The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    So You Want To Be A Millionaire: Libyan Popular Resistance, 1000 Strong

    By Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 10:04am |

    New York Times has a talk with Ali Tarhouni, who notes the Libyan rebels have only 1000 trained soldiers. Time Magazine notes that the rebels have now given up on advancing to Tripoli and are instead safeguarding home territory.

    But in a rare stroke of luck, these few, these proud, these brave are being supported by cruise missiles that have gone from "no-fly zone" to "no-drive zone". At this rate, a baby could overthrow the government, as long as reaching the government weren't required. (The "re-taking" of Ajdabiya was arranged by bombing Qaddafi troops until they left, at which point the rebels could limp into town, but CNN obligingly reported this as "a victory".)

    And in a scene reminiscent of Libyan Idol or "So You Want To Be A Millionaire",  the British government has decided to give these rebels $1 Billion in newly minted bills that were supposed to be delivered to Qaddafi. To f***ing cool - instant millionaire for each and every bedouin digging the sand with a rifle. And like a putz I was trying to get tickets for The Daily Show? Where's the payoff I want my cold mill too.

    The "days, not weeks" timeline for the invasion rescue is now 90 days (not to be confused with "months, not weeks"). I'm waiting to hear the cheery prognosis, "the mission will pay for itself - they have oil".

    And one wise blogger seemed to notice that "NATO" = "The US of A" at least when it comes to weaponry and equipment required to pull off any complicated operation like this. So the idealism that this will all be passed off to some willing ally is simple delusion, or kabuki theater.

    Meanwhile, tens of thousands of protesters marched in Yemen yesterday (no one gave them $1 million each), 200 protesters marched in Damascus with 20 killed, Algeria is getting protests and pressure, Wefaq in Bahrain is drawing tens of thousands for its protests, and Jordan had 100 injured as a couple thousand protested.  Will anyone care now, or all that matters is what the US is doing?

    Comments

    But Obama has declared that our Libyan effort is "succeeding" even though we don't quite know what it's supposed to succeed in (is Qaddafi packing already? are rebels forming a democratic shadow government? will we get the bastard Lockerbie bomber back in jail? pick your metric). I expect by the time we hit the Afghanistan standard ("decades, not centuries") we'll be starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. But you have to admire people who remain optimistic despite historical lessons, repeated failures and their own incompetence.


    by Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 10:15am

    Is it optimism or just the economic payoff to our sponsors, for resource, (read: weaponry), utilization?  Couple that with the all ready low Q score of the Qaddafi brand, and it's like a red flag to the bulls making up our foreign policy.  Worked so well in Iraq and all.  Think of it as a jobs program, take a qualude, and settle in for a few episodes of 2-1/2 men, and you'll begin to see the logic and understated genius here.


    by miguelitoh2o on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 12:25pm

    Thanks very much, but that's a low "G" score, for Gaddafi. Spelling, oh-so-important.


    by quinn esq on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 1:51pm

    Actually, I think القذافي‎ begins with a ي‎ (or is it a ا?).


    by Verified Atheist on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 7:52pm

    The problem is Libyan pronunciation is different from standard Arabic.

    So you're right for the Arab world, including Al Jazeera.

    Quinn's right when in Tripoli (which by the way sounds completely different in Arabic) and Benghazi.

    Of course if Quinn pronounced his own name with a proper Arabic Q, he'd probably either choke or blow a hole through his Adam's apple.

    And in America you can just call him "Mummer" and get away with it.


    by Desider on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 10:36am

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/02/libya

    in case any unwise and unwashed feel like arguing with me.


    by Desider on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 10:37am

    Who cares about the spelling?  It's the pronunciation thingies that can toast my cookies.  For instance, anyone who says 'Eye-rack' should be dropped through the nearest trapdoor; same went for 'SOD-'em Hussein.  (of course, that was Daddy Bush's clever try at a scatalogical diss...)


    by we are stardust on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 10:55am

    Yeah yeah yeah, there you go with your abstract morality, and high principle and, ummm, symbolism.

    Get real, Des. I mean, the  visuals are incredible, are they not? And all those old films with a psycho screaming Arab madman terrorist - originally build up around this guy - can now be dusted off and given a rerun.

    Sweetest of all..... guess who's baaaaaaaaack? Yeah bay, Ahhnie's baaaaaaack. 

    Boffo box office. Especially when the psycho madman leader sends little boats of terrorists into Italian ports at night. 

