Re: [Marxism] Questions for Vijay Prashad
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 08/27/2014 01:23 PM, Jon Flanders via Marxism wrote: You know, they essentially ceded that part of the country. Libya was going—Gaddafi’s rule was going to fall. There was no need forNATOintervention. Tell that to the people of Homs. When French jets swooped in to destroy Qaddafi tanks on ~19 March, they were starting to enter Benghanzi, to carry out the cleansing operation Qaddafi had been promising for days, From your comfortable position I'm sure you valued political purity over stopping Qaddafi from doing to Benghazi and Misrata what Assad has done to Homs and Aleppo. I disagree and so do my Libyan followers. So, the second reason I opposed intervention in Libya was it was inevitable that Gaddafi was going to lose power. Let the process take its own way. Like Syria? Let them fight a little bit. Let there be a political dialogue within the rebellion. Let them create alternative structures of power. And. as a Marxist, [ and an internationalist? ] what did you do to help with that? My record is clear. http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-libyan-diaries_786.html If you just give the Libyan people a destroyed country, how are they going to build a future? And that was the real danger of aerial bombardment of the style the Americans conduct. Syria is a destroyed country [infrastructure wise] because there has been no UN intervention, no no-fly zone, and Assad has been allowed to use his air force, artillery and chemical weapons to destroy whatever the chooses in Syria for more than 3 years now. Libya suffered very little infrastructure damage because NATO stopped Qaddafi from doing the same to Libya. The chaos [not destruction] is the result of 42 years of Qaddafi rule not NATO destruction. And its a slight against the Brits, French, Italians and Dutch to call it an American aerial bombardment. The US conducted only about 17% of the strike missions. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Questions for Vijay Prashad
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 08/27/2014 02:04 PM, Clay Claiborne via Marxism wrote: Does it mean to you that the state shouldn't be overthrown and that the Qaddafi regime should have been allowed to perfect its Green Book based state for at least another 60 years? Clay Did you listen to the interview with Vijay? Jon Flanders But the second reason I was opposed to U.S. andNATOforce was that by the time the Americans started talking about intervening, a third of Libya was out of Mr. Gaddafi’s hands. And I’ll give you a sense of this. If you traveled to Libya, Egypt and Syria prior to the Arab Spring, you would find something interesting. In Libya, since 1987, the military has been a wreck. There’s no morale. You know, you could walk in and out of a base without being asked questions. In other words, their military was a shambles. When Gaddafi’s son visited Benghazi a week into the rebellion, he came running back to Tripoli and said, you know, Papa, it’s over. We’ve lost Benghazi. You know, they essentially ceded that part of the country. Libya was going—Gaddafi’s rule was going to fall. There was no need forNATOintervention. In Egypt, the military is very powerful, but you will find something interesting. The soldiers have dark skin compared to the other Egyptians. They are recruited from upper Egypt. They are very disciplined, but they are not exactly with high morale. In Syria, the military has very high morale. You know, it has often been amazing to me. I keep wondering, why did the Turks and others believe that the Syrian regime was going to fall like the Libyan regime? They have completely different military structures, and the morale is completely different. So, the second reason I opposed intervention in Libya was it was inevitable that Gaddafi was going to lose power. Let the process take its own way. Let them fight a little bit. Let there be a political dialogue within the rebellion. Let them create alternative structures of power. If you just give the Libyan people a destroyed country, how are they going to build a future? And that was the real danger of aerial bombardment of the style the Americans conduct. They level countries and then tell people, Well, create a democracy. It doesn’t work like that. If the Libyans had been given three, four, eight months to fight against Gaddafi, already much weakened, I think a different outcome might have been possible. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Questions for Vijay Prashad
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 9:23 PM, Jon Flanders via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: In Libya, since 1987, the military has been a wreck. There’s no morale. You know, you could walk in and out of a base without being asked questions. In other words, their military was a shambles. That was true on most American military bases until a few weeks before September 11, 2001. (Cue conspiracy theorists here.) -- Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
