On Libya

[Paul Mackin]

On 5/5/2011 3:10 AM, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> No. The people in Libya opposed to Ghaddafi would have been better off had they
> never picked up the weapons. As Gene Sharp points out using violence is inviting
> your authoriatian enemy to use his greatest weapon without discretion. That's
> why Libya looks quite different from Egypt&  Tunisia right now. Notice that
> people in Syria aren't arming themselves.


If the Libyan rebels were at all rational, their decision to use 
violence was based on the calculation that Colonel Q would return fire 
in spades and that world opinion would force Europe and the U.S. to come 
to the rebels'  rescue. This happened in a limited but not very decisive 
way. (the rebels may have presumed too much)

Nonviolence would have been a nonevent.

In Egypt only a slight nudge was the best strategy. Nonviolent protest 
can work if both world opinion and the Army are on your side.

P


>      Of course, had I been in the Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising I think I
> would have found it hard not to take up arms.
>      Oh, one more thing. I never like that part in the Bhagavad Gita where Krisna
> tells Arjuna not to wrrying about killing folks. Just an ancient justification
> for killing. No wonder Bhudda wanted to put that all behind.
>
> MC otis
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Richard Ryan<himself at richardryan.com>
> To: Richard Fiero<rfiero at gmail.com>
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Wed, May 4, 2011 11:25:49 PM
> Subject: Re: Bin Laden
>
> Want to make sure I understand:  you think the Libyan rebels would be
> better off if they "put down their weapons and went home"?
>
> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:46 PM, Richard Fiero<rfiero at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> Anecdotally we see that the results of the peaceful Egyptian revolution were
>> far more successful than the Libyan uprising where peace could be achieved
>> by the rebels putting down their weapons and going home.
>>
>