Monday 21 March 2011

Swatting the Gadfly.

I don't like Gadfly, the dictator of Libya. He's arrogant and filled with self-importance and he treats the country he runs as his own personal property. He orders his army to go out and kill people he doesn't like.

I don't like the Cameroid, nor the Clegg, nor most of those who think themselves the new gentry, for much the same reasons.

Gadfly is an unpleasant individual on many levels. He's not someone I'd like to be associated with and I certainly wouldn't invite him to my house. He is, however, a human being. Human beings I don't like, I avoid. It's not that difficult. There is no need to kill them or even dehumanise them. It's a big planet.

Our government have decreed that this man, Gadfly, is not a human being. He is a 'legitimate target'. He has been dehumanised and everyone now has the right to treat him as subhuman, treat him with utter contempt to the point that they can kill him, or let him die, and our government will be pleased.

As a smoker, I know what that means, which is why it disgusts me to see our government openly declaring a human being as a 'legitimate target'. Even when it's Gadfly. It's only a matter of time before they make that declaration about me. Already it is legitimate, according to our government, to make smokers stand in 'shelters' that would be illegal to keep an animal in, it is legitimate for businesses to advertise 'no smokers' in job adverts and it is legitimate for the NHS to refuse treatment to smokers, whether they present with a smoking related illness or not. 'Legitimate target' is a line that has the Dreadful Arnott salivating. She would love to hear it more often.

Yes, I could stop being a smoker. Will that help? Not really. Ex-smokers are still coated with the imaginary pixie dust that is third hand smoke. There is no escape. Equally, Gadfly could give up being boss of Libya. Will that help? No, the hounds are on his trail now and they will never stop. Once you join Denormalisation Club, there is no way to leave.

It's so easy for them now. After all this time dehumanising their own people they have no trouble at all dehumanising non-British people. All they have to do is declare the 'legitimate target' line and that's it. Done. Dusted. Dehumanised.

Dead.

Even Madman Hussein had a trial. A trial whose outcome was decided from the start, but a trial. They can't put Gadfly on trial. Too many photo opportunites will come back to haunt them. No, he has to be disposed of to save embarrassment.

And so we have another war. Another Muslim country invaded. This is not the same as Iraq and Afghanistan. Those were Labour wars. Dirty, naughty wars. This is a Coagulation war, this is the Cameron/Clegg Collective trying once more to be more New Labour than New Labour. So the Cameroid declares it 'just and legal' and that's all right then. So he sends what military hardware he hasn't already had dismantled, run by troops who don't know what will get them first - the bullet or the P45. And he expects us to cheer.

Afghanistan at least had a reason. The Americans went in after Bin Laden and we went to help. Bin Laden left Afghanistan a long time ago, but we're all still there. The reason has gone.

Iraq had no reason behind it at all. It was possibly the only Muslim country where Bin Laden could get no help or support. It was the one country that could not have been involved with Al Qaeda but it was the one we invaded. We're still there.

Libya? It's none of our business. While the rebels looked like winning, our glorious leaders shouted about what a bad, bad man Gadfly was. They held back from interfering because there was no need. They were shouting for the right team - even though they don't know what that team wants. They don't want Gadfly, but what do they plan as a replacement? Something better or something worse? I hope they have a plan because their 'liberators' don't. Never have, and never will.

While things were going well for the rebels, Cameroid sent in the SAS to say hello. The rebels told them to piss off. Now things are going badly, the rebels are wailing 'Where are the western powers we just told to piss off? Why aren't they helping us now we're losing?'

If I was in Cameroid's job, my response would be simple. 'I offered help. You told me to piss off. I pissed off. Sort it out yourselves.' Actually it wouldn't have come to that because I'd have stayed out of it, called nobody names and waited to see who won. I'd have the military on standby in case the rough stuff headed our way but otherwise, none of our business. It's an internal matter for Libya.

Ah, but Cameroid has appearances to keep up. No matter that he appears to have a bread-bin for a head and a children's TV presenter for a sidekick. No, he has been shouting about what a very bad man Gadfly is, and he knows that if Gadfly wins, those words will not be forgotten. Cameroid is, to use the vernacular, bricking it. If Gadfly gets control of Libya, those lucrative oil contracts will all be seriously reconsidered.

This invasion is to save political face, not to save Libyans. How can Cameroid claim to be saving Libyans by bombing Libyans? Well, it comes from the same government that claims to be saving smokers, drinkers, fat people and many more groups by mercilessly persecuting them so perhaps somewhere in the cobwebbed caverns of that Tabla-drum skull, the brain cell took a few moments out of playing 'Echo' to insist that its one foray into surrealist logic was correct.

