Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 197

Who (Or What) To Blame For Libya?

Christopher Stephen paints a picture of a country where deeply entrenched corruption and factionalism have rendered good governance impossible and fueled the pseudo-civil war tearing the country apart today:

With the economy moribund, the only growth industry has been militias. In all some 168,000 members have registered at the government’s Warriors Affairs Commission, which was set up to take control of the various militia brigades—but that’s at least four times the number of militia members who actually fought in the civil war. Now they’re all getting state pay packets. “I don’t care about Islamism, but they pay me 1200 dinars [about $800] a month to guard the base twice a week,” said Hassan, a Benghazi teenager employed by the city’s Islamist Libya Shield brigade.

Today all those victorious militias are at war with each other. The militias from Misrata, a city 120 miles east of the capital, and Zintan, a mountain town 90 miles south west, did the hardest fighting of the revolution, surging into Tripoli together to liberate it in August 2011. Their units never left, and since then the Misratans and Zintanis have increasingly fallen out as claimants to the spoils. … In the confrontational atmosphere in congress, the political parties began funding militias that were sympathetic to them, rather than dissolving them as parliament was supposed to do. Misrata and Zintan, the two most powerful militia groupings, broke along the political divide — Misrata for the Islamists, Zintan for the nationalists.

Peter Dörrie names Khalifa Haftar, the former general with previous links to the CIA who now leads a coalition of Zintani fighters and other nationalist militias, as the primary instigator of the ongoing conflict:

Publicly, Haftar claims to fight against Islamist militias for a secular Libya, but his political ambitions are obvious.

It’s especially telling that his moves against the fledgling government of Libya occurred just as the new regime was trying to enforce a law banning functionaries from the Gaddafi era from public office. Haftar would be subject to this law, as would be many leaders of the armed groups he is allied with.

The fighting Haftar instigated meanwhile has spiraled out of control. Militias are battling for the international airport in Tripoli. An important fuel depot has caught fire after being hit by a rocket. Embassies in the city have evacuated. In Benghazi, Islamist and secular forces openly are fighting. Haftar largely is responsible. His ambitions already have inflicted great damage on the transitional process in Libya. What remains unclear is how close his connection remains to U.S. intelligence services. In interviews he says that he is in “indirect contact” with the U.S. government.

From Hisham Matar’s perspective, Qaddafi’s legacy still resonates loudly:

To understand today’s events, one must remember what life was like under Qaddafi. The state was designed around an individual and his family; it resembled more a Mafia than a political structure. And so ending the dictatorship meant ending the state. Without a fully functioning national army and police force, and other state institutions, building an accountable and democratic government is going to be immensely hard. Contributing to this is the legacy of Qaddafi’s oppression of dissent. Modern Libya is sixty-five years old, dating from 1951. For almost two-thirds of that time, it was ruled by one voice. In light of this history, creating a political atmosphere that permits and encourages difference and plurality will be difficult.

Meanwhile, Larison catches Max Boot spinning our intervention in Libya as another example of Obama’s “weak” foreign policy. In Boot’s revisionist retelling, the instability in Libya today is Obama’s fault for refusing to deploy a peacekeeping force on the ground or pour more resources into training Libyan security forces – in other words, because he didn’t do exactly what interventionists said we wouldn’t have to do:

Indeed, it was an essential part of the argument that American interventionists made at the start of the war: there would be no U.S. ground forces deployed to Libya to fight, nor would there be any deployed to a post-Gaddafi Libya. Interventionists don’t get to have the domestic political advantages of avoiding a prolonged occupation while disavowing the consequences of the regime change they supported. Libya is in chaos in large part because outside forces aided anti-regime rebels in destroying the existing government, and the governments that intervened are at least partly responsible for what they have wrought. It doesn’t follow from this that the solution for Libya was or is to increase the involvement of outside governments in misguided efforts to stabilize the country. Having seen what a “serious program” to train local forces produced in Iraq, it is far from obvious that a more concerted effort by the U.S. to train Libyan government forces would have changed much of anything for the better.

Recent Dish on Libya’s crisis here.

(Photo: A mosaic of Gaddafi is seen on the wall of a building, riddled with bullet holes, on August 29, 2011 in Tripoli, Libya. By Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images))

The View From Your Window

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, 12 pm

John Brennan’s Latest Lie

The torture-defender and CIA loyalist insisted earlier this year that the CIA never deliberately hacked the Senate Intelligence Committee to undermine its vital report on war crimes under Bush and Cheney. Here’s what he said:

When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.