    Yeah baby. 3-D.


    by quinn esq on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 1:55pm

    Jamming to The Cure, "Killing an Arab". I can't hear you, la-la-la, I CAN'T HEEAARRR YOUUUU!!!


    by Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 2:32pm

    Four hours of Lawrence of Arabia on this pm. ha


    by Richard Day on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 6:23pm

    Yeah, I missed that and most of Dr Zhivago last night. Rats.


    by Donal on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 7:29pm

    So, you are saying when Qaddafi's men cut down lightly-armed citizens who had risen up to throw them from around 90% of the nation ... with combined attacks using heavy artillery, rockets, air power, and sea assaults ... that Qaddafi's forces achieved for themselves a glorious victory. But, upon having the arms equalized and it being a fair fight, when those same government forces turn tail and run ...

    LMAO. Yes, Desi, we are intervening specifically to take out all that hardware that was allowing Qaddafi to suppress the Libyan majority. Cheer the "poor helpless little Qaddafi soldiers" and lament that the world supports a new order in Libya if that's what you're ideology tells you to place your loyalty. The point isn't to show how hardcore the Libyan people trying to achieve a better life are. They aren't. Their glory isn't in being the best warrior - it's in standing for their nation despite the military superiority they face. The point is to help save the Libyan citizens with ZERO military training who are trying to stand against a tyrant who can purchase the best-trained Xe force in the world.

    I suppose if there were nothing else at stake, it would be hilarious watching Qaddafi exhort his loyalists by highlighting you guys holding "pro-Qaddafi" rallies in the USA. Yeah. Like THAT'S going to go over well with the electorate when the media inevitably creates a false conflation between pro-Qaddafi activists such as yourself and union supporters such as me. Fuck. How many more important contemporary political fights are you guys going to undermine chasing long-gone glory years of the 60s war protest movement?

    It should also be noted that "the matter of days" was in relation to handing over command, not completion of the operation. If you thought the operation was slated for days ... well, you pretty much had to do a Breitbart and ignore the majority of reportage to grab three lines out of context.

    Britain gave a billion dollars that were supposed to be delivered to the Libyan people to the Libyan people ... and you are crying because it didn't go to the Qaddafi family-enrichment fund? Sounds like you are proposing that the Libyan people should be punished with starvation because you don't like the fact that they weren't slaughtered a week ago.

    BTW. The deadly encounter related to Syria protests happened Sanamin near Daraa (where 20,000 marched) ... only a couple hundred miles from Damascus, so you were close. If you are going to start advocating an expansion of the international intervention to include Syria, maybe at least try and get a grip of the facts on the ground? Do you even realize those protesters aren't ASKING their government to step down at all - just asking for a few reforms? Or does that even matter to you? I propose "caring" is best demonstrated by actually having a command of the facts surrounding a situation BEFORE trivializing someone's death and warping it to support a position you plan to hold regardless actual reality.


    by kgb999 on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 2:27pm

    kgb. I can agree and disagree with you on most things, but the idea that people opposing this war is somehow crippling all your other political positions, e.g. deficit, pro-labour, etc. is just fracking nuts.

    Can't people oppose a war without you losing your load over how Republicans are somehow gonna mash this up with everything else?

    Or do your views on what's best for your job and your pension now necessarily determine everyone else's stance on every other foreign policy issue that might come up? If so, too bad so sad for all the dead, eh?

    And how about if the Republicans demanded we stay out? Are we then required, in order to protect your financial self-interest, to reverse course?

    Shorter: Your position is politically incompetent, as well as having the morals of a monster. Cool.

    And pro-Gaddafi rallies in the US? And the 60's? WTF? How about this. Try to provide something, ANYTHING, as a quote an event a link, anything, so that will you appear not to be babbling on this. Or are you just real fracking high?


    by quinn esq on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 2:54pm

    KGB - It may be a waste to try persuasion with these three. Des, Q and M2o seem to lack the intellectual capacity to think much beyond TV shows, 3D movies, or drug abuse. Des seems to be fixating on a fantasized 'cold mil' the unwashed rebels of Libya might get their dirty paws on, for nothing more than having the courage and capability of 'babies', perhaps Des, knowing he is at least physically not a baby, and not a Libyan to boot, believes he should get the 'newly minted bills' instead?


    by NCD on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 3:07pm

    I'm fixated on asking tough questions about tough events, not glamorizing some putrid little pathetic uprising that would be squashed flat after 3 weeks if western powers hadn't come in with cruise missiles to divvy up the oil in the presumptious name of "humanitarianism", after dallying with Qaddafi the last 10 years. (Tell me, oh guru, how did that guy who bombed Lockerbie end up being freed after what, 3 years? Do you know anything about bribes and "national interests"?)

