Capitalisme ou Barbarie?

We find ourselves incapable of even imagining another society, a better world and an alternative to capitalism. It is even easier to imagine the end of the world itself than the end of the capitalist system. The motto of the ideological constellation which currently holds us hostage might as well be a pun on the old socialist saying, instead of "Socialisme ou Barbarie" the capitalist can say "Capitalisme ou Barbarie". As the system can only defend itself at this point as the only way, all other roads have led to barbarism, so we must stick to this last route carved out by the managerial aristocracy on the way to a plutonomous future. According to this view, all the "experiments" with socialism have failed and that proves there is no alternative to capitalism available. Any attempts to change the world are doomed to fail, to descend into totalitarianism and horrors beyond our wildest dreams. In Celsius 7/7 the neoconservative Michael Gove posits Islamism as the new great evil of the world, in line with National Socialism and Communism.

Unsurprisingly, the radical Left is the natural ally of radical Islam in the eyes of Michael Gove and for him both have to be combated. First of all, the presupposition is that the problems of the 21st Century are ethical-cultural (e.g. the right to choose, free-speech, niqabs etc.) and that socio-economic issues have been solved. This in itself is a result of the ideological struggle that has repressed the socio-economic dimension in recent decades. For Gove the Left are simply the purveyors of a backward economics that impoverished and killed millions in the 20th Century. So the economic system is unquestionable, the debate is about freedom which is under threat from Islamism. Even though it was the economic crisis of the early 30s that led to the rise of National Socialism and the sustained deprivation under the Tzars which preceded the Russian Revolution. It can hardly be said that the rise of Islamism is unconnected from the failures and collapse of Arab nationalism, which was dedicated to economic justice along secular lines.

The way that the problem of economics has been submerged is befitting in a world in which capitalist realism is prevalent. Mark Fisher defined capitalist realism as "the view that it is now impossible even to imagine an alternative to capitalism. Capitalism is the only ‘realistic’ political economic system, and, since this is the case, all we can do is accommodate ourselves to it." As a product of the emergence of capitalist realism, we seek to solve societal problems within the narrow framework of which we are allowed to think about change. In the midst of crises we seek refuge in a business ontology, in which everything will be remodeled on the practices and forces of the market. This is what lurks behind the austerity measures which are sweeping the Western world right now. The cuts to public spending are an expression of the inability to even imagine a better world, in Britain we dare not tax the 10% of the population who owns £4 trillion in wealth. Instead we revert to the neoliberal shibboleths of austerity measures, debt reduction and fiscal responsibility etc.

In the 21st Century we have found this extends to health-care, education and warfare, but also as far as terrorism. We ought not forget that al-Qaeda is active in private-terrorism which funded by the Saudi bourgeoisie, Osama bin Laden inherited his wealth from his father - who died in a helicopter crash in 1968 - which would swell through lucrative investments over the years. In other words, the attacks on the World Trade Centre were cross-subsided with money extracted from the stock market as well as the generous donations made to the group by wealthy Arabs who are sympathetic to the cause. Consequently, the military-industrial complex has in turn been able to secure greater and greater funding for the stated purpose of "defence". Due to the interconnected nature of high-tech industry and the military in the US the increased funding functioned as a huge injection of capital into the economy. The convergence of interests which benefited from the attacks then went on to invade Iraq on the basis that the war was necessary to prevent another devastating attack on American soil.

The US had made it out of the Great Depression until the early 40s just as the country began to build up for war as Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941. By 1949 the US government was concerned that the country could fall back into economic depression if the military apparatus was dismantled and so Truman opted for perpetual war for perpetual peace. The military functions as a cover for the state-sector of the American economy and has done for a long time. Since then the US has spent over $7.1 trillion on defence and today the US military budget accounts for 50% of military spending in the world. Incidentally, from the end of the Second World War to today the US has "intervened" in over 70 countries around the world. This has played a vital role in the development of the US as a economic superpower, without it Bill Gates and Steve Jobs may not be so wealthy today. It was massive state-intervention which created the internet and computer technology before it was handed over to the private sector. This is the dirty secret of the American economy.

When reminded that "capitalism works" and "socialism fails" we ought to remind the reactionary  that the system only works as long as 3% compound growth can be attained forever. That if we can just find profitable investments for just $1.5 trillion a year and every year forever, even as the amount rises to $3 trillion and beyond, then we let billions of people slip into poverty and starvation. The Right are sceptical of climate change because it threatens growth ad infinitum but are comfortable with Peak Oil because it seems to be another "obstacle" for capitalism to circumvent in order to go on indefinitely. Suppose climate change is a hoax and the energy crisis can be solved, that will not alter the potentialities of capitalism to push onwards to new crises. We may find ourselves in a position where the banks are too big to bailout and we are dragged kicking and screaming into the darkness of the abyss which we have managed to avoid for so long.

  

At one of his more gloomy moments Karl Marx thought that the class struggle might lead to the "common ruination" of all classes and he did not have the thrill of living in a world of nuclear weapons, chemical warfare and environmental decay. It would seem the infinite growth paradigm is incompatible with a world of finite resources and the ultimate trajectory is fatal in destination. Thus capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and a zombie-marker. As Mark Fisher notes "the living flesh it converts into dead labour is ours, and the zombies it makes are us." We are edging ever closer to an unprecedented state of crisis which has been generated by the system and all the while we can envisage the end of the world but not even begin to think about the alternative. The dichotomy of capitalism or barbarism keeps us chained to the status quo. That is the intended goal of those champions of the free-market who cheer on the entrepreneurial spirit of Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.

Interpellate This!

Ideology is not simply in the heads of human beings it is material in nature, in order for a belief to be held the minds of the masses it must first of all shape the lives of the people as a whole. Only in this way will the ideology retain its hegemonic status and continue to function in spite of what thoughts might go through the heads of certain people. It could be argued that the Saudi state preceded capitalism on the Arabian peninsula and so it played a large role in the way it emerged in the Middle East, though it might be more nuanced to say that the state can be deduced from the structural needs of capitalism. The state-repression in Saudi Arabia has guaranteed the free reign of capital. But it takes more than the repressive agencies of the state (e.g. the military and the police) to protect the social order and to reproduce the existing social relations of production. This is where Islam as ideology comes into the picture as embodied in the institutional forms of the state apparatus, which ranges from the family and schools to corporations and the media.

