president” because that dictator had kept Syria on the straight-and-narrow of ‘anti-imperialist struggle’:

“Syria will not betray the Palestinian resistance, she will not betray the Lebanese resistance, Hizbullah, she will not sign a shameful surrender-peace with General Sharon, and … Syria will not allow her country to be used as a military base for America to crush the resistance in Iraq." (6)

Earlier this month Galloway returned to the same argument: “The government of Syria for a long time has pursued a policy of Arabness. Of Arab nationalism, of Arab dignity, of support for the Palestinian cause, material support, material support for the resistance, rejection for the foreign occupation of Iraq. And a refusal to bow before the foreign powers.” (7)

Thus, Gaddafi, having ditched ‘anti-imperialism’, is “just another Arab dictator”, whereas Al-Assad, having remained loyal to ‘anti-imperialism’, is “the last Arab ruler”.

The criterion of ‘anti-imperialist struggle’ is easiest understood by contrasting what Galloway has had to say about Gaddafi (not his “mate”) with what he has had to say about Al-Assad (a man of “dignity”).

According to Galloway, speaking in 2008, Gaddafi was “just another Arab dictator” because he had abandoned the ‘anti-imperialist struggle’:

“Gaddafi has betrayed everything and everybody. He turned away from the justified struggle of the Arab people against Zionist occupation and against imperialist domination of the region. He has lost any respect which any struggling people had for him. …”

“I think this is all a tragedy. Gaddafi was always strange, but in the past he took an Arab stance, even if it was more in words than in deeds. But now he is just like all the rest. … He was terrified of American power. But he should have waited because the uprising in Iraq has broken the American power.”

“Gaddafi surrendered to America when he saw Saddam fall but before the Iraqi people rose. If he had waited just one year he would have seen that in every street of Iraq the Arab resistance is defeating the occupation. He lost confidence and faith in the Arabs long ago.” (5)

By contrast, according to Galloway in 2005, Syria was “lucky to have Bashar Al-Assad as her president” because that dictator had kept Syria on the straight-and-narrow of ‘anti-imperialist struggle’:

“Syria will not betray the Palestinian resistance, she will not betray the Lebanese resistance, Hizbullah, she will not sign a shameful surrender-peace with General Sharon, and … Syria will not allow her country to be used as a military base for America to crush the resistance in Iraq." (6)

Earlier this month Galloway returned to the same argument: “The government of Syria for a long time has pursued a policy of Arabness. Of Arab nationalism, of Arab dignity, of support for the Palestinian cause, material support, material support for the resistance, rejection for the foreign occupation of Iraq. And a refusal to bow before the foreign powers.” (7)

Thus, Gaddafi, having ditched ‘anti-imperialism’, is “just another Arab dictator”, whereas Al-Assad, having remained loyal to ‘anti-imperialism’, is “the last Arab ruler”.

Read the whole thing, it is an excellent take-down.

The second article is entitled "Libya: No illusions in West but 'anti-intervention' opposition is abandoning rebels".

The writer has clearly looked a very difficult question right in the face, and come to a rather uncomfortable conclusion. That question, which should be put to all anti-interventionists is this: "Are you willing to stand by and watch Gaddafi slaughter the inhabitants in Benghazi and crush the revolution because you don't want to see the West intervene." It is fair to be skeptical of Western motives, how this could end, mission-creep, the cost, hypocrisy and so on, but until you tackle that all-important question, and give a convincing answer to it, you simply aren't being serious. So congratulations to Workers' Liberty for looking this question dead in the face, and coming to the conclusion that it must support Western intervention, a traditional foe, because there is simply no other serious option right now.

On 17 March, after much procrastination, the United Nations agreed to military action against Libya’s dictator Muammar Qaddafi, whose murderous forces were advancing on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
The Stop the War Coalition immediately issued a statement condemning “a new war”, and “escalating armed intervention in Libya”. Socialist Worker headlined “No to intervention in Libya! Victory to Arab revolutions!” Much other left-wing commentary has focused on opposing intervention.
But the rebel forces in Benghazi greeted the UN decision with jubilation. Benghazi is a city where Qaddafi has, in the past, conducted the mass public execution of oppositionists. They knew what they could expect if Qaddafi triumphed. And it seemed likely that Qaddafi was on the verge of defeating the revolution, or at least inflicting terrible slaughter.
To oppose – that is, demonstrate against, and make a serious effort to prevent – the limited military action against Qaddafi, is to tell the rebels in Benghazi “you’re on your own.”
What socialist would want to send out such a message? Only one not deserving the name.