There has been much discussion of Gadfly's oppressive regime. Maybe he really did make people disappear. Maybe he really did terrible things like threatening to take people's children away if they didn't behave as directed. Maybe he did.

The British justice system certainly does those things.

The courts in this country can pronounce secrecy on anything they like. If you mention that you are involved in one of those cases, if you attempt to contact your MP, they will take your children away. Not because you are a bad parent but as a punishment for not doing as you are told. We live in a country that can do that, and has done that, and still does. We have councils who employ people to spy on other people's bins and declare fines for littering. Attempt to challenge them and they'll simply increase the fine. We live in a country where you do as you are told or a thousand petty gadflys will be at your door demanding all that you have. We have no business criticising even Cuba's system. At least they don't pretend to have freedom.

A fews days ago, the Arab countries were insisting that the West impose a no-fly zone over Libya even though they are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. Russia did not veto the UN's decision to impose this sanction.

With tiresome predictability, the Arab nations and Russia now condemn the West's imposition of a no-fly zone. Slaphead and Simple, our partially-elected leaders, walked right into that one and now have no way out. Continue the action and increase world friction, or back off and let Gadfly win. Either way, we're going to be paying a lot more for oil in the very near future. Either we get it from Libya, from a furious Gadfly, or we get it from the other Arab nations who are enraged that we're shooting at Gadfly.

And our suited oafs have declared this man, this Gadfly, a 'legitimate target'. What does Iran's leadership think of that? Or Syria? Are they expecting to be declared 'legitimate targets' too?

Why not? Most of the population of this country are expecting it at any moment.

I have to wonder why the Arab nations didn't lift a finger to help the rebels but insisted the West did it - and then turned on us as soon as we did. I have to wonder why Cameroid and the EU and the UN were so stupid as to take this bait. Why did so many countries want us tied up in another war that's none of our business? Another war we can't afford.

For our leaders, life is all about money. Oil is money so the oil must flow. For other minds, there are matters that transcend money, oil, gold, all of it. Much more pressing matters. Matters that are worth playing a long and complex game to achieve.

If I were Israel, I'd be worried to see all my allies being run ragged like this.

20 comments:

JuliaM said...

"Gadfly is an unpleasant individual on many levels. He's not someone I'd like to be associated with..."

I feel the same way about iDave and Clegg...

subrosa said...

The Arab nations are behaving as they do and have done for centuries. Let someone else take the blame. Someone who has lived and worked in that region for many years said to me 'They can't agree amongst themselves so what else do you expect'.

We should have joined Germany, offered humanitarian aid and let the Arabs and Africans sort things out.

This will quite possibly turn into a prolonged war. Cameron and his sidekick know that of course.

What is it with modern MPs and their warmongering attitudes? Do they think that's the only way they'll get noticed on that world stage on which they like to pose in the front row?

David Davis said...

I wish I knew why so many libertarians think that "what happens in other countries is none of our business", especially those "run" by nasty GramscoStaliNazi dictators.

Do these droids have to be allowed? Are we supposed not to do anything, ever?

Sorry. Is it just me, or are you fellows all mistaken?

V4V said...

The SBS close protection team were sent in on an overt mission to establish links with the rebel council, the contact was to make sure that arms shipments from Saudi that are being shipped via Egypt reach the intended destination. These teams carry standard kit that includes explosives and politician as usual have sacriced the reputation of this squadron for their political endgame because the rebel council would not receive them on a diplomatic level. As Subrosa said, it's the Arab way to let others take the blame.

JuliaM said...

"I wish I knew why so many libertarians think that "what happens in other countries is none of our business", especially those "run" by nasty GramscoStaliNazi dictators."

I can't speak for them, not being one, but I have to say that, unless it threatens our interests, it isn't.

Otherwise why would we do nothing over Mugabe?

Anonymous said...

None of our _business_ maybe, that implies money. None of our concern? I would disagree. It concerns me what was happening to my fellow human beings in Libya and it honestly surprised me that it doesn't concern you LegIron or you JuliaM.

And Julia if I were PM, good ole Bob would be vapourised.

LI: I don't really understand why you're trying to conflate Libya with the smoking issue, I think that is in bad taste.

Zorro

JuliaM said...

Oh, it concerns me, but is it enough for us to meddle in another country's internal affairs?

I don't think so. Our last venture didn't go so well, did it?

After all, what we are really doing is taking sides in another country's civil war. Is that wise?

sixtypoundsaweekcleaner said...

It's like Iraq all over again...the worrying thing is that our leaders don't seem to have noticed.

Anonymous said...

Yes I think people being killed in those numbers for merely protesting about their dodgy leader is enough for us to say no, we're not having that.

"Our last venture didn't go so well, did it?"

I think that's the problem. Iraq. If Iraq hadn't happened, practically NO-ONE would be disagreeing with this action...

