Sep 16
From Pambazuka News
American ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three officials were killed when a mob attacked the US consulate in Benghazi on 12 September. The protest arguably emerged out of a long-standing sense of humiliation and anger at the West…
Last year there was a vigorous debate on this blog on the pros and cons of the Western intervention in the Libyan conflict vs. the proposed African Union mediation solution. Now we are seeing that Western intervention has unleashed forces that the West itself cannot control, some of which have turned against the West itself. The dangers of religious extremists filling the void left by a collapse of the Gaddafi regime were well-known at the time. Is there not a supreme irony in the fact that the murdered Ambassador was the US representative to the rebel forces in Benghazi during the conflict, and, in effect, helped to bring about the situation of which he has now become a tragic victim? And are there not historical similarities with the fate of Western intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and in countless other places? Will Syria and Iran be next?
A fatal flaw of Imperial hubris is the belief that the possession of an overwhelming preponderance of military force confers the power to dictate the course of events that follow its use. “Full spectrum dominance” exists only in the military sphere–it doesn’t extend to the messy world of political, social and religious dynamics. There is a passage in the Christian Bible which says “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7) The tragedy is that many innocent people become the victims of the whirlwind.
Norman