Reflections on Revolution

As I write this, the Middle East is metaphorically aflame. A female co-worker told me she feared this might be the end of the work, yet I know better. I've seen this movie before played out in the writings of my history text books. Similar uprising occurred during the 1960s all through out the Middle East. In Syria and Iraq, Soviet inspired Baath Socialists ascended to power sweeping away the traditional monarchies and friendly governments, left behind by the retreating colonialists. Though the revolutions were conceived with the noblest of intentions, and the regime they swept away were corrupt, dictatorial, and incompetent, the insurgent governments did no better but worse. In fact, the Butcher of Baghdad reigned with unquestionable iron fist. Wholesale slaughter unfolded under the reign of the Syrian Baath Socialists. In Egypt, Gamal Nassar dethroned the incompetent and spendthrift king. A committed Arab Socialist and a warmonger, he lead the country into several disastrous wars with Israel and further destroyed the the ailing Egyptian Economy.

Moammar Gadhafi dethroned the monarch of Libya in change for the horror we see unfolding in Libya today. He too was a revolutionary. He espoused a hybrid of communism and capitalism that was supposed to catapult Libya from poverty to "lead the world". A joke by today's standards, but dead civilians are no laughing matter. All the revolutionaries Libya to Iraq rode under the banner of freedom, idealism, and democracy, promising political reform and relief from the stagnation of poverty. They made have had the best of intentions, but good intentions as that tired cliche goes, often pave the road to hell. Machiavelli put it more eloquently:

[F]or men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules: wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse.

History often repeats itself, yet the details vary and the actors change. There is no longer a Soviet Union to inspired and help along Marxist and Socialist revolutions in the Middle East as it did with Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Marxism is now a dinosaur on the scrap heap of history. Cultures have changed. Before I accuse the insurgents of planting the seeds for a new Saddam Hussein, first begs the question: who are the rebels? I will focus on the Libyan Rebels because the Libyan war is the only Velvet Revolution inspired conflict the US is directly involved in. I do not count Iraq nor Afghanistan because they have been barely scathed by the  "Day of Rage" or the "Leaving Friday" mass protests. They are as far from civil war as my home in Layton, Utah is to Arab uprisings.

First, it is important to understand the Libyan rebellion is divided among the western-eastern lines. Pro-Gadhafi forces are in the west and the insurgents are in the east. In a memo Wikileaks surfaced, the State Department has documented that the eastern portion of Libya is a bastion of Islamism. The group that fomented the Libyan civil war is called the National Conference of Libyan Opposition, which was originally founded in protest of the Danish Mohamed cartoons. The groups own web site formally objects to Gadhafi's rule on Islamic grounds. It is not a secular Democratic movement. It is an Islamist movement.

Second during the Iraq war, the Libya provided more foreign al-Qaeda insurgents per capita than any other country. They were particularly from Eastern Libya--now the primary nexis of the  anti-Gadhafi rebellion. It is sympathy for the devil. Obama has just just made a deal with him. Is it any wonder al-Qaeda has spoken in favor of the Libyan rebels? This is not to say that the Libyan rebels and al-Qaeda are one and the same. The question is remains. Against Gadhafi, are the rebels supporting al-Qaeda, or is al-Qaeda supporting the rebels? To what extent are the rebels influenced by Osama bin Laden? After the war is over, whom will the Libyans treat as liberators, and whom with they label as occupiers--the US or al-Qaeda? Whom do you think is going to be blamed for the collateral damage? I would like to say them, but it is probably just wishful thinking. It seems President Obama is channeling George Bush when he should be channeling Edmund Burke. He said:

A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of statesman.