Jonathan S. Tobin, executive editor of Commentary magazine, has responded to my objections to his ridiculous mischaracterizations of my recent Foreign Policy article with a cowardly and dishonest reply that confirms everything I said in my last Ibishblog posting. He again falsely claims that my article alleged a “false moral equivalence” between Israel and Hamas, which I did not do; that I “attempt to blame Israel for Hamas terrorism,” which anyone familiar with my writings will know is completely ridiculous; and that I argued that a new war in Gaza might “convince those hoping that Arab tyrannies might be replaced by democracies to forget about reforming their own countries,” when my conclusion was precisely the opposite. Anyone who compares my actual article with his caricature will see the dishonesty in all its frank ugliness.

Tobin correctly says that I accused him of calling me an anti-Semite, adding “even though [I] admit [he] never actually wrote that.” I did indeed point out that he never actually used the term directly, but he described me as someone who “can never resist blaming the Jews for everything.” If that's not a textbook definition of an anti-Semite, I don't know what is. His ridiculous disavowal is very much like someone saying, “I never actually called him a racist, I merely said he takes every opportunity to insist that black people are inferior to white people.” This man is not only a liar, he's a coward who lacks the courage of his convictions. He wants to describe me as an anti-Semite in unmistakable terms, but hedge by not actually using the word, and then repeat the accusation by continuing to assert the clear description. He wants to have it both ways, but of course he can't. He has obviously described me as an anti-Semite, and no thinking individual could conclude otherwise, but he doesn't have the guts to say so directly. Here's the most telling thing: if Tobin really doesn't think I'm an anti-Semite, even though he plainly described me as one, he had a perfect opportunity to say so in his last article. That he did not do so tells you all you need to know.

Naturally, Tobin again provides a narrative in which Israel can do, and has done, no wrong, and has no share of the blame whatsoever in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This, of course, is in stark contrast to my own analysis that frankly recognizes the faults on both sides and understands there are no clean hands here and plenty of blame to go around. But he's stuck in a chauvinist, tribalist mentality holding that the essence of the problem is simply what he calls “the twisted nature of Palestinian political culture.” Me good. You bad. End of story.

I'm deeply heartened by the number of Jewish supporters of Israel, including conservatives, and indeed neoconservatives, who have, since his outrageous article was published, told me frankly that they consider Commentary an ongoing embarrassment. And so they should. Goodness knows sensible Arabs consider those who cling to the mirror image Arab version of the narrative in which Palestinians can do no wrong and everything boils down to “the twisted nature of Zionism” to be precisely such an embarrassment as well, and I've spent a great deal of my time in recent years combating such reductive, tribalist sentiments.

The most delicious part of Tobin's pathetic response is his contention that my carefully considered riposte to his outrageous attack is motivated because I believe that “spewing hate toward COMMENTARY will bolster [my] image with the Jewish left,” and that I am trying to “ingratiate [myself] to left-wing Jews.” This is particularly delightful given that some of Tobin's counterparts on the Jewish ultra-left have been on a long campaign to insist that all of my rhetoric is actually designed to ingratiate myself with right-wing Jews! So here we have the mirror image of that same solipsistic fantasy in which everything boils down to what some people imagine I supposedly hope one group of Jews or another will think of me (“don't you, don't you, don't you?"). This is chauvinistic, tribal narcissism at its very worst, indeed pathologically so.

Let me say this as clearly as possible. Attention far-right and ultra-left wing Jewish Americans: this is NOT about you! It's about trying to build the most broad-based, wide, robust and powerful coalition for peace between Israel and the Palestinians as possible, even if that idea frightens Jewish and Arab extremists alike. I'm not going to speak for anyone other than myself (though I am sure many other Arab-Americans must feel the same way) when I insist now and for the record that I am not, and I refuse to become, a prop in internecine conflicts between Jewish extremists on the far-left and ultra-right. Anyone who thinks I'm trying to undermine their side in this battle in which I have no stake, or ingratiate myself with the other side in somebody else's internal communal squabble is deluding themselves. You think too much of yourselves, guys. All of this, of course, is in stark contrast with the rational Jewish center-left and center-right organizations and commentators who recognize that Arabs and Palestinians can think and speak for themselves, and have their own agenda, independent of intra-Jewish bickering. They have proven perfectly capable of dealing respectfully with my colleagues and me at the American Task Force on Palestine on our own terms without trying to drag us into internecine Jewish quarrels.

