Top Ten Ways that Libya 2011 is Iraq 2003

Professor Juan Cole just posted a piece on his popular blog Informed Comment, called Top Ten Ways that Libya 2011 is Not Iraq 2003. While I hold Professor Cole in great esteem both as a scholar and as an individual whose politics are generally pretty good in my opinion, occasionally I feel that the language he uses gets tainted by US imperialist rhetoric around international issues, and when that happens, those arguments often don't hold up logically or factually. I wrote a response to something he said about the 'international community' being opposed to Iran a couple years back, and I have taken this opportunity to rebut the claims he makes that the current imperialist invasion of Libya is significantly different from the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The italicized text is from Juan Cole's post; my responses are below.

1. The action in Libya was authorized by the United Nations Security Council. That in Iraq was not. By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense or with UNSC authorization. Most countries in the world are signatories to the charter and bound by its provisions.

Sure, this is objectively different than Iraq in 2003, but it shouldn't be a justification. The UN also established Israel in 1948 but that doesn't justify the Israeli occupation of Palestine today.

2. The Libyan people had risen up and thrown off the Qaddafi regime, with some 80-90 percent of the country having gone out of his hands before he started having tank commanders fire shells into peaceful crowds. It was this vast majority of the Libyan people that demanded the UN no-fly zone. In 2002-3 there was no similar popular movement against Saddam Hussein.

The same Libyan people that rose up against Qaddafi also railed against foreign intervention. Those that did call for a no-fly zone did not call to be bombed, which is is happening now - and the US military admits it has trouble identifying civilians, which has led to some (like Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League) decrying the invasion for killing Libyan civilians. It's disingenuous to conflate the popular movement against Qaddafi with a popular movement in support of the US/UN invasion. There were also Iraqis that supported the 2003 invasion, and Saddam was probably opposed by a majority of Iraqis, but the invasion itself was overwhelmingly unpopular.

3. There was an ongoing massacre of civilians, and the threat of more such massacres in Benghazi, by the Qaddafi regime, which precipitated the UNSC resolution. Although the Saddam Hussein regime had massacred people in the 1980s and early 1990s, nothing was going on in 2002-2003 that would have required international intervention.

The justification was slightly different, but only slightly so. According to the invasion narratives, Qaddafi is killing his own people; Saddam was killing his own people and would do it again, and moreover he supposedly had weapons of mass destruction, etc. The narrative that justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq claimed that it was in order to prevent it getting to the point of the situation in Libya now, with massacres taking place.

4. The Arab League urged the UNSC to take action against the Qaddafi regime, and in many ways precipitated Resolution 1973. The Arab League met in 2002 and expressed opposition to a war on Iraq. (Reports of Arab League backtracking on Sunday were incorrect, based on a remark of outgoing Secretary-General Amr Moussa that criticized the taking out of anti-aircraft batteries. The Arab League reaffirmed Sunday and Moussa agreed Monday that the No-Fly Zone is what it wants).

Objectively, sure, this is a difference. But why should we care what the Arab League says, one way or another? It's primarily made up of the leaders of despotic regimes, from Saudi Arabia to Yemen to Bahrain, that are often beholden to the US and are every bit as despicable as Qaddafi, and many of them are currently committing massacres against protesters in popular uprisings in their own countries.

5. None of the United Nations allies envisages landing troops on the ground, nor does the UNSC authorize it. Iraq was invaded by land forces.

The US supposedly did not envisage staying in Iraq for 8 years after the invasion, and yet here we are. It would be terribly naive of us to take the invading powers (or politicians in general, really) at their word on this.

6. No false allegations were made against the Qaddafi regime, of being in league with al-Qaeda or of having a nuclear weapons program. The charge is massacre of peaceful civilian demonstrators and an actual promise to commit more such massacres.

No false allegations against Qaddafi were needed to justify the invasion of Libya; instead, false allegations about the motivations for the invasion were made, as well about future plans. In both cases, we (the public) have been lied to about the reasons for going to war and the plans for what follows the initial invasion.

7. The United States did not take the lead role in urging a no-fly zone, and was dragged into this action by its Arab and European allies. President Obama pledges that the US role, mainly disabling anti-aircraft batteries and bombing runways, will last “days, not months” before being turned over to other United Nations allies.

See my response to #4- again, this is true, but why does it matter? The UK, France, and Italy (for example) have imperialist histories in North Africa far longer (and often bloodier) than that of the US. They supported Qaddafi in recent years, and are just as suspect in their motives as the US was in Iraq in 2003, along with the Arab League which I discussed above. Obama's pledge that the US role will last "days, not months" is as believable as Bush's announcement of "mission accomplished" in 2003. It's an empty slogan.

8. There is no sectarian or ethnic dimension to the Libyan conflict, whereas the US Pentagon conspired with Shiite and Kurdish parties to overthrow the Sunni-dominated Baathist regime in Iraq, setting the stage for a prolonged and bitter civil war.

Actually there is a great parallel here, but the division that the invading forces are exploiting is not religious or ethnic, but rather regional-- the underdeveloped east of the country versus Tripoli and other parts of western Libya that Qaddafi "rewarded" for their loyalty with development. These material divisions could prove to be even more deeply divisive than ideological divisions like religious sectarianism. That certainly remains to be seen, but many analysts have already begun speculating about US/UN plans to partition Libya along those regional lines (see here for one example).

9. The US has not rewarded countries such as Norway for entering the conflict as UN allies, but rather a genuine sense of outrage at the brutal crimes against humanity being committed by Qaddafi and his forces impelled the formation of this coalition. The Bush administration’s ‘coalition of the willing’ in contrast was often brought on board by what were essentially bribes.

What kind of a joke is this? A "genuine sense of outrage"? Where is the genuine sense of outrage for the exact same brutal crimes against humanity being committed in Bahrain and Yemen, close allies of the US and many other European countries involved in the invasion? What about the crackdown on protesters in other US/Western-allied countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, Oman, and elsewhere? This is international politics in the 21st century; who really believes that the US, UK, France, or Italy invade one country and not another out of a "genuine sense of outrage" and not specific political, economic, and military interests?

10. Iraq in 2002-3 no longer posed a credible threat to its neighbors. A resurgent Qaddafi in Libya with petroleum billions at his disposal would likely attempt to undermine the democratic experiments in Tunisia and Egypt, blighting the lives of millions.

The other side to this coin is that the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, which were independent of foreign interference, could have played a more positive role in the Libyan uprising if not for the foreign invasion of Libya (and other factors, like the Egyptian military getting in the way of Egyptian popular support for the Libyan uprising, etc.) Juan Cole suggests that Qaddafi could, theoretically, undermine democracy in Tunisia and Egypt; however, as we speak, the US along with other Western imperialist powers and some powerful Arab states like Saudi Arabia are actively undermining democracy in those countries and many more.

Further reading

Solidarity and Intervention in Libya (Jadaliyya)
Don't exaggerate Arab support for Libya No Fly Zone (Foreign Policy)
The West goes to war for oil and power (Socialist Worker)
Arab League condemns broad Western bombing campaign in Libya (Washington Post)