Juan Cole's Open Letter to the Left on Libya

The Libyan revolutionary forces, under western air cover, are now rapidly pushing back Gaddafi's lines and advancing westward. The momentum has once again shifted and there are few betting on the regime's future. Would the Left actually be disappointed if the intervention was swift and successful and not a prolonged quagmire that embroiled U.S. imperialism in dirty oil deals? What happens if it actually works?  Below the video, see leftist professor Juan Cole's Open Letter to the Left on Libya in which he compares the anti-imperialist absolutist ban on western military intervention to the absolutist ban on abortion by religious fanatics.

A teaser graph from Juan's essay. Read the whole thing.

Some have charged that the Libya action has a Neoconservative political odor. But the Neoconservatives hate the United Nations and wanted to destroy it. They went to war on Iraq despite the lack of UNSC authorization, in a way that clearly contravened the UN Charter. Their spokesman and briefly the ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, actually at one point denied that the United Nations even existed. The Neoconservatives loved deploying American muscle unilaterally, and rubbing it in everyone's face. Those who would not go along were subjected to petty harassment. France, then deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz pledged, would be "punished" for declining to fall on Iraq at Washington's whim. The Libya action, in contrast, observes all the norms of international law and multilateral consultation that the Neoconservatives despise. There is no pettiness. Germany is not 'punished' for not going along. Moreover, the Neoconservatives wanted to exercise primarily Anglo-American military might in the service of harming the public sector and enforced 'shock therapy' privatization so as to open the conquered country to Western corporate penetration. All this social engineering required boots on the ground, a land invasion and occupation. Mere limited aerial bombardment cannot effect the sort of extreme-capitalist revolution they seek. Libya 2011 is not like Iraq 2003 in any way. MORE…