Tobin's final comment, that in talking about the future of the Middle East and the Arab world I "should leave Israel out of that discussion” proves a crucial point I was making in my initial response perfectly: that the only thing that would satisfy him is if I never mentioned Israel or the occupation, except maybe to praise them. But the fact is that Israel is a major factor in the Middle East, another war in Gaza would have a major impact on the political and strategic landscape of the region, and, although as I said it would not derail the Arab reform movement, it would almost certainly complicate it. To think otherwise is to deliberately adopt the ostrich pose, burying one's tiny little brain as deep in the sand of neurotic denial as possible. Tobin can ask, demand or beg that I stop talking about Israel and the occupation that began in 1967 while I continue to talk about the future of the rest of the Middle East and pretend that it's not an important factor. But I'm not going to give myself the kind of auto-lobotomy he seems to have performed on himself, and switch off a major part of my brain.

One can reliably count on Commentary magazine for a daily dose of paranoia, bile and deeply unhealthy Jewish tribalism, if you have a need for this kind of toxin with your morning cornflakes. But the reaction of its executive editor, Jonathan S. Tobin, to my latest article in Foreign Policy is both stupid and dishonest, and demands a response here on the Ibishblog. Tobin either needs a dictionary, a new pair of glasses or a credibility transplant given his misreading of my words and arguments. The main thrust of his response is to accuse me of trying to “blame Israel for the potential failure of the Arab Spring." This is so wrong, one hardly knows where to begin. I was writing about the drift towards another conflict in Gaza that is being driven both by Israel and Hamas, and I did not put the blame particularly on either side, and in fact said clearly that it wouldn't be in either of their interests.

Obviously I do worry, as any sensible person should, about the effect of another war in Gaza on the political landscape of the Middle East, but my final sentence was extremely clear in dismissing the prospect that such a conflict, let alone simply “Israel,” could be responsible for "the failure of the Arab Spring.” I wrote, “there's almost no chance a resurgence of the Israel-Hamas conflict can stop the reform movement dead in its tracks.” Maybe Tobin didn't bother to read the piece to the end, or maybe he just doesn't care about what I actually wrote, preferring to seize the opportunity, however disingenuous and fake, to stoke the tribalist Jewish fears of some Commentary readers by suggesting that here is another Arab pointing the finger at Israel unfairly and in an irrational manner. One has to ask the inverse question: does Tobin imagine that a major Hamas-Israel conflict, an Operation Cast Lead redux, would have no impact on the political and strategic landscape in the Middle East? Would it be irrelevant? Anyone who thinks that is simply clueless, as I'm afraid he seems to be.

Tobin thinks my arguments “infantalizes Arabs to assert that they are incapable of understanding that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has nothing to do with attempts to overthrow their own dictators.” In fact, on the Ibishblog, in a recent article in Book Forum, on the Riz Khan show on Al Jazeera English yesterday, and on countless other occasions I have made precisely the opposite argument: that the two issues are in fact not connected and that Arabs are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. In other words they can rise up for their rights as citizens against autocracy and unaccountable dictatorship and nonetheless continue to support the cause of Palestinian independence and the campaign to end the occupation that began in 1967. If he wants to point that finger at somebody, he'd better pick somebody else. I said no such thing in my Foreign Policy article, and I didn't imply it either. And since I've been saying exactly the contrary in almost all my writings since the Egyptian uprising began, it's really a preposterous accusation. Sadly, Commentary is filled with articles and blog postings that make the opposite and even more ridiculous case: that because Arabs are capable of focusing on asserting their own rights as citizens and demanding accountability and good governance, that means the Palestinian issue has been a red herring all along and that they don't really care about Palestinian human or national rights. So what we're dealing with here is actually a form of projection in which the kind of brain-dead de-linkage of the two issues typically promoted in Commentary is falsely twisted into a direct linkage to which I do not subscribe and which I have not argued for in my Foreign Policy article. My point is so obvious as to be virtually irrefutable: that Palestine and Israel are a powerful regional political factor that, if it erupted again into wide scale violent confrontation in Gaza would have important implications throughout the region, but that it would not be enough to derail the Arab uprisings and the movement towards reform and good governance. Why Tobin can't grasp this, I'm not sure, but it seems to me probably closer to a neurotic symptom than anything else.

Tobin's basic attitude towards Palestine and the Palestinians is summed up in this little aside: "neither the moderates of Fatah nor the extremists of Hamas want peace." This means he doesn't understand Palestinian politics at all, and he probably doesn't care to understand them either. If he doesn't get that the PLO has doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on achieving a negotiated two-state peace agreement with Israel and that if they do not succeed in this goal they will vanish as a potent political force in the foreseeable future then he simply does not understand the Palestinian political landscape. I'm sure it's a comforting thought for someone who seems to be all in favor of the occupation and a greater Israel to believe that no one on the other side, whether moderate or extreme, really wants peace. Trust me: there is a huge body of Palestinian and Arab opinion which holds that no significant faction in Israel wants peace either and that the overwhelming majority share the same vision of permanent control of all of the occupied territories. Again, it's a neurotic symptom to see all of “the other side” whether “moderate or extreme” as essentially the implacable enemy bent on total victory. This must be an enormous relief, liberating one from the difficult task of trying to understand the complexities of the real political situation in the other society and, even more challengingly, becoming part of the solution by looking for points of convergence with the ethnic and national other. So much simpler, and more comforting, to dismiss them all as enemies of peace.

