Libya and the Left: Benghazi and After

Guest post by Michael Bauble, expert on left wing thought

In March 2011, a massacre was averted in Libya - not an ordinary massacre, mind you, but a really nasty one, with an entire city being smashed and pounded to rubble with heavy weaponry and arbitrary execution of civilians and captured fighters by Gaddafi's thugs.

The Nato-led attack on Libya saved Benghazi from this fate, by smashing and pounding a different Libyan city to rubble with heavy weaponry and with arbitrary execution of civilians and captured fighters by rebel thugs instead.

This totally awesome outcome sent a clear message to other authoritarian governments - if you're going to intentionally rub out thousands of civilians in pursuit of political goals, don't start destroying heavily-populated urban areas around the ears of residents or empowering gangs of militia to crack down violently on ethnic minorities.

At least, not without first making sure that you ask the UN for a mandate to "protect civilians".

By authorising Nato to take action to "protect civilians" then looking on in horror as Nato helped to protect tens of thousands of Libyans to death, the UN recovered some of the legitimacy it previously lost for not allowing western nations to blow up whatever they like, whenever they like, for whatever reasons they like.

The Arab League would later protest that Nato air strikes exceeded the resolution's mandate, but nobody cares what a bunch of jumped-up sheikhs think about anything. If they were stupid enough to hand Nato a blank cheque for maximal violence, they should at least have had the decency to keep quiet, once Nato started blowing shit up.

In the United States, Dennis Kucinich pointed out that the president of the United States doesn't have the authority to just blow up whatever shit he likes, whenever he likes, for whatever reasons he likes. It's almost too easy to trot out the hoary old allegation that Dennis Kucinich was objectively pro-Gaddafi, so here goes...

Dennis Kucinich was objectively pro-Gaddafi, and also wants to give Gaddafi a big kiss on the lips and be his boyfriend and hold hands with him like a girl.

It was possible to oppose American intervention in Libya for legitimate reasons. One could point out that Nato traded the total destruction of one city for the destruction of another and empowered one gang of cold-blooded killers at the expense of another, but nobody should actually point this out.

If we're going to criticise the war, we should do it with some weak-ass objections that even the most cretinous Sensible Liberal can easily swat, and definitely not with substantive criticisms that don't have any easy answers.

From the outset, the American left adopted very traitorous and pro-tyranny positions, asking why we were so very upset about vicious crackdowns in Libya but were entirely content to watch other countries that we like killing the fuck out of their citizens without saying a word.

This is a difficult question to answer without honestly reassessing some very uncomfortable questions, so let's just say that it's all, like, complicated man; imply that anyone asking it is basically evil and then leave it at that.

After all, if an antiwar movement can't get behind an opportunistic assassination/regime change wheeze in which the side we're supporting is murdering civilians because of the colour of their skin, then it probably can't get behind any mad schemes of exemplary violence, and that's no fun for anyone, is it?

Instead of cheering for war, the left succumbed to that old chestnut Obama Derangement Syndrome - that crazed, hard-leftist belief that the President shouldn't export extreme violence to any nation on Earth, just because it seems like a good idea to him.

I am not insisting that support for Nato military action in Libya should have been a litmus test issue for the left.

I am simply saying that any leftist who didn't support it is a hideous, pro-Gaddafi cock-wrangler who should probably get out of my sight before I flip out, start bellowing cursewords and insults at the top of my voice and throwing tables around the room like the Incredible Hulk on a Jagermeister binge.

All we need to know on the left is that the US is involved in killing tens of thousands of people all over the Middle East and Africa for reasons that range from dubious to insane, and then we automatically know that the action is wrong.

For the left, knee-jerk opposition to America's retarded, ultraviolent and counter-productive military adventures should be opposed because they are American, and certainly not because we object to America's a track record of wiping out tens of thousands of people for no sane reason.

Ten years ago, Michael Walzer asked if there could be a "Decent Left". After ten years of constant mockery, it's clear that the time has come to put a new shade of lipstick on the Decent pig. Clearly, the reason why the Decent Left failed to troll everyone into buying their own dishonest, hacktacular politics is because we gave ourselves a silly name, and certainly not because we are dishonest and hacktacular.

I suggest the "Internationalist Left", by which I mean the lockstep-support-for-whatever-crazy-schemes-for-revolutionary-violence-the-American-government-fancies-left, although it's probably better if we pretend that it really means something about freedom from tyranny and humanitarianism. After all, it worked so very well the last time.

After Benghazi, the left has a difficult question to answer - Do you support the use of extreme violence in highly dangerous and unpredictable situations by politicians who openly lie to their citizens, or do you want to give Colonel Gaddafi's corpse a big cuddle like a girl?