Osama bin Laden was born into the Saudi bourgeoisie, his father was the head of a company which built 80% of roads in Saudi Arabia and has done rather well out of the relationship between the Saudi ruling class and the US government. The life Osama bin Laden led mirrors the contorted relationship between corporate base and Islamic superstructure in Saudi Arabia, the transition from Saudi oligarch to radical Islamist. Initially it might seem as though a thing is defined by its function in the arrangement, while a hammer may be used to knock nails into wood it can also be used to bash someone's head in. But it is not that the hammer has been removed from it's intended usage, rather it is defined as a torture tool when it is used as one. So we might understood bin Laden's place in ideology as defined not as the "leap" from his privileged origins to his life of fanaticism. Rather we should designate him in regards to what exact function his actions played in the world, the impotence of Islamist Terror and the way al-Qaeda contributed to the ideological constellation in the West.

At the end of the Cold War the grand narrative that the US was in a war with the Soviet Union finally drew to a close as "shock therapy" swept Russia clean of really existing socialism. The interests of capital that were invested in that narrative were now deprived of a way to make sense of the world and, in particular, the actions undertaken by Western governments. Eventually a new narrative had to open up and the attacks of September 11th 2001 heralded a new narrative of the "War on Terror". The ideological development served the Bush administration, the liberal commentariat and even al-Qaeda. It gave the government and the media a meaningful way to report on global events for public consumption. It also sells papers, boosts approval ratings for politicians and provides a way for Islamists to recruit young angry men in the Middle East. The materiality of all of this was the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Osama bin Laden became the face of international terrorism as the constellation shifted from anti-Communism to counter-terrorism.

Louis Althusser developed a fascinating account of the way individuals become the subjects of ideology. It is through interpellation by the state apparatus in the process of socialisation that the individual is hailed. The individual recognises themselves in this call of a grand Subject capable of legitimately holding them accountable. The grand Subject might take a form appropriate to the context, from God and the Nation to the King and the Ulama. The media, as well as educational institutions and corporations are the materiality of ideology and each is a segment of the state apparatus. Ideology is not just belief in the heads of politicians, it is in the fabric of society and the practices of life on a day-to-day basis. It is more like the Freudian unconscious, it is not just a residue but it is central to the way we imagine our relation to specific experiences. This is the way ideology becomes engrained in the minds of citizens. Only through shaping the material can ideology shape people, so that the system and by extension the world can be understood in unquestionable terms as almost a natural phenomenon.

Ideology does not primarily involve theoretical explanations of 'how the world works', so much as provide accounts of who individuals are and where in the political world such individuals fit. In this ideological process, the relation of the subject to the world can become distorted as the subject is ascribed a functional role (as a citizen, a voter etc.) as if it is chosen by them. Thus, we find a man can go from an upstanding member of society from a respected family to a wanted criminal. The places we hold in such structures are politically decisive, whether it be in the pecking order in a corporation or in kinship as a son or a mother. People will perform as if these roles are the free realisation of their subjective potential. It took many years for Osama bin Laden to go beyond just the conservative reading of the Qur'an which he delved into as a student of economics. The notion of the autonomous individual is a product of ideological misrecognition. As Marx wrote in The Brumaire "Men make their own history, but not of their own free will not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted."

Don't Forget Brian Haw!

Brian Haw died in his sleep at the age of 62 after a struggle with cancer. In the last 10 years he has become a fixture of Parliament Square in a perpetual state of protest which defied the people responsible for the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis in war, who were eager to break him with the changes to law which David Blunkett likened to a "sledgehammer". Months ago Boris Johnson won a court order to evict Brian Haw, supposedly in preparation for the Royal Wedding, just as Boris had stamped out Democracy Village back in 2010. It was just when Haw was being treated for cancer in Germany that the Mayor, in collusion with David Cameron and Theresa May, decided to make his move and Haw immediately appealed the order in spite of his deteriorating condition. In fact, it was just as the Con-Dem Coalition came to power in May 2010 that Brian Haw was arrested for perhaps the last time at 8:30am.

Over the years there were consistent attempts by the Establishment to bring his 24 hour protest to a halt. He was repeatedly arrested and taken to court by the British government, which supposedly stands for enshrined notions of bourgeois freedom. Every time Haw won so much more cunning methods were used to force him out of Parliament Square. Protest outside Parliament, without permission, was banned in 2005 and only Brian Haw was exempt because his demonstration began years before the law was passed. Oh the absurd intricacies of legal wrangling! There were efforts to evict him by force and when that didn't work the government restricted the demonstration to 1 metre by 3 metres. The most recent efforts have limited the protest to the pavement and now it looks like the protest will be kicked off of the pavement and would no doubt disappear as a result.

It is important to remember that Haw began his protest outside of Parliament in 2001, first of all against the fresh round of sanctions imposed on Iraq by Western governments and then against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Brian Haw was the son of one of the soldiers who liberated the concentration camp of Belsen. As an evangelical Christian he was deeply concerned with the suffering of oppressed peoples around the world, he had visited Northern Ireland during the Troubles and Cambodia's Killing Fields. Sadly, it would appear that Tony Blair has the last laugh in this instance and that might be a testament to the nonsense that is Karmic retribution. It is at least a testament to the moral fibre of how society that Tony Blair has gotten away with the outright war crime in which he indulged so enthusiastically. Over 1 million people have been slaughtered in Iraq, along with millions left deformed and dispossessed in the economic reforms imposed without the consent of the Iraqi people.

Iraq had been first subjected to sanctions by the United Nations soon after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the US struck back at the disobedient client state. In the 1990s the sanctions led to the deaths of over half a million children and possibly more people than the number of people who were killed in the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Before the sanctions Iraq was a developed country, rich with oil and dependent on imported food. In 1996 the UN Security Council permitted Iraq to sell oil in order to secure food and other essentials for it's people. The control of the capital accumulated from the sale of Iraqi oil was under the Security Council, which was in turn dominated by the US. The special sanctions committee responsible for what is allowed to flow into Iraq in exchange for oil consistently opposed the rejuvenation of vital services such as power and water.

