Tag: United States
The devil in the details is named Saif
Former Republican Congressman Curt Weldon says in the New York Times this morning that he is in Libya to get Muammar Gaddafi to step aside. He also argues that the United States should have developed a much deeper relationship with the Libyan people and civil society since the Colonel gave up his nuclear ambitions in 2004, a perspective I can certainly share.
Reading more carefully, it appears that “step aside” does not mean “leave Libya,” and Weldon also says
Colonel Qaddafi’s son Saif, a powerful businessman and politician, could play a constructive role as a member of the committee to devise a new government structure or Constitution. The younger Mr. Qaddafi, who has made belligerent comments about the rebels, has his detractors. But he also pushed his government to accept responsibility for the bombings of a Pan Am flight over Scotland and a disco in Germany, and to provide compensation for victims’ families. He also led the effort to free a group of Bulgarian nurses in Libya who had twice been sentenced to death.
Here is where I part company with Mr. Weldon. I don’t think we owe Saif anything for his past efforts, all of which were amply rewarded at the time. Keeping him–or any other member of the Gaddafi family–in the process now will only complicate the post-war arrangements and make it difficult to satisfy the 98 per cent of the Libyan population that has not benefited from the last 42 years of the Colonel’s idiosyncratic and impovershing rule.
Weldon will be serving a useful purpose on his visit to Tripoli if he convinces the Gaddafis that they all need to depart, post haste. Anything less than that will prolong Libya’s pain, and U.S. involvement.
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Barbarities
It doesn’t get much more senseless than this: a pastor in Florida conducts a mock trial of the Koran, then burns it. No one notices, until Afghan President Karzai denounces the Koran burning and arouses the sensibilities of Muslims almost half a world away. A group of them compounds the evil by attacking a local UN office and killing twelve, none of whom have any connection to the Koran burning (and at least four of whom were Afghans). Another nine people died today in Taliban-inspired protests in Kandahar, where the Americans have made an enormous effort to win over the local population.
This isn’t a clash of civilizations; this is a clash of barbarities.
They are not the only barbarities in today’s world. The Red Cross says 800 were killed in fighting over a town in western Ivory Coast between the forces of president-elect Alassane Ouattara and incumbent Laurent Gbagbo. An American testified at trial that he and his U.S. Army comrades wantonly killed innocent Afghans, for the sake of entertainment.
Apart from the obvious, several of these incidents have in common something surprising: the passion to do something “good.” The pastor thinks the Koran is evil–that’s the avowed reason for the mock trial and Koran burning. Those who attacked the UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif were led by imams seeking to punish the evil that had been done to Islam. Outtara and Gbagbo are both fighting for what they claim was the legitimate outcome of an election.
What about those Americans? Entertainment is I guess a “good” of sorts, but it really doesn’t match up with the other good causes implicated in these barbarities. What makes it possible for Americans to kill for entertainment?
They can do this only if they view the Afghans as the “other,” a group that does not merit respect for human life. This is likely to be the case in the other instances of barbarity as well. The “othering” of individuals or groups is at the root of much interethnic and sectarian violence. Americans are not immune, especially if they have reason to fear, or want to instil fear in adversaries (two sides of the same coin).
How to respond to such senselessness? Prosecutions in Afghanistan are clearly in order. The UN, desperately needed in Afghanistan to help with everything from negotiations with the Taliban to feeding and sheltering the poor, will not be able to stay if its staff can be murdered with impunity. The incitement in Florida is truly irrelevant to the need for accountability in Mazar-i-Sharif, and Kandahar.
That said, the church in Florida–I don’t want to name it or give its pastor any more of the publicity he so obviously craves–is abusive. Symbolic acts like the burning of the Koran (or of the New Testament) are constitutionally protected in the U.S. The church folk know this and are using that protection as a shield while they attack Islam. I have no idea how the American justice system will handle this–there is precedent for restraining people from symbolic acts that incite violence. But it seems to me that those ideologically close this pastor have a clear responsibility to stop him from further provocations. This includes his own parishioners as well as much of what is known today as the “Christian right,” which has been quick to ask that American Muslims restrain their own from extremism. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
Accountability in Ivory Coast seems far off, but if Ouattara wants to avoid Gbagbo’s fate he’ll tend to it even before the fighting is over. The appeal for Gbagbo’s people to come over to his side that I’ve published in the previous post is not enough. He needs to restrain his own people and prevent harm to civilians, no matter whom they support. Starting his regime with a massacre will do him no good at all.