    10x as many civilians are dying in Ivory Coast and 100x are dying in Congo, not to mention Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, out there in the real world, and you have the impudence to lecture me about "TV Movies". The TV Movie is this image in your head you have about Libyan freedom fighters and the real chance of democracy or any improvement for civilians whatsover. (Which ignores the ethnic division between the left and right sides of Libya, a major ingredient to dissatisfaction with government in the east).

    And don't get me wrong, the personal bravery of people fighting is likely heroic even if their numbers are miniscule as is their realistic chance of success, and if there is a real opposition, a chance to come up with a nouveau politik that supports budding transitions to democracy, I'm all for exploring and supporting.

    But what I see is a model of encouraging another Bay of Pigs or Prague Spring or Tiananmen for every idealistic band of youth ready to take to the streets. 1 out of 20 we might do something to support, the other 19 they're on their own to either succeed or get shot down like dogs in the street (or carried off to torture chambers or football stadiums, depending on if you're in Latin America or not).

    The beauty of the original Mideast uprisings is that they didn't depend on the largesse of the US, the "kindness of strangers" - only tweets, self-sufficiency, ballsiness, and a DIY spirit. Now we have "liberals" and "progressives" encouraging some hybrid course of street rebellion / military action as a way to change the world, which of course is exactly how Russia turned several countries communist in its heyday, starting up fake street actions with its shipped-in goons, and when they destabilized the country, they sent in their "advisors" to fix it. Okay, for fair play, that's probably the script for numerous US-backed rebellions as well.

    The internet-based, Wikileaks-inspired activity was the real breakthrough. Mideast Uprising 2.0 is a hastily remade sequel by the hack Hollywood director who hasn't had a hit in years but knows how to work a formulaic re-make in to please the studios anyway. We've seen this movie a million times, and the ending never gets any better.


    by Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 4:05pm

    Let's tone down both the insults and the rebukes or I'll have to charge one of you $20K.


    by Donal on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 4:23pm

    NCD showing up to say nothing but that we "lack the intellectual capacity to think much beyond TV shows" - well that's intellectual laziness in itself. Perhaps a $20K fine will wake him/her up from zombieland sleep walk.

    At least the moderators just deleted my f-bomb and not the whole segment - the comparison of our Libya strategy to a million new Bay of Pigs should be salient. (Remember when we encouraged all those Shiites to rise up and fight Hussein, and then George Bush Sr. didn't enforce the no-flight zone? Careful with that football, Charlie Brown)


    by Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 7:49pm

    Donal linked the twenty G's to his faux-meat market blog, actually.  I almost always miss the hyperlinks, too.


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 7:52pm

    Probably that damned intellectual capacitor I had installed a few months back.  I'll leave it to you to explain henceforth.


    by miguelitoh2o on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 5:42pm

    Donno why he didn't finger you for the ferret molestation charges, and Des for the poodle plumping. 

    Foul FOUL stuff. 

    Otherwise, I have to admit, he's got us pretty much dead to rights.

    Though, to give us our due, we don't suck much establishment fart.

    So we got that goin' for us.


    by quinn esq on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 7:47pm

    Speak for yourself - I've been moonlighting in a 3-piece-suit doing corporate butt inhalants - find it pays better than popcorn stand at the matinee, and I don't have to put up with the 3-year-olds spilling coke on my clown shoes.


    by Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 7:51pm

    That ferret and I had a consensual relationship, and would never have offered state testimony if not for the month and a half s/he got off his/her own sentence.


    by miguelitoh2o on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 8:08pm

    It gave you its all and you still don't know its gender?

    Watch out for those husky sounding girls in Juarez, my friend. The blank political days press her now. (search for Slinger)


    by Desider on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 11:23am

    "So, you are saying when Qaddafi's men cut down lightly-armed citizens who had risen up to throw them from around 90% of the nation ..."???  

    Of course I'm not saying that. Because you make it sound like 90% of the nation was protesting. It's a country of 6.5 million people. How many were in the streets? 50K? 100K around the country?

    People always jump to the assumption that every event will continue like the previous. Egypt resulted in Mubarak's stepping down so Qaddafi has to. Egypt's protests turned into super-popular critical mass, so Libya's hast to.

    Wishful thinking is no substitute for sober analysis.

    It's easy to take a remote city center for a few days. It's terribly difficult to hold it if the government is seriously armed, and it's also hard to build a new government.