The country was permitted to restore it's oil industry as supplies of food and contracts for equipment were withheld in New York. The worth of the equipment exceeded $1.5 billion and included the equipment needed to diagnose and treat cancer, as well as X-Ray machines, the tools necessary to put out fires and even toilet soap. The stated purpose of these sanctions was to "pacify" Iraq by forcing it's government to stop building weapons of mass-destruction. In one instance, Britain blocked vaccines for yellow fever and diphtheria from being exported to Iraq on the grounds that the vaccines might be used in weapons of mass-destruction. The country was basically held to ransom, of which the Iraqi people suffered the real consequences and Saddam Hussein held onto power in the meantime. Though the Ba'ath regime was left crippled, it only clinged to power because of the impact of the sanctions on the Iraqi people and looks likely that Saddam would have been deposed in the Arab Spring.

The Narrative of Terror.

Life After History.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which began with the Berlin Wall in 1989, the grand narrative that the US was engaged in a war against Communism came to an end. Out of the Second World War, the US came out the most powerful country in the world and it had a powerful military to justify. The threat of Communism was enough to play on to increase the defence budget. It began with the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s were actually started by the Democrats under Truman. It provided a pretext for the Korean war, as it would later provide for Vietnam and then lose in the mid 1960s. A performative contradiction emerged between the grand narrative professed by the US and the actual situation in the world. After all the US was bombing Vietnam to contain the spread of Communism, why was the US bombing South Vietnam then? A similar contradiction has arisen in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, why are we still in Afghanistan if Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan?

The collapse of the grand narrative of the Cold War came around 1990 and gave way for a new narrative. Though for a while things flat-lined as Fukuyama had declared the End of History. The events of 9/11 would open up such a narrative, though there are signs to be detected earlier than September 11^th 2001. As there was a global economic crisis in 1998, as well as the hysteria around Monica Lewinsky, US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were bombed. Osama bin Laden was the mastermind and Bill Clinton immediately seized on it. Cruise missiles were fired and nothing was hit (except for a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan) so the media charged Clinton with trying to take the heat off himself. If a Middle East connection had been found behind the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing the US would have bombed just about anything in sight, with the press cheering it on all the way. It wasn’t until the atrocities struck on American soil in 2001 that the grand narrative was opened up as the “War on Terrorism” was declared.

The grand narrative of the “War on Terror” has been a self-serving narrative for the Bush administration, the commentariat and not to mention al-Qaeda. It gave the government and the media a meaningful way to simplify global events for public consumption. It also sells papers, boosts approval ratings for politicians and provides a way for Islamists to recruit young angry men in the Middle East. The US could have split the Jihadist movement in 2001, as there was a division between the Islamists who supported the action and those who opposed it. Instead the US invaded Afghanistan and in doing so united the Jihadist movement behind the new strategy to attack the “far enemy” and not just the “near enemy” of corrupt Arab leaders. In other words, the moves to "contain, minimise and marginalise" the threat referred to by Alex Massie couldn't include the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The same can be said of state-sanctioned kidnapping and torture.

As Patrick Cockburn has claimed, al-Qaeda might just be the most successful terrorist organisation in history. After all the attacks on 9/11 were committed in order to lure the US into an over-reaction in which it would wage a war against Islam. Ayman al-Zawahiri expressed hopes of this, these was the reason for the attacks on 9/11. The logic being to unite the Muslim masses against the West, the attacks succeeded in uniting the Jihadist movement as the US invaded Afghanistan and later Iraq. With the US and Britain committed to a ground war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism in the West increased significantly. George Bush and Tony Blair had done a good job of acting how al-Qaeda wanted them to. Despite warnings that the invasions would increase the threat of terror Bush led the way. We can all look and see the link between the invasions and the terrorist attacks which have struck in Western countries since then.

History Jump-Started.

The trial of Osama bin Laden would have surely demystified al-Qaeda, it seems as though the assassination has the potential to bring the grand narrative to a close. It could make way for a new narrative. With the snake decapitated there are few ways for the Republicans to criticise the administration and a second term may be secure. There are also few ways to justify the current occupation of Afghanistan, a contradiction could easily rise from the depths of American ideology to the surface and manifest itself in political crisis. Whether or not it can be managed by simply claiming that the US has to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan is another matter. If the man is dead what is the point of occupying Afghanistan? The hopes look slim for the “War on Terror” to be bolstered in any significant way. Yes, there are terrorists still out there. There are also Communist regimes in Cuba, North Korea and China among a few other places and yet there is no hope of kick-starting the Cold War.

The only conceivable way the grand narrative could be maintained is if there is another invasion. The most valuable, in strategic and economic terms, are Pakistan and Iran. But to even justify a war another baddie has to emerge from the shadows. There is no one in sight who can fill the shoes of Osama bin Laden. Not even Ayman al-Zawahiri, the de facto leader of al-Qaeda. It should be noted that there is word of new names being added to the terrorist watch-list, as a consequence of the raid and the information found at the compound in Abbottabad. There is a great deal of speculation over how the Pakistani government managed to ‘miss’ that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. The Americans felt no obligation to inform Pakistani intelligence of the raid because they were "untrustworthy", as the CIA have pointed out. Even though Pakistan agreed to this kind of raid 10 years ago.

Barack Obama has faced a great deal of criticism from across the political spectrum. There has been legitimate criticism for his position on Israel-Palestine and then there are the allegations that he is an illegal alien, a Muslim and the bastard son of Malcolm X. It seems that there is little room for words which regard what change he has accomplished. Understandably so, there is a great deal of disappointment with him and general disillusionment with politics in the US. But Obama never pretended to be anything more than a centrist liberal. We forget that the presence of a black family in the White House has moved the perimeters of what is possible in the US. The statements he has made on torture and Guantanamo Bay have the same impact. Though the gulag is still open, we should not forget that it was totally impossible to even imagine the American President admitting torture and calling for Gitmo to be closed down. The assassination of Osama bin Laden may be the greatest contribution to ideological change Obama has made thus far.

American intelligence officials are expecting to add new names to the terrorist watch-list as a consequence of the raid on the compound. The information is from 10 phones, 10 computers and 100 memory sticks found at the compound in Abbottabad. So there are hopes for the “crazies” who will want to see the narrative survive. Nevertheless, there is a chance that this narrative might have to close and with that a new narrative will open up. The conditions for this new narrative are not unique. It would have to make room austerity at home and repression abroad. It would need to rationalise the lunge for resources in Central Asia and the Middle East. As the US loses its power it is possible that the grand narrative will be shaped even more by China. It is even possible that the decline of American hegemony could itself be the next narrative. We live in interesting times, as well as dangerous times.

Justice for Pat Condell.