Really? So here are the facts on this:

An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has found that its officers improperly penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program. In a statement issued Thursday morning, a C.I.A. spokesman said that agency’s inspector general had concluded that C.I.A. officers had acted inappropriately by gaining access to the computers. The statement said that John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, had apologized to the two senior members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and that he would set up an internal accountability board to review the matter.

Brennan apologized this week to Senators. I doubt he will ever apologize to the American people.

Andrew Asks Anything: Rich Juzwiak

If you ever read Gawker, you know who Rich Juzwiak is. Yesterday he came out with a new piece revealing how he’s not just taking Truvada again; he thinks almost every gay man should be on it too:

In my first piece on Truvada, I said that I thought most sexually active gay men should at least consider going on it. That was not strong enough: All sexually active gay men who are negative should go on it, at least those who are in the highly populated gray area that I find myself in—guys who either have casual condomless sex from time to time or who are “always safe” but still burdened by the fear of HIV.

If you know that you don’t need Truvada, I trust your judgment. If there’s a shred of uncertainty, just take the fucking pill.

I try to be as nonjudgmental as possible when it comes to the behavior of other gay men (though I cannot refrain from judging those who judge). We are all in different places in life; we all enjoy different things. That variety is, in fact, what makes gay culture so vibrant. The choices at the disposal of those who are privileged enough to live in areas where gay is OK and where same-sex marriage is legal—these are part what make being gay so wonderful. But if you cannot deal with taking a single pill every day, you need to get a grip and reevaluate your life. After you do that, then just take the fucking pill.

Rich and I sat down a little while ago to talk about sex and love and gay men’s lives today. The resulting podcast can be a little racy and provocative at times. Hey, it was a real conversation. We actually talk about the sexual adventurism of gay men – a subculture where no women restrain sexual desire – as an often wonderful thing, regardless of the judgment that so many, including gay men, have made about it. There may be a measure of mutual respect, friendship, democracy and brotherhood in a sexually liberated gay male world – that is perhaps unavailable to heterosexuals:

The whole conversation is up on Deep Dish now for subscribers only. Check it out. If you haven’t subscribed yet, do so here – you only need to spend $1.99 to download the whole thing. And you’ll also get access to my unfiltered conversations with Dan Savage and Hitchens, among many others.

New Dish Shirts: Your Response, Ctd

@thoughtsigns Spoiler Alert: I found your next bday present. MT @sullydish: Dish t-shirts and polos available now! pic.twitter.com/bjPAaTQEL0”

— Kurt von Tish (@kayveetee) July 28, 2014

Our first big screen-printing is underway and more orders for t-shirts and polos keep pouring in. If you haven’t decided on your shirt yet, full details about options and sizing are here. Or just go here to purchase now. A hesitant customer:

I am pretty much the last person to buy a “band t-shirt” at this point, but I may actually buy one of the polos (prolly navy) with the customary alligator replaced by the dog. It’s super subtle and pretty adorable. Most people will just think it’s a cool shirt, but those in the know will get it.

That reader soon followed up: “Caved, bought one.” Another reader:

So glad there are T-shirts and polos – thanks. It will be fun for me and other Pacific Northwest fans to recognize one another – kind of like a secret handshake. But when I go to BustedTees, they offer me 30% off my order for giving up personal information, and then I learn that I cannot apply the discount code to my Dish product because of a “stipulation of our agreement” with The Dish (a quote from the online chat in which I tried to figure this out). Grrrrr.

The Dish’s privacy policy is different than BustedTees’, and they offer a different kind of shirt than we do, so their coupon agreement isn’t compatible with our shirts. But after buying your Dish shirt, definitely look around the rest of the BustedTees’ site to check out their own shirts and offers. Some Dish faves:

Update from a reader: “Surprised you didn’t give a shout-out this one, on account of the beard! Another:

The shirts do look beautiful, congratulations and hope you sell a lot because I am a big fan of your blog. I will unfortunately be abstaining because I am allergic to polyester and can only buy all natural fibers – cotton, all linen or rayon mix, etc. Can’t please everyone I guess, but you made them in America! How great!

Many readers have inquired about a 100% cotton option, so we are discussing with BustedTees a way to have that option within the next month or so. We certainly don’t want to exclude readers because of allergies. Another reader:

I just bought two T-shirts. But the checkout had no security icon. Is that site secure?

Very secure. We confirmed with Jerzy, our point-man at BT: “Our certificate is updated and we’re totally clean in terms of security.” And this verification is displayed throughout the site:

Another:

I’m a loyal Dish subscriber and I love the shirts and will be ordering a couple for myself. If youth sizes were available you might see my kids in them as well.