Again, this tribalist fantasy comes through in Tobin's analysis of the drift towards broader conflict between Israel and Hamas in recent weeks. According to him, what everyone else readily identifies as a tit-for-tat exchange of vicious attacks, is not at all “another 'cycle of violence' in which sides are complicit but rather yet another expression of a Palestinian nationalism that appears incapable of renouncing violence.” So again we come back to the most comforting of all tribal myths: this isn't really a conflict between competing nationalisms over land and power that needs to be negotiated: it simply an expression of the pathological nature of the culture and nationalism on the other side. And, for Tobin, it isn't just a problem of Hamas, it's all of “Palestinian nationalism” which is “incapable of renouncing violence,” a position that willfully, and again probably neurotically, denies the radical transformation in the West Bank due to the almost universally lauded performance of the new Palestinian security services and their cooperation with the Israeli occupation forces in suppressing terrorism and other forms of violence. That mainstream Palestinian leaders like Pres. Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have very clearly not only renounced violence rhetorically but have acted against it vigorously simply doesn't fit Tobin's worldview and therefore can't be processed. And then of course there is the other side of the coin: Israel's violence in Gaza especially and also to some extent in the West Bank which has cost the lives of numerous children and elderly in the past few weeks alone. Nor does he stop to consider the increasing phenomenon of settler violence. Or the violence inherent in the occupation itself. No, it's just that Palestinian nationalism is steeped in violence, and that's the problem. The murder of the settler family in Itamar was angrily rejected by the overwhelming bulk of Palestinian political and civil society, and the culprits are not yet known. That Hamas and Israel have been engaging in what obviously is a cycle of tit-for-tat violence that has taken the lives of innocents on both sides is simply beyond question. To look at the situation and see a normal, healthy, reasonable society on the one side (in spite of the occupation and all that goes with it), and a pathological, violent, irrational and anti-peace society on the other can only be described as chauvinistic tribalism run amok. And that's what we get, as usual, from Tobin and, sad to say, from Commentary.

Tobin accuses me of "foisting the blame for Hamas terrorism on Israel,” though how on earth he came to this conclusion or could possibly justify such a characterization I cannot imagine. I've rarely seen my words so brutally tortured beyond recognition. And in a final parting shot, Tobin pulls out all the paranoid and chauvinist ethnic stops, declaring about me that "some people can never resist blaming the Jews for anything that happens in the world." Well. I guess the alternative is to never mention Israel or the occupation at all, ignore the exchange of violence between Hamas and Israel, pretend that a new war in Gaza would have no effect on the political landscape in the Middle East, neurotically deny that the Palestinian plight is a major factor in Arab political thought, and proceed as if everything Israel ever does is not only justified but forced on it and will have no negative effect on anything except insofar as people are unfairly blaming it or it has been forced to do things it loathes and spared no effort to avoid.

Any deviation from that model, apparently, threatens to have Commentary put you in that category of persons who “can never resist blaming the Jews for everything” bad. In other words, because I decry the cycle of violence between Hamas and Israel, warn against another war, and worry about its effect on the Arab Spring, therefore I'm an anti-Semite. It's as simple as that. There's really no other way to read his ridiculous article, which is not only totally misrepresentative of my arguments but which also, without using the term "anti-Semite," accuses me of being exactly that. It's probably pointless to note that this extreme level of paranoia, this shameless dishonesty, and this casual and unjustifiable tossing out of an extremely serious accusation is degrading to Tobin and his unfortunate readership, and trivializes some very serious problems such as the really-existing tendency on the part of some people to blame Israel for everything (which certainly doesn't apply to me) and even more seriously the actual existence of real anti-Semitism. But people who use this accusation as a casual cudgel to beat back any argument they don't understand or don't like (I'm not sure which applies to Tobin here) are stripping these terms and ideas of all of their meaning and rendering them completely irrelevant. This deeply irresponsible conduct is something that ought to make anyone who cares about Israel and Jews extremely angry.

