"ALL NECESSARY MEASURES" MEANS TAKING OUT KHADAFY.
It’s A Matter Of Survival, Thus Justice.
(Reagan called Khadafy the "mad dog of Africa".)
***
Abstract: Why did the holocaust of the Jews happened? Because Germans believed that human rights were less important than other notions. Germans were moved first by these other notions. German culture was organized that way. Denazification could not correct this.
Kadhafi, the Libyan dictator, after gunning with tanks, and strafing with planes his opponents, called them “germs” who he was going to “exterminate without pity or mercy”.
Guess what? Many in Germany still do not get it (and Germany has flouted orders from the United Nations ordering a weapons embargo on Libya).
Before the Second World War, Hitler made himself the advocate of “peace”, and obsequious pacifists flocked to help him set-up the conditions for Auschwitz. Afterwards, they lied that they did not know that Hitler was a bad person, and they swore never to pronounce his name again.
The operation in Libya is to protect civilians from the leadership of a mass murdering criminal, who has been referred to the International Court of Justice by the United Nations. Even nations which, historically spurned the ICJ (USA, Russia, China) voted that way.
The intervention in Libya is more a humanitarian, international police operation than a war. Those who stand in its way are beneath contempt and oblivious to history.
We can learn a lot from the way that other mass murdering criminal, mad dog Adolf Hitler, was dealt with, or, rather, not dealt with. Then, in 1939 and 1940, and even 1941, and most of 1942, the USA acted badly, as it let France and Britain go to war alone against Nazi Germany. The result was 70 million killed.
In a magnificent contrast, this time the president of the USA acted splendidly, and was deaf to all those indifferent to massacres (thus Obama earned his Nobel Peace Prize retroactively).
Britain, France and the USA united, fighting for human rights, against fascism: no wonder Germans are crying up a river. Those don’t seem to have progressed much since 1939, philosophically speaking. Now pro-fascist, pro-massacre Merkel has withdrawn German ships from NATO command, to avoid helping in the arms embargo on Libya mandated by the United Nations. (How about changing back to the preceding flag?)
The Congress of the USA may not have progressed much since 1939, either. It has to integrate the following notion. The USA’s fate is closely related to that of its parents, France and Britain. France and Britain are not just allies, or “partners”, they deserve to be worshipped by the USA according to an ancestor cult. France and Britain gave birth to the higher principles at the core of what the USA wants to be.
How brain dead or fascist countries feel, does not matter. Those have to be instructed, rather than consulted obsequiously.
For the basic conventional reasons to get rid of Qaddafi, see for example the New York Times’ "A War In Libya".
In this essay we dig deeper, and spare nought. The planet has shrunk, gunship diplomacy is to be replaced by survival enforcement. And the best way to survive is to enforce human rights, planet-wide.
The leading democracies have counter-attacked in Libya on behalf of the People against the heavily mechanized mercenary force of the self described "King of Kings of Africa". This intervention of civilization against abomination was pretty much launched by a single individual, the French national dandy, the wealthy and gutsy philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy ("BHL", who, from Benghazi, told his friend the French president he should act fast and why; BHL was a friend of president Mitterrand, he is an anti-fascist philosopher).
However one should go further than stopping the mayhem, be it only because it will start again as soon as we turn our back, and we cannot have Combat Air Patrol over Libya ad vitam eternam.
KADHAFI SHOULD BE TAKEN OUT (dragging him and his entourage to the International Court of Justice would be best).
Destroying Kadhafi’s regime has to be the aim of the war, and it has to be done swiftly (for reasons to be made clear below). The most moral way to do away with the regime, is to attack Khadafy personally, and to attack his sons, who are his own personal Goebbels and Himmler. Those individuals, mass murdering terrorists, ought to be the prime military targets.
I use the terror exercised by the Khadafys to reveal shallow and nefarious aspects of Socrates’ philosophy. On the way to demolish Gaddafi, one has to do away with Socrates’ sneaky hypocrisy.
Socrates had to fight for democracy, as a philosopher. He did not. Socrates did not understand the mental superiority of democracy. Just the opposite.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, used specious arguments to undermine democracy. They contributed to the occupation of Greece by a succession of fascist regimes for more than 21 centuries. Indeed they undermined the spirit of the Athenian National Assembly, while encouraging Athenian plutocrats to collaborate with fascists (and, ultimately those fascists were the Macedonian led by the presciently named general Antipater).
The small Russian muscle man, the top plutocrat Putin, and the unsophisticated Germans, have expressed their displeasure at the sight of democracy smashing dictatorship. For reminder, Russia and Germany were two fascist dictatorships allied to each other from 1917(de facto!), until June 1941. Some seem to have kept all too fond memories.
When Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and most of Western Europe were invaded in 1940, Russian oil propelled Nazi tanks. Now Russia and Germany dare collaborate again together against the western democracies?
Russia, to this day, is a half republic, a petro regime riddled by a state directed plutocracy. Russia should learn democracy, and that starts with listening quietly to those who have long practiced it. Now Denmark, Holland and Norway are siding with France and Britain, and have engaged in hostilities against the fascist mass murdering dictator to their south.
It is a time, when in Europe, people and individuals can chose again to do something against fascism in defense of democracy.
In a bitter, and alarming reminder of the atrocious past, Germany is on the other side, the fascist side. Sad, and troubling. German history, and the despicable, uneducated, lying attitude of Germany at the United Nations are scrutinized below, and this enlightens the debate.
Predictably, the major Italian plutocrat, Berlusconi (personal worth above ten billion dollars) is sabotaging the anti-coalition effort, by asking NATO in (when Arabs don’t like NATO, and major members Germany and Turkey are pro-Qaddafi).
