Reuters: US ambassador to Libya dead

[Viking]

The point is that in western liberal enlightenment societies self censorship due to physical intimidation is considered a bad thing which is harmful to the fabric of society itself.

I'm not sure I entirely agree - as in that case I think it was a bit of picking one's battles. I guess we could continue to publish lame things they find offensive but I'm not sure where we have room to be surprised that they then act in a ridiculous violent manner - unless we are planning to do something to curb them of their violent ways. (And I don't think a sharply worded retort qualifies.)

Sometimes I wonder if you actually read what I write and if you even try to understand what I mean. Sometimes I think you do read what I write and you are just a moral monster.

You seem to think that threatening people with violence and harm to force them to self censor themselves is not entirely a bad thing?

WTF, seriously WTF? Do you even think about what you are saying? Are you so fucking stuck up and focused on disagreeing with me that you argue that violence is even in some cases an acceptable response to words?

I am genuinely amazed.

Do you really think there is something you could say to me that I could use as a moral justification to show up at your house with an axe and try to kill you?

And I didn't say it was. You asked about justification for the attacks on the embassies, that is what I responded with.

Usually when someone says justification, they mean a statement that defends/supports something. I don't see how one could say that Bush's statement defended extremism only that it spoke to how they could reasonably be upset.

Because that is precisely how terrorist apologist always speak. I condemn, but understand is the refrain from Gerry Adams justifying murder and bombing for the IRA, Herri Batasuna did the same for ETA and Yassir Arafat did constantly not only for his PLO but HAMAS as well.

If you can't condemn it without qualifications or caveats you are not condemning it. You are trying to avoid having to justify it while suggesting that the victims of terror only need blame themselves.

In your mind it might be nonsensical. As I agreed you misunderstood me, I clarified and you continued to argue against your misunderstanding. Am I supposed to consider you honest?

Yes, I'm being honest. You used the word "offend" to mean something that it did not. I did misunderstand what you wrote because you used a word contrary to its definition. I'd be fine with that except that you're suggesting the failing was on my part.

So when I clarify why the fuck do you keep on harping about your own misunderstanding? I don't think you qualify for the first condition of having a discussion. You don't make any effort to understand. You just quote mine for counter attack. When I have explained or clarified multiple times and you continue to harp about you original misunderstanding I have to conclude you don't care what I think. You don't operate with the assumption that you might be wrong and can change your mind.

[DGuller]

Berkut, if you are reading this thread, now do you agree that it was wrong to get involved?

To the extent we can, we need to disengage with the Arabic world for a while.

I think the answer depends a lot on who the attackers are.  It sounds like it may not have been a spontaneous mob lynching after all, but rather a planned attack or assassination.

[alfred russel]

Why was an ambassador there without the marines?

They were not in the Embassy (and actually we just have a Consulate in Bengazi so I am not even sure this guy was technically an ambassador) and it was a rocket attack.

Whoever this guy was, the point still stands.

[alfred russel]

Berkut, if you are reading this thread, now do you agree that it was wrong to get involved?

To the extent we can, we need to disengage with the Arabic world for a while.

I think the answer depends a lot on who the attackers are.  It sounds like it may not have been a spontaneous mob lynching after all, but rather a planned attack or assassination.

I don't think it makes a difference.

[mongers]

Berkut, if you are reading this thread, now do you agree that it was wrong to get involved?

To the extent we can, we need to disengage with the Arabic world for a while.

Not at all ?

Or good luck not being able to drive to work from the winter onwards.   

[Valmy]

Whoever this guy was, the point still stands.

Mob attacked the Consulate so the ambassador escaped.  The Marines were at the Consulate I believe.

[alfred russel]

Berkut, if you are reading this thread, now do you agree that it was wrong to get involved?

To the extent we can, we need to disengage with the Arabic world for a while.

Not at all ?

Or good luck not being able to drive to work from the autumn onwards.

There is a global market for oil, which the ME produces a good chunk. We don't get much from there, you guys do. If the ME went down, the price would spike for everyone, but it would be your supply chain that would be messed up.

Besides, you know who really needs to get oil to market to keep themselves afloat? OPEC.

[mongers]

Berkut, if you are reading this thread, now do you agree that it was wrong to get involved?

To the extent we can, we need to disengage with the Arabic world for a while.

Not at all ?

Or good luck not being able to drive to work from the autumn onwards.

There is a global market for oil, which the ME produces a good chunk. We don't get much from there, you guys do. If the ME went down, the price would spike for everyone, but it would be your supply chain that would be messed up.

Besides, you know who really needs to get oil to market to keep themselves afloat? OPEC.

You haven't gone far enough, think more globally still; it's relatively cheap oil that drives our economies, sort of some stupidity in the Gulf, oil isn't going to stop flowing, but instability increases the prices and harms us all. 


We're all engaged with and in love of cheap oil, so my point stands, you can't disengage from the Middle East. But picking the 'wrong' side can make things worse.

[alfred russel]

Well, I won't be happy until US M1s are parked in Riyadh.

You know what? I bet there are already a bunch there. We probably have some. Well, maybe outside the city, because we can't offend them with our infidel ways. We also probably sold them some.

[mongers]

From what I've read the Libyan government hasn't been performing too badly given the huge task they face, but they have failed to deal with the militia brigades and haven't stood up to the Salafists at all.

Up until now it's been left to local residents and determined individuals in other militias and government to face them down, for example this recent item:

http://www.libyaherald.com/?p=13919

Three Salafists reported dead following clashes with locals defending Sufi shrines

By Maha Ellawati.

Benghazi, 8 September:

Three people have been killed in the latest attempt by militant Salafists to destroy a Sufi shrine, the interior minister has said.