In the context of the recent tumult in the Arab world, the new no-fly zone over Libya, and other dramatic developments, a lot of people are rightly paying close attention to what influential Arab commentators, journalists and activists are saying. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, many Western and Arab observers are too quick to forget the context in which those words are being uttered and to treat some very irresponsible, albeit influential, Arab political figures as if they were much more respectable than they really are. There's a strange unwillingness to apply the same standards we would to a Sarah Palin, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Silvio Berlusconi or Michael Moore to Arab voices that are also prominent but also equally irresponsible or dangerous. In the past 24 hours on twitter I've had a series of exchanges with several people I respect a great deal about two such figures: Abdel Bari Atwan, editor and publisher of the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, and Yusuf Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and superstar of Al Jazeera Arabic. I agree these are two important people, but I don't agree they are serious commentators whose opinions are worthy of respect, let alone deference. On the contrary, their utterances, not to say gurglings, always need to be viewed in the context of their political and religious fanaticism, and especially the unsavory agendas they relentlessly promote.

Atwan is perhaps the most important, and certainly the loudest, of the remaining left-nationalist Arab voices, particularly those that are counterintuitively and inexplicably enamored of the Islamist religious right. Essentially his political attitudes are Arabist in a very bad way and shamelessly pandering. Put in the American political terms, he combines something like Pat Buchanan's level of chauvinism with a Michael Moore-style lowest common denominator populist demagoguery. His are politics that are guided by fear and suspicion, mainly of the West and Israel, but generally speaking of anything that undermines his paranoid and chauvinist worldview. He doesn't speak for a particularly large group in the Arab world: his old-style Nasserite weltanschauung is almost entirely a thing of the past, except for some aging holdouts. But these nationalistic and chauvinistic sentiments remain popular, particularly as they do not come with an overt Islamist bent but are rather respectfully deferential to the Islamist perspective.

He is a classic example of a left-nationalist Arab who's in the grip of an unrequited love affair with the religious right, feeling that it embodies all the behaviors, although not necessarily the ideological content, that the old-school Arab left feels it ought to have but cannot muster: Leninist party structures, overt and covert activities and organizations, revolutionary agendas, extensive social programs aimed at winning the hearts and minds of ordinary people, commitment to armed struggle, and, of course, the right enemies. So in spite of the fact that his political perspective has very limited appeal, his voice is loud and influential because so much of what he says seems to resonate with both what people want to hear and also what makes them feel good. His columns, and those like them, are like nostalgic old patriotic songs; you don't necessarily believe a word of what they say, but singing them feels good, takes you back to "the good old days" (which, of course, never existed), and they have a powerful emotional resonance.

Yusuf Qaradawi could be explained as something like the Jerry Falwell of the Arab world, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the most prominent and influential Islamist and reactionary religious politician in the entire region. Here is a man who metaphorically sits at a desk that has two quasi-spiritual but actually political boxes in front of him, like a pair of giant files, if you will. He then takes everything that comes before him and puts it into one of these two simple boxes: the halal (permitted) and the haram (forbidden), with gradations of what is encouraged or discouraged in between (his most famous book was actually called "The Halal and the Haram in Islam"). It's a very comforting intellectual space, one in which moral and political questions are relatively clear-cut, and explained by an articulate and intelligent octogenarian tub-thumper. His weekly program on Al Jazeera Arabic, "ash-Shariah wal-Hayat" (Islamic law and life) has an estimated audience of about 40 million victims who are thereby propagandized with the worst superstitious and reactionary gobbledygook imaginable.

The elderly Egyptian charlatan has been leading the way in trying to spin the ongoing Arab uprisings in an Islamist bent, particularly in his February 18 speech on the Egyptian revolt. Among his many charming opinions are that Shiites are heretics; that death is an appropriate punishment for apostasy (at least in theory); that terrorism is unacceptable except with regard to Israel; that Hitler was a kind of divine punishment against the Jews; that it was the individual religious duty (fard ayn) of every Muslim to join the Iraqi "resistance" against the Western coalition without specifying which group to join or to what purpose; that a woman who does not sufficiently resist rape might be punished for her ordeal; that “light” wifebeating is acceptable as a last resort; and, of course, that homosexuality should be punished by death. Mashallah!

Now, I put it to you that any Western preacher or politician (Qaradawi is far more politician than preacher, by the way) who takes such views, regardless of whether he/she has a large constituency, would be viewed with a much greater grain of salt than is usually accorded to this charmer. It's reasonable to take what people like Qaradawi and Atwan have to say into account. They are significant voices. They have influence. Atwan has readers. Qaradawi has followers. Lots of followers. So I pay attention to their words quite closely, and any careful reader of Arab public opinion and politics has to. But I never forget who they are, what they stand for and what degree of intellectual and political respectability they should be accorded. I do exactly the same thing here in the United States: I pay close attention to Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Pat Robertson, Dennis Kucinich, Michael Moore, and so forth. But I don't take any of them seriously on their own terms.

