October 20, 2011

It’s what happens when you obviate self-determination.

Meanwhile, Iraki Kurds waive a Kurdish flag. Looks like our old goal of a “united” Irak is ephemeral – while our “hold” on NATO is a bit soft.

Same ‘ol shite – short-term expediency blows up in our fundamental orifice.

No doubt there will be much celebration on the death of Gadhafi. But before we remain sheep in the propaganda paradigm, it should be remembered…

… That Gadhafi was probably the product of something similar to what’s happening in Egypt and elsewhere.

Gadhafi participated in overthrowing the colonially imposed government of Idris. The “locals” couldn’t take such a pawn, saw a chance and took it.

Gadhafi immitated Nasser (as Saddam and others did), and tried to make a secular opposition to colonialism – AND fundamentalism. By applying nationalism against colonialism, and by not kowtowing to Western pressure (and approaching the Soviets), he became a Cold War enemy.

I’m not defending Muhamar, not by a longshot. But I think that it’s important to gauge the situation in Libya from a perspective which is not the military-industrial, neoconservative one.

We’ve seen how anti-colonialism, pan-arabism, and other -isms have arisen from Algeria to Pakistan. Our unfortunate Cold War policies made fundamentalist islam the most popular option in those parts – and I’m very much afraid that within an artificial country such as Libya, the only unifying factor will probably be fundamentalist… sooner or later.

The leit motif of history is the struggle between the haves and have-nots. From that struggle we have ideological and factional struggles. While alternatively alienating, supporting, alienating and supporting Muhamar over the past 4 decades, we have helped to foster a very unstable situation which does not address the have/have-not question.

What will happen? Who knows. But what is clear is that our continuous pursuance of immediate expediency as opposed to justice, we have yet again shot ourselves in the foot.