Putin maybe an even bigger plutocrat than his comrade Qaddafi. Qaddafi is a plutocrat, Putin orders plutocrats around. Putin sneered that getting rid of Gaddafi reminded him of the crusades, when “one invaded a place to liberate it". Well, maybe he should learn Soviet history: after all Germany was invaded and destroyed, to be liberated, in 1945.
Russian President Medvedev, a lawyer by formation, walked directly to reporters he had convoked. Chin up, he declared severely that it was "completely inadmissible in such a situation to use such terms, and evoke a shock of civilization". Medvedev was as serious as one could be. He then walked briskly away, after his twenty second press conference. It was very courageous, and even admirable, for Medvedev to condemn, and so brazenly, the former head of the KGB (Putin). Hence one man can stand in the way of plutocracy. Ideally, Putin ought to resign, but he will not, because he is the stealth dictator of Russia.
Putin has sent a task force of extremely wealthy billionaires to take over the French Riviera. Among other places. Today Qaddafi, tomorrow Putin? Clearly, this is what Putin is thinking about, and he worries: where is this assault against plutocracy going to end? Are French philosophers going to attack Putin’s apparent scheme of revolution by corruption?
Physically eliminating Hitler was a moral duty, and would have prevented, or shortened the world war, saving up to 70 million people. It was a massive failure of morality not to have assassinated mad dog Hitler.
The non execution of Hitler was first a German moral failure, and a failure of German collective intelligence. Hitler was the beloved "Guide" of the Germans, and maybe they feel empathy for the African mercenaries madly in love for the bloody tyrant who enriches them (when you have been co-dependent, you justify other co-dependents).
The French were the first to conduct a bombing raid on Nazi Berlin. Ironically, Berlin was less pro-Hitler than many other places in Germany. Any fighter in the anti-Nazi Resistance would have assassinated Hitler, so why did the Allies not try it? They did not try it, because they thought it was against the laws of chivalrous war.
But there was nothing chivalrous about the context. Hitler himself was the biggest outlaw of the twentieth century (Stalin had more excuses, starting with the German threat).
By the Fall of 1940, French authorities had determined that Hitler was mass exterminating civilians, and had assassinated at least 700,000 Jews in extermination camps (However, by then Metropolitan France was occupied by the Nazis, and the military power of French forces had waned). The French advertised the holocaust widely, but the Anglo-Saxons powers that be decided to ignore those pleas (the Americans had selfish interest to refuse to fight the Nazis, the British were fighting for their own survival, and could not do more than what they were doing).
When a guy grabs a gun and points it at the head of children, does civilization say that he primarily requires respect and due judicial process? The question answers itself.
So why was not mad dog Hitler targeted for elimination personally? Because of a quaint morality, the belief that 80 million Germans could not be that wrong. There was still a modicum of respect for Germany, and its electorally chosen "Guide". It was misplaced.
Hitler deserved less respect than a rabid dog. And so it was for the millions of Germans licking his toes. The collective mind exists, and so does the collective guilt. Especially when it comes from the collective hubris, and a collective facility for lying, and being "apolitical" (namely looking the other way when Auschwitz smokes; many German towns could literally SMELL the burned flesh of extermination, but, for the German mind, smelling a massacre is apparently not evidence enough ).
By 1938, Hitler should not have been viewed by democracies as a head of state anymore. He was a mass murdering gangster, violating all human rights in sight, and calling those violations “laws”. Any government official who forfeits human rights to that extent should lose any human legitimacy in the eye of democracy.
The same considerations, and the same answer, hold for mad dog Kadhafi. Qaddafi was never elected, though, so he has even less legitimacy than Hitler that way. Gaddafi’s mass murdering acts are legions.
Mad dog Qaddafi ought to be treated as Hitler ought to have been treated, the way an armed mass murderer ought to be treated, and generally is. And for exactly the same reasons. If a mass murderer takes children as human shields, snipers aim at his head, in any decent state (it does not even have to be a democracy, it could be a putinocracy).
All too many Germans of influence apparently still consider that using tanks and bombers to kill civilians is no drama, and leaves them cool and collected.
Real democracies should instead insist to bring to justice gangsters who lead countries astray. And to do it in a timely manner.
Some whine, why did we not bomb Bahrain, or Yemen, or Syria, or Jordan? Well neither the threats, nor the butchery has been comparable there. Those countries are not on Europe’s doorstep, nor have threaten to, and mass murdered American or European civilians.
In 1939-1945, Germany disagreed that “Guides” who lead countries astray should be brought to justice, and it still dares to disagree now, having learned apparently nothing.
Germany’s ethical immaturity ought not to matter to France and Britain: they are used to German nihilism, and now the balance of power is clearly not on pathetic Germany’s side. Germany ought to go back to school, and learn history for a change. Meanwhile, France and Britain can teach some more positive history.
Hitler and Qaddafi are not knights in shining morals with whom democracies have legitimate gripes. Instead tyrants such as Qaddafi and Hitler are criminal gangsters with a fanatical devotion to themselves, modern cut-throat highway men, empowered by technology and plutocracy, emboldened by the timidity of the lawmen.
The mere existence of crazed despots such as Hitler and Qaddafi is combat, thus they are legitimate targets. Qaddafi does not even bother to hide his mass murdering principles (contrarily to Hitler, an avowed apostle of peace, a tremendous lie which hypnotized the gullible, ahistorical Germans…hey, who wants to be German, and learn history? Just asking… Crying up a river smears the ink. But notice that, the more the Germans do not feel like learning about history, the more they do more of the same, the more disgusting they get, the less they learn.)
What we are witnessing is the rise of “We The People” against the dictatorship principle imposed on the southern part of the Mediterranean around 16 centuries ago. Yes, Islam associated tyrannies were the second phase of the Roman Christian imperial mass murdering theocracy which had crushed Mid Terra’s in body and mind.