We’re on it. But for you moms and dads, you can buy your shirt today. Thanks for all the feedback and keep it coming. And send us a pic of your shirt when it arrives. Though maybe not from this reader:

I just read that you’ll be at Burning Man! Brilliant! Our camp, Listen (dedicated to the proposition that really being listened to is so close to being loved that most people can’t tell the difference) is at 7:15 and Ephesus. I’ll be the one in the Dish t-shirt. Given the venue, it may be the only thing I’ll be wearing.

Update from another Burner:

I just ordered a t-shirt (the one with the howling beagle of course). And I will be wearing it at Burning Man. I read that another one of your readers is also wearing a Dish shirt at BM. I will be at a camp at 7:15 and Gold and most probably will be wearing just the Dish t-shirt and sensible footwear.

Perhaps we need to set up a Dishhead camp next year.

The Fruits Of Liberal Intervention, Ctd

This is 1.5 million gallons of gas going up in smoke in Libya http://t.co/ZYqAhgw8K5 pic.twitter.com/Go7swk03Et

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 28, 2014

Frederic Wehrey cautions against buying into the conventional wisdom about what’s going down in Libya:

Outside observers are often tempted toward a one-dimensional reading of Libya’s turmoil. It is easy to trace Libya’s breakdown as a political struggle between Islamists and liberals: The Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Justice and Construction Party and more rejectionist, jihadi factions like Ansar al-Sharia versus the “liberals” under the National Forces Alliance (NFA). Another level of conflict seems to be regional: A contest between the towns of Zintan and Misrata for economic power and political leverage in Tripoli, or amongst federalists and their opponents in the long-marginalized east. Yet an additional layer is between remnants of the old order – ex-security men, long-serving and retired officers, former Gaddafi-era technocrats – and a newer, younger cadre of self-proclaimed “revolutionaries,” often Islamists, who were either exiled and/or imprisoned during the dictator’s rule.

Elements of all these dimensions are at play, but none of them alone has sufficient explanatory power. At its core, Libya’s violence is an intensely local affair, stemming from deeply entrenched patronage networks battling for economic resources and political power in a state afflicted by a gaping institutional vacuum and the absence of a central arbiter with a preponderance of force. There is not one faction strong enough to coerce or compel the others.

Meanwhile, Friedersdorf lays into the hawks who supported our role in overthrowing Qaddafi:

When Ivo H. Daalder and James G. Stavridis declare that the cost of intervening in Libya was “$1.1 billion for the U.S. and several billion dollars overall,” I can’t help but think that GiveWell estimates that one of the most efficient mosquito-net charities saves a life for every $3,400 that it spends. That’s 882,352 lives saved for the cost of the Libya campaign. Given present conditions in Libya, how confident are we that the NATO-aided ouster of Qaddafi saved even half that many lives? Development aid is far from perfect, but my instinct is that it saves lives more reliably than wars of choice and virtually never results in violent blowback.

Most of all, I am struck by the willingness of prominent interventionists to have publicly declared their instincts in Libya vindicated when the country’s future remained very much in doubt, as if they couldn’t conceive of an intervention that would result in more lives lost than the alternative even as the possibility of that outcome was extremely plausible. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Washington, D.C. foreign-policy establishment seemed to perform no better at foreseeing how events would unfold than non-expert commentators who simply applied Murphy’s Law. At the very most charitable, the common interventionist claim that Libya vindicated them in their dispute with non-interventionists was wildly premature. Perhaps the lesson to take from the NATO campaign is that even the most thoughtful interventionists have no idea how geopolitical events will unfold.

Can Israel “Win” This War? Ctd

Staggering photo: evacuation notices from Israel warning residents in Gaza to leave their homes or be bombed. pic.twitter.com/uhuaN9mNjk

— Historical Pics (@HistoricalPics) July 30, 2014

Brent Sasley says yes to that question:

When the dust settles, Israel will also have restored some of its deterrence against its enemies. Against Hamas specifically, it demonstrated it’s gotten over what we might call Cast Lead Syndrome: recoiling from the type of international opprobrium that war generated against Israel because of the scale of Palestinian deaths. In that conflict, between approximately 1,100 and 1,400 Gazans were killed, depending on what source one looks to for casualty figures. Yet already in Operation Protective Edge, more than 1,000 Palestinians may have been killed. Though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become a cautious administrator since his first term in office, the temptation to keep going to destroy Hamas’ tunnel infrastructure has overcome his reluctance to use large-scale force. And the Israeli public has rallied behind him.