The Americans have already tried and convicted one of the U.S. Army perpetrators. He got off with a relatively light sentence, apparently in exchange for testimony against his buddies. I find that disgraceful, but I suppose also unavoidable. Let’s hope the others get what they merit, as a clear signal to the rest of our soldiers and marines that the institution they work for will hold them accountable.
My personal inclination would be to put all these perpetrators in the same prison cell together and let them sort it out. I suppose it is better that what will happen is that the respective justice systems will slowly sort out which punishments are merited. Let’s hope they do it quicker and better than usual. Preventing future barbarities requires ending impunity for past ones.
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Another BIG Friday
The President of Syria has thumbed his nose at the protesters, suggesting that they are operating on an Israeli agenda. After much vacillating and many negotiations, the President of Yemen has called for his supporters to rally in Sanaa tomorrow, a day when the opposition is also planning another mass rally in the capital. Gaddafi’s favorite Foreign Minister has defected in London and other regime stalwarts are thought to be on their way, even as the rebels lose ground to his forces in eastern Libya and the CIA tries to train them into a more effective fighting force.
Tomorrow promises to be a big day. Will Syrians respond en masse to the President’s provocation? Will the opposition in Yemen push the vacillating president past the tipping point? Is the Gaddafi regime near collapse?
It would be easy to be cynical and suggest that the answer to these three questions is “no.” It is not likely to be “yes” to all three on the same day. I’m more inclined to hedge a bit.
Maybe the best bet is on clashes tomorrow in Sanaa. The more nonviolent they can keep it, the better the chance for the protesters to win a confrontation. Violence will evoke a violent response on the part of the security forces, and in a violent confrontation the protesters lose. President Saleh would appear to have more than nine lives. He definitely wins the survivor prize so far, but nine is a finite number and he is certainly close to it.
Syrians have long given Bashar al Assad the benefit of more doubt than can seriously be alleged to exist. They really haven’t even reached the point of asking for his departure. They stop short of that by asking for suspension of the emergency laws that prop up his regime. He has responded violently and likely will again tomorrow. Numbers of demonstrators, and non-violent discipline, will be vital to the outcome. Whatever residual support for him the Americans (and Israelis) harbor, on grounds that he provides stability, should by now have been dispelled: he is as bad as his father, and likely as violent too. His father killed 20,000 at Hama.
Libya is the great uncertainty. By all rights, Gaddafi should be gone already. But he holds on in Tripoli and has again fought back the rebel advance. The Americans are loudly debating whether to move ahead with arming the rebels, in accordance with a covert action “finding” that the President has already signed. I suppose they expect this noisy display to scare him. He is definitely frightened, but that makes him hold on tighter. There is no way he can stay on in Libya if he loses this fight, and he knows that sooner or later justice will find him if he leaves.
Maybe none of these issues will be decided tomorrow, but it would certainly be a fine trifecta if all three went down on April Fools’ Day.
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Bashar’s challenge
Before I could get this piece up, Bashar had spoken. He flunked the test. Syria is in play. Will its youth stand up to be counted?
The Syrian cabinet has resigned and President Bashar al Assad is scheduled to speak to the nation today. But he was supposed to do it yesterday too, so who knows?
I assume he isn’t fooled by all those pro-government “demonstrators” in the streets yesterday. He has a tall order to fill: convincing his people that this time he is serious about reform. He may never have merited their confidence, but there is something in the Syrians that holds on to the hope that he’ll prove the modernizer he claims to be. If he disappoints once again, it won’t be long before he follows Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi into a battle with his own people that he can only lose. The first skirmishes have already been fought.
For some reason that is difficult to fathom, Washington has also grown attached to the notion that Bashar may be more part of the solution than part of the problem. John Kerry was quite explicit about this last week at the Carnegie Endowment, and Hillary Clinton has been not far behind. Some even seem to view him as an asset in the effort to make peace with Israel, a hope he (following in his father’s footsteps) has repeatedly dashed.
Perhaps the only thing that could make me think twice about this is an Elliot Abrams op/ed denouncing Bashar in such stentorian terms that you’ve got to wonder whether you’ve joined the wrong team. The specific measures Abrams proposes amount to denouncing Syria in every available forum and trying to hold Damascus accountable for its crimes.