I think we should get in there, kill that fucker and his sons, and get out, saying to the people of Libya 'put who you want in charge but don't pick another mad fucker like that'.

Z.

Anonymous said...

You're conflating the latest Iraq conflict with what is going on in Libya, this is a mistake imo. What's going on in Libya is much more akin to the first Gulf war, I don't know if you remember that, we went in because Saddam invaded Kuwait, he was killing people at that time.

If in the first Gulf war we'd actually done the job properly, gone into Iraq and killed _that_ fucker, then the second Gulf war would simply not have been necessary.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the second Gulf war which we went into on _very_ dodgy legal grounds is in any way related to this. At that time Saddam posed no threat to anyone which is why we could not get UN agreement, that was a personal crusade on the part of Bush Jnr, trying to fix Daddy's mistake in not finishing Saddam when he should have.

Gadaffi is a very real threat to a large percentage of his own population and now a very real threat to us if we leave him there. (and when I say now I don't mean since we started bombing him, I think we were probably a target long before that).

Z

Styx said...

Yes I'm with David Davis and the last anon with this one.

So far we are told that Gaddafi is not a target - though the military and the Government appear to differ on this - yes I know that the first casualty of war is truth but still...

Given that Gaddafi chose to use live ammunition on peaceful protesters on Feb 17th and subsequently his lies and faux cease-fires, I think that an attempt simultaneously to provoke some of Gaddafi's associates to defect (as many have already) and to prevent Gaddafi murdering - deliberately - not "collateral damage" - his citizens must be a good thing.

Trooper Thompson said...

Firstly, Leg-Iron thanks for the link in the post.

Secondly, if certain libertarians wish to support the state engaging in its favourite hobby, the onus is on them to justify it.

David Davis said...

in 1991, two London Bobbies could have walked into Baghdad and arrested the murdering Nazi butcher Saddam. He _was_ a Nazi: just looki at all his palaces, each one lovingly modelled on a Stalin one, all 31 of them - and with Villeroy and Boch toilets to boot. And he used standard socialist-Leninist-nazi methods all round.

The two London Bobbies (they didn't even carry Heckler-&-Kochs in those days) would have "sent a strong message" to other repellent thugs thinking of trying it on. Who knows? Even Bobby "chief big-man" Mugabe might have fled with his gold bars and wifelets to Saudi Arabia, or Paris. Poor old Berlusconi's a saint by contrast with those buggers. he pays for his seax, and does not have them and their families dismembered if the little girls have displeased his tastes slightly.

The problem with the West is that we spend so much time arguing and staring into our belly-buttons about the pros and cons and morality of killing wicked people, that we lose the moment. It's like trying to do "The Joy of Sex" and applying too much foreplay: by the time the enemy says he's ready to surrender, we've lost our erection.

Trooper Thompson said...

@ David Davis,

taking out Saddam is one thing. It's the collateral damage of half a million dead other people where the moral problem begins.

Leg-iron said...

Zorro: LI: I don't really understand why you're trying to conflate Libya with the smoking issue, I think that is in bad taste.

I'm not conflating Libya with smoking. That was an example of the ease with which our government declare human beings as non-persons and thus legitimate targets. The smoking comparison was with Gadfly's new designation as a 'legitimate target' by people who were happy to deal with him only the week before. Not with Libya as a whole.

Leg-iron said...

It's a perfectly good and moral stance to say 'yes, we should stop these evil dicators' but where do we draw the line?

This is a small country and is nowhere near as rich and powerful as it once was. We aren't the big boys in the playground any more.

So yes, let's dispose of Saddam, and what then? Let's dispose of the Taliban, and what then? Both countries are now run by regimes every bit as corrupt as the ones we deposed and we're still in there.

Once again, we have a dictator to dispose of, and what then? Even if we depose Gaddafi, who takes his place? We can't dictate who that will be or we are effectively taking over another country. How long do we stay? Until someone we approve of runs the country in a way we approve of?

Hell, we don't even have that at home!

Many of the Arab/African countries are arbitrary boundaries enclosing tribal areas. We don't like to think about that because it was European colonisation that caused it.

Often, these tribes don't get on and the only reason the country functions as a country is because it's a dictatorship. Take that away and the place falls apart into tribes.

Nothing wrong with that, each tribe could go back to running their own territory and call those territories separate countries but it's not as simple as that. The oil in Libya is in certain tribal territories and the non-oil tribes are going to get the scraps.

Then there'll be tribal wars for the oil-rich regions.
What do we do then? Leave them to it and move on to Zimbabwe? Sudan? Syria? How about China? Cuba? Turkmenistan? We'll be fighting wars forever and leaving chaos in our wake.

We simply cannot act as the world's police force, unless we set up a British Empire that covers the entire planet. We tried it, and it fell apart.

