Transitions and foreign policy
Like everyone else, I've been following events in the Middle East with no small amount of shock. As protests in Libya expand, I've been thinking about the ideological angle. Dictators of all different ideological stripes are under fire.
That ideological mix is throwing the western hemisphere for a loop. The Obama administration was slow to respond because Mubarak was such a strong ally, yet much more quickly now says it will provide "technical assistance" to Libyan protestors. Fidel Castro lauded the protestors in Egypt, and then the Cuban government became utterly silent when similar protests hit Libya. Similarly, Telesur emphasizes the Libyan government's official line that the protests constitute foreign intervention, though interestingly in the Egyptian case Hugo Chávez criticized the U.S. for not supporting Mubarak, which itself is foreign intervention.
3 comments:
British Guardian : September 2009 : Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, dictator of Libya acted as a fool in the United Nations - And next he was decorated, praised, honored, glorified and exalted by dictator Hugo Chavez of Venezuela
I want to refresh the memories of readers :
Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, dictator of Libya acted as a fool and sick man in the United Nations - A perfect idiot or lunatic, perhaps suffering from Alzheimer or an extreme case of Lunaticism.
Same for Hugo Chavez - These type of dictators were described by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in "The Autumn of the Patriarch", a novel by this Nobel Prize winner of Literature, surrounded by sycophants, the dictators lose every relation to Reality.
From the British Guardian :
UN general assembly: 100 minutes in the life of Muammar Gaddafi
By Ed Pilkington in New York
September 23, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/23/gaddafi-un-speech
Some excerpts :
Muammar Gaddafi - for it was he - grabbed his 15 minutes of fame at the UN building in New York today and ran with it. He ran with it so hard he stretched it to an hour and 40 minutes, six times longer than his allotted slot, to the dismay of UN organisers.
On his first visit to the US, and in his maiden address to the UN general assembly, Gaddafi fully lived up to his reputation for eccentricity, bloody-mindedness and extreme verbiage.
He tore up a copy of the UN charter in front of startled delegates, accused the security council of being an al-Qaida like terrorist body, called for George Bush and Tony Blair to be put on trial for the Iraq war, demanded $7.7tn in compensation for the ravages of colonialism on Africa, and wondered whether swine flu was a biological weapon created in a military laboratory. At one point, he even demanded to know who was behind the killing of JFK. All in all, a pretty ordinary 100 minutes in the life of the colonel.
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Vincente--well why not? Quadaffi's days are numbered, as is the old patterns of US/Israeli hegemony in the middle east and Asia.
Gaddafi earned some credibility with the anti-imperialist forces in the past when his home was bombed by the US, his kid was murdered in this assault. Terrorism.
So you begrudge the man force rubbing the empire's face in the shit?
Where he erred was in creating a client state for international capital, and becoming a sell-out. He squandered his own revolutionary bona fifes ( such as they appeared) and betrayed his people.
More, it is doubtful that Libya was the force behind the ,attack on the airliner over Scotland.. Why was the west becoming chummy with this fake-ass? Because there was loot to be made.
This thug sell-out isn't in the same league as Revolutionary governments in the Americas, and to try to conflate the US supported dictatorships in the Middle East with the revolutionary governments in the Americas is pretty lame.
But a pro-US stoodge regime seems out of the question, nonetheless.wa
Slave-Revolt :
Thanks for your reply or comment. It is very interesting and worth reading.
I also think that U. S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East is now in big disarray.
And even some of the authors of such a prestigious publication as "Foreign Policy Magazine" are filled with doubts about the wisdom of what America has done in the Muslim World during the 21 century.
I confess to be an addict to "Foreign Policy Mag", and specially professor Stephen Walt, Tom Ricks, and others.
I am also a big fan of Jewish American Journalist Thomas L. Friedman ( New York Times ) that has become more Liberal and less Pro-Israel and less Hawkish of "Send in the marines" ... He acknowledges of having erred in the past.
And Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times is also a man of Bravery, Courage, Valor and Great Humanity.
There is hope if the "Fourth Power" has such great men.
Vicente
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