There is of course no reason to trust the armies of the West, or their Arab allies, to bring democracy to Libya or anywhere else. There is no guarantee that Western intervention will even succeed in its shortterm aim of halting Qaddafi’s advance.
The force which is advancing democracy across the Middle East is the mass movement, above all the workers’ movement. In Egypt a new, independent trade union federation has been formed in the midst of a wave of militant strikes.
This is the agency to which socialists look to transform the Middle East.
But neither such workers’ movements nor the labour movement internationally have a military force of our own to come to the aid of Benghazi. We can build our own forms of solidarity with the popular movement in Libya. We can be vigilant against whatever political steps the Western powers take (including, for example, any attempt to rehabilitate Qaddafi, which they may think is the best, most “stable option).
But what issue of principle should make us demonstrate against the one thing which might prevent untold slaughter, prevent Qaddafi’s immediate bloody victory, and therefore a crushing defeat for the wave of revolutions?
It is not good enough for socialists to point out that Cameron, et al, are no friends of the Libyan people. Indeed they are not. But what do you propose to do, instead, then, to prevent Qaddafi crushing his enemies? Socialists either address this real, life-and-death question or they are irrelevant poseurs.
It’s not good enough to argue that the West has supported dictators in the past and will do so again. Of course it will. But how able the West is to impose its agenda on the Middle East in future depends on the self-confidence of the mass movement. A terrible defeat in Libya might sap that self-confidence much more than a temporary acceptance of Western assistance.
We need to develop a strong solidarity campaign which is independent ofWestern (or Arab) governments. We need, in particular, to help the new Egyptian workers’ movement to continue to grow and develop, which could have an immense, positive effect on the whole region.
Instead, some socialists have responded to this crisis by putting their hostility to America above the lives of the Libyan rebels.
And this is a shameful disgrace.

I don't know about everyone else, but I find a far-left which expresses solidarity, real solidarity, with opposition to dictators who are not allies of the West, to be a pretty refreshing break from the weasels, opportunists and moral cretins who get into bed with every reactionary and lunatic dictator as long as he is an "anti-imperialist" with "achievements".

"United We Rise"

Peop1e, which as far as I can make out is a democracy advocacy group, has put together an absolutely inspiring video splicing a Charlie Chaplin speech from The Great Dictator with footage from the Egyptian Revolution. A must watch:

The Crass and Contradictory Cynicism of the Moribund "Anti-Imperialist" Left

Apologies to my limited readership for my inactivity, the pesky demands of real life (here read final year dissertation) have taken a grievous toll on my budding blogging career. I thought I'd break my blogging fast by deconstructing a disgraceful and shoddy piece of work I saw on the Stop the War Coalition website today:

10 Reasons to say no to western intervention in Libya

Stop the War Coalition are reliably consistent in their consistent deployment of every factually incorrect, inconsistent and irrelevant argument in the anti-war playbook. They really have turned throwing shit at the wall and hoping some of it sticks into an art form. Let's see if we can't scape all this facile excreta from the important pages of UN Resolution 1973, and leave it where it belongs: stinging the noses of the people who would rather see Benghazi burned to the ground by Gaddafi's thugs than allow the international community to give the Libyan people any meaningful help.

1. Intervention will violate Libya’s sovereignty. This is not just a legalistic point – although the importance of observing international law should not be discounted if the big powers in the world are not to be given the green light run amok. As soon as NATO starts to intervene, the Libyan people will start to lose control of their own country and future.

Yes, the imposition of a no-fly zone and tactical strikes will be a violation of Libya's sovereignty. Sensible people, however, have come to the conclusion that a state can surrender its sovereignty when it commits gross human rights violations, as Gaddafi undoubtedly has. This was taken into account in UN Resolution 1973, and it was determined that the atrocities Gaddafi has committed mean it is legitimate to breach Libya's sovereignty in order to protect Libyan civilians from his onslaught.

The last sentence, is a fair point, but is something for the international community and the Libyans to bear in mind, it is not a killer argument against intervention. There some risk of this Libyan revolution being taken over by outside powers, and we should do everything we can to make sure this is a Libyan affair, as much as possible. But what is almost absolutely guaranteed to leave the Libyan people without a say in their future is doing nothing and allowing Gaddafi to crush Benghazi and reassert control over the entire country again.