Eh? EH?

Party Issues Artistic Purge List 2010

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GLORIOUS NEWS COMRADES STOP PARTY ISSUES UPDATED PURGE LIST TREACHEROUS ARTISTIC BADTHINKERS STOP ALL PARTY MEMBERS REQUIRED TO EXPUNGE FOLLOWING TRAITOROUS MUSICAL RECORDINGS FROM PERSONAL COLLECTIONS STOP

DISSENT WILL BE MET WITH IMMEDIATE CONDEMNATION AND EXPULSION STOP

PARTY MEMBERS WILL IMMEDIATELY DIVEST SELVES OF SEDITIOUS ARTISTIC MATERIALS OF PRIMAL SCREAM STOP EXTREME RISK OF IDEOLOGICAL INFECTION/CONTAMINATION VIA CHILDISH POLITICAL ANTICS OF PARTY ENEMY GILLESPIE STOP

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WITH FEELING THIS TIME STOP WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE STOP LONG TIME PASSING STOP WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE STOP LONG TIME AGO STOP WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE STOP GIRLS HAVE PICKED THEM EVERY ONE STOP WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN STOP

PARTY MEMBERS WILL CONTINUE SINGING UNTIL ORDERED TO STOP

Administrative Notes - Resonance FM Interview

Your less-than-humble host interviewed here, on the rise and fall of Decency in the realm of foreign policy and the General Election. I also do children's parties, on request.

Arise, Ye Warriors Of Decency!

Congratulations to all Encyclopedia readers, as news reaches Muscular Manor that the Israeli Knesset has embarked on a new crackdown on human rights NGOs. The latest proposals would allow the Israeli government to close down any NGO on entirely spurious and heavily fictionalised allegations of treachery.

Coming so soon after the previous crackdown's restrictions on the movement of human rights NGOs' employees, this fresh move amounts to an entirely deliberate and Dalek-esque attempt to exterminate the concept of "oversight" under the hilarious pretence that everyone in the entire universe is a racist psychopath hell-bent on Israel's destruction.

In short, it appears that we may be on the cusp of achieving the Decent dream of a world in which the IDF will be able to imprison and/or kill the fuck out of whoever it likes, whenever it likes, without having to answer a lot of impertinent questions.

None of this could've been achieved without your contribution, dear reader, for polls now reveal that...

More than half of Jewish Israelis think human rights organizations that expose immoral behavior by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely, and think there is too much freedom of expression here, a recent survey found. (Haaretz)

To be clear - the Israeli people did not wake up one morning suddenly filled with the deranged belief that human rights NGOs are jammed to the hoop with pro-terrorist, genocidal Nazis who need to be jailed. It took a long, monomaniacal and completely insane campaign of misinformation, fraudulent non-scandals and outright propaganda to reach the point where these crackdowns would be possible.

So arise, ye warriors of Decency! Whether you wholeheartedly joined in the wingnutty circle-jerk over Amnesty International and the awful terrorists or merely pretended to be terrified that Human Rights Watch was employing actual, jackbooted Nazi stormtroopers, it is your efforts that have led to this glorious outcome.

Candidly, our furious bullshit campaigns against NGOs have been so obviously premised on utter bad faith and tissue-thin innuendo that it has taken years of hard work to reach the point where the Israeli government can crush anyone and everyone who tries to draw attention to its astonishingly bad behaviour.

Our record of trumping up these hysterically dishonest and see-through allegations into a massive media bullshit explosion of blatantly fake concern about non-existent pro-Jihadism is second to none, and has played an important role in creating this situation.

So give yourselves a pat on the back, muscular liberals! You yourself may not literally have shot a Palestinian woman in the face with total impunity from scrutiny or accountability, but it's thanks in no small part to you that all of tomorrow's horrific Israeli human rights violations will take place in a media and judicial vaccuum.

Well done, to each and every one of you.

The Court of Decency vs. Amnesty International

Interim Report

(With the Decent Jihad on Amnesty International well underway, the Court of Decency has issued its interim findings on the latest witchhunt against a human rights organisation...)

1. Amnesty International is in partnership with and promoting CagePrisoners

Status: UNDETERMINED.

Amnesty vehemently deny any official relationship at all with CagePrisoners, a foolish gambit given we all know that they are literally in cahoots with the Taliban and praying for the victory of fundamentalist Islam.

2. The head of Amnesty Asia has condemned the organisation

Status: UNDETERMINED.

