Unrest in MidEast-Africa 9: Gaddafi falldown

Three days ago, I wrote this:

Today's international news headlines say that the rebels have already brought the fighting within Tripoli. Mr. Gaddafi's elite and loyal forces should provide their last stand in the capital.

I hope that this conflict will really end soon, that Mr. Gaddafi and his family should be prosecuted, and the Libyan people can move on with a new life. Wars and conflict are always destructive and counter-productive, with so much lives and properties lost and damaged. People should be working to live a peaceful and productive society for themselves and their families, not shooting and bombing each other.

It is the politics of BIG government that often divides people. Those in power have the strong appetite to unleash various coercion on ordinary citizens.

I also hope that the mistake of BIG government and its various coercion and deception will not be repeated in the next administration. People these days are empowered by various information that they can use to improve their own lives without depending too much on government and politicians. The latter have the habit of stocking up more guns and other armaments, not so much for external war but more for intimidating their own citizens when the people will resist the various coercion imposed upon their lives.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gaddafi must go. So that a bigger challenge, that of rebuilding Libyan economy and lives can proceed after the long, messy and divisive civil war. The big war that people should fight is the war against material poverty and mental indolence and dependence.
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Today, the news is that Gaddafi's main compound in Tripoli has been stormed by the rebels already. There are still pockets of resistance, but they are no longer significant to counter the anti-dictatorship rebellion. It may just be a matter of days before rebel victory will be officially announced, and Mr. Gaddafi be found and arrested.

The world will soon have one less dictator. There are still many despots and dictators around but at least their number is declining one by one. There may be upcoming new dictators -- BIG governments are conducive to the rise of dictators and deceivers -- but at least they are warned that the people's patience for dictatorship is getting lower.

We hope that the Assad dictatorship in Syria will soon follow Mr. Gaddafi.
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See also earlier discussions about the Libyan conflict:
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 2: Libya rebellion, February 22, 2011
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 4: Libya succession, February 28, 2011
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 5: Gadhafi wealth, March 01, 2011

When coercion and arms rule: Libyan war

War is ruthless. Whichever way you look at it, war means destruction, shooting and killing. That is why we should aim for a peaceful society, a society based not on coercion but on voluntary exchange among people.

While the bulk of humanity's progress and modernization is on the positive side, meaning the construction of many structures to allow people to live and work in peace, a sizable amount of human invention and modernization is used to develop weapons of destruction and death. All these are currently happening in Libya.

All pictures here are taken from the New York Times photo gallery. And most of the armed men here are rebels. Foreign journalists are not at liberty to take any pictures they wish to take as they are being monitored by the Libyan government in the capital.

Being in power for 42 years now, Muammar Gadhafi (or Qaddafy or Gaddafi or Khadafy...) has stockpiled enough armaments and bombs to kill potential rebels who will challenge his reign of power. Even if the Allied aerial bombardment has decimated his choppers and fighter jets, lots of weaponry are on the ground -- tanks, missiles, rifles, bombs and ammunitions.

The rebels, mostly civilians who took instant training in actual combat, are generally less skilled in the art of shooting and killing. But they are fighting for a cause, the desire to be free from Gadhafi dictatorship.

It's eerie to see all those fighting. The greed and hatred that had been planted in the hearts and mind of people under many decades of political dictatorship are now getting actual outlet. People bearing guns and bombs.

The Gadhafi forces are more fierce in their defense of the status quo. They have tasted power and large-scale coercion for many years now. It is something that they do not want to be taken away from them, especially with the prospect of rebel victory. The greed for continued power and coercion over other people is what drives them to become brutal killers of those who challenge them and their leader.

The practice of political coercion and stockpile of heavy armaments is not unique to Libya of course. Almost all BIG governments have big stockpile of such weapons of death and destruction. Because BIG governments rely on large-scale coercion and deception in order to keep the people docile or kept ignorant.

Why would people tolerate a situation where they work hard, only to see that a big portion of their earnings go to the government, a big portion of which will be used to procure armaments and to train tens or hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men on the art of killing and destruction.

Woe unto the people who do not like such kind of arrangement, but nonetheless have to go through the same path of taking up violence in order to control or stop mainstream violence by the state.

Rockets, like fighter jets, are weapons of long-distance killing and destruction. The pictures of rockets here are again, from the rebel side. The accuracy of those rockets to really hit their targets, usually armored trucks, tanks and bunkers, is not 100 percent, especially if in the hands of new recruits from the civilians who have no formal military training. So those rockets and missiles are capable of hitting civilian structures and houses.

I understand that the UN has certain "rules of conduct" during war. But who pays attention to such UN regulation? The best rules of conduct during war is no war. Dictators, both in government and among ordinary civilians, often hate peaceful debate. They are allergic to debates, they want a short cut to settle debates through the use of arms, violence and coercion.