The rise of pro-democracy does not please some who prefer fascism, or who prefer to keep all the riches to themselves (discrete allusion to Germany and Turkey, which see developing the south of the Mediterranean as competition for their own backyard). But the rise of pro-democracy should please those thrilled by the real spirit of the hearth of civilization, that spirit which has made us what we are.
Fascism is not compatible with the continuation of civilization, planet wide. Destroying fascism is the essence of the ultimate morality, survival of humankind (no, Hitler did not subscribe to that morality, because, like the Germans, or Kadhafi, he started a war, just to lose it… As Salvador Dali pointed out).
Doing away with mad dogs help doing away with the mad dog spirit. After doing away with Hitler the mad dog, Germany was well behaved for 65 years, and ten and a half months. If one does away with the mad Libyan mass murderer, humanity will take heed, and learn (that Germany seems incapable of learning comes from its mechanical hubris, other countries will find easy not to fall into that).
Last, but not least. In 1929, plutocracy threw the world in a crisis, a cover for establishing working relationships with all sorts of tyrants (some in place, such as Stalin or Mussolini, or some incubated, such as Hitler). Right now, we have a similar situation. Plutocracy is going to try to start a big bad war. To do so, it needs its strong men. To stop it, democracies need to be pro-active (and not passive, as in the thirties, or cutting deals with the fascists, as the USA and Britain did all too long).
Kadhafi leads perhaps the world’s richest plutocratic clan (140 billion dollars, plus mercenary armies). Short of the Saudis, of course. The Libyan despot thus has many friends among the world wide plutocratic network, and that is why he was able to get away with so much. One can hear influential Americans such as Brent Scowcroft (close associate to Bush I) deeply regretting that one would do away with such a sure value of the existing order as Gaddafi. he was close to tears on the august TV channel PBS. He looks like another one once on Qaddafi’s payroll. Such good money, so much of it.
Disposing of the Libyan despot chops off one of the most vicious and avid heads of the plutocratic hydra. That may encourage those who, like the honorable Obama, have hesitated to take the minnow plutocrats on Wall Street head on (Soros, another plutocrat, in sheep disguise, has partly excused himself for steering a university to serve the Khadafi clan).
***
***
SI VIS VITAM, PARA BELLUM:
A fireman told his wife he was going to the spewing, exploding, burning, tsunami ravaged Fukushima nuclear installation with its 6 crippled, partly melted reactors, and seven fuming, boiling nuclear pools. His wife said:"Go save Japan." This is the spirit. The spirit of democracy. Save the People. In democracy, the People rules, and not just with words. It also rules over the heart, and the notion of ultimate sacrifice.
That fireman, and his wife are heroes. So were the French pilots who destroyed tank columns dashing into Benghazi, even though Kadhafy’s anti-aircraft defenses were still fully functional. Life could not wait, death had to be stopped. By all measures necessary. The planes came out of the dark clouds, just in time. Another two hours, and much of Kadhafi’s tank force would have been completely inside Benghazi, making it impossible to destroy from the air, without killing many civilians.
***
ASSASSINATING RABID DOG HITLER WOULD HAVE SPARED DOZENS OF MILLIONS:
It was a moral duty to execute Hitler. It was a tragedy not to have done so. That tragedy is called "The Holocaust". 70 million killed.
The first plot against mad dog Hitler by the top German generals happened in 1938. They needed a cover-up, namely a reason that even the moronic Germans could understand, demonstrating to them, cognitively impaired Germans, that Hitler was going to destroy Germany.
At the time France was clearly close to declaring war to Hitler, but Britain was not. The idea of general Ludwig Beck (the head of the German army), and his colleagues, was to have Britain send a strong message that one more sign of craziness from Hitler would make Britain join France in declaring war to Germany. So the top German generals contacted the British government, to ask Britain to make very clear that it was going to go to war against Hitler. Unfortunately, pro-Nazi traitors in London warned Hitler instead of warning Germany. Beck lost his job, but he kept on coordinating his ex-colleagues in opposing Hitler. He was forced to commit suicide on July 20, 1944.
In 1943, plotting field Marshalls had contrived to invite Hitler to a fateful breakfast in the Ukraine. Elite aristocratic officers, expert at guns since their childhood, were to shoot the dictator in the face (to avoid Hitler’s body and skull armor). However, Himmler, head of the SS, did not show up, and the commanding Marshall let Hitler have breakfast in peace. It is very unfortunate that the young officers did not proceed nevertheless. Again in 1943, German officers put a bomb in Hitler’s plane, but it did not explode.
In July 1944, courageous German officers tried to kill Hitler while making a coup in collaboration with the chiefs of the Nazi armies in Germany and France. The explosion of the bomb spared Hitler. The coup still proceeded, for a while. However, when despicable German officers learned that their beloved Fuehrer had survived, they arrested the courageous ones, and had them executed. German discipline at its best. Where does it come from? Cowardice. Stupidity. Intense mediocrity.
Oh, by the way, this proves that decapitating a regime led by a criminal leading other criminals who have nothing to lose, can work. If Hitler had died, or had been severely wounded, the many general officers and Marshalls who knew of the plot would have gone along with the coup (the next step was to inform the Western Allies that Hitler was dead, and that Germany wanted to put an end to hostilities).
The Wolf’s Lair conference room soon after the explosion. Four died. Too little, too late.
The 20 July plot of 1944 attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, "Guide" of the Third Reich, inside his Wolf’s Lair field headquarters in East Prussia (now in Russia). Hitler was always in hiding, especially from the German army. Similarly, Kadhafi is the self described "Guide" of Libya, and runs a secretive regime even less lawful than Hitler’s.