Is it Libertarian to say 'We want to live as we choose, and we insist you lot live as we choose too'? Oh, and if you don't, we'll declare you a legitimate target and bomb you. Libertarian doesn't just mean being free to choose your own life. It means letting everyone else choose theirs too. You can't impose libertarianism because if you do, it's not libertarianism at all.

It's not even as if we have the moral high ground. Sure, we vote our lot in, but they lie to get in and when we find they've lied, what can we do about it? Not a thing. Once they are in they act like any other tinpot dictatorship and do just as they please. A vote on the EU? Flatly refused by the government we thought represented us, but in fact represent only themselves.

Today it is announced that all nursing staff face a pay freeze. A suggestion that MPs pay should be frozen (at three times the pay of a nurse) caused threats of a backbench rebellion.

Do we really have the morality to tell Gaddafi how his country should be run?

Finally, we have sided with the rebels but we have no idea what those rebels plan for their country. We have chosen to fight against a regime, not for anything.

Whatever happens, whether we were involved or not, Libya is going to be a mess.

All Cameron has achieved is to set us up to take the blame for it.

We can't fix the whole world. All we do is meddle and make things worse.

It's better for everyone if we stay out of other countries' affairs.

Trooper Thompson said...

Well said.

kitler said...

Why do you all believe Gadaffi is committing massacres when you havent seen a single piece of evidence to back this up?

All we get is news reporters telling us of 'eyewitness accounts'.

Some people really are a bunch of dupes

David Davis said...

Please see Sean Gabb's post on the Libertarian Alliance at:-

http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/sean-gabb-on-the-libyan-intervention/

You will all be very pleased to see that he is against it. I think the comment thread over there may develop quite well in the next few days.

Sean and I are having a good-natured argument about whether people like Legiron and trooper Thompson are right (Sean thinks you are) or whether I am right (nobody else does so far.)

I think - like Cromwell did "in the Bowels of Christ" - that you are all mistaken, but there you go. That's life, and I think that we will all regret not doing stuff like having Hitler and Stalin assassinated in the 1920s, or perhaps not fingering the Frankfurt School to the Salvation Army's "Special Agents" at the same time: it would have at least taken the PC-buggers' eyes off their ball for a bit, and we could have had it kicked into touch.

The trouble of course that I see with my argument is that it depends heavily on hidsight. Who in 1906 would have predicted, from 2,000 miles away in London in a liberal polity, that a Georgian bank-robber called JV Dugashvili would need to be rubbed out in a back alley, or that a half-clever and lazy, angry Austrian boy called Adolf Schickelgruber needed to be watched?

Perhaps I read too much history in my attempt to solve this one.

Anonymous said...

Leg-Iron: Okay perhaps conflating was the wrong word. Believe me I'm with you on the smoking thing (and I live a lot closer to Dover than you!) - but I don't think it's of any particular relevance to the whole Libya/Gaddafi story. It just seems a bit off to be even talking about it (so I'll stop!!)

In your last comment there is much to agree with for sure but I do have issue with a couple of things;

"We aren't the big boys in the playground any more."

Nope America definitely are the big boys now. And I believe they're spending a lot more on ordinance than us at the moment.

"Both countries are now run by regimes every bit as corrupt as the ones we deposed"

Possibly more /corrupt/ in the case of Afghanistan, but I would suggest both are a lot less vicious than what came before, a good thing surely?

"Once again, we have a dictator to dispose of, and what then? Even if we depose Gaddafi, who takes his place? We can't dictate who that will be or we are effectively taking over another country. How long do we stay?"

I don't know who will take his place, I don't much care, I doubt they will be _as_ bad. How long do we stay? Until he and his disgusting offspring are dead.

"Hell, we don't even have that at home!"

No sure but at lease Cameron is not massacring us.

The points you make about Arab tribes are very good and I would say 'leave em to it' once we've taken out the current nutter. If they want to scrap amongst themselves then let them at it...

"Libertarian doesn't just mean being free to choose your own life. It means letting everyone else choose theirs too."

Precisely. The people of Libya are plainly NOT able to choose their own way at the moment, let's help them be able to do so! (They simply do not have the military know how or equipment to take on the regime, the news has made that quite plain over the last few weeks).

"Today it is announced that all nursing staff face a pay freeze. A suggestion that MPs pay should be frozen (at three times the pay of a nurse) caused threats of a backbench rebellion."

Many MPs are scum, no doubt. For the most part I would not piss on them if they were on fire unless I thought I could prolong their firey agony by doing so.

"Do we really have the morality to tell Gaddafi how his country should be run?"

Yes I think we do, our MPs might be mostly scum but Gadaffi is an order of magnitude worse scumbag.

Z.

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