Motley Moose – Archive

Driving home today I heard Elliot Abrams on NPR in an interview.  He opened with this:

Mr. ELLIOTT ABRAMS (Senior Fellow, Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations): What the president began to say after 9/11 was that there was no special exception for the Arab world, that we had supported stability in the Middle East at the cost of liberty. And that we weren’t going to get stability either. And, of course, this is at a time when most of these regimes look completely stable. So the point I was making is he had it right in saying that these were not as stable as they appeared to be.

Elliot Abrams is right.

His comments are exactly correct. That was the one thread of Bush’s blunderfooted post-9/11 direction that I always agreed with while I rapidly became dissatisfied with his method. That one part of his legacy is quickly being proven as a real inflection in western policy. It isn’t OK to support tyranny ever, no matter what benefits it has for you.

It was true in Taiwan sixty three years ago this Monday. We should do what we can so that in  sixty three years there are only stone markers to the follies of the past.

As free Libyans rise up the world finally reacts to the unforeseen and widely misunderstood events of the last ten days.  

Libya’s prospects rely on their solidarity with each other and the principles of social justice which, as Obama recently mentioned, are as universal as they have been inaccessible to many Libyans for more than a generation.  Libya must rise to the occasion and there is every evidence that they will.

Perhaps we must create the space and opportunity for this and put aside for a moment our geopolitical and cultural fears, not to mention our apprehensions over the price of fuel, and watch the wondrous, rare process of nationhood with respect while withholding our considerable judgement.

This new nation is largely composed of youth whose notions of democracy are as intangible as their understanding of the afterlife and who have earned their hard-won freedom through determination and courage by confronting and vanquishing their own parents’ most terrible fears.

And Thursday Colonel Gaddafi likened himself to Queen Elizabeth, prompting this picture:

Unfortunately for him I think most Libyans will like this one:

After days of nothing but unconfirmed yet compelling twitter messages of the dramatic events in Libya the mainstream media is finally catching up with the horrible reality.  Libya is ablaze and the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi now hangs by a slender thread, but only at the cost of hundreds of lives.

We are finally getting the confirmation that has been delayed by an almost complete media blackout in Libya since the insurrection began:

CAIRO – The son of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, warned in a nationally televised address early on Monday that continued anti-government protests could lead to a civil war.

The son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, said the army continued to support his father, although he acknowledged that protesters had seized some military bases, as well as tanks and weapons.

David D Kirkpatrick – Qaddafi’s Son Warns of Civil War as Libyan Protests Widen NYT 20 Feb 11

Yes, tanks and weapons and about half of the country, as was accurately reported days ago.  And now Tripoli itself is in turmoil.  Curiously these dramatic events have been reported by eyewitnesses and retweeted widely for almost five days but have been virtually unremarked in the media.  

Human Rights Watch reports that security forces in Libya killed 24 protesters Thursday during anti-government demonstrations. Inspired by demonstrations and uprisings in other nations, opponents of Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libyan leader since 1969, called for demonstrators to continue the protests and named Thursday a “Day of Rage.”

Deadly protests continue to rock Libya. According to Human Rights Watch, Libyan security forces have killed 24 protesters at anti-government demonstrations during the past few days, and many others have been wounded in the spreading unrest in the North African country.

The organization said in a statement that hundreds of peaceful demonstrators had taken to the streets of the Libyan cities of Baida, Benghazi, Zenten, Derna, and Ajdabiya on Thursday, the the day opposition activists had called for an anti-government “Day of Rage” on social networking sites. The human rights group, quoting several witnesses, said Libyan security forces shot and killed protesters to disperse the crowds.

Los Angeles Times

Mythology records the constraints on power of mortal kings:

…[King Cnut of Denmark, England and Norway] set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes; but the tide failed to stop. According to Henry [of Huntingdon], Cnut leapt backwards and said “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.

Cnut the Great Wikipedia

In the wake of the revolution in Tunisia and the amazing scenes in Egypt in recent weeks the tide of popular sentiment against autocratic rule has risen to unprecedented levels among the persistent regimes of Africa and the Middle East and threatens to expose the illegitimacy of their rule if not inundate them altogether.

That these movements are concentrated in, though not limited to, the Islamic world seems no coincidence and their scope transcends the geopolitical or religious alignment and ethnicity of their respective ruling classes.  This is not strictly speaking a democracy movement in the narrowly understood Western sense though it is clearly a movement of social justice as framed within the context of the culture of the respective states.