The face of New Atheism on the internet Pat Condell has come out in blind support - 'blind' as in ignorant of the implications - of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Though it is hardly a surprise as Pat Condell has come out as a supporter of UKIP, which sheds some light on Condell's populist anti-theistic rhetoric as an extension of postmodern nationalism. It is the characteristic "You may!" quality of this brand of nationalism which is what makes it permissive. Only in the sense of "You may use the n-word because they use it!" Freedom of speech and expression become umbrellas to shelter racism, homophobia and misogyny. By his own admission he no longer believes in social justice, he has embraced UKIP and Daniel Hannan, making his anti-theism a cover for an effectively conservative outlook. Just like the majority of New Atheists, Pat Condell sees history as Progress and the only things that stand in the way of Progress are barbarous myths like Islam.

Take note of the language used in the video above. Condell mocks compensation and counseling early on before insisting that the aid to Pakistan be cut-off. How far does his commentary differ from Fox News? Apparently, Pakistan is living on "welfare" but can afford nuclear weapons and can't be trusted to hand over wanted terrorists to the country that has been bombing Pakistan for years now. It was under General Zia ul-Haq, a US-backed dictator, that began the nuclear weapons program in Pakistan. The US supported the program, it was hardly undertaken as a choice made by the Pakistani people. It is true that Osama bin Laden survived in Pakistan for so long because of institutional corruption, incompetence and sympathies with Islamism in the establishment. But the radicalisation of Pakistani Muslims was initiated by Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s as a way for him to legitimate his rule over the country.

As Noam Chomsky has pointed out the US has a history of habouring mass-murderers, like Luis Posada Cariles, and Orlando Bosch (who died just days before bin Laden), which the media forgets in it's criticism of Pakistan. Condell seems to acknowledge that the assassination was not justice, but he also seems to revel in that it was revenge. I wonder how Pat Condell would react if Iraqi commandos landed in Texas, shot George W Bush in the head, photographed the body and then dumped the remains in the Atlantic Ocean. After all Bush led the way for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was a war crime that has led to the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis. The Bush administration will never see a trial for the "supreme international crime" it indulged in with the enthusiasm of a child burning ants with a magnifying glass. Uncontroversially, the crimes of George Bush exceed the crimes of Osama bin Laden and yet Bush is not a "suspect" but the "decider" responsible for the millions dead, mutilated, displaced and dispossessed in Iraq.

We should also keep in mind that the same weekend the Obama administration attempted to assassinate Gaddafi as well. The method in that case was an air-strike against Gaddafi's compound. In that case it is also important to reverse the rationale as Alexander Cockburn has posited: "If a Libyan bomber had blown up the wedding couple and a goodly tranche of the British upper crust in Westminster Abbey under justification that the whole place and its human contents, down to the grandchildren, not to mention the hats, were fair game because Cameron was there." What would Pat Condell say if this actually happened? You can guarantee he would be throwing the word 'terrorist' and 'Muslim' around, just like the reactionary press would be. Even though the standards applied to Gaddafi do not apply to us, we can bomb whoever we like and everyone else can go to hell.

The natural bogeyman for Pat Condell are the liberal Left, who defend multiculturalism and political correctness which are contrary to his idea of freedom. For him the Left are apologists for evil because they oppose a ban on the veil, he has even lashed out at feminists over this. Naturally, the radical Right have taken an interest in Pat Condell and have tried to latch onto his videos in the past, which he has railed against in his usual contrarian manner. But it is no doubt that the nationalist populism of UKIP appeals to Condell, and many others, as a supplement for the weaknesses of liberalism. The problem is that the trajectory of the market is towards relativism, individualism and pluralism, this will inevitably undermine national pride, tradition and culture. The liberal doctrine of multiculturalism is partially a product of that tendency, the reaction against it is the need of the system to defend itself through recourse to nationalism and traditionalism.

Sort it out, Pat! You're no better than Enoch Powell, who wanted freedom from the EU and the end of the NHS but he also knew he needed someone to blame when the shit hit the fan. Here you are elated at the death of a wanted terrorist, the pursuit of whom has justified the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. Where is justice for them?

Douglas Murray is Wrong.

Douglas Murray, the first self-proclaimed British neoconservative, appeared on Question Time last night and argued that it is "reasonable" to execute Osama bin Laden, because the man was a monster who killed thousands all over the world and would have killed even more had he been left alive. After wrangling with Paddy Ashdown and others Murray found support from a survivor of 7/7, who claimed that only Douglas Murray represents the victims of 9/11 and 7/7. It ought to be noted that the reason al-Qaeda committed the attacks on 9/11 was to lure the US into an over-reaction, which could then be construed as a war with Islam and be used to unite the Jihadist movement and the Muslim masses against the West. The neoconservatives jumped to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, in doing so they succeeded in uniting a divided Jihadist movement against America. These wars in the Middle East were exactly what Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri wanted the West to do.

It is sad that the neoconservatives, who have acted in just the way al-Qaeda wanted, can still be held up as the defenders of the victim. People like Douglas Murray are willing to destroy the Free World out of hatred for the Muslim Other, whilst al-Qaeda want to destroy the world out of love for another world - a Caliphate. The consistent message of the neocons is that we must infringe upon our values to defend them. To save lives we must kill. In the violent defence of freedom and democracy we are at risk of losing those very things, this is the major lesson of the "War on Terror". The threat of terrorism increased as a result of the wars supported by neocons like Murray. Without Iraq and Afghanistan there wouldn't have been a 7/7. The neoconservatives are the defenders of attempts by the state to increase it's own power in order to be able to easily crush mass-movements whenever the effect of economic policies is social collapse and disorder.

The fact that the man was a preacher of hate and mass-murder is supposed to mean that the rights and freedoms of liberal society can be suspended in that case. Of course, we soon find ourselves in a state of exception in which the rights and freedoms of anyone can be stalled over a perceived threat. The point made by Paddy Ashdown is that the rights and freedoms of citizens as a whole will be undermined. If it were not for the USA Patriot act there would not be a NSA national database being constructed in Utah. The base will be bigger than Washington DC and will cost tax-payers $2 billion. The database will store information derived from "signals intelligence" - credit card details, emails, phone calls, internet searches and text messages - from which the NSA will decide who is and who is not a "terrorist". Apparently the world will be a better place if the NSA knows what you've been Googling and it's all justified by the death of a wanted terrorist in Pakistan.