Sam Zafiri, Amnesty's Asia Pacific director, was reported by the Times journalist who first broke the BullshitGate story to have called upon Amnesty to "admit it had made a mistake" by allowing Moazzam Begg to speak. Zafiri has since said he was misquoted, which means he must surely have called upon Amnesty's UK directors to commit suicide by disembowelling themselves instead.

3. Amnesty is giving Begg a platform to espouse his nutty beliefs.

Status: FALSE.

Begg has only ever spoken about the secret black prison network in which he was held, and into which an unknown number of innocent and guilty individuals have vanished, many of whom have been tortured for false confessions or murdered. Amnesty has no place drawing attention to the legitimate torture and national security operations of western democracies, and referring to the US black prison network is surely just as bad as Amnesty calling for Jihad on western democracy itself.

4. Amnesty is soft on Islamists in general and the Taliban in particular.

Status: FALSE.

Amnesty's latest work on the Taliban is available here and is, admittedly, somewhat short on kisses and hugs and long on documenting human rights violations. Mind, you'll notice they Condemn the Taliban, but the question is, do they Denounce them? Do they Castigate and Excoriate them?

5. Gita Saghal was suspended for objecting to Amnesty's promotion of Begg.

Status: FALSE.

The sequence of events leading to Saghal's suspension is clear. She took part in an internal debate at Amnesty on their decision to allow Begg to speak, which she lost. Rather than resign or accept Amnesty's decision, she took her complaint to News International. Thus, Saghal was suspended for attacking the organisation in the Murdoch press, which is almost exactly the same as being suspended for her moral rectitude.

6. As a whistleblower, Saghal should be protected from victimisation.

Status: FALSE.

All of the relevant information was already in the press before Saghal spoke to the press, thus she is not a whistleblower. Nor is she being victimised, since every organisation on Earth would suspend an employee in this situation.

The Court finds that Amnesty should, however, hold itself to far higher standards than every other organisation on Earth and allow its employees to denounce it in the national press. After all, we all remember how it was totally fine when Katherine Gun leaked news that the United States had been bugging UN delegations in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, to pick a random example.

Conclusion

On the above evidence, the Court Of Decency has no choice but to find Amnesty International hideously guilty of all charges. The fiends.

Amnesty International is hereby sentenced to twenty years of re-education by Oliver Kamm in respecting the human rights of all individuals not currently being bombed, shot, tortured or extrajudicially detained by the armed forces of the United States of America, Great Britain or Israel.

The Court also commends the following agents for building this airtight and in no way misleading case against Amnesty: Denis MacShane MP; Christopher Hitchens; Harry's Place; David Aaronovitch; Martin Bright; Nick Cohen; Norman Geras; The Times; Melanie Philips and others.

Without your sterling efforts comrades, this patchwork of misleading claims, bald deceptions and outright hysterical lies would never have reached the international press.

(Cheers are due to Pickled Politics)

You Are The Decent Ref - Human Rights NGO Edition

1) A Humanitarian NGO that does fine work exposing the crimes and atrocities of dictatorships worldwide has recently begun to criticise the Departures From Universal Principles of nations that are uncritically supported by the Decent Left.

You then discover that a hideous gaggle of despicable right-wing lunatic bastards have unearthed proof that a military analyst who works for the NGO collects World War II memorabilia, including German army issue kit and insignia, and are engaged in a wingnut circlejerk of the utmost ferocity aimed at damaging the NGO as badly as possible.

What do you do?

a) Nothing. Jesus, a military analyst who's also a massive World War II geek with a fetish for uniforms? What next, a football fan who likes lager and pies?

b) The NGO risks harm to its reputation, thus harming its ability to publicise human rights violations by tyrants and totalitarians. Type up a short blog post expressing your concern and calling upon the NGO to investigate and, if necessary, discipline or fire the analyst in question.

c) Publish post after post after post furiously denouncing the NGO, feigning concern for its reputation and good works while actually striving to inflict as much damage upon it as possible, while inviting a massive crowd of baying right wing fuckheads to defecate liberally over the NGO by painting it as a malign conspiracy of Jew-hating, anti-western Nazi bastards?


2) A Humanitarian NGO that does fine work exposing the crimes and atrocities of dictatorships worldwide has recently begun to criticise the Departures From Universal Principles of nations that are uncritically supported by the Decent Left.

You then discover that the NGO is hosting public appearances by a former inmate of a massive American black prison network with a long record of disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture and murder; the former inmate, however, holds deranged and unpleasant Islamist views.