There is a very disturbing tendency by both Western and, to some extent also Arab, observers to apply different standards in these cases, to be very tough on Western populists, demagogues and religious fanatics on the one hand and to be neutral, blasé or “understanding” about their Arab counterparts on the other. I don't consider this the soft bigotry of low expectations. I consider it to be a reflection of a lack of appreciation of how bad these politics really are, what their consequences have been and, worse still, could be, and an unwillingness to judge, sometimes harshly, when judgment is, in fact, required. Ignoring such people would be a terrible mistake. But so would according them a level of respectability that they not only don't deserve, but that they have unquestionably forfeited given their gross irresponsibility and shameless opportunism.

There is a lot of complaining about double standards between the West and the Arab world, and that's absolutely justifiable. So in this case, I think we yet again have to look for a single standard: people who consistently talk the worst crap — especially if they are influential with large audiences — need to be held to account. Everyone ought to be reminded at every possible stage exactly who it is they're listening to and what precisely they represent. That can't apply more to American and other Western hucksters and snake oil salespersons than it does to Arab ones, if we are to maintain a serious level of political judgment and thereby know what we are listening to and talking about.

That's a real, not rhetorical question. It has obvious answers, with very serious implications, and they worth looking at carefully. For many weeks, numerous voices have been calling for an international no-fly zone intervention in Libya, including here on the Ibishblog. While there was always significant support for the idea in parts of Western and Arab societies, there was also a great deal of resistance, particularly from certain governments. I've made my views clear already that the greatest opportunity both politically and strategically for a no-fly zone in Libya to maximize its benefits was in the immediate aftermath of Qaddafi's deranged first televised speech to the Libyan people after the revolt began. I'm not going over that territory again. The point is that international hesitation was based on numerous serious concerns that I have always acknowledged: how much impact could the no-fly zone have; what to do if a no-fly zone failed to help produce regime change; how to manage anticipated (although I always argued unlikely) negative fallout, especially in Libyan and Arab public opinion; what if a no-fly zone merely solidified a stalemate and led to a long-term de facto division of Libya; and, perhaps most influentially in the thinking of several key governments, what, exactly, would be being promoted by a no-fly zone in place of the Qaddafi regime? It's worth bearing in mind that the West has long considered that it can live with Qaddafi, even while holding its nose, and greatly fears the outcome of uncontrolled Arab change, especially in a situation like Libya in which it has extremely limited information, influence and options.

Therefore, the long hesitation before today's historic UN Security Council vote authorizing a no-fly zone and other forms of international intervention in Libya — an extraordinarily robust and vigorous international intervention citing humanitarian concerns (this may be a first in several important ways) — was based on some very serious questions that didn't have easy answers. I've always acknowledged them as serious and legitimate, while continuing to argue in favor of a no-fly zone for various political and strategic reasons I've explained at length elsewhere or on the Ibishblog. And none of them have been answered at all in the few days leading up to today's vote — every one of them is as valid as ever it has been!

So what changed? I think it's obvious: the Qaddafi regime appeared, in the past 48 hours, to perhaps be on the brink of a decisive victory, potentially pushing into and recapturing Benghazi, the rebel stronghold. If that happened, it would secure its grip on almost all of the country and probably be able to capture or wipe out most of the rebellion's troops and leaders. It is the prospect of this, and this only, that moved the international community so far and so quickly.

The West and the world had to consider what impact regionally and internationally a victorious Qaddafi regime would have had, and what role it was likely to play in the future. Is it plausible that it would return to the tense cooperation with the West and Arab states that existed since the rapprochement following the US invasion of Iraq? Could any responsible actors in the international community really live with the specter of a victorious, vengeful, bloodied, enraged, empowered and still oil-rich Qaddafi regime stalking the region and the globe with malice towards all? The answer clearly was no. The international community may have been halfhearted about intervening to support the rebellion, fearing what it might be creating and what kind of commitments it might be setting in place. But it could not afford to be blasé about the prospect of a straightforward and total Qaddafi victory. There is no way to argue that such a prospect would be simply a Libyan problem, given the history of Qaddafi's relations with Western and Arab states, and the copious bad blood that has already been shed politically and diplomatically in the course of the Libyan revolt even though any international intervention had yet to take place. In other words, the West and the international community was prepared to live with a long, drawnout, civil conflict between the Tripoli regime and the Benghazi-based rebels. But it wasn't willing to live with Libya returning to the uncontested rule of an enraged, dangerous and probably psychotic leader with a freshly-composed revenge agenda that undoubtedly reaches far beyond Libya, and probably far beyond the Middle East.