The incident took place yesterday in the town of Rajma, some 35 kilometres from Benghazi, when local residents sought to defend the Sidi Al-Lafi mausoleum from the extremists.

Sources have told the Libya Herald that all three of the dead men were Salafists and that a further seven were injured. Three of those are said to be in a critical condition and are receiving treatment in hospital in Benghazi.

Whereas the security forces did nothing to stop the desecration of three Sufi shrines in Tripoli, Zliten and Misrata, a battalion of the army's Libya Shield brigade is said to have intervened to stop the fighting, albeit belatedly.

Two of the  vehicles were reported to have sustained damage, and the house of a local resident was burned down.

This is the first time that Salafists have been challenged and killed in their campaign to eradicate Sufism in Libya.

On 23 August they committed huge damage to the Abdul-Salam Al-Asmar Al-Fituri shrine in Zliten, apparently taking advantage of separate clashes there that had left at least three dead.

On 25 August, another mausoleum, that of Sheikh Ahmed Al-Zarruq, was targeted in nearby Misrata, the same day that the Al-Sha'ab shrine in Tripoli was also hit.

In the latter instance the Salafists returned with an automatic digger to continue the destruction over a period of 48 hours.

The Interior Ministry chose not to intervene in that instance, leading to allegations that extremist elements within the Supreme Security Committee had refused to act.

Interior Minister Fawzi Abdelal tendered his resignation on 26 August following intense criticism from the Congress over his handling of the situation, although he reversed this decision two days later on the grounds that it would "further complicate security".

[mongers]

Well, I won't be happy until US M1s are parked in Riyadh.

You know what? I bet there are already a bunch there. We probably have some. Well, maybe outside the city, because we can't offend them with our infidel ways. We also probably sold them some.

No trust me I'm thinking of something more pro-active, say giving Seigy free rein for a week or two.   

[alfred russel]

You haven't gone far enough, think more globally still; it's relatively cheap oil that drives our economies, sort of some stupidity in the Gulf, oil isn't going to stop flowing, but instability increases the prices and harms us all. 


We're all engaged with and in love of cheap oil, so my point stands, you can't disengage from the Middle East. But picking the 'wrong' side can make things worse.

I completely agree to the extent we are all in this together with our need for ME oil. But at the margins, we have less than many at stake. We also seem to be quite fallible on the war and peace questions.

But I need to go to bed.

[DGuller]

On the larger Libya question, it seems like a no-win situation whether to get involved or not.  If you help topple the mass murders, you get Islamists rising up, and let's get real, few democracies have been ushered in by the cries of "Allahu Akbar".  If you support the secular dictators, tacitly or otherwise, then you just keep stoking the fire of religious extremism, and sooner or later it's going to engulf the region whether you like it or not.

[Jacob]

I think the future of Libya is far from settled.

There are definitely Islamist anti-American types who'd love to take over Libya. They're the kind of people behind the attack, and at this moment I think there's little they'd like better than Americans and other Westerners writing Libya off as a bunch of wacky Muslim extremists; that way the Islamist anti-Americans have a much better chance of winning.

My impression - and I'm obviously far removed from the situation - is that both the Libyan government and the majority of the Libyan people are outraged and this attack by this attack.

(As an aside, I really like how the Libyan representative at the UN describing the US ambassador as a "wonderful person" when he denounced the attack; it may just have been a translation or ESL thing or something, but it sounded like he was personally upset about the killings)

[Viking]

On the larger Libya question, it seems like a no-win situation whether to get involved or not.  If you help topple the mass murders, you get Islamists rising up, and let's get real, few democracies have been ushered in by the cries of "Allahu Akbar".  If you support the secular dictators, tacitly or otherwise, then you just keep stoking the fire of religious extremism, and sooner or later it's going to engulf the region whether you like it or not.

The problem is that democracy doesn't just happen. I'm actually a bit shocked to find that I have moved from pre-Iraq war position that you can give a country democracy to one where I see it just doesn't happen like that. Democracies where they exists have either come into being as part of some severe national trauma where political pluralism is seen as the only way to end a destructive and interminable conflict or it comes about by adoption from a culture that is admired, respected and considered close.

I actually now agree with the pre-Iraq War war opponents that you can't impose democracy. You can only give a society a fighting chance of building it themselves. If a country is a democracy it is likely to be seen by the arab "street" as either an enemy or as allied to the enemy. To be blunt, the fact that Israel is a democracy is a hinderence to democracy developing in Israel. Both the nationalists and salafists will oppose becoming like the enemy; while the liberalists are too few. This is why Kemalism never developed democracy until the end of the cold war and why Turkey is backsliding.

In a sense you just have to let it burn and let the locals fight it out before they are sufficiently traumatized to realize that democracy is the only way to end the internal civil conflict. It took the ECW to give the english speaking world democracy, it took Napoleon and the bourbon restoration to give it to the french and it took WWII to give it germany and japan.

I think the Eisenhower age expression "making the world safe for democracy" is the best one to use and live by. We can't make Libya a democracy, we can only make Libya safe for those who seek to build one. We also have to remember how counter-intuative democracy is to a tribal society and to an autocratic one. In these societies freedom is equivalent with weak government. Government is always oppressive and power is always used to weaken the center. Democracy achieves freedom by strengthening the government massively. The government establishes a monopoly on violence. This is what makes the transition to democracy so ultimately hard, at the same time you disarm the traditional protectors of liberty while arming the traditional enforces of autocracy while you give the populace the right to choose the rulers. Pick the wrong ruler and you get Nazi Germany and don't disarm you get post war Iraq.