The Civil War in Libya

The news this morning is that the rebels are running out of money, implying, I presume, that the NATO countries aren't paying enough. Does Qaddafi win?

Finn McCool said:

You can hardly fault me for calling the conflict in Libya a revolution. There's a lot of people who are trying to use violence to affect radical political change and overthrow the government. Would you not call that a revolution?[...]

Finally I'll just say this. People can argue against NATO intervention as the West imposing its will on Arab country, drumming up a conflict to justifying gaining control of oil, etc. But what would those same people be saying if NATO hadn't intervened? If Qaddafi forces had captured Misrata and Benghazi and killed thousands? At least some of them would be saying that the West tacitly allowed a dictator (who they had arms and oil contracts and intelligence contacts with) to crush his own people, in order to protect "stability". I'm not accusing RedMoon of kneejerk anti-Westernism, but I will say that people who do think that way have the luxury of being able to say "gotcha" in almost every possible outcome of geopolitical situations.

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Well, you are not "accusing" me, but indeed, my stand on this issue, as on others, is determined by my "feelings", and this all happens rather quickly, kind of "knee-jerk", as you say. Many posters at SDF are this way, and especially us older ones. However, in my post #287 (page 20), which you quoted in #291, I was not intending to express any stand AT ALL or "moral" judgement, for or against. Revolution is not automatically "good", nor foreign intervention automatically "bad". Rather, I was expressing skepticism of your characterization of events in Libya. I don't think these have the significance, in quantity and quality, which you assign to them.

Maybe I am being too picky about the word "revolution", but words help one see things clearly. Discussing the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville observes: "Indeed, I would go so far as to say that whenever a nation destroys its aristocracy, it almost automatically tends toward a centralization of power..." My interest in this quote is the specific turn of phrase: "WHENEVER A NATION DESTROYS ITS ARISTOCRACY". This strikes me as an exceedingly good definition of "revolution", for the following reasons:
Any chance of this in Libya? There may be a constituency that backs this sort of development among the rebels, but they will not gain traction, NATO will see to that.

In this connection, you misunderstood my point about the lack of "unity" among the Libyan opposition. I am NOT FORECASTING A CIVIL WAR post-Ghaddafi, though this is a distinct possibility. What concerns me, in my previous post, is the significance of this disunity TODAY. You have several different forces, each with its own agenda. Some may be "revolutionary", as you claim, others are simply neo-Liberals of sorts. Some may have tribal claims, some could be "islamist", etc.

All of this means, TODAY, that NATO can pick and choose. It means that the Libyan factor in the equation is EVEN WEAKER than we might expect, even if they are doing most of the fighting on the ground, and all of the dieing. The slow progress, and the gradual evolution of NATO action, also serves this purpose, as it gives NATO the opportunity to get to know the forces, to strengthen the ones it likes, and to let others dissipate. And NATO is not doing this for "fun", or "for the hell of it", but because it calculates that it can serve its interests. Without getting into what these "interests" might be, I can only tell you that "revolution", as I have spelled out above, is certainly not one of them.

delft said:

The news this morning is that the rebels are running out of money, implying, I presume, that the NATO countries aren't paying enough. Does Qaddafi win?

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He might in the end, if he could keep his reserves up till then. As we all know, the West / NATO lacks the strong political will to have a drag-on fight neither move in a full-scale war with Libya. If he can keep it up the rebellion will run out of steam...while the rebels held some of the oil fields and refineries but those need foreign engineers to operate them, but they're all left the country now so the production / export almost nil at this time.

"Future RAF missions under threat if Libyan intervention continue"
This is the heading of an article today in the Daily Telegraph. Even the United Kingdom, one of the second tier military countries in the world, together with China, France, Germany, Japan and Russia, is being exhausted by the support it gives to US wars against Afghanistan and Libya.
At the same time Obama's contention that the US is not making war on Libya is to be tested in a US Court.

Second thoughts. It seems that the "civil war" in Libya was set up in a hurry, perhaps as a counter fire against the bush fire we call the Arabian Spring. So the fighting began before the several parties in the rebel coalition where brought to a single policy by the initiators, perhaps the British. This might also explain the bizarre incident with the British helicopter. But it might take 75 years before the relevant archives are opened. Perhaps even more. The police archive relating to the Jack The Ripper murders is still closed after more than 120 years.
As for a massacre in Benghazi: It is just what the propaganda makes of it. Remember how little was made of the suppression of the people in Bahrain.

This is a New York Times commentary about the legality of President Obama's war against Libya.

delft said:

Second thoughts. It seems that the "civil war" in Libya was set up in a hurry, perhaps as a counter fire against the bush fire we call the Arabian Spring. So the fighting began before the several parties in the rebel coalition where brought to a single policy by the initiators, perhaps the British.

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Well, I certainly think NATO's primary objective in the Libya action has been "managing" the Arab Spring, by increasing the pressure on the more Anti-Western states. The choice of Ghaddafi was ideal for this because of his ambivalence (Anti-Western for many years, then pro-Western after 2003, and somewhere in the middle more recently).

An interesting article by Victor Kotsev in Asia times on line:
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No doubt Ghaddaffi learned from the Kosovo war more than NATO did.

The Europeans probably thought this was going to last this long. The Europeans are running out of ammo after 90 days?

The started talking about "days or weeks", not three months. Also they don't dare chose for elections. Gaddaffi might win.