Some might argue that what I'm calling dithering based on serious, reasonable concerns was actually careful, painstaking diplomacy preparing the way for today's vote. I'm afraid not. No doubt the endorsement of the no-fly idea by Arab states — first the Gulf Cooperation Council and then the Arab League — helped to reassure Western governments that Arab hostility to the idea was not a significant, let alone dispositive, factor. I've argued in the past that solid majorities of public opinion in most of the Arab world were primed to welcome any such intervention with open arms in the immediate aftermath of Qaddafi's first speech. It's still the case that post Egypt-Tunisia euphoria and enthusiasm for rebellions against Arab tyrants, combined with Qaddafi's bloodcurdling rhetoric and evident brutality, might well ensure the no-fly zone a surprising (to some) measure of popularity among Arabs generally. Certainly, much of the Libyan population will be profoundly relieved and grateful, at least at the outset. But in spite of some Western perceptions, the Arab publics didn't need prepping to view such a mission in a positive light. On the contrary swift action would've been much more positively viewed and the hesitation has tarnished, at least to some extent, the decision taken in New York today. So it wasn't weeks of painstaking diplomacy with Arab states or Western governments that tipped the scales, but the sudden resurgence of the Qaddafi regime and its possible imminent victory that shook the international community out of its relative stupor and into action.

What this means is both simple and profound: it was always coming to this, and the long period of pointless hesitation must now be viewed as a significant and foolish mistake. Obviously everybody hoped that the rebels would just sweep the Qaddafi regime aside, but there are always serious doubts about whether that could happen unaided: hence the many voices raised in favor of a no-fly zone, targeted sanctions, international criminal investigations and so forth. It's a shameful thing to have to admit, but many Western and Arab governments, it would seem, would have been comfortable with a drawn out civil conflict but not with a government victory. Yet the lack of a no-fly zone was one of the most decisive factors in making such a victory not only plausible but likely. Stalemates don't last forever. Eventually either the rebels were going to win, in which case the no-fly zone would have helpfully placed the West in the role of midwife to a new Libya, or Qaddafi was going to win, in which case we have the scenario we have right now. So it seems that in the end there was no other alternative, given either plausible scenario. The big difference was between the West being perceived as playing an enthusiastic, proactive role in helping an Arab society throw off its vicious dictator versus being perceived as responding in a kind of panic to the strategically unacceptable specter of a resurgent, empowered Qaddafi regime threatening regional and international security and stability.

So the period of hesitation merely made a bad situation worse, and postponed the inevitable at considerable political and strategic cost to the West, and human and political cost to Libyans. And, among other things, swift action would have created much less of an obligation towards the Libyans over the long run, having appeared to be genuinely humanitarian. This intervention is plainly strategic and political, and therefore it carries with it kinds of obligations that the West was trying to avoid by not taking this decision, but counterintuitively ended up imposing on itself by not acting sooner. Almost everything that worried doubters about the downsides of no-fly zone have been intensified by the delay, including what everyone agrees is the unpalatable, indeed unacceptable, prospect of international boots on the ground.

The UNSC vote today was long overdue, and of course it should be welcomed. But there is a lesson to be learned here about the dangers of pointless political procrastination. Caution is important. In diplomacy, and above all, war, “first, do no harm” is generally a very good principle. But postponing the inevitable at the expense of predictable and obvious costs is not a serious application of this wisdom. In my last essay on this subject I dwelt on the greatly reduced benefits that a no-fly zone imposed now would have as compared to three or four weeks ago. I stand by every word of it, and I think that with every passing day over the past two weeks or more that damage only increased. I also continue to think that a no-fly zone is the best available policy, although it would have been much more effective in every possible sense if it had been done when it should have been done. Nonetheless, I'm relieved that the UN Security Council has finally taken the right vote, and I very much hope it's not too late to have at least some of the positive impact I had anticipated several weeks back, as opposed to merely staving off calamity. This is a step the international community was always going to have to take, barring an implausibly quick and decisive rebel victory. I hope all serious observers not only acknowledge that there was really, at this stage at least, no other choice, but also stop to consider the significant and avoidable costs of the delay of what was, now in hindsight more clearly than ever, inevitable.

Two days ago, a courageous man, Shahbaz Bhatti, a Pakistani Roman Catholic politician and minister for minorities, was brutally gunned down by extremists from the radical Tehrik-i-Taliban group in part of an ongoing campaign of murder to enforce, defend and expand the country’s outrageous anti-blasphemy law. These maniacs described him as “a known blasphemer” because he was a Christian and because he opposed the draconian Pakistani anti-blasphemy laws, under which another Pakistani Christian, Asia Bibi, has been unjustly convicted and sentenced to death, although not yet executed. Bibi was accused of making disparaging remarks against the Prophet Mohammed, for which in, November, 2010, she was sentenced to death by hanging.

