The Passing of a Dictator

Today, we all received the news that Gaddafi has been killed by rebels. Much rejoicing ensued. I, however, would like to suggest that this, and the entire "Arab Spring" is not a cause for rejoicing. I have many reasons for saying this, and I'll try to go through them here. In my opinion, aiding the Libyan rebels, and helping them to attack pro-Gaddafi forces was no business of America. Usually, I would be categorized as a "hawk," due to my support of military actions. In the case of Afghanistan and Iraq (I have internal debate about that one), I feel military action was justified. That being said, I still think we need to completely pull out now, but that's a different story for another day. In terms of Libya, we had no right to take on the Libyan government. That, was a violation of sovereignty. Now, I hate the UN (and want to defund it), but Chapter VII of the Charter gives a good basis for when we can "violate," or consider "illegitimate" the sovereignty of a nation. To paraphrase Chapter VII, Article 39 of the UN Charter, action should be taken against a nation when: 

"The Security Council...determine[s] the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall...decide what measures shall be taken...to maintain or restore international peace and security."

I would argue, that while Gaddafi certainly was a fruitcake, and unsavory in his actions to his people (particularly carpet bombing funerals and such), we had no right to aid in his takedown. Doing so was a violation of national sovereignty. International laws have been set up to prevent wars from breaking out, but committing to a war on the basis that the leader is unsavory is moronic. They were having protests. If we changed the government and had a war every time Great Britain had a protest, the country would have gone through a hundred leaders in the last decade, and the country would be a smoking hulk of twisted metal from wars. On that note, let me defend the concept of war in say, Iraq. Iraq was suspected to have, and I believe probably did have, WMDs. The toppling of a leader who was dangerous to everyone is a matter of international security and peace.

I would also like to point out Darfur, and Uganda. No effort has been made in those nations to stop human rights abuses. Those crimes are a hundredfold worse the Libya, but we never do anything on the basis of "sovereignty." Why then, pray tell, can we topple a government in Northern Africa, simply because the leader was a loon? Answer: We shouldn't have.

Let's move to Egypt. Here we have another dictator. I can sum up why we shouldn't have supported the people getting rid of him with two words; Christians and Israel. Mubarak tried to keep peace with Israel, and now that relationship is gone, and the entire Middle East is on even more high-alert regarding Israel than ever before. Now that the Muslim Brotherhood is coming to power in all of the Arab Spring countries, we see Christians, who were already a minority, now being treated like an oppressed minority.

Video evidence above. Those are Coptic Christians who were peacefully protesting the burning of a church, but were then assaulted by the Egyptian military, who as you can see tried to run them over (killing 24), in order to break up the protest. Gosh darn. That looks like some good democracy there. I guess when you put "Muslim" and "democracy" together, you get something different than what the rest of the world understands.

The end game here, is that we supported the wrong people for no good reason. Why do we insist on helping Libyans and Egpytians, but never try to help the Iranians when they protest and rebel?

Let's just use Casey's favorite example. Allende and Pinochet. By popular consensus, Pinochet is called a "right-wing" dictator. Well, in a military coup, supposedly supported by the U.S.A., Pinochet took power, and killed Allende. Pinochet imprisoned well over a hundred thousand Chileans, terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms. Now, why in the name of good God did we help this man? Because right-wing dictatorships, more often than not, can turn into democracies. By placing diplomatic pressure, over the years, Chile was turned into a democracy. Yes, 3,000 people were killed or are still unaccounted for. I contend that the number is far lower than had the Marxist Allende taken power. Look at Chile now. It has become one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations, probably only really behind Brazil or Argentina. Compared to the countries with Commie loons, i.e., left wing dictators, such as Chavez, the country is amazingly well off. It leads Latin American nations in human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, low perception of corruption and state of peace. Great stuff. Is Egypt, or Libya going to turn out like that? I'm willing to bet not. Just like we screwed up Somalia by "helping them," I'm willing to put money on Libya and Egypt being utter destitue warblow holes in a decade.

It's a shame. God forgive us.