I can certainly support that, but withdrawing the U.S. Ambassador would be silly. It accomplished nothing when the Bush Administration did it and would accomplish nothing now, except to deprive the protesters of an important point of reference, one that can help to ensure the regime feels the scrutiny of the international community for its offenses against them.
Helena Cobban suggests a middle ground. Hoping to avoid Iraq-like chaos in Syria, she hopes the Turks will be persuasive with Bashar and convince him to accommodate legitimate demands of the protesters. Clear commitments and careful monitoring she thinks could steer a Syria still led by Bashar in the right direction.
I have my doubts, but we’ll find out soon enough. If Bashar is as bad as Abrams says, he will fall short in his speech by failing to lift the emergency and other laws that support his repressive state, by refusing to open up the political system to competition, and by trying to maintain the monopoly his family and cronies have on corruption. Syria’s youth will then have its opportunity. Let’s hope they are as ready for it as the Tunisians and the Egyptians. And let’s hope they keep it non-violent, because one Libya is already too many for most Americans.
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At last some post-war thinking
Michelle Kelemen on NPR today says the London conference will discuss post-war plans, and the Secretary of State met there with a representative of the Libyan opposition, contrary to what had been foreseen. The Transitional National Council is said to have issued a statement promising a constitution and free elections that includes the following:
there is “no alternative to building a free and democratic society and ensuring the supremacy of international humanitarian law and human rights declarations.”
The locution is a bit backhanded, but still all to the good.
The President last night was at pains to emphasize that regime change by military means would be a mistake, because that is what we did in Iraq and look what a mess it got us into. Alfred North Whitehead would have called this a “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” What caused the mess was inappropriate, inadequate and incomplete transition planning, corrected by a hastily arranged and ineffectual occupation.
We are at risk of committing at least the first part of this mistake in Libya (I trust no one will occupy, pretty much no matter what happens). The President is correct that the United States can duck primary responsibility for the reconstruction of Libya. That belongs to the Transitional National Council (TNC). The Europeans should provide most of the support, since they are close neighbors to Libya, which supplies a significant portion of their oil and gas.
But there is no substitute for American leadership in ensuring that this process gets off to a good start. Washington is sending diplomats to Benghazi to establish liasion with the TNC. This is important, even if late. I hope the Europeans, including the European Council and Commission, are doing likewise. Keeping Washington and Brussels on the same page is vital.
The other big piece of the diplomatic puzzle is getting Gaddafi out of there. Military pressure is indispensable in doing this. If the battle for Sirte turns into a stalemate, it will be much harder to convince Gaddafi and his family to board. The President said our allies would keep the pressure on, even as the U.S. lightens its military activities. I hope that is going to happen.
Some will regret Gaddafi escaping, but in my view there will be time and place for his accountability. He is not yet indicted by the International Criminal Court, which I hope has investigators on the ground in Libya. Remember Charles Taylor: he was allowed to flee to Nigeria, but arrested not too long thereafter.
Of course it is possible that the Libyans will inflict accountability on Gaddafi and his family in the time-honored way. That is not in my view a preferred outcome, because it is a bad foundation for the New Libya and could well lead in the direction of replacing Gaddafi rather than changing the regime to the freer and more democratic one the TNC says is unavoidable.
PS: Here, courtesy of The Guardian, is the Interim National Council (aka Transtional National Council) Vision for a Democratic Libya. First rate, but I fear written in English. That is not entirely a good sign.
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Still vague on those post-war plans
Here are the comments on the President’s speech that I posted this evening at The Danger Room:
Clear enough to me: atrocities in Benghazi would have reverberated against US interests and values, not only in Libya but elsewhere as well. Because allies and partners are now picking up the burden, US military and taxpayers will need to do less. Libyan frozen assets will pay for reconstruction.
He said little about post-war plans, other than Libya is for the Libyans, who should lead the transition. Gaddafi has to go, but that is not a military task.
The difficult trick now is that transition. If that goes well, this operation will be remembered well. If Gaddafi remains, or the transition is botched, it will be remembered badly. We need the diplomats to get Gaddafi out of there. And we still need those post-war plans, which should include a big assistance role for the Europeans.
In case you missed the speech:
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