The plot against Hitler combined most groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi regime. The failure of both the assassination and the military coup d’état which was planned to follow it led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people. According to records of the Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 people were officially executed.
The organized resistance in Germany was destroyed. Morality? If one does not destroy ruthlessly nihilistic gangsters such as Hitler or Kadhafi, they will destroy you. And the more they destroy, the more they have to destroy, just to see another day (this phenomenon was made famous with the Roman emperors Caligula, then Nero and Domitian, during the fateful half century when Rome got habituated to autocratic fascism).
The coup d’état would certainly have worked if the many general officers who sat on a fence had realized that Hitler would assassinate them ALL afterwards. Instead many meekly hope that, by joining the repression, they would prove their submission to their Guide. The same process is in evidence in Libya. Like Hitler, Qaddafi stands ready to torture the families of his enemies.
The widespread hostility to Hitler in the German’s officer corps was blunted by a set of German character traits which actually violated German military law, let alone basic human common sense and decency. In retrospect, it is pretty obvious that, if the objective was to limit the number of death caused by Hitler, Hitler had to be eliminated, and there was neither honor nor ethics, nor any intelligence in not doing so.
Kadhafi is similar in detailed ways to Hitler. For example, neither trusted their own armies. They preferred to depend upon foreign mercenaries. The French jets killed many non Libyan mercenaries in the attacking tank columns.
Similarly Hitler came to depend upon a mercenary force, the Waffen SS. At its peak, the Waffen SS had more than one million mercenaries, 38 divisions, and many small units besides. By the end of the world war ethnic non-Germans made up approximately 60% of the Waffen-SS. Ironically, in his last few days, Hitler was defended mostly by fanatical French speaking SS. German combatants had given up on him.
After the failure of coup d’état, the Second World War went on, as the half crazed Nazi criminals were still in power, and more crazy than ever. Their obsession was to kill as many as they could as they died themselves. They were all into their destructive madness, posing as Wagnerian heroes, congratulating themselves to have annihilated European Jews. They celebrated the Gotterdammerung (the destruction of the gods and all things in a final battle with evil), the proto-Nazi and great racist Richard Wagner had made an opera on the theme, and the Nazis played it, in a huge solemn occasion at the Berlin opera house, with artillery rumbling in the distance, and a hole in the roof. Self aggrandizing madness. Now one French fuel explosive bomb could have taken care of them all.
Another twenty million or so, died, including maybe seven million more Germans. Still, after the war was over, millions of deluded Germans kept on hating the courageous officers who had tried to kill the rabid dog. As those fanatics, contaminated by the rabies, died from old age, a reconsideration of sort happened. Some German army barracks are named after Colonel Count von Stauffenberg. Merkel should go there, get on knees, pray and analyze what it all means. And how she came short. It’s not enough to go around with a red dress.
***
WE HAVE LAWS BECAUSE WE WANT TO SURVIVE:
Humanity is about the mind. The mind comes from inside the self, and also from others. The spit of a rabid dog cannot infect more than a few, the mind of a rabid human can infect the many. Khadafy has ordered many times to deliberately kill civilians, and boasted about it. Result? Many other regimes doing the same. And the worst, the ones with many nukes, doing it implicitly. Time to call it off.
Socrates talked about the law ad nauseam. Nice, but shallow. What is the deepest reason for the law already? Survival. Socrates fought for Athens on the battlefield, very courageously, saving fellow soldiers at great risk, and killing at least four in hand to hand combat. So he knew about survival. Of the self.
However, Socrates’ survival skills came short in the field he provided the most added value with, philosophy. His work, albeit long term precious, clearly contributed to weaken Athens, lethally, during his lifetime, and the crucial two generations after that. The fascist friendly philosophy of Socrates and his philosophical descendants weakened the People, and emboldened the Athenian plutocrats, who ended up collaborating with Macedonia. Greece was also handicapped with its anti-imperialist mentality, which prevented its unification, whereas the Macedonian were infused with the imperial principle.
Thus, in the big picture, Socrates, at the time, failed completely in implementing the fundamental reason for the law in Athens. His wishy-washy philosophy caused the death of democracy and two millennia of triumphal fascism (often disguised as theocracy).
***
THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA LEARNS, CONGRESS & GERMANY DO NOT:
This time, differently from 1914, 1939 and 1956, the USA is standing with its parents, France and Britain, to fight for their defining principle, democracy, right from the start. At last.
We have to thank Obama’s courage for this. Suddenly we have an immensely courageous Obama. American lawmakers have pointed out that Obama’s action was “illegal”, as it violates the “war powers act’. However, the War Powers Act of 1973 is itself illegal, as it contradicts international law ratified by the USA. Indeed the NATO charter declares that any attack on one of its members is an attack on all. Moreover, of course, the Libyan dictator attacked the USA since 1973, killing much more than in the Lusitania.
It is because of this sort of Americano-American close mindedness, or outright idiocy, that American lawmakers refused to do anything against Hitler, for years. In truth they were objecting because their rich masters were busy doing business with Hitler. The same holds with Qaddafi.
Verily, the American plutocrats have set-up a giant exploitative machine throughout the Mideast, which provides them with cheap oil. Kaddafi is a fancy wheel in this well oiled device. Lose him, and the question of Saudi Arabia, for example, arises. It’s not just about oil, but about enormous money flows, recycled inside Wall Street, and, ultimately, the Congress of the USA. Hurting that wealth machine ought to be illegal, say the congressmen, and they repeat their performance with Hitler, an even more important device for enriching American plutocracy, and, thus, Congress.
