Exceptional massacre

[muckefuck]

For me, one of the most striking aspects of the horrible slaughter in Libya is how much our expectations have changed. When did we start believing that authoritarian dictators could be unseated with a minimum of bloodshed? It's tempting to see 1989 as the watershed year in this regard, though I don't know if that's giving too little attention to the wave of democratisation in Latin America that preceded it. And even then the thrill of seeing Communist regimes topple like deck chairs before a gale was tempered by the bloody mess of Tiananmen Square.

Four years later, a civil war was in full swing in Algeria in the wake of a de facto military coup; within a decade, perhaps 200,000 died, most of them civilians. And what we have now in Libya is rapidly coming to resemble an old-fashioned civil war more than a people power revolution. Despite the flurry of recent trade agreements, Gaddafi is clearly no more amenable to outside pressure than he ever was. If anything, he's only become more delusional--one glance at his recent pair of appearances is enough to confirm that.

All things considered, I'm amazed that the confirmed body count isn't already above four figures. It's a stark reminder, as fengshui pointed out recently, of just how badly the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt could've gone. Here's hoping it's a powerful example to the remaining dictators of What Not To Do. Already Bahrain seems to be leaning back from the abyss, though the damage already done may prove the ruling family's undoing. (Making martyrs out of Shi'ites--what could go wrong with that plan?)

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Couldn't they maybe have turned around and bombed Bab al-Azizia instead?

(For that matter, why aren't we bombing it again? Aren't the lives of thousands of Libyans worth at least as much as two US army sergeants?)

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed. But there is a difference between responding to a direct attack on our own people and intervening in another country's internal conflict.

And whatever I think, at this political juncture military intervention to promote democracy in a Muslim country is likely a hard sell politically. Considering the continuing controversy over our actions wrt a regime that violated most of its peace terms from the previous war, will the public support attacking one that-- however murderous at home-- has been sort of behaving itself internationally in recent years, and with which we don't have a direct casus belli?

(We did, at length, intervene in ex-Yugoslavia, but only after it had ground on a long while, and there was no Iraq or Afghanistan fatigue then.)