We will have to look at the role of the weapons manufacturing companies, mostly in the US, Russia, Germany, UK, France, China and Israel. But being private enterprises, they generally respond to incentives. When there is big demand for missiles, rockets, bombs, tanks, fighter jets and related products by many governments, they produce more to cash in and earn huge profits.

And here are the ordinary Libyan civilians. Torn between armed government troops and armed rebels firing missiles and guns against each other everyday, the civilians, especially the weak, the sick, the old and the young, are the worst affected.

I wish to see the end of violence in Libya and elsewhere. I believe that Gadhafi must go, but the new government, from among the various groups in the rebel forces, must assure the civilians that the old system of political and economic repressions should not be repeated. Otherwise, the current destruction and killing will just be repeated in the future.

Coercion is evil. The use of arms and violence to advance whatever political or philosophical agenda is evil. BIG governments thrive on coercion and the stockpile of weapons of violence and destruction, to harass if not kill, those who will seriously challenge the coercion and deception that the BIG state has inflicted on the citizens.

Let us keep this mind always.

European conflict in the Libyan conflict

Waging a war is not only to protect existing interests, like the lives of ordinary civilians being massacred by threatened dictators and monarchs, oil and business interests in a country undergoing bloody civil war, etc.

Waging a war is also to protect or secure future interests, like whoever helped the new victors (and current rebels) will get special business deals and huge contracts at large scale economic reconstruction in the future.

This scenario is slowly shaping up among a number of leaders of European countries who have sent their fighter jets, battle ships and submarines to Libya to bomb certain military targets of the 42-years in power Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. That's how one report from The Globe and Mail, Libya's economic war rages in southern Europe has painted.

According to that report by Eric Reguly:
"Italy, Libya’s biggest European investor, is at the centre of the economic war. On Monday Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini threatened to deny the allied forces access to Italian airbases unless command of the operation were shifted to NATO. At the moment, the French, British and Americans are calling the shots...

(2 pictures below: in happy-friendly times, Gadhafi with UK's PM Brown; and with France Pres. Sarkozy, below)

"Why does Italy cherish a NATO takeover? Because the Italians do not want the Libyan rebels seeing the air war as largely an Anglo-French effort. Italy fears that, should the rebels succeed in overthrowing Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, they will repay the British and the French by giving them the most valued reconstruction and oil projects. If NATO takes control, Britain and France’s influence over rebel loyalties would be diluted, putting Italy on a more equal footing for the post-war reconstruction spoils, whenever that may come.

"France has been resisting transferring military control to NATO. On Wednesday, however, France softened its position. It appears NATO will take over..."

(2 pictures below, former UK PM Tony Blair with Gadhafi)

"Italy, which ruled Libya as a colony for 30 years, until the Second World War, is especially worried about France muscling into the Libyan economy. Italy considers Libya part of its economic landscape. Eni, the Italian national oil company, and Europe’s fourth largest oil player, is the biggest investor in Libya. Before the war started, Eni was pumping about 250,000 barrels a day of Libyan oil, most of which went to Europe. Last year, according to Morgan Stanley research, 32 per cent of Libyan oil exports went to Italy (France, Germany and Spain were the other largest importers).

"But French oil giant Total is also on the ground in Libya; it pumped about 50,000 barrels a day until the war virtually eliminated exports. Italy would go into a rage if the rebel forces, should they overthrow Ghadafi, were to reward Total with lavish oil concessions and investment opportunities in other projects, like highway construction, that the Italians consider their right."

As the bombings continue in Libya, I was also thinking that when most of Gadhafi's radars, fighter jets and choppers, bombs and tanks have been charred, and Gadhafi himself is thrown out of power, the next administration will also buy new radars, new fighter jets and choppers, new bombs and tanks, from the same countries who crippled and destroyed these military hardwares of Libya.

Paying those new military spending will not be a problem for Libya or other oil-exporting countries that currently undergo political turmoil. They will not need foreign aid and loans from the west, they have lots of oil to sell.

Since the current rebels are fighting for political democratization and not individual liberty, should they win someday, the profligate lifestyle of having modern army, air force and navy will most likely be continued, if not expanded. There is something that projects a "macho" image for leaders of countries to have those lethal machines and bombs to display during their "national day" or "independence day" or similar events. Whether these countries are under dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or democracy.

Huge military spending are wasteful and a display of non-productive use of the citizens' money or a country's natural resources. Business cronyism is also a display of wasteful and inefficient economic policy.

Somehow there is synergy between the BIG governments of Europe and North America on one hand, and the BIG governments of Africa-Middle East Asia on the other hand. Before, during and after the on-going political turmoils there.