The USA underwent an anti-plutocratic revolution as its founding act. It was generated indigenously (with encouragement from French special agents, especially in Philadelphia). What was the founding act of the present German republic? Its invasion by the tank armies of most democracies, and its erstwhile ally, the USSR. Democracy was brought to Germany at the point of a gun. does Germany understand that? Maybe it does understand that all too well, and seethes with resentment.
I have been highly critical of many of Obama’s policies, but, on this most important of all subjects, war in Libya, he is acting perfectly, and much better than any president before him, for at least a century. Even Clinton intervened in the Balkans years after France and Britain did, and only gave logistical support to the French army in Rwanda.
Now Obama was here on day one to fight for democracy, and save the Mediterranean revolution against fascism, an immense change, renewing finally with the spirit that president Washington and his successor showed in the same Libya, then already occupied by a pirate dictatorship of Turkish obedience. Washington attacked, and so doing shamed Britain and then France into taking action. If they had not, slavery and impaling would still be of the essence in North Africa. If you don’t believe me, go to steal a piece of pizza in Saudi Arabia: your hand will be chopped off. The "West" never invaded Saudi Arabia.
It goes without saying that the despicable betrayal of Germany in March 2011 repeats the same hypocritical scheme Socrates inaugurated: collaborating with fascism against democracy under a cloud of specious arguments (most of them so vile they can only be seen below) .
***
NECESSARY TO DESTROY THE RABID MIND:
The UN resolution 1973 calls on "ALL NECESSARY MEASURES" to protect the "Libyan People". The resolution forbids an "occupation" force (but not an intervention force).
Qaddafi has been massacring civilians for 42 years, and was boasting he would do more of the same, massacring civilians Libyan or not, "with no mercy, nor pity", weeks after he was referred to the International Criminal Court, for mass murder and crimes against mankind, by the United Nations.
So, "all necessary measures" to protect civilians means taking out Khadafy. The situation is more explicit with the Libyan dictator than it was with the Nazi dictator during his reign.
As the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy ("BHL") said on French TV, "before the holocaust, there is the massacre" ("avant l’holocauste, il y a le massacre"). And the massacre is a holocaust warning, as the quake is a tsunami warning.
BHL did extremely well in this crisis (although he woke up very late, like Brad Pitt/Achilles in the movies "Troy", he did what was necessary). According to French officials, "Sans le cinema de BHL, il ne ce serait rien passe’". So BHL was good for Libya as Socrates was bad with Athens. And the reasons are deep and philosophical. Basically BHL’s philosophy is anti-fascist, whereas Socrates’ philosophy was pro-fascist. Fascism is not just political, it goes to the deepest fibers of man, why and how man thinks. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle were pro-slavery, pro-plutocratic, pro-fascist, hence may have undermined Athenian democracy just enough to cause its ultimate defeat by fascist, theocratic Macedonia, changing the course of civilization. Things may have been completely different if a trio of anti-slavery, anti-plutocratic, anti-fascist philosophers had achieved as much fame instead.
Thus there are extremely philosophically sophisticated, global reasons for taking Kadhafi out: do we want fascism and plutocracy to win, thanks to its mercenaries? The deepest of the reason for destroying the likes of the Libyan tyrant is the ultimate one: SHEER SURVIVAL.
The next big war will be fought with nuclear weapons, except if the democracies take out all dangerous regimes, before the conflict go nuclear. (The similarity some will fear with G. W. Bush is only apparent.)
***
A SMALL PLANET REQUIRES BIG HEART, DEEP MIND, SOARING PRINCIPLES:
Post decolonization, something unexpected happened, namely, its exact opposite, total interdependency. Decolonization could not work, should not have worked, and did not work, instead it swept back like a tsunami wave, interfering with itself, and causing even more waves and destruction.
Why? How? The planet has shrunk. Relative to our existing technology, it is now no bigger than a large European county in the Middle Ages. What happens anywhere else in that county is every one’s business.
It is therefore of prime importance to take out the crazies. Not one crazy should escape the wrath of democracy. A fortiori when several Casus Belli exist. Kadhafi is a mass murderer prone to boasting of his disregard of the most basic laws. He was acquiring the capability for making nuclear weapons, from Pakistan, until Bush made a deal with him, exchanging torture and executions for oil. Therefore Qaddafi is an excellent case for drawing the line on tyranny. The Libyan tyrant should not just be nicked, he should be destroyed. This way, he would be made finally useful in some way. Otherwise we would be doing what the Greeks did, namely not destroying Macedonia when they could have, for wishy-washy philosophical reasons arising from blatant neurological laziness.
In earlier times, powers such as Portugal or Spain, and then, later France, Britain, the Netherlands went around the world, looking for riches. Doing so, they created worlds, such as Brazil. OK, the entire process of world entanglement has been disparaged as "colonialism" and "imperialism". Ethnocides happened on the way; however they always have, and precious elements of the ancient cultures survived, as in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, South Africa, India, Indonesia. Now we are all colonists, and colonized. Some force will be needed to re-establish a modicum of order, lest all we breathe are nuclear fumes.
No, this was not an allusion to the scheming nuclear operator which created a disaster in Japan, but an allusion to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
***
GERMANY’S RELAPSE IN PRIMITIVE MEDIOCRITY:
On the way to Tripoli, something scary happened: Germany, or more exactly Merkel, disappeared into a hole, and fell back with its old demons.
German politics relapsed into its main problem. Astounding. Does Germany learn? 130 years after being condemned ferociously by Friedrich Nietzsche for getting ready to bring the horrors it brought, Germany is at it again.
Nietzsche condemned German culture for what it was, or, mostly for what it was not. In the nineteenth century German culture made it dangerous to be worthy. (Nietzsche expressed it nearly in these terms, and was forbidden to teach in universities anymore).
