America's ruling class is filled with some of the most wonderful people around. 

In some ways, I’m glad that Colonel Gaddafi has (apparently, at least) been captured and killed in his hometown of Sirte by the barbaric hordes that he had kept at bay for so long. I don’t say this because I have much hope for the democratic dawn in Libya. Indeed, my guess is that one of two outcomes are most likely under the new leadership:

1) The rebels become Washington’s puppets, who make sure that the oil flows (and gets denominated in U.S. dollars), enrich themselves through foreign aid, hold onto power by their fingernails, and become justly reviled by their people;

2) The rebels begin slitting each others' throats, and the country swiftly descends into failed-state status.

Instead, I am somewhat gladdened by the reported outcome because there is a certain heroism to Gaddafi’s demise, which would have been lost were he to live out his life in secluded exile. We can now remember Gaddafi in happier times, when he cut the figure of a dashing dictator.

But what does it all mean? Here are three perspectives:

Ding, Dong, the oppressive dictator is dead! And don't fret, Libyans, that civil order has been destroyed, for soon NATO will install wonderful “Democracy” in your homeland! ...

While my guess is that the American public couldn't care less about the recent toppling of the Gaddafi regime, if it's aware of it at all, the event has revealed, once again, the small, windowless box in which the commentariat reside.

• A left-liberal professor, who from 2003-2008 defined the anti-war blogosphere, is solemnly quoting Niebuhr as he openly supports Obama's NATO intervention and the rebellion.

• It took Washington and NATO an embarrassing five months to topple the regime of a colorful tin-pot dictator, proving, definitively, that the world's supposed “Superpower” is barely capable of small “Jonah Goldberg wars,” fought through surrogates; big ones against regional powers like China and Russia would most certainly prove disastrous. And yet for a Beltway liberal who styled himself a “realist” in the Bush years, Libya marks a “win” for Washington. (Steve Clemons isn't the only “realist” living in a dreamworld...) 

• The “conservative” response, as represented by people like former UN Ambassador John Bolton, is to cheer on “democracy,” but fret that some “Islamicists” might be among the rebels NATO has been backing. (Libyans must learn to elect good men.)

All are on the same page that America is an interventionary force that must spread its political and economic system abroad—and by the D word, they certainly don't mean the will of the people, which in the Middle East and North Africa is likely something close Hamas, nor even liberalism. Democracy means, as the South Park song goes, a pacified, mass population getting the opportunity to choose between a Douche and a Turd, both of whom don't pose the slightest challenge to Washington's dollar-debt-oil world order, as Muammar Gaddafi most certainly did.

And in many ways, the ongoing implosion of America's debt-financed empire reveals Washington's motivations all the more starkly.

Iraq and Afghanistan might have evolved into pointless quagmires; however, when they were launched, they had the shine of the Force of History and Progress sweeping across the desert. The question was how to restrain, or at least ethically harness, American omnipotence.

From the beginning, the Libyan campaign has seemed like something desperate and pathetic—at best, Samantha Powers's fever-dream; at worst, a blatant power grab.

It's worth remembering that on March 19, shortly after NATO became involved, the rag-tag crew of anti-Gaddafi rebels decided to launch a new private central bank, an arrangement more to Washington's liking than Gaddafi's stated desire to begin pricing oil in a gold-backed Dinar. And does anyone doubt that NATO's European underlings will expect the oil to flow?

However the chips might eventually fall, Washington's latest overseas “victory” bespeaks nothing but full-spectrum decline.

Medvedev slams Putin's 'inexcusable' Libya 'crusade' comments

The Christian Science Monitor

Fred Weir

22 March 2011

Moscow – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev exchanged sharp words Monday over the true nature of Western military intervention in Libya, leading many observers to wonder whether the gloves have finally come off in the long-anticipated battle over which of them will run for president in elections that are just one year away.

Though the two have sparred indirectly before, they have publicly maintained that everything is fine with the "tandem" arrangement under which they have jointly run Russia since Mr. Putin handpicked Mr. Medvedev to succeed him as president three years ago.

Both men have said they'd like to run again for what will be a six-year presidential term next year, and have insisted that they will decide amicably between themselves which of them will be the establishment candidate – a status that virtually guarantees success in Russia's heavily stage-managed political culture.

Putin croons like Sinatra: Top 7 marquee moments

Perhaps it's not so amicable anymore.

The tough public words were exchanged over an issue of foreign policy, which is a presidential prerogative under Russia's Constitution. While answering questions from defense workers Monday, Putin slammed the Western-authored United Nations resolution that authorized the use of force to protect Libyan civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi as allowing "anyone to do anything they want" against a sovereign state.

"It resembles a medieval appeal for a crusade in which somebody calls upon somebody to go to a certain place and liberate it," Putin said. "This is becoming a persistent tendency in US policy," mentioning the bombing of Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo war, and subsequent US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Now it is Libya’s turn, under the pretext of protecting the peaceful population. But in bomb strikes it is precisely the civilian population that gets killed. Where is the logic and the conscience?"

A few hours later Medvedev weighed in. Without naming Putin, he made clear that he disagreed with both his tone and the implication that Western powers are acting improperly in Libya.

"It is absolutely inexcusable to use expressions that, in effect, lead to a clash of civilizations, such as 'crusades,' and so on. That is unacceptable," Medvedev said. "All that is now happening in Libya is the result of the appalling behavior of the Libyan leadership and the crimes it committed against its own people."

Russian diplomats did not veto the authorization of force resolution when it came before the Security Council because "I do not consider this resolution to be wrong," he added.