Pakistan's outrageous blasphemy laws and the campaign of murders
This flabbergasting miscarriage of justice kicked off a major debate about Pakistan’s despicable blasphemy laws. Pakistan’s Criminal Code includes Section 295, which forbids damaging or defiling a place of worship or object of veneration, and several subsections: 295-A, which prohibits offending religious feelings; 295-B, which criminalizes defiling of the Quran; and 295-C, which outlaws defaming the Prophet. Of these provisions, only 295-C would appear to raise the possibility of the death penalty. No one has ever been sentenced to death under this law before, and Bibi has not yet, and probably will not be, executed pursuant to her sentence. But the fact that it's even a remote possibility that she could actually and legally be executed for expressing her alleged religious opinions should be enough to appall any decent human being, whatever their religious opinions, and rings the strongest possible alarm bells about where Pakistani society has been and is heading.

Bibi is still alive. However on January 4, the Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was assassinated by members of his own bodyguard for having made statements sympathetic to the plight of Bibi and questioning these draconian and utterly indefensible laws and verdicts. So while Bibi herself may or may not be killed by the state (local fanatics have bluntly stated that if she is not executed they will “take matters into their own hands” and her family has gone into hiding as a consequence), first Taseer and now Bhatti have been murdered by maniacs, not for allegedly committing blasphemy themselves, but merely questioning the propriety of these utterly barbaric laws against freedom of thought and expression.

The need for secularism in Arab and Muslim societies
Obviously this is a very extreme situation, and hardly representative of the generalized condition of the Muslim world vis-à-vis blasphemy laws and debates about how to deal with differences of religious opinion. However, it represents a fairly disastrous situation emerging in one of the largest and most populous Muslim countries, in which the state and radical vigilantes are in open competition as to who can outdo each other in using violence and threats of violence to impose religious orthodoxy on what is, after all, a quite heterogeneous society. I recently wrote a column about the need for secularism in the Arab world in the context of the uprisings against autocratic Arab rulers and the question of how best to build a better future for the Arab peoples. To my dismay but not surprise, I received numerous e-mails from people suggesting that secularism has had its chance in the Arab world and was not only a proven failure but also a proven source of oppression, autocracy, corruption and bad governance.

First of all, I would strongly disagree that genuine secularism has been a feature of most, if any, of the autocratic Arab states presently being threatened by ongoing or potential popular unrest. And, insofar as any of these oppressive governments have reflected some degree of secularism in their policies and laws, that has been one of the few sources of freedom rather than oppression. Tunisia under Ben Ali, for example, suffered under a corrupt, autocratic, unaccountable and kleptocratic dictatorship, but at least the Tunisians weren't having much religious bigotry shoved down their throats. The same certainly can’t be said for many other Arab states that are at least as corrupt, autocratic, unaccountable and kleptocratic, but which also do more to attempt to enforce a degree of religious orthodoxy, only adding additional layers of oppression and further limiting freedom.

Secularism is not responsible for oppression
Blaming the rather limited secularism that has existed in some of the Arab dictatorships for their autocratic tendencies and mismanagement is a little bit like saying that because a serial killer kept a neat and tidy home, this personal fastidiousness therefore somehow contributed to their criminal mayhem. The two are obviously not connected, and trying to draw a causal link between secular principles and oppression or corruption because they both may have been attributes of certain governments is a fatuous logical syllogism. It's a fallacy analogous to a pseudo-logical progression to the effect that: “all dogs have four legs; my cat has four legs; therefore my cat is a dog."

There is not the least reason to think that secularism itself contributes to corruption, oppression or bad governance, even though some secular governments (totalitarian communist regimes, for instance) have certainly been strikingly repressive. But the only arguments that can place that repression at the feet of secularism are those that presume there is some kind of connection between religious devotion and both morality and political freedom, neither of which can be maintained with a straight face. No one who lives in the real world could possibly believe that religious devotion actually makes people more honest, or more inclined to political liberties for that matter. Just look around you, no matter where you live, and proofs positive against such assertions are ubiquitous. The intimate although not, of course, inevitable, connection between religious dogma and zealotry on the one hand and political and social repression on the other hand is irrefutable. The certainty that comes with intense religious belief lends itself very readily to all kinds of social and political restrictions, as the entire sweep of human history demonstrates. There are other forms of certainty that lead to equally disturbing levels of oppression, but religious fanaticism is one of the quickest, and most powerful and common, ways to get to a tyrannical mentality.