In Ancient Rome if you were convicted of a certain crime all of your rights were revoked, as you become homo sacer, so anyone can legitimately kill you and take your property. The life of a homo sacer can be taken by anyone, but not sacrificed in ritual, as the person has been banned as an 'outlaw' and such a person is expunged from society where all civil rights and civil religious functions are in suspension. The homo sacer is both excluded from law and included at the same time. The mirror image is the sovereign, who is included in that he can be impeached and face trial (in theory) but excluded in that his privilege and power allows him to the rig the chances of him ever coming to trial. Osama bin Laden can be killed with the sanction of a state, George Bush can sit at home and praise the decision without fear that he might face trial for Iraq. This week it was Osama bin Laden, but assassination is not an aberration as we know just by looking at Fred Hampton who was murdered by the state and this is the reason that we should oppose assassination as defended by neocons.

Brand Obama - the Warrior President.

Obama has fulfilled a campaign promise in killing Osama bin Laden. Brand Obama can go 'Warrior President' now, with his citizenship finally confirmed, it seems he shouldn’t have much trouble in fending off a Republican candidacy or even an entry by Donald Trump into next year’s electoral bout. At the same time the Middle East is being swept up in revolutionary fervour, with the US supporting the Gulf Cooperation Council in it’s repression of the uprising in Bahrain. American gulags like Guantanamo Bay are still open for business and there is little possibility of closing down the kidnapping-and-torture ring in the near future. It might have been better to have held the man for trial, alongside Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for 9/11 and other atrocities. But that would have led to a protracted battle in court, with the potential for serious questions of American conduct in recent years and this would have reopened the rift in American politics. Unity and national pride might be useful in subduing the American people before a harsh austerity can be imposed.

Noam Chomsky predicted that the Obama administration would recycle the policies of the last half of the Bush years, which were considerably moderate when compared with the first term. The bailouts and bombing of Pakistan were the early signs of this, in spite of this conservatives resorted to labelling Brand Obama "socialist". The important changes came in form, the rhetoric changed along with the way policy was delivered and the limits of what can be done in the US has been challenged significantly in this way. The most important change being that there is now a black family in the White House, a house built by slaves, which really does widen the perimeters of what is possible in the US. Though under Obama there has still been US support for the blockade on Gaza, the bombing of Pakistan, the coup in Honduras and the assault on Haiti by the IMF. There has only been a lukewarm return for liberal interventionism. Along with a no-fly zone over Libya also came a subtle pass for Gaddafi on human rights and the Libyan bankers have been made exempt from the sanctions.

We have seen the return of the old "crazies" in the media since Osama bin Laden was wasted. Most notably of all is Dick Cheney, an ultra-nationalist if there ever was one, has come out in support of the President's decision. It was under Cheney that policies of war and torture were furthered to an appalling extent. Andy Card reappeared on Newsnight to inform us that the raid went well as a result of planning. He also emphasised that it was "tough, courageous decisions" that Presidents have to make, which Mr Card would no doubt extend to the kidnapping and torture of "enemy combatants". The uniform praise for Obama reaches as far as George W Bush. The basic message of the Bushites has been defensive of past actions, criminals like John Yoo have claimed the death of Osama bin Laden justifies torture in all circumstances. Now the extremist wing of the GOP no longer have to fall back on the feeble line that torture is justifiable because there has yet to be another terror attack on US soil.

This is reason for the whitewash for Bush, who effectively allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan in 2001. The administration also failed to leap on the opportunity to divide the Jihadist movement by extraditing Osama bin Laden rather than executing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – which have increased the threat of terrorism significantly. Instead there is talk of "courage" and "justice", as if these values are best expressed in war and assassination. Revenge would be the best word for it! If Obama had bombed the compound, the lives of Pakistani intelligence forces and soldiers could have been jeopardised. Not that the US has ever shown any concern for killing Pakistanis in bombing raids. Under Obama there have been six times as many drone strikes as there were under Bush, in fact Barack Obama picked up where Bush left off on his third day in office and the victims of these attacks are mostly civilian. The continued bombing of Pakistan was not enough for conservatives, he was still too soft for them. 

Assassination is no more an aberration in American history than the use of violence to achieve political goals in general. As Benjamin reminds us, every advance of civilisation is an advance in barbarism as well as emancipation. The recent action undertaken in Abbottabad by Obama is standard practice for the US government. Not always carried out by Americans personally. There is Ngo Dinh Diem, who ran South Vietnam, in a typically oppressive manner, and then in 1963 he was assassinated on orders from Washington. The attempt to kill Gaddafi in Libya, which has been overshadowed, is a similar demonstration of a willingness to kill in the American establishment. Assassination is not a method reserved to dispatch the monsters from this world. At the peak of COINTELPRO Fred Hampton was murdered, the same apparatus has tried to assassinate Fidel Castro 638 times and succeeded in killing Che Guevara in 1967. The willingness to kill is an important qualification for all American Presidential hopefuls, whether it is in war or in America's prisons.

The ultra-Rightist campaign of vilification, fear-mongering and baiting of all kinds, has been successful in fuelling the rise of the Tea Party and forcing compromise in the White House. The aim was to stamp out any currents in Obama policy which might have progressive outcomes – from health-care to the stimulus. The death of Osama bin Laden might signal the end of easy targets for the RightGlenn Beck, which might contribute to the inability of the Republican machine to attack Obama in damaging ways every week and put forward a more capable figure. It would seem that the Obama administration may have a lot more in common with Bill Clinton than Jimmy Carter.

It has been said that a second term might not be secure for Obama, after all George Bush won the Persian Gulf War and then was humiliated because of a U-turn on taxes. There are important differences between the election in 1992 and the one coming up in 2012. Though there is just as much, if not more, disinformation and fear-mongering going on today as there was in 1992. George HW Bush represented a third-term for Ronald Reagan, which is what John McCain would represent for George W Bush, whereas Barack Obama was elected as he represented a clean break with the Bush era. The Persian Gulf War may have been a victory for the US, Bush was criticised by neoconservatives for not taking out Saddam. The neocons have no grounds to attack Obama as Guantanamo Bay is still open, the war in Afghanistan is ongoing; there have been air-strikes against Gaddafi and Osama bin laden is dead. Obama is about to initiate a series of harsh spending cuts and the Bush tax-cuts have been renewed, it would seem there is little the Republicans have to offer for Corporate America.