Divergent viewsThose two sharply divergent foreign policy views – one bristling with suspicion toward the West, the other frankly identifying Russia's interests with it – have long been on display in Moscow. But never before have Medvedev and Putin so clearly moved into separate corners in what looks like the prelude to a real fight, analysts say.

Is Putin proving himself a man who understands the "Totalitarian Humanism" of America and Western Europe?

In past blog postings for AltRight, I have discussed the phenomenon of what I call “totalitarian humanism,” a particular worldview that I regard as being at the heart of the most serious political and cultural problems currently facing the modern West. Specifically, I consider totalitarian humanism to be an intellectual and ideological movement among contemporary Western elites that serves as a replacement for older worldviews such as Christianity, nationalism, cultural traditionalism, Eurocentrism, or even Marxism. Such features of modern life as political correctness and victimology serve as a representation of the totalitarian humanist approach to domestic policy. The present war against the Libyan state provides an illustration of what the totalitarian humanist approach to foreign policy and international relations involves.

The regime of Colonel Qaddafi poses no conceivable threat to Western nations. Allegations of Qaddafi’s insanity not withstanding, his substantive efforts over the past two decades to ease tensions between Libya and the West have shown his capabilities for behaving as a rational actor and practicing realpolitik. As recently as August of 2009, Qaddafi was described by David Blair of the Daily Telegraph as having “gone from being the epitome of revolutionary chic to an eccentric statesman with entirely benign relations with the West.” These benign relations ended with the outbreak of the present civil war between Qaddafi and opponents of his regime. Richard Spencer has pointed out the nearly identical parallels between Western intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and the current intervention in Libya. Both interventions serve as prototypes for the vision for the world that our contemporary elites possess. An interesting discussion that aired earlier today on ABC’s This Week cuts to the chase of the matter. Former Congresswoman Jane Harman, now of the aptly named Woodrow Wilson Center, monster neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, and Wilson Center scholar Robin Wright provided rationales for the intervention that involved no consideration whatsoever of national interests, geopolitical questions, or legitimate defensive concerns. Essentially, their rationales amount to little more than “Qadaffi runs an illiberal regime.”

Libya under Qadaffi represents everything Western elites despise: a conservative, religious, nationalistic, traditional, patriarchal, tribal society that has resisted the penetration of its own culture by the norms of Western, secular, liberal, humanism and globalism. According to the religion of Western elites, Qaddafi is an infidel and must be punished or destroyed. The intervention in Libya is essentially about spreading the Jacobin revolution to the Middle East (a plausible argument of a comparable nature could be made concerning the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq). The role of the United Nations and the participation of certain usually rather pacific European nations in the assault on Libya is rather telling. The vision of the elites is one where a global super-state maintains an international army whose purpose is the eradication of political institutions and cultural values that fail to conform to the standards of totalitarian humanism. Kosovo and Libya are essentially pilot programs for this future vision.

I must confess that I have a half-written blog entry on how the Obama administration has, in essence, given up on the American Empire. Due to fiscal constraints, its own incompetence, and its lack of self-assurance in the wake of Iraq and rising anti-Americanism, the Democratic power elite (along with allies like Robert Gibbs) simply doesn’t have the will to act. It was thus unwilling to save Israel’s ally Hosni Mubarek and has been dragging its feet instituting a no-fly zone over Libya. Actively toppling the Gaddafi regime would be out of the question.

I further argued that this inaction will be opposed and demeaned by the mainstream Republican presidential contenders (with the possible exception of Haley Barbour), who will shriek about how Obama is “appeasing dictators.” (On this front, see the Politico’s recent piece “The Return of the Neocons.”)

I was to conclude that for those of us who think the American Empire is a liability for both the American people and the West in general, the Democrats‘ dilly-dallying is actually preferable to the Republicans’ lunatic war-mongering.

Well, needless to say, my half-written blog has been overtaken by events, and my sense that the Democrats are giving up on empire now seems like wishful thinking.

Instead, what we are experiencing today in Libya is a situation that, in many ways, resembles the last time a Democratic president engaged in major military action overseas.  It’s Kosovo all over again:

• The UN offers its imprimatur;
• NATO provides the muscle;
• The U.S. declares war on a small national regime with no clear objectives or exit-strategy;
• A statesman (Milošević/Gadaffi), whom Washington had dealt with civilly only months before, is depicted as a Hitlerian menace (and the dutiful media eats it up);
• The U.S. takes sides in a civil war and uses its air and missile power on behalf of a group (the KLA/Libyan rebels) that is—at best—highly dubious.

Libya might actually turn out far worse than Kosovo in that it will eventuate in a failed state and a mass Muslim refugee flow into Europe.

Daniel Larison is quite good on these matters:

The similarities with Kosovo are eerie, and that is a very bad sign for the people living in eastern Libya. Perhaps the only thing worse than intervening in a civil war in which the U.S. and our allies have nothing at stake is to intervene and then opt for those tactics that will do just enough to commit us to the fight without protecting the people our forces are supposed to be protecting. Quite apart from the outrageous harm done to both Albanian and Serb civilians in the prosecution of the air campaign, the war in Kosovo facilitated and caused the mass refugee exodus from Kosovo that it was officially trying to avert. The U.S. and our allies weren’t going to be responsible for what happened to the people in eastern Libya, but our governments have now assumed responsibility for them.

Whatever you want to say about them, the ’99 House Republicans were steadfastly against Clinton’s Kosovo adventure; Gov. George W. Bush (in another life) actually scolded Al Gore for engaging in “nation-building.” After the entire mainstream GOP went “all in” for Iraq, they now have nothing to run on.