As Gaddafi falls - Lessons from Libya - imperialism, anti-imperialism & democratic revolution

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Friday September 02, 2011 21:31 by libertarian leninist

lough libertarian leninist league

Looking for balance? Andrew Flood gets out his scales and tries to find some balance in Libya. Did the Left come down too heavily on one side?

The sudden end of the Gaddafi regime some 6 months after the start of the Libyan revolt leaves some difficult questions unanswered for the left. Gaddafi’s determination to physically crush the revolt quickly transformed it into a civil war, a civil war that saw considerable imperialist intervention on the rebel side, intervention that was essential to their eventual victory. This and Gaddafi’s historic record led to some on the left taking his side in the civil war while other organisations tried to balance support for the ‘Arab spring’s’ arrival in Libya with opposition to imperialism. This question of where the balance lies between international solidarity with pro-democracy movements and opposition to imperialism could well rapidly return to the top of the agenda in a very much bigger way as the regime in Syria continues its months long military suppression of the democracy movement there.

Truly an anti imperialist?

The spread of the Arab democratic revolution to Libya and the subsequent intervention by imperialist airpower against Gaddafi led to a major and heated debate on the revolutionary left on the question of imperialism. The very complexity of the situation in Libya means that as well as the specifics of this war and revolution it provides a useful starting point for a re-examination of what has become traditional anti-imperialism. Libya like Rwanda, Srebrenica and more rhetorically Palestine has become one of those recent conflicts where many argue for rather than against intervention.