Obama kills Osama.

The Justice Done.

Osama bin Laden has finally been wasted, at his notably immodest hideout, in Pakistan by US forces. For a long time he was the international personification of Islamist Terror for around a decade. A signifier of pure and radical evil in the West, the name itself was enough to conjure up the images of the Twin Towers crashing down after the planes struck. Osama stands out from the 52 children of Mohamed bin Laden, a multimillionaire who built 80% of roads in Saudi Arabia and died in a helicopter crash in 1968. In a sense Osama bin Laden personifies the contorted base and superstructure of Islamism. A son of the Saudi bourgeoisie, born to privilege and luxury as a result of capital accumulation which would have been impossible without the close relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. The contradiction between the economic base of corporate oligarchy and the ideological superstructure of radical Islam is evident in the surroundings of which he was found. Only the face of Islamist Terror could hide in a mansion less than a mile from Pakistan's Sandhurst.

The BBC is eager to remind us that the ideas of Osama bin Laden are not dead, we ought to keep in mind that the ideas are not his own. It was Sayyid Qutb who advocated the formation of  state with all the advances of Western science and technology, but it would be purified of the decadence of liberalism through a strict adherence to a radical interpretation of the Qu'ran. These conclusions Qutb made after his travels in America throughout the 1940s and upon his return to his native land of Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Brothers supported the revolution led by General Nasser, a bourgeois nationalist committed to a non-aligned secular model of development. The CIA had trained the security services of Egypt. By 1954 Sayyid Qutb was imprisoned for his political activities, he was tortured and suffered a heart attack in his time in prison. The experiences of prison radicalised Qutb even further, he concluded that the possessive individualism of the West was a barbarous infection.

All the means of combating the spread of jahiliyyah in Egypt were justifiable and leaders like Nasser could be killed justifiably because he was no longer a Muslim according to Qutb. The Nationalist regime tried Qutb for treason and then executed him to set an example. The radical writings inspired a young doctor, another aristocrat, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In 1981 Zawahiri helped organise the assassination of Sadat, for his corruption and compromise to Israel. The Propaganda of the Deed was intended to provoke a mass-uprising against the Nationalist regime in Egypt. There was no such uprising in support of a Islamist state, Sadat was merely succeeded by Mubarak. In prison al-Zawahiri was tortured and he began to blame the Muslim masses for failing to rise up against the corrupt regime in Cairo. He went on to conclude that the masses had been corrupted and were no longer Muslims either. For him the slaughter of politicians, infidels and even ordinary Muslims would be necessary in order for Islamism to be realised in a country.

Once Ayman al-Zawahiri was released from prison he went to Afghanistan to help the resistance to the Communists and Osama bin Laden had moved there in 1979 for the same reason. The two of them would become heavily involved in the radical wing of the Mujahideen, which had been founded in 1978, just before the Soviet invasion, with money provided by the Carter administration. The flow of money to the Mujahideen was increased under Reagan, it was funnelled through Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Incidentally the regime of General Zia ul-Haq initiated the radicalisation of Pakistani society in the 80s and we are still seeing the consequences today. The corruption in Pakistan is the reason that Osama bin Laden managed to hide there for so long. The US not only funded but trained the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan, ironically Osama bin Laden personally thanked Prince Bandar for securing the assistance from the Americans. Over 30 years of war has reduced Afghanistan to a backward narco-state, it was once a modern and forward-looking country.

The Terror of War.

The name bin Laden was rolled out on the news soon after the attacks on the Twin Towers took place on September 11th 2001. The televised images were horrifying and surreal. How could such a thing happen to America? When the attacks hit home, I had just got back from school to find the horrible news on telly. Looking back, my reaction is quite interesting. I immediately changed channel. The reason: I took the sight of people fleeing from an enormous dust cloud must be something to do with Israel-Palestine. The constant fighting over patches of sand seemed a wearisome issue at the time, an unsolvable conflict which had gone on forever and would go on forever. When my mother informed me of the dreadful truth, that the people in those towers were American and not the fresh victims of a conflict going back 60 years. At first I thought the planes must have flown into the Towers by accident somehow. No one would dare attack the beloved America, the land which brought us The Simpsons and Coca-Cola. It had to be an accident.

In the wise words of Hunter S Thompson "The Towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for peace in our time, in the United States or any other country." Soon the old men with grey hair were on TV and we were all assured that there would be justice. George Bush re-declared the "War on Terrorism", a declaration originally made by Ronald Reagan, the words of Thompson were proven deadly accurate. The justifications for warfare against "rogue states" were reminiscent of the words picked by LBJ "We have to stop the communists over there [Vietnam] or we'll soon be fighting them in California." Only the Western victims of terror mattered and the Persian Gulf War had demonstrated that the invasion of a country could be executed without major casualties (on our side). Don't mind the thousands of Iraqi slain, particularly civilians and the hundreds of thousands more who would be brutalised by economic sanctions.

The invasion of Afghanistan followed as the Taliban refused to extradite Osama bin Laden to the US, but would do so on the condition that there was evidence put forward. It is strange that the US seems perfectly capable of extraditing Julian Assange for rape, but not a man who was responsible for terrorism on an international scale. The regime in Kabul had been propped up on cash from Saudi Arabia and the US. Even radical Jihadists condemned Osama bin Laden at the time, so there was a chance to divide the Islamists and secure the extradition through unscrupulous methods not alien to the chickenhawks. Nevertheless, the invasion went ahead as the British and Americans were fully aware the military strike could lead to the deaths of over 7 million people just through starvation. It was not part of a reaction to 9/11. The war has united the Islamist movement against the West and the threat of private-terrorism increased sharply. Even more so after the invasion of Iraq.

We do not know if the invasion could have been avoided given the concentration of power in the US and the convergence of interests in favour of war. The bombing of Afghanistan killed civilians and was executed to demonstrate the might of the US. From the standpoint of neoconservatives it might have been seen a necessary war to be fought in order to take Iraq later on. The American people had to be brought together in a fight against a common enemy, which morphed from bin Laden to the Taliban in a couple of weeks. The value of Afghanistan is strategic as the country is situated on the edge of the oil spicket of the world. Not just the Middle East, but also Central Asia. The way in which India seeks to power it's growing economy is relevant here, rationally there could be agreements between India and Iran to run a fuel pipeline through Pakistan. The US wants to isolate Iran and force the Indians to make a deal with Turkmenistan, which would require a multi-billion dollar pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India.