This translated this way in the twentieth century: all too many Germans came to feel that it was to be dangerous to be a democrat, or a defender of human rights. Hitler was taught that later. Dangerous to be worthy is a curious trait for a country which aim at disciplined excellence. But so it is when discipline overwhelms excellence.
So here we are, with Germany’s head back to 1933: it is dangerous to fight for democracy, says Germany, not minding becoming again the outcast of Europe, as it exhibits a dry heart, an empty head, and no guts. Well, France and Britain have to teach savages some more. Lesson #1: Democracy is worth dying for, especially as now globalization of high tech means that no democracy entails no regeneracy. Germany should copy that in capital letters 100 trillion times.
Germany’s relapse is a warning that it is very hard for cultures to learn, even when abomination itself taught them. On the positive side, Germany s is offering a snide service to the world, because it warns all cultures that relapsing in mediocrity, or even criminality, often looms, as the culture one sees and understands heavily depends upon a subculture one neither sees, nor understand. Germany has not become fully Cartesian. Hopefully Germany will understand this, and Merkel will realize that a possible electoral defeat is no justification for an ethical collapse.
Some evoke other Arab countries, and wonder why the democracies did not intervene there yet. Well, they did, verbally, and now visually. An objective of crushing Kadhafi is to crush the spirit of dictators.
***
DEMONSTRATING DEMOCRACY AS A PRINCIPLE WORTH FIGHTING FOR:
As French planes bombed tanks even before attacking the air defense system, the heroic message was that democracy is a danger worth defending. When curing gangrene, one amputates the most affected part first. Khadafy ‘s goons had killed at least 8,000 rebels.
***
COLLABORATING WITH HITLER: DESPICABLE SWITZERLAND:
Is a country which does not defend democracy, such as Switzerland, a democracy? Of course not, and that was demonstrated in World War Two, when Switzerland collaborated with Hitler, instead of fighting him. So did Sweden.
By contrast, Finland and Norway, half the size, heroically fought fascism. Treacherous democracies such as Sweden or Switzerland are not really democracies, because they survived only by collaborating with fascists, and depending upon real democracies to defeat said fascists, so they could live to see another day. actually countries which are determined to" stay neutral", namely not to defend democracy, should be banned from the European Union.
The US Air Force had a precision bombing campaign to deprive the Nazis of indispensable equipment, such as ball bearings. However the Nazis kept on having ball bearings for their machinery. That was mysterious.
Finally the US Air Force had to launch a massive raid to smash crucial Nazi factories located in Suisse. With supreme irony, the Americans excused themselves for this "error". Other "errors" involved stealing funds from massacred Jews.
***
COLLABORATE WITH FASCISM, BECOME ALIKE: SUISSE AGAIN:
Is Switzerland still a lamentable, conniving entity deprived of a sense of democracy, as it jiggles below mountains of ignominy? On November 18 2010, four month ago, a Swiss politician was prosecuted by the Swiss Federal Council with a possible sentence of three years in jail, for having called the criminal Khadafy a "criminal" (for "insults against a chief of state").
When one has not learned to defend democracy, one stoops. Swiss neutrality is a sham. Historically, it means that France and Britain have to defend Switzerland, while Switzerland collaborates with the enemy.
The dearth of democracy showed very practically, even inside: Switzerland practiced arbitrary detentions, especially of children, sometimes against their families’ pleas (these were so called “administrative detentions”). A commune, or a canton would secretly decide to jail someone, without even informing either those jailed, nor their families. Something like that would be unimaginable in the French republic next door, a democracy. Detainees would be used for menial work as in the Middle ages (but without the judicial proceedings of the Middle Ages). This included stealing babies and forced adoption. As in fascist Spain and Argentina. Fascist is who fascist befriends.
This happened two generations after Switzerland’s collaboration with Hitler, up to 1980s, showing that one thing leads to another.
Nowadays, not enough democracy out there means nukes over our heads soon. And it can happen in a sneaky way, as when the private company in Japan did not take all measures to cool its crippled reactors, because it was trying to "protect its assets".
So the behavior of a country like Switzerland have now to be questioned. Dearth of democracy is not to be tolerated (But a huge progress now: Suisse helped with Libya. It let 20 British military trucks drive through!)
***
TWENTIETH FIRST CENTURY: GERMANY SAYS, AGAIN, THAT DEMOCRACY IS NOT WORTH FIGHTING FOR:
Germany don’t learn no thinking, as G. W, Bush no doubt proffered. Germany voted against democracy in Libya. Merkel’s despicable non-act, abstaining against action in Libya, as if it were Russia, but without the excuses of Russia was praised by the opposition Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party. We have again a German problem!
The German UN representative, who did not seem happy to read the text he had to read, said it was "dangerous". Ach so. Contradicting Hitler was also dangerous. So Germany did not contradict Hitler, and others, like France and Britain, had to step in, and contradict Hitler. Anything new in the German Weltgestalt und Glaubenswirklichkeit ? (World picture and reality of belief ?) Germany goes from danger to danger. Should it stay in a hole, and never come out? It may be better. If you can’t think, don’t try.
"I can assure you that we had respect and understanding for our position and our decision even from those that voted in favor" of the resolution permitting "all necessary measures" to protect civilians, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said, a day after Germany’s abysmal abstention at the United Nation Security Council. Guido the Guide is from the "Free Democratic Party". Apparently free of democracy. Well, he does not get respect from here. Instead he is getting a history lesson, because, obviously he and Merkel need some.
Westerwell added: "I have great understanding for the motives of those that voted for the resolution and the military action. But after weighing up the risks… we came to the conclusion that German soldiers would not contribute to the intervention in Libya and therefore we decided to abstain for this reason, and for other reasons."
Zehr klar. This, that, and the other thing. Jawohl, mein Fuerer. What would these other reasons be?