What do you do?

a) Nothing. Jesus, the whole point of human rights is that they're universal. It's entirely obvious that states will crack down on extremists and nutters as much as they will on peaceful democratic dissidents, and any human rights org worth its salt will take both cases equally seriously. Plus, what the fuck? Torture and black prisons?

b) The NGO risks harm to its reputation, thus harming its ability to publicise human rights violations by tyrants and totalitarians. Type up a short blog post expressing your concern and calling upon the NGO to investigate and, if necessary, discipline or fire anyone found to have taken actions that are in conflict with the organisation's founding principles.

c) Publish post after post after post furiously denouncing the NGO while feigning concern for its reputation and good works and actually striving to inflict as much damage upon it as possible, while inviting a massive crowd of baying right wing fuckheads to defecate liberally over the NGO by painting it as a Jew-hating, Jihadist-fellating anti-western conspiracy and, further, using the issue as a stick to beat your political enemies and launching a fucking Facebook campaign?

3) A large number of Humanitarian NGOs that do fine work exposing the crimes and atrocities of dictatorships worldwide have recently begun to criticise the Departures From Universal Principles of nations that are uncritically supported by the Decent Left.

You then discover absolutely any scrap of pissweak propagandistic horseshit that may damage the NGO and discredit their attempts to hold Democrats to minimum international humanitarian standards by implying that war, torture and murder may not be entertaining and laudible activities.

What do you do?

a) Nothing. Jesus, you may not agree with everything that NGOs do and may strongly disagree with some of it, but you appreciate that launching a series of vindictive and spiteful hate campaigns against the world's leading humanitarian organisations would be counterproductive and wrong-headed.

b) The NGO risks harm to lunatic, bloodthirsty and disastrous military misadventures unconditionally supported by the Decent Left, thus harming western nations' ability to launch insane and murderous bombing campaigns against heavily populated urban areas and to operate a secret network of black prisons. Type up a short blog post expressing your concern and calling upon the NGO to consider whether war, surgical strikes, arbitrary detention, torture, murder and disappearances are really worth getting all steamed up about, in the midst of a Global War on Terror.

c) Immediately seize upon any old bullshit that damages the NGO in question by pretending that the International Red Cross may have collaborated with terrorists to bomb their own ambulance, using a risible pack of wingnut lies published by a hideous shower of evil right wing bastards as evidence; Reprint a pack of dubious What If? bollocks from a well-known Republican cretin implying that Human Rights Watch conspires with the Saudi regime to falsely attack Israel; Reprint a mad Israeli wingnut's attempts to hurl huge handfuls of shit at HRW by accusing one of its employees of loving terrorists and terrorism; Instantly shit your pants in terror when an Amnesty official compares the Americans' secret torture, murder and arbitrary detention network of black prisons the Gulag; Issue a full-throated defence of international disappearance and arbitrary detention or a masturbatory Real-Men-Ain't-Afraid-Of-Torturin'-a-Bad-'Un display of belligerent machismo; call for "morally serious" people to have a debate on torture, an issue which deserves careful consideration, and generally make it clear that opposition to western human rights violations is the preserve of ivory tower-dwellling pro-Islamists who pray for the destruction of western civilisation?

Answers

Mostly a)

If you like Jihadistan so much, why don't you fuck off and live there, you relativist, genocidal Osama Bin Liberal bastard?

Mostly b)

There's a time and place for level-headed, rational discussion, and it's never and somewhere else.

Mostly c)

Congratulations - you are a morally serious, level-headed Decent. Our deranged plan to suicide bomb every left-wing organisation and institution on the face of the planet into submission, in the insane hope that a new, more politically acceptable network of human rights organisations will automatically spring into existence on the day of the Rapture, proceeds apace. Onwards to an ill-defined and probably fantastical victory, comrades!

Arrogance

Despicable Self-Righteousness

1. Disgusting anti-war groupthink of sniffy left wingers, contending that there were no good reasons for supporting an insane, half-arsed, ill-defined and transparently doomed militaristic clusterfuck led by morons with support from the undead cast of Iran/Contra: The Musical.

2. The dogmatic certainty that a war that resulted in horrifyingly brutal civil strife and mass slaughter, sectarian partition, the rocket-propelled national decline of the invaders, the invaded nation and all of their allies in the region, plus the vast empowerment of reactionaries and lunatics, was somehow a bad idea.

By hewing to the bien-pensant party line, liberals on the internet have perpetrated possibly the most tragic injustice of the 21st century in implying that an elderly academic's opinions are cretinous, deluded and cracked, leaving him feeling somewhat slighted.

Source: "Why can't those who opposed the war admit that I cheerled this easily-avoidable, murderous catastrophe in good faith?", Normblog: Extract from page 388, Chapter Seven, Book Nine of the Professor's thirty two-volume epic poem "Just Because It Was a Disaster Doesn't Mean I Was Wrong, You Snotty Liberal Bastards".