What Justice Done?

It took 10 years to kill this man, though the extent to which the "War on Terror" was about capturing this man seems highly suspect. In death he has secured a second term for Obama, who has finally accomplished one of his election promises to kill Osama bin Laden and may have made the demagogues calling for Obama's birth certificate look irrelevant. We should remember that it was the idle threats bin Laden made in 2004 which secured a second term for the Bushites. In other words, the financier of international terror had earned a swift burial at sea from the Americans. No doubt the conspiracy theorists will be typing vigorously. The de facto leadership of al-Qaeda are still at large, the organisation has lost a useful financier and prominent ideologue. The former of which will be easier to replace than the latter. Despite the superficial role of bin Laden, the Taliban have sworn revenge and al-Qaeda may have acquired a useful prominent martyr.

The Republicans will seek to vindicate the Bushites of such criminal indulgences as kidnapping and torture at secret prisons around the world, as well as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Democrats can forget about the lessons of the Bush administration and it will be up to the American people to force the US government to change. The United States of Amnesia at it's finest! Revenge is the word for it and far more appropriate than justice as the latter would require a degree of self-reflection and presuppose a lack of double-standards. If the US were to pull out of Afghanistan and leave the Iraqi people to decide the trajectory of their country it might mean more than simple vengeance. It would mean even more if the Bush administration faced trial for the crimes committed in the name of freedom and democracy. After all the Bushites are guilty of the supreme international crime - unprovoked aggression - established at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

There is something surreal about the death of bin Laden, a man who had avoided capture for 10 years and in the end was killed. There were theories that he had been killed or died years ago. Some even thought he had never existed or was not involved in 9/11 in any way. The corpse was buried at sea after it was not accepted by Saudi Arabia. It would have been the appropriate burial ground for a man who bought into the obscurantist Wahhabi brand of Islam, a puritanical reading of the Qu'ran propagated to protect the heart of capitalism in the Middle East. The assassination of Osama bin Laden has come at a vital moment for Obama, it will provide a 'boost' for Americans who are looking at huge austerity measures and economic turmoil. The impact of the man's death - which has even boosted the stock market - is far less noticeable in Europe where there are no gatherings of people chanting nationalistic slogans. Possibly because in Europe there is the stark perception of what the American government has done since the tragedy of 9/11.

The greatest victory of Islamism would be the self-destruction of Western values as a reaction against itself, a sadomasochistic method if there ever was one. The proponents of liberal interventionism, from American neocons to Blairites, are so eager to fight radical Islamism to defend Western values and the Judeo-Christian civilisation. Not only are the warriors on terror profoundly anti-Christian in their rejection of Christianity as a universalist doctrine and reversion to Paganism. The terrorists are prepared to destroy this world for love of another world, the counter-terrorists are ready to destroy the Free World out of a hatred of the Muslim Other. From waging illegal wars to legalising torture, the greatest infringement on freedom and democracy, made to defend freedom and democracy. This is a contradiction internal to late capitalism, the explicit need for a violence in the defence of freedom against violence and in doing so freedom is lost. After the "War on Terror" Americans should inquire what was it the US was fighting for?

Intervention without Illusions.

Imperial Arrogance.

The history of Western imperialism could be chartered as a series of humanitarian missions gone "awry" and adventures of liberal interventionism. Every war is supposedly a war of self-defence or of noble intention. The calls to intervene in Libya are hardly any different here. After so many years of economic support to Gaddafi the West calls for intervention once the regime lost control of the country. The conflict affected the flow of Libyan oil, at a time when there was growing concern of a potential oil shock, the rebel forces have agreed to respect old relationships with oil corporations. This is the same reason that the French were quick to recognise the coalition based in Benghazi. Gaddafi had outlived his usefulness and had become a blockage to the neoliberal project, the sooner the regime in Tripoli is toppled the sooner that the oil trade can resume business as usual. The only hope Gaddafi has of keeping power is to crush the uprisings in oil rich areas of Libya. Only then might, and that's a big might, the support shift in favour of Gaddafi and against the rebels.

The West has an ignoble record of military intervention, whereby the soldier and the policeman hold the "native" down while the businessman rummages through his pockets. This is imperialism, whether old or new, it has not changed much. The 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was illegal as well as immoral. The slaughter, displacement and dispossession of millions in Iraq are the result of such intervention. It has to be pointed out that there are numerous differences between the situation in Libya and the imperialist invasion of Iraq. In Iraq there was no grass-roots based democratic movement pushing for social justice that could be empowered by a benign intervention. Let alone the crusade for oil that took place in 2003, which opposed to democracy and social justice. The country and the regime had been crippled by war and economic sanctions. It is true that if there had been no invasion Saddam Hussein would have remained in power, though the recent uprisings could have overthrown the regime.

The Arab League supports intervention, though it should be noted that these Arab states are dictatorships backed by the US. These regimes are actively trying to crush the uprisings which threaten the established order. These are not the friends of democracy and neither are they the friends of Gaddafi. King Abdullah has a personal hatred for the obnoxious Colonel, who tried to have him assassinated in 2010 and represents a secular nationalist model that is the traditional enemy of Islamist monarchy. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are actively helping to stifle an uprising in Bahrain, no doubt with the full support of the US, but there are no calls to intervene in Bahrain. The logic of the Arab dictators is to snuff out any alternative political systems which might stir up the people against them. In regards to Bahrain, a predominantly Shi'ite country ruled by a Sunni elite, the repression is to avoid a revolution which could seize hold of oil reserves. This is the reason for the general hostility towards Iran, Tehran offers an alternative to the Shi'ites living in oil rich east of the Saudi Kingdom and other states.


However, we should not ignore the fact that the West has consistently backed illegitimate and authoritarian regimes in order to secure economic and strategic interests. The French government supported Ben Ali in Tunisia, as well as other regimes in North Africa. The support given to Libya was reciprocal in this case and Sarkozy received campaign funding from Gaddafi in 2007. Britain has retained a close relationship with Egypt since the 1952 revolution, with British investment amounting to £10 billion. Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Uzbekistan (among others) have all been stations to which the US has sent "terrorists" to be tortured with the sanction of the regime. This is on top of the amount of support given to the Arab dictatorships and Israel, who are tacitly aligned against the Palestinian people as well as Kurds and religious minorities like the Ahmadiyya. The people of the Middle East have legitimate grievances with those who govern them and by extension the West. Ideally the intervention would be made by an Arab state, like Egypt which is sending weapons to the rebels in Benghazi but that alone is not enough.