Merkel had a privileged youth in fascist East Germany, where her father the pastor emigrated voluntarily. Obviously, a strong fascist leader is of her liking, and she would feel sorry to see one more of them go.
There are even more sinister reasons for the Teutonic attitude: raw egoism. Germany is interested by Greater Germany, and by its own Eastern European backyard. As funds and development go there, Germany becomes richer. The PIGS used to get such funds and development. But no more.
Now Eastern Europe gets the funds and the development. If the Arab world on the south side of the Mediterranean becomes democratic, more European funds and development will go down there. They already do. But it is a trickle, and a flood is needed. Thus, Germany has interest to see dictatorships thrive on the south side of the Med.
The same exact reasoning holds for Turkey. On top of that, Turkey views, historically speaking the southern Med as its own playground. Turkey invaded, and occupied the southern side of the Mediterranean, for centuries, until dislodged by the French, and, a century later, Lawrence of Arabia. So not only a lot of the backwardness of the southern Med can be attributed to the Turks rather than the West, but the Turks are possessive about it, as they are possessive about the tremendously ancient land of the Kurds.
France and Britain did a lot of good on the south side of the Mediterranean, and are spiritually entangled there (and many French have North African roots, including yours truly). Whereas the German presence, historically, has been reduced to the Nazi Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Germany and Turkey act out of their national interests. It’s base, it’s obsolete, and even criminal. Modern Europe requires higher standards.
What seems to be missing in the collective German mind is the necessity to order principles according to their importance, and the capability to do it correctly. So let’s recapitulate.
***
WHY FRANCE & BRITAIN GOT IT RIGHT:
Francia was founded around superior human right principles which had eluded the Greco-Romans. Ideally: no sexism, no slavery, equal opportunity. Then Francia founded England, extending the superior philosophy therein. Jews were equal citizens in the Imperium Francorum.
Now, of course, Francia also founded Germania. So why did the latter devolve, and not Francia and Britannia? Well, the rise of Prussia as an increasingly anti-Jewish state starting around 1720 CE has a lot to do with it.
France and Britain took a pro-Jewish turn, while Prussia’s anti-Jewish 19 C legislation (following the well named philosopher Herder), versed into racism and generalized hyper nationalist hysteria (to which even Nietzsche initially succumbed, before realizing his grievous mistake).
The Revolution of 1789 had given equal rights to all, including ex-slaves in the colonies and Jews in Europe, and had become law in Europe, after the counter-attacking French armies conquered it. Thus good Prussians/Germans were supposed to be anti-French, hence anti-1789, i.e., anti-human rights. In other words, as France, Britain and the USA, were moving forward with respect to human rights, Germany was moving backwards. And, to justify that, progressing in reverse, it had to become ever dumber.
A Jewish captain in a small three person counter-intelligence office was accused of spying for Germany (another officer in the office was actually the spy). Anti anti-Semites in France jumped on the occasion to accuse the powers that be, all the way to the president, of anti-Semitism. There were anti-Semites in France, true, and they were severely repressed. Ultimately captain Dreyfus was rehabilitated, and became a general. After some the nastiest anti-Semites acted out during the Nazi occupation of France, many were imprisoned, and executed.
Some French writers were racist and fascist. However, they were drowned in a much louder chorus of contradictory thinkers of great fame. True, Germany had major thinkers such as Marx, and Nietzsche, who were scathing about German culture. But both had to flee Germany, one to London, the other, having become an admirer of France, on the French Riviera.
The superiority of France (and of the Jews!), especially in comparison to mechanized imperial racist Germany was the subtlety of the mind, said Nietzsche. And where did that come from? Nietzsche would have said good digestion. Good cooking, in other words. Nietzsche would have said good music, thinking of the happiness of Bizet’s Carmen, in comparison with Wagner’s heaviness.
In truth the Gallic superiority comes directly from the charm of France, which is all about paying attention to what make people happy. There is another side to France, of course, that of the nation in arms, but that is to defend the former.
***
HOW DID GERMANY BECOME FASCIST ALREADY?
In 1944, the talented French writer Céline survived the wrath of democrats only by fleeing to Hitler, and then Denmark. Why did Céline, who was wounded in WWI fighting Germany, become rabidly anti-Jewish? Because he did not want another war with Germany. Céline was afraid of another war. Since Germany was rabidly anti-Jewish, so was Céline.
Thus Céline made the same exact cowardly reasoning that Germany as a whole did with the Nazis, and does with the Kadhafi clan: "it’s dangerous not to collaborate with the crazies, especially when they are murderous, so we should appease them by collaborating". Germany collaborated with Hitler, now it’s collaborating with Qaddafi. Did Germany learn anything important yet?
Germany was a fascist country pretty much from the time Bismarck became Chancellor, until the Allies arrested the Nazi government of the Chancellor-President, Admiral Doenitz, a month after Hitler’s suicide. Even after been completely overrun by Allied armies, and well after having surrendered, Germany kept on being Nazi. Not one rebel in sight: that’s Germany. Germany is not Libya, it does not have rebels, just Nazis.Germany was a Nazism that kept on going, even when it was dead.
Why did Nazism happen? Because enough Germans of influence had weighted the risks, and found it was not worth fighting for democracy. Same thing for the unprovoked attack by German generals against democracy in August 1914: Germans of influence let it happen, because after weighing up the risks, they would not contribute to prevent a holocaust (the generals had sent the Kaiser away, incommunicado, lest he tried to stop them).
***
CROSS THE HITLER LINE, GET DESTROYED:
Is the on-going existence of Khadafy compatible with democracy going in the USA, or in Europe? No, not at all. I am not alluding to the massive corruption that the Libyan dictator has sown throughout the West, from politicians, to intellectuals, to universities, and lesser plutocrats. Look: G.W. Bush himself was in Khadafy’s pocket. No, the problem is the example Khadafy represents to the collective human mind (and yes, Putin and his lackey plutocrats could turn into a similar problem, should he persist down the Pluto route).
