Tag: Libya
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Foreign Policy Fundamentalism
Originally published in The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3 (Summer 2015) Print version available here. With pomp and polish and platitudes, the 2016 presidential campaign is underway. It began in December, as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced he was “actively exploring” a run for the White House. Bush is more moderate than much…
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If Underpants Gnomes Took Over the Pentagon, Very Little Would Change
In the Comedy Central television series South Park, the boys discover a cartel of gnomes who steal people’s underwear. Over the course of the episode it’s revealed that these seizures are part of their business plan which goes: Step 1: Collect Underpants → Step 2: ? → Step 3: Profit The punchline, of…
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Gen. Petraeus Must Face Justice
The U.S. Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have recommended felony charges against David Petraeus for giving classified information to his biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell. While not a crime in itself (because Petraeus was retired from the military at the time the scandal broke), the affair put Petraeus, then director of the Central Intelligence…
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Fantasyland Syria and its Horrific Real-World Consequences
In the wake of the Islamic State’s takeover of northern Iraq and Syrian territories, several foreign policy hawks have blamed the Obama administration’s for failing to act in Syria. They claim that had the U.S. provided greater arms to the Syrian rebels or directly intervened on their behalf, Syria’s “moderate” opposition would have long triumphed…
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Arming the Syrian Rebels is Counterproductive: Here’s Why…
A critique circulating by many foreign policy hawks is that the Obama Administration was far too concerned about delineating the “moderates” from the “extremists” of Syria’s rebellion, and only providing support to the former. They speculate that if the United States had provided more aid early on, extremists like the Islamic State would have never…
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The Obama Administration’s “Yeminization” of the Mideast
Earlier this month, the White House unveiled its new foreign policy credo: “Don’t do stupid shit.” While many lamented the modesty of this approach, acting with restraint in order to limit iatrogenesis is certainly a worthy goal—and an approach with wide and enduring popular support—in fact, this is the vision most of Obama’s voters endorsed…
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Libya in Transition… But to What?
Since the overthrow of Gaddhafi, Libya’s capital has long been consumed by fierce struggles between Islamists and the coalition aligned with former PM Zeidan, largely perceived as Western proxies—each with their own parliamentary blocks and militias. Over the course of the last several months, there have been many attempts at deposing the country’s first democratically-elected Prime…
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The Thin and Highly-Permeable Line Between Revolution & Tyranny
Summary of a revolution: people making drastic and weighty decisions, rapidly and spontaneously, in a highly emotional state–often under the sway of some charismatic leader. Question: Are these the sorts of actions we tend to retrospectively endorse or regret? Followers of my work will know that I have been highly critical of virtually all…
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The Geneva Talks Are Not About Syria
In the second round of Geneva II talks, the government agreed to a temporary ceasefire in Homs, and a lifting of the blockade, in order to allow citizens to flee if they wish, and to allow some aid and provisions to enter for those who remain. Immediately following this concession on the part of the…
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Will a too-late “victory” for America hasten the untimely demise of Libya? The rendition of Abu Anas
On October 5th 2013, in a joint operation between the CIA and U.S. Special Forces, the United States captured and extracted Nazih Abdul-Gamed al-Ruqai, known popularly as Abu Anas al-Libi (not to be confused with the late Abu Yaya al-Libi of AQSL). Abu Anas was a high-priority target, implicated in the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings,…
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Two Years, Three States, Two Civil Wars? Post-Revolutionary Libya
The NATO intervention in Libya was an unmitigated disaster. At the outset, Washington policymakers believed that the people would rise up en masse against Gaddhafi, and embrace the new “democratic” government which was installed in the aftermath of his execution. This didn’t happen. Instead, NATO was pulled ever deeper into the theater because there were…
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The Semantics of Revolution
Many in media and academic circles seem to pride themselves on having advanced beyond the “Clash of Civilizations” rhetoric that defined the aftermath of September 11th (2001). However, upon analysis is clear that the primary development has been the transformation of these frameworks into euphemistic forms: consider, for instance, the supposed conflict between the liberals…
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Barack Hussein Obama, Moderate Neoconservative
In early 2003, Saddam Hussein’s regional and international allies were all warning him that an American invasion was imminent. Hussein’s reply was basically, “I know Washington’s tone is getting aggressive, but they aren’t going to try to remove me. I’m the only one in the region who is really taking the fight to the terrorists…
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Moammar Gaddhafi’s Final Victory
It would not be surprising if there are many in the Obama Administration who occasionally think, “I miss Moammar Gaddhafi.” And if no one there is thinking that, they should. And not just because of the camping trips he would take in New York City, his amazing sense of style, his elite unit of all-female bodyguards,…
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The Arab Spring’s Third Wave
Insofar as it is helpful or accurate to understand the “Arab Spring” as a meta-movement which began with the December 17, 2010 self-immolation of Mohammad Bouazizi, we can break it into a few significant “waves.” The first wave of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were quick, peaceful and orderly, relative to the second wave with…
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The Arab Spring and the New Mujahadeen
Following the military coup which removed Hosni Mubarak, it was widely reported that al-Qaeda was rendered obsolete by the Arab Spring. Fareed Zakaria, for instance, pronounced: “The Arab Revolts of 2011 represent a total repudiation of al Qaeda’s founding ideology. For 20 years, al Qaeda has said that the regimes of the Arab World are…