The call to respect Libya's sovereignty is a call to respect Gadaffi's "right" to butcher his own people with impunity.

2. Intervention can only prolong, not end the civil war. “No-fly zones” will not be able to halt the conflict and will lead to more bloodshed, not less.

This point is absolutely nonsensical and simply not grounded in reality. The military might of the international community, won't be able to roll back Gadaffi's offensive? It can't ensure a rebel victory if used properly? Yeah ok... I guess we should just take the word of the military experts at the StWC, rather than simply using common sense.

This war might get messy, with or without intervention, but if I'm a civilian in Libya opposed to the regime, I sure as hell like my chances a lot better with international help, rather than just being watched from afar by idiots wringing their hands about "imperialism".

3. Intervention will lead to escalation. Because the measures being advocated today cannot bring an end to the civil war, the next demand will be for a full-scale armed presence in Libya, as in Iraq – and meeting the same continuing resistance. That way lies decades of conflict.

Possibly. There's a small chance of that happening. War is a messy and uncertain business. There's a much better chance of a decent outcome with intervention than without though. They haven't proved that a no-fly zone and targeted strikes can't bring an end to the civil war and a rebel victory though (I think there's a good chance it could), so the leap to occupation is obvious logically flawed. It is right to raise concerns about where this could lead, but jumping straight onto the scare-tactic of "there's going to be a demand for an occupation, and it's going to be Iraq all over again" is hilarious hypocrisy, especially for a group which continually rails against the hyperbole and scare tactics of the "neo-cons" and "warmongers."

4. This is not Spain in 1936, when non-intervention meant helping the fascist side which, if victorious in the conflict, would only encourage the instigators of a wider war – as it did. Here, the powers clamouring for military action are the ones already fighting a wider war across the Middle East and looking to preserve their power even as they lose their autocratic allies. Respecting Libya’s sovereignty is the cause of peace, not is enemy.

This point is very interesting. Because their reasoning in sentences 2 and 3 make absolutely no sense if we apply them consistently, the only thing to take away from this point is their admission that non-intervention in conflicts means "helping the fascist side". StWC and their supporters get really, really defensive if pro-interventionist people say they are "helping the Taliban", "helping Al Qaeda", "helping Saddam" and so on. They say that they simply don't want to start a new war with more bloodshed. But here we have them admitting that non-intervention can mean actively helping the bad guys. We can see the inconsistency of applying this to Spain in Civil War (in which we should have intervened to save the Republic no doubt), but not to other places in the very next paragraph:

5. It is more like Iraq in the 1990s, after the First Gulf War. Then, the US, Britain and France imposed no-fly zones which did not lead to peace – the two parties in protected Iraqi Kurdistan fought a bitter civil war under the protection of the no-fly zone – and did prepare the ground for the invasion of 2003. Intervention may partition Libya and institutionalise conflict for decades.

Of course, this line of argument wouldn't entail "helping Saddam" commit a further genocide on the Kurds in the aftermath of the First Gulf War would it? No siree. See, we should have intervened in Spain in the Civil War because fascists are bad and letting them win will lead to further war, but we shouldn't have intervened in Iraq to save the Kurds, even though not protecting them would quite possibly led to a genocidal massacre.

Their further defense of rank inconsistency in point 4 is that the Western powers are waging wars across the Middle East now at the moment. Well, what the hell were the Western powers doing in the late 1930s? The British Empire, the French Empire, the United States, these powers weren't waging wars all over the world, and weren't trying to solidify their control over their colonies and dominions?

Does anyone actually think that StWC would actually be pro-intervention if the Spanish Civil War were being raged now? Like hell would they. They would sit back and let the Spanish Revolution be burned to the ground by the Falange forces, and they would sit there and watch, doing everything in their power to stop the "imperialist powers" from "hi-jacking" the Spanish Revolution.

StWC are NOT a progressive, left-wing, pro-democracy movement who only want to see an end to conflict. They are a thoroughly reactionary, anti-democratic organization with a monistic fixation on "Western Imperialism". They believe in a zero-sum view of politics: if the Western powers are for something, they are against it, even if that means allowing brutal dictators to rape, torture and murder "their own" citizens by the thousands.

6. Or it is more like the situation in Kosovo and Bosnia. NATO interference has not lead to peace, reconciliation or genuine freedom in the Balkans, just to endless corrupt occupations.

