Documentary footage of Qaddafi in 1976 (BBC) provides food for thought and ironies. One irony is that, as a kind of populist-socialist who made housing a priority instead of tents, Qaddafi created institutions of direct democracy and that term is one he uses (in translation). If the West wants democracy in Libya, as it has said it does, it is certainly not Qaddafi’s version.
Qaddafi maintained the power of a dictator and arrested and tortured many (as did leaders in Iran), for I believe he is visibly lying when he denies this. Just as many states have been built on conquest, many others could not be erected without internal repression and conquest. Don’t all states suppress their people in many ways and deny rights in many ways? Is it so clear that the U.S. way is so superior that it can rightfully invade and wreck a country in an attempt to remake its politics? I don’t think so; the U.S. leadership thinks otherwise.
Another irony is that Qaddafi believed (as a moral obligation) in interfering (supporting with Libyan military force) in other countries in which the oppressed (as he saw it) were rising up against imposed rule or foreign rule. America intervenes too, but with entirely different rationales.
Qaddafi distinguishes sharply between terrorism (which he condemns) and supporting popular uprisings. The U.S. leadership has to make a similar sharp distinction whenever it intervenes militarily so as not to be itself called a supporter of state-terrorism.
Each irony arises because of the similarities between the actions of U.S. leaders and those of Qaddafi. The largest irony is therefore that the U.S. leaders and Qaddafi are both essentially on the same side of a line. On one side of this line are those who are willing to use force either for the “good” or to make what they think is a “good” outcome and who think they are behaving morally. On the other side of the line are those who are unwilling to use force to promote or make the “good” and who view its use as immoral (either in any circumstances (pacifists) or apart from self-defense (non-pacifists).
Battles such as between the U.S. and Qaddafi are “all in the family.” They are not the battles mythically depicted as a sharply-defined struggle of freedom vs. dictatorship. They are battles between two unclean ruling clans, neither of which has clean hands.
8:42 am on June 28, 2011