    What happened to all those brilliantly promising African revolutions in the last 30 years? How many turned into stable nation-states, vs. say Ivory Coasts, Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe? Would I be anti-civilian if with 20/20 hindsight I opposed Congolese independence, knowing it would save 5 million civilian deaths?

    Quit being a pollyanna. There's no cakewalk into democracy or economic success. Ukraine is stuck where it was. Russia is still controlled by its economic oligarchies and mafia. Lebanon remains a basket case. Georgia is limping along, but miles ahead of the still tyrannical Central Asian states. Just because CNN gets all excited (after missing out on the beginnings and previous Mideast uprisings) and acts like the uprising is promising doesn't mean that they analyzed it in any detail and it's a sustainable revolution.

    And civilians die in most of these places in significant numbers, whether ruled by someone we call a tyrant or someone we think enlightened.

     


    by Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 3:48pm

     ...no substitute for sober analysis.

    It's easy to take a remote city center for a few days

    How many were in the streets? 50K? 100K around the country?

     

     

    Urban Area Rank

    City Pop Rank

    City

    Country

    City Population

    Urban Area Population

    161

    108

    Tripoli

    Libya

    1890600

    2271800

    384

    383

    Benghazi

    Libya

    728500

    1080500

    1796

    1760

    Homs

    Libya

    187900

    187900

    1826

    1792

    Misratah

    Libya

    184400

    184400

    1849

    1817

    Zawiyah

    Libya

    181700

    181700

    2083

    2060

    Barqa

    Libya

    158300

    158300

    2101

    2078

    Zlitan

    Libya

    156600

    156600

    2198

    2178

    Garyan

    Libya

    148800

    148800

    2232

    2213

    Tobruk

    Libya

    146800

    146800

    2411

    2396

    Yafran

    Libya

    134700

    134700

    2472

    2456

    al-Bayda

    Libya

    130900

    130900

    2569

    2553

    Tarhuna

    Libya

    125300

    125300

     

     

     

     

     

     

     Held by Rebels : Benghazi, Misratah  Zlitan , Tobruk  plus some others. We could look them up but they're too small to affect any  sober analysis suggested by this data.

     

     

     




    by Flavius on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 5:15pm

    Hey, did I tell you I held New York City for 2 weeks? I did, have the pictures to show you.

    Despite the western efforts to show how much they "hold" these cities, all I see is video of a few kids directing traffic and a government building allowing tours.

    There's still no indication how much of the local population is actually with this.(Certainly rebels are making sure to disappear people supporting Gaddafi just as Gaddafi's fans are doing the reverse)

    Aside from NATO intervention, Libya's had little trouble pushing back against rebels after initial successes. I see it as a house built on sand.


    by Desider on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 8:28pm

     

    You're more apt to change opinions when  you emphasize  your personal beliefs rather than introducing  evidence that's either ambiguous or actually  undermines your case.

    When you claim it's ' all about oil ' altho I  doubt you can prove it, neither could I attempt to prove you're wrong.. It's true often enough to justify the suspicion . .

    Ditto for your statement that a revolution that can't succeed on its own isn't worth helping .It's a reasonable generalization altho susceptible to a lot of qaulifications . Does it have to hang the ruler  or just  show some ability to hold some significant  geography?.( Wasn't the Warsaw uprising "worth" assisting when the Russian troops marked time on the other side of the Vistula waiting for the Germans to destroy the Home Guard? Indeed that's coming close to saying  the only reveolutions worth supporting are the ones that don't need it.

    But  when you write

    There's still no indication how much of the local population is actually with this

    ........it verges on not recognizing inconvenient truths

    When  the second largest city in any country, with over 20% of its population,  is taken over by rebels ,denying that's an indication of support smacks of W' s  scorn for reality.

     


    by Flavius on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 10:27pm

    Careful with stastics creep: Benghazi at 700,000 people to "over 20% of the population" (6.5 million)

    Yes, it might seem I'm changing goalposts, but I trust more in Egypt's slow protest buildup and information-full weeks of rage over an uprising that started 15 Feb and Benghazi "fell" 23 Feb, only 8 days later.