See? Things would be much better today if only we'd left Milošević's rape squads and ethnic cleansers finish their sordid business in Kosovo and Bosnia...

7. Yes, it is about oil. Why the talk of intervening in Libya, but not the Congo, for example? Ask BP.

Most of the pressure to intervene has come from ordinary Libyans, and ordinary people in the West, not oil companies eager to gobble up the reserves of Libya. Weren't StWC critical of the sweetheart deals done between the Brits, BP and Gaddafi? You can't have it both ways. BP can't simultaneously be propping up Gaddafi for oil deals, AND pressuring the government to overthrow him for oil deals. (Edit: Harry's Place noted this same contradiction a few days ago also)

But hey, these arguments almost never make any sense. You only have to mention the dread O-word, and they think they have just made a killer point against intervention.

The issue of the Congo is complicated, and there are many reasons for it. Maybe we should be doing more to help end the conflict there, but I think the one of the biggest reasons we don't do more to stop it is the fact that it is incredibly complex and it would be almost impossible to stop even if we tried. Libya, though not simple, is much more straightforward than the Congo - there is a reasonable plan on the table now, and a fairly clear idea about what we can do to help, and how we can do it. Not all the details are clear so far, but they are much more clear than the Congo.

They would be better off asking why we chose to intervene in Kosovo and Bosnia instead, places not exactly know for their huge natural resources ready to pilfer...

8. It is also about pressure on Egyptian revolution – the biggest threat to imperial interests in the region. A NATO garrison next door would be a base for pressure at least, and intervention at worst, if Egyptian freedom flowers to the point where it challenges western interests in the region.

This is just conspiracy-minded poo-flinging, which is barely even worth responding to. I have no idea why NATO would specifically need Libya as a base for intervention in Egypt if they wanted to do that, considering there are already bases in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and so on, all within striking distance of Egypt, not to mention the US Navy's Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. This point is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

9. The hypocrisy gives the game away. When the people of Bahrain rose against their US-backed monarchy and were cut down in the streets, there was no talk of action, even though the US sixth fleet is based there and could doubtless have imposed a solution in short order. As top US republican Senator Lindsey Graham observed last month “there are regimes we want to change, and those we don’t”. NATO will only ever intervene to strangle genuine social revolution, never to support it.

Bahrain is an absurd comparison. There may come a point where tricky questions are raised about US allies shooting down civilians protesting, but there is no comparison between the full-scale civil war in Libya right now, and the low level atrocities in Bahrain and elsewhere. No one would be calling for intervention in Libya if the atrocities were on the scale of Bahrain, so it is a completely false point to make (although, like I say, there will be some important questions to ask if violence does spiral out of control in Bahrain, Yemen, or Saudi Arabia).

10. Military aggression in Libya – to give it the right name – will be used to revive the blood-soaked policy of ‘liberal interventionism’. That beast cannot be allowed to rise from the graves of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ignoring the hyperbolic and rhetorical childishness of the "military aggression" jibe, they simply do not understand what "liberal interventionism" is, and when it has been used. Good examples of liberal interventionism are Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone.

Afghanistan was NOT a liberal intervention. It was a war of defense after 9/11 with the aim of destroying the organization which attacked the United States, denying them safe havens, and toppling the Taliban "state" which gave them a safe haven and tried to protect them after the attacks. It has been subsequently argued for in terms of liberal interventionism (human rights, democracy, women's rights and so on), as it should in my opinion, but Afghanistan was and is, primarily a war of defense and a war of national interest for America and the West in general.

Iraq is a similar story. Plenty of liberal interventionist themes have inevitably come up, but Iraq was primarily sold as a war of necessity by the Bush administration (think of the reasoning what you will). It was not primarily sold on helping protect the Kurds or Iraqi civilians, it was primarily sold on the issue of WMD and Saddam's links to Al Qaeda. Think of the war and how it was sold however you want, Iraq was not primarily a "liberal intervention" to protect human rights.

The tactic of comparing Iraq to every single act of military intervention by the West around the world is an old tactic by now, and it is a very good sign that such demagoguery is not persuading huge numbers of people to adopt the narrow, feeble-minded isolationism of StWC and their so-called progressive supporters. The people of Benghazi seem to agree with me:



Sidenote: this post is not meant to denigrate all those who oppose intervention in Libya for their own reasons, some of them sensible and some of them not so sensible. This is merely meant as a riposte to the quoted StWC article, and the general arguments which the group routinely employs.