In a debate among Brookings experts, Michael Doran contends that whether or not Israel is “winning”, Hamas is definitely losing:

Six months from now, many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, will ask themselves what all the pain and destruction that Hamas brought down on them was worth. Their disgruntlement will not weaken Hamas’s grip on power, because it is a dictatorship supported by foreign money. But the organization, as it stands before its people and lectures them on the need for more sacrifice, will surely clock the sullen faces that stare blankly back. As for the “support” that Hamas gets from public opinion in other parts of the Arab world that will certainly dissipate. Of course, it’s never been worth much anyway, throughout modern Arab history, because it never translates into lasting change in the behavior of states, the true power brokers in the region. Meanwhile, Hamas will have lost considerably on the battlefield.

But Shadi Hamid is not so sure:

Even if Hamas “loses” in the ways that you describe, it seems to me that they’re likely to at least be better off than they were before the conflict started.

It’s hard to envision any ceasefire arrangement that won’t include easing the blockade in some way (Hamas has little incentive to agree to a ceasefire that doesn’t alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza). The West Bank surge in pro-Hamas sentiment isn’t just about public opinion; it’s about closing the gap between Hamas and Fatah. If the developments in the West Bank underscore anything, it’s the real, and growing, desire for Palestinian unity. Last week on MSNBC, Mustafa Barghouti said that a new uprising had started. He may be getting ahead of himself, but if a ceasefire doesn’t hold in the coming days, there will be more instability in the West Bank (and corresponding anti-Palestinian sentiment) and that can only strengthen Hamas hand during post-ceasefire negotiations over contours of unity government. Also, the expectation, which I suppose is implicit in these Israeli deterrence operations, is that at some point Palestinians will blame Hamas more than they blame Israel. But, there’s little to suggest this is how most Palestinians process the results of Israeli military operations.

Aaron David Miller considers Hamas the winner, so far:

It’s impossible to predict a winner or loser at this stage. Israel is determined to prevent a Hamas victory or even a stalemated outcome that might appear to represent one. The situation is, as they say, remarkably fluid. But three weeks in, if I had to do a tally now, I’d say Hamas has taken round one in what is likely to be an ongoing struggle. And here’s why:

Survival counts as a win: As in previous confrontations, the organizational imperative dominates Hamas’s tactics and strategy. Against a militarily and technologically superior Israel, Hamas can afford to waste a couple of thousand rockets and lose a few dozen tunnels, but the main goal is keeping both its military and political leadership intact, and not giving into Israel’s superior firepower. Indeed, in a way Hamas wins just by not losing.

And even if Hamas is utterly destroyed in this war, Scott McConnell worries about what would come next:

Suppose Israel succeeds in destroying Hamas. How many terror cells will it have created thoughout the Middle East? Will those cells content themselves in mounting operations against Israel? Or would they also seek vengeance against the superpower which enables, and could even be seen as encouraging, Israel’s annihilation of them. In 2002, a not-very-sophisticated home-grown sniper traumatized the Washington metropolitan area for weeks. If the predictions of one of America’s leading anti-terror officials are correct, Israel is setting the table for much more complex terror operations, in which American civilians will become targets. Sad as it is to contemplate, if that happens, people all over the Mideast will believe we are only getting what we deserve.

Previous Dish on what an Israeli “victory” would entail in the Gaza war here.

The View From Your Window

Nampa, Idaho, 8.30 am

The Worst Ebola Outbreak In History, Ctd

Very sad news: #BBC's reporter in Freetown just confirmed that doctor leading the fight against #Ebola in Sierra Leone – Dr Khan – has died—
Julia Macfarlane (@juliamacfarlane) July 29, 2014

Keating looks at why the current epidemic has been so severe:

As political scientist Kim Yi Dionne notes, a number of factors have combined to make this the most deadly Ebola outbreak in history, and most of them are political rather than biological.

For one thing, none of these countries has experienced an outbreak of the disease before, so knowledge of it is low. For another, the fact that it’s spread to multiple countries makes a coordinated response more difficult. (Liberia has now shut almost all of its borders.) As Dionne notes, all three countries have poor health infrastructure, due in part to years of civil war in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Liberia has just .014 doctors per 1,000 people, and a common joke is that JFK Medical Center, Monrovia’s main hospital, has long had the unflattering nickname “Just For Killing.”