    There is decent info on how poorly the rebels are equipped, and for all the talk of how the army switched sides, if the rebels only have "1000 trained soldiers" as Ali Hourani tells NY Times, then obviously the switch hasn't been so convincing.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/africa/24minister.html?_r=1

    As the link Stardust gives below, the rebels are dragnetting for any supporters of Qaddafi and killing/imprisoning them, so not unusual that Qaddafi supporters might keep quiet at the moment or pretend allegiance to the new way. But any bravado that they were headed to Tripoli has faded - we're stuck with pretty much an Eastern breakaway movement to support, one that can't even hit anything far away, no chance of moving across the desert.

    http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2061111,00.html

    And we really don't know who or what will rule a new government if the West manages to keep Qaddafi from retaliating. Egypt has The American University in Cairo as just one example of liberal institutions that have trained people for self-sufficiency (a whole lot more studied in London or other decent universities, have been part of the international community in a 1000 ways, whatever Mubarak's torture and other excesses. Same for Tunisia, et al).

    From these articles it also seems that Qaddafi's also letting the east's businesses sink as this uprising rolls out, and that sooner rather than later there will be pressure to get back to making some money rather than continuing revolt. Re-said, it doesn't seem like a deeply felt, unified revolt, but rather one where the rebels got a bit cocky with early easy successes. (And in the desert, there's typically not a need to rush).

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-24/libyan-rebel-march-on-tripoli-is-hobbled-by-lack-of-organization-weapons.html

    Libya has been isolated, and we really don't know what we're supporting, whether there's any sense of democratic movement or simply "local control" for Cyreneica. (Conveniently, that's where a lot of oil production is - the Sarir field is the largest and lies in southern Cyreneica - which would allow the west to negotiate oil contracts vs. the nationalized Libyan production).

    Really it's hard to see where we can get clarity in foreign/military policy in this regard. The only big step forward I've seen is that Medvedev has split with Putin in saying, "It's Qaddafi's own damn fault for firing on his own people". It's that kind of simplicity that could lead to a new doctrine, but it needs to be repeatable and implementable, not just a vague promise that could lead to a Bay of Pigs or Kurdish slaughter in most cases, and freedom and democracy in a few.

    And we're still sitting by in the Ivory Coast 4 months later despite democratic elections that threw out the last bum, but he won't leave. Funny how that UN Security Council resolution for supporting the freely elected new government just hasn't taken place, but Libya's got through in a matter of days. Yes, I can't prove the difference is oil (and large cash reserves) until the next Wikileaks dump, but the stinking suspicion won't go away soon.

     


    by Desider on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 4:06am

    My over 20% was based on the far right column which I take to be the population of the entire metropolitan area.And includes Tobruk et al. After 20 years as an unwilling  ( I went into business only because I was turned down by Columbia Journalism) corporate comptroller  I usually get numbers right.


    by Flavius on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 8:13am

    1.08 million is not over 20% of a 6.4 million total.

    A bit less than 17% by my calculator.

     


    by Desider on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 10:30am

    I was cheating. I wasn't just counting Benghazi but  including  Tobruk and Misrata


    by Flavius on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 11:44am

    There's still no indication how much of the local population is actually with this.

    I'd say the panning shots in the following video are a pretty damn strong indication of the majority of the population of Benghazi being anti-Gaddafi:

    Voices from a Benghazi Rally, CNN, February 24, 2011

    True that it doesn't mean all of Libya and doesn't mean they are all pro-rebel.

    But then neither is the U.N. pro rebel, their position is ceaefire then negotiate. He refused the ceasefire.

    As to the concerns about two Libyas, north vs. south. I don't get why it's our business beyond what they themselves end up doing. The UN giveth in 1951, creating a kingdom where there were only 2 to 3 Italian territories before and Ottoman rule before that. The UN can help do a revised version if the people want it.  An earlier incarnation for an example: 1707, the Kingdoms of Tripoli and Faisan, and the land of Berdoa, It's not like it's sancrosant writ in hieroglyphics ancient Egypt; I can fill several shelves with obsolete atlases of Africa published in my lifetime.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 2:04pm

    I saw this piece, or more likely a reprint of it, two days ago, and couldn't find it again when I wanted it.  It was not good to read, as it didn't paint some of the rebel forces in a good light, especially concerned the Africans they think are Gadaffi mercenaries.  Strict photo-ops for journalists.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-prisoners-20110324,0,7452859,print.story

    Who the hell knows?

     


    by we are stardust on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 9:29pm

    No one knows for sure. Therefore, the more heavy weaponry demolished, the better.. Where nobody or no group can win and rule over another via access to powerful machinery. Where they've got to use things like skills, smarts, coalition building, conviction. Yes, skills can  include nasty ones like being a good sniper. But that would still be a situation where they'd have to convince that sniper to be on their side.


    by anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 12:43am