 Potential for Disaster.

Because of the intimate relationship between Gaddafi and the West, that the arms being used to massacre the Libyan people are mostly Western in origin and that the funding which the regime is reliant on came out of oil deals. The arrangement between the coalition in Benghazi and energy corporations might indicate that the best scenario possible is a liberal democracy complete with greater freedoms and rights. It is unlikely that the influence of multinational corporations would not set limits on the democratic system which the rebels are fighting to establish. The calls for economic justice might also be played down, steps forward might be made but with great flaws and limitations. In a sense the revolution has been diluted already, though it is still the alternative to the Colonel. With Gaddafi in power there is no hope of a democratic system emerging in any form, nor is there a chance of economic justice with the exception of the bribe of civilians in Tripoli.

On the other hand, there is a possibility that the UN sanctioned air-strikes could escalate and lead to a full blown invasion. In the worst case scenario this could lead to the partition of Libya along tribal lines to create a NATO enclave positioned perfectly to suppress any further uprisings and strangle any further revolutionary developments in the region. Inaction is itself a form of intervention in itself which brings the possibility of a successful counter-revolution, which would not only sustain the power of Gaddafi but send signals throughout the Middle East and these signals would not be progressive in any sense of the word. The Arab states might easily opt for similar methods of counter-revolutionary violence in order to retain control. In both scenarios the tacit alliance between the Arab dictators and the Israeli government would be secured, with US power left relatively unscathed by the uprisings. Though Israeli interests may be maintained even if the revolution in Libya is successful.

It is likely that the intervention will be used by Gaddafi to play the anti-imperialist card against the rebels and rally support for himself along nationalist lines. The problem here is that the anti-imperialist card is already being played, along with every other card available, to crush the uprising. In a sense there is a ring of truth to the claim that behind the revolt are imperial interests, as the coalition in Benghazi has made deals with oil companies and out-manoeuvred Gaddafi on that front. It is possible that the masses of Western Libya and some officials might be deterred from defecting by the intervention, particularly the air-strikes. The regime has proven it will use any ploy to stay in power, even going as far as to bribe citizens and to hire out death squads from Chad. Even if we opted for the minimal amount of intervention, e.g. selling off Gaddafi's assets to fund the revolution, this card would still be played and it would be played if there was no agreements between energy corporations and Benghazi.

Remember Jimmy Carter, who now criticises Israel but did nothing to help the Palestinians and, during his time in office, effectively exacerbated the suffering of oppressed peoples in the world. In his "heroic liberalism" or "virulent anti-Semitism", depending on your political disposition, Carter's critical remarks about Israel only serve to reaffirm the "superiority" of the West as no responsible actions are pursued from these remarks. Instead of the racist "White Man's Burden" - that as the superior race we are obligated to "civilise" the inferior races - we reassert our own "superiority" by insisting on our guilt without acting to redeem ourselves and correct past injustices. Meanwhile Libyans, Sudanese, Rwandans and Slavs are left to be butchered as we claim to be in "solidarity" with them. We might as well just revert back to the most overt form of comfortable resistance and start calling for "world peace" and "universal love". Resistance is not supposed to be comfortable, responsible decisions have to be made and there has to be accountability for the consequences.

Body Bags for Peace.

In the case of Afghanistan the conditions under which the decision to invade was made included the knowledge that the invasion might exacerbate a famine in the country. It was predicted that this could lead to the deaths of 7 million people. Whereas in the case of Libya we do not have such knowledge, but we do know that Gaddafi's forces have pledged to "cleanse" Benghazi. There is a distinction between the imperialist intervention and the kind of intervention which might enable the revolutionaries to topple the Gaddafi regime. The invasion and occupation of Libya should be opposed, as that would no doubt be imperialist, but a no-fly zone would not be inherently imperialist. It may even be too late for a no-fly zone and we have the crimes of Srebrenica, committed long after a no-fly zone had been established over Bosnia, to keep in mind. Though the variables differ and any "cleansing" in Libya would be political or tribal, not along explicitly racial lines.

It is undeniable that in the past the United Nations have supported interventionism in order to expand the American empire, protect Israeli interests and maintain the established order. But it is also undeniable that in the cases of Rwanda and Sudan (along with lots of other places) the West effectively stood back and watched as the violence reached new heights of depravity. Similarly it is undeniable that the Western powers are considering intervention out of economic interests. The West fears a long drawn out conflict and for that reason there might not be an occupation of Libya in the works. If Gaddafi was allowed to commit a major massacre, e.g. far worse than the massacres he has already orchestrated, an embargo on Libyan oil would have to be imposed and this would keep oil prices high at a time when the US and other countries are recovering from a major economic crisis.

In the mantra of the SWP "No to intervention in Libya! Victory to Arab revolutions!" conceals a certain perversity. In order for the revolutionary ideal to be achieved in it's purest form, it must fail to be "saved" for the Left as this radical ideal. Though this is ignorant of the fact that the Libyan revolutionaries have already made deals with the oil corporations. So the best outcome, e.g. if the revolution succeeds without Western interference, might only be bourgeois democracy. To "save" ourselves from this inconvenient truth we need Gaddafi to crush the rebellion. Similarly the Soviet intervention in Prague '68 "saved" the myth for us that there could have been democratic socialism in Czechoslovakia. We needed the Tiananmen Square protests to be repressed in order to preserve the ideal of Chinese democracy, missing the point that a democratic China might well be chaotic. Let's not dwell in these safe illusions, where we are comfortable in resistance and welcome failure.

We should have no illusions about intervention, let alone the interests of the Western governments, of which we must remain fiercely critical. The fall of Gaddafi is only preferable to them because he has outlived his usefulness as a "reformed despot" and a freed up political system will be less of an embarrassment now. Gaddafi might just be replaced with a softer, and more insidiously pro-American, version of himself and therefore even harder to drive out. But that is contingent and does not justify Gaddafi's regime as life under even a bourgeois democracy, which is a possibility, would be an improvement. Intervention to enable the rebels to overthrow Gaddafi is the lesser evil, no form of intervention is a bloodless solution to the conflict. The revolutionaries are right to hold a sceptical view of Western military power, especially in regards to an occupation, but a no-fly zone is a necessary evil.