Which is why a major Ebola outbreak in America is unlikely. Olga Khazan tries to determine how this outbreak started:

Researchers still don’t know the exact cause of this particular outbreak, but it might have to do with the local practice of eating bats for food, according to Jonathan Epstein, an epidemiologist at EcoHealth Alliance. “It’s unclear whether it occurred due to butchering a bat, exposure to bat bodily fluids, or eating some food or fruit that was contaminated by saliva, urine, or feces from the bat, which may contain Ebola virus,” he said. Pig farms in Africa also often attract bats, which also may have been a cause.

Once the infected person begins to show symptoms—flu-like aches, nausea, and vomiting—local customs continue to play a big role. There aren’t enough doctors or supplies available to treat all the Ebola patients in the area, but even if there were, many locals are suspicious of Western medicine.

John Herrman reflects on the West’s detachment from these kinds of diseases:

I’ll read almost anything about infectious diseases, and in retrospect, most of this reading was cold and sociopathic. Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone was an escapist thriller; The Great Influenza was an apocalyptic period piece; The Coming Plague was an engrossing feat of science fiction world-building, about a planet that contrives, almost at random, new and hideous microscopic monsters to destroy sophisticated life, and that will not give up until it has succeeded. Nature finds a way, a narrator intones, except that this narrator is a doctor who has spent her whole life watching people die in pain and confusion, and I’m just sort of dozing off, because I’ve been reading too long and it’s time for bed.

This is of course an insane way to read about deadly diseases. It is also standard in areas of the world where these rare viruses feel utterly remote. It provides comfort that your incidental version of civilization at least shields you from the most vividly horrific diseases.

An Ebola vaccine is still at least a few years away:

There are quite a few preventative vaccines in development, with three to five that have been shown to completely protect nonhuman primates against Ebola. Some of these vaccines require three injections or more and some require just a single injection. Most of them are being funded by the U.S. government, so they’re in various stages of development, but none of them are ready to be licensed.

The hang-up point with these vaccines is the phase I trials in humans. That’s where scientists get frustrated because we know these vaccines protect animals and we don’t quite understand the regulatory process of why things can’t move faster. I can’t give you an answer as to why it’s taking so long.

The Economist maps current and former Ebola hot-spots. All the Dish’s coverage of the latest epidemic is here.

We Won’t Make Israel Make Peace

After John Kerry’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in the Gaza war crashed and burned, Zack Beauchamp asks why the $3 billion in aid we give Israel every year doesn’t seem to buy us any leverage:

Talk to Middle East analysts, and you get a clear sense that the US really could box Israel in a corner if it wanted to. “In theory, of course the US has enormous leverage over Israel,” says Nathan Thrall, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. But in “the very unlikely event” that “the US were to threaten the very alliance with Israel,” he says, it’d put immense pressure on an Israeli Prime Minister to bend.

Clearly, the United States doesn’t want to do that. But it has successfully pressured Israel before. For instance, the Bush administration forced Israel to back off an arms deal with China in 2005 by threatening to cut off military cooperation on certain projects. The US refused to give Israeli aircraft friend-or-foe codes during the Gulf War, effectively keeping Israel out. It refused to give American support for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program, which amounted to vetoing it.

So it’s not that the US can’t ever push Israel. It’s that American policymakers aren’t willing to threaten the foundations of the US-Israeli relationship — aid, diplomatic support, and the like — over a ceasefire in Gaza or even a final status peace agreement.

Drum, on the other hand, is skeptical that the US could do anything to make peace between parties whose objectives are fundamentally incompatible. As long as that’s the case, he argues, we should just stop trying:

Quite famously, we all “know” what a deal between Israel and the Palestinians needs to look like. It’s obvious. Everyone says so. The only wee obstacle is that neither side is willing to accept this obvious deal. They just aren’t. The problem isn’t agreeing on a line on a map, or a particular circumlocution in a particular document. The problem is much simpler than that, so simple that sophisticated people are embarrassed to say it outright: Two groups of people want the same piece of land. Both of them feel they have a right to it. Both of them are, for the time being, willing to fight for it. Neither is inclined to give up anything for a peace that neither side believes in.

That’s it. That’s all there is. All the myriad details don’t matter. Someday that may change, and when it does the United States may have a constructive role to play in brokering a peace deal. But that day is nowhere in the near future.

I can see Kevin’s grim point. But as long as we are financing and subsidizing Israel’s wars, we are not neutral. Only if we cut off our aid can we afford the luxury of viewing the entire conflict as irresolvable. Everything else is complicity.