No, I am not alluding to the fact that If Kadhafi , or his sons, if allowed to survive, would no doubt try to acquire nuclear weapons again. So the Kadhafi clan ought to be smashed, independently of any other consideration. Was not that Bush’s official reasoning about Bush? Sure. But although it was unwarranted at the time, that does not mean it is unwarranted always. Hussein was long an instrument of the west, and conducted an extremely bloody war, against theocratic Iran, in alliance with the West.
Saddam Hussein started to disobey his masters in the West well after Gaddafi got away with mass murder against the West, several times, and blatantly. It was only natural for Saddam to believe he could repeat Khadafy’s performance, and be a real man, like the desert fox.
There is something called psychology, and it teaches by example. Khadafy taught Saddam, and probably bin Laden, and the Pakistani’s ISI (with its 200 thermonuclear bombs!). Khadafy taught the collective mind that a crazy could get away with anything, and the worse which would happen would be a few bombs from the Americans once, and a few decades of low intensity war with the French in various desertic countries. Nothing that did not burnish the reputation of the dictator.
As the UN Security Council was going to vote, Khadafy threatened to bring down civilian airliners and ships, as he has, in the past. "If the world gets crazy with us, we will get crazy, too" Qaddafi’s commented to Portuguese TV. No, you are not just crazy, you are violating the laws of war, and basic human rights, and you are bragging about it.
It’s no empty menace: Kadhafi already brought down US and French jumbo jets, and bombed night clubs (in Germany! But the more you bomb Germans, the more they submit, apparently…). Khadafy’s bluster terrorized Germany, Russia, Brazil, India and China so much, that they abstain from daring to oppose the bloody tyrant.
These attacks on civilians by Khadafy are no detail. When leaders engage in mass murder one can see, it is certain that they engage much more in mass murder that one cannot see. Moreover war is the best way to hide mass murder. Kadhafi called his compatriots "insects" and "germs" he would exterminate. How many hints to do you need, on the way to Auschwitz? German answer: never enough.
The principle that indices of mass murdering behavior ought to be enough for war was long honored by France and Britain, and even the USA. So this why, after 128 American civilians died in the sinking of a civilian ship off Ireland in 1917 by a German submarine, the USA declared war on imperial Germany. The civilian ship, the liner Lusitania, alone and undefended, was struck by torpedoes, without summations, and sank in minutes. 1198 civilians died.
Hysterical germanophiles of the fascist type have whined that the liner was carrying secret ammunition. However, it is pretty certain that the steam generator was hit, and the point was that the laws of war were violated. Khadafy violated the laws of war much more by murdering nearly 500 American, French, British, Germans and other civilians, all the more when there was no war. The USA has had plenty of reason to bring Qaddafi to justice. Time to do it.
***
Conclusion: BEFORE THE RULE OF THE PEOPLE, THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE: SI VIS VITAM, PARA BELLUM:
"Man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains," Rousseau whined disingenuously. Rousseau argued that the solution was a self-imposed law created by the "general will". That was excellent. However, the sick, resentful Rousseau, following the clueless, resenting Socrates, also accused the "art and sciences". In other words, Rousseau accused the very essence of humanity. By influencing a herd of less gifted thinkers, it led directly to Nazism. Germany has not understood that yet. Rousseau was born in Geneva, and belonged to the highest citizen class in the city-state (yes, there was such a thing: apartheid by the lake; only some citizens had full rights).
In the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (1754), Rousseau argued that:
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
Cute rhetoric. Idiotic too: even crows or chimps have personal property and territory, and they did not lose the Earth. Rousseau had not understood the exact nature of the problem.
Personal property is not the problem. Nor is the human mind the problem. Nor are vast human population the problem. civilization is not the problem. The problem is too much concentration of property and mind on the few, out of the multitude. That brings out the worst. It brings Pluto out, instead of leaving it underground, where it belongs.
Thus civilization has to prevent this phenomenon, plutocracy, by all and any means necessary. All the more since Weapons of Mass Destruction are readily made. When Germans and Libyans found themselves goose stepping behind a "Guide", they were lost. And so others, completely innocent, were.
The distance between southern Corsica and Tripoli, 1,000 kilometers, is the same as between Paris and Ajaccio in Southern Corsica. Now the latter already brought us Napoleon, born in Ajaccio, who caused the burning of Moscow. Therefore Khadafy should be destroyed. Socrates used to make this sort of little reasonings, I can do better, using warp jumps. The distance between Tripoli and Malta, in the European Union, is 345 kilometers. Naples, with its urban area of about 5 million, is 878 kilometers away.
As I said, SELF PRESERVATION is more important than any other notion for democracy, and the law which organizes it. Any regime that puts in question the survival of the People should be destroyed. That was the number one reason why the French republic went after Hitler, and it stays good enough a reason.
Democracies such as the French and American republics ought to search and destroy any regime that puts their survival into question. Kadhafi already tried to equip himself with nuclear weapons, while being, beyond doubt, a deliberate mass murderer, and a "Guide". Enough said. Go get him. It’s a matter of survival.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
Note on EU and euro: Europe has bigger problems than a mad man in Libya and his demented brood, playing Hitler of the desert. Considering that suddenly Germany is back to its old demons of finding democracy not worth fighting for and human rights not a data entry, the wisdom of trying to tie Germany down with the European Union, and the euro, shines anew.
Those who refuse to learn history and persist in considering humanity to be a superfluous notion, need to be shackled down.
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Share this: Please do share, ideas are made to spread and enlighten!
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 