Secularism must be properly defined and applied
So the premise of these questions challenging my call for Arab secularism is inadmissible to begin with. But I think the Pakistani experience, although it is admittedly uniquely extreme, strongly demonstrates why secularism as a political value is an essential aspect to reform in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and is not optional at all. First, let’s define very clearly what we mean by secularist, in case there’s any confusion (which there seems to be). Secularism means this neutrality of the state on matters of faith, and the refusal of the government to either privilege or punish any religious tradition that does not violate the inalienable rights of protected persons such as children, minorities, women or other individuals, or that does not involve the commission of mayhem or other extraordinary crimes and abuses. It means that the government does not interfere with the practice of religious devotion, but also does not favor one interpretation of religiosity over another, and provides space for not only a multiplicity of religious orientations, but also an agnostic perspective that embraces skepticism and an atheist position that rejects everything that cannot be perceived by human empiricism and reason.

Secularism has been misinterpreted and misapplied in many countries
Obviously, certain forms of secularism can and have gone too far, even in relatively free societies. For example in France, cultural practices such as the wearing of cross necklaces, Jewish kippas or headscarves for devout Muslim girls have been banned from public schools on the grounds that they offend state neutrality on religious grounds. This is not secularism at all. This is faux-secularism being used as an excuse for cultural chauvinism and the suppression of both cultural and religious norms that do not in anyway infringe upon the rights of others and cannot be viewed in any serious light as a threat to the neutrality of the state on matters of faith. So, obviously, it doesn’t take a totalitarian communist regime to be oppressive against faith, which is not what secularism involves at all. It can also come from the French tradition of "Laïcité," which derives from the revolutionary period of trying to drive Roman Catholic political influence out of the governance system in the country following a tradition in which it was closely aligned with the monarchy and the aristocracy. This set of values, based on a very different set of concerns, is now applied to Jews, Muslims and other religious minorities who never had any access to abusive power, and in the case of Muslims to almost any power at all, in a blatantly cultural-chauvinist attempt to suppress immigrant cultural traditions.

Secularism is not iconoclasm. It is not the state rejection or suppression of religious sentiment or practice. In this regard, France, and several other European countries, have it absolutely wrong. Liberty, of which secularism must be a key component, means maximizing the range of choices available to individuals, which certainly includes wearing crosses, kippas and headscarves if people feel religiously or culturally inclined to do so. How on earth would any of that impinge on the fundamental rights of anybody else? It minds not me if people want to wear superstitious crosses or tiny editions of the Quran around their necks, skullcaps or turbans on their heads, sport nicely trimmed or silly looking beards, or don either elegant or frumpy headscarves. Why it bothers anybody else if people do things like that, I completely fail to understand, and how it could possibly be a matter of public policy is absolutely incomprehensible. This is an irrational, and indeed a phobic reaction to diverse cultural, religious and sartorial opinions, tastes and norms that any heterogeneous society will have to deal with in a tolerant, open manner that maximizes the range of choices available to individuals without offending or impinging on the rights of others. Telling people how to dress, with some very extreme exceptions like public nudity of course, isn't secularism at all, it's just narrow-minded, bigoted and pointless stupidity.

Secularism is essential to liberty because all societies are heterogeneous
The reason that secularism is essential — understood in the sense that it involves the strict neutrality on matters of religious faith, and neither the privileging of any religious order, nor the suppression of any order that stays within the law, broadly defined — is that all societies are heterogeneous. Some of them lie to themselves and claim to be homogenous. But in fact, all societies — absolutely all of them — are heterogeneous on matters of religion and include devout people from traditional faiths, schismatics, small denominations, people who are spiritual without adhering to any specific theology, agnostics and, of course, atheists. There is absolutely no society on earth that does not contain this range of opinions.

Therefore, if the state is not neutral on religious matters it will be oppressive in some manner or other. For example, in the United Kingdom, which still has an established Church of England, the taxes of all people go to subsidize the weird superstitions and social and political power of that organization. This isn't exactly religious oppression, but it isn't fair or neutral either (the UK and other European countries also still have blasphemy laws, although they're not as draconian by any means as the Pakistani madness described above, and rarely enforced). Non-secular states will, by definition, in some way or other impose certain arbitrary views of one group of people, probably but not necessarily the majority, on everybody else in some manner or other, and this can very frequently have dire consequences for freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and all other aspects of fundamental social, intellectual and political liberty. The biggest champions of secularism ought to be religious people themselves, since a religiously neutral, secular government is the best guarantee of the actual freedom to practice religious beliefs in an unimpeded, unregulated manner. The problem is that all-too-many religious types consciously or unconsciously yearn not just to practice their faith but to impose it or its implications on the rest of society, which secularism would preclude.

The Pakistani catastrophe could spread
The catastrophe of religious intolerance unfolding in Pakistan at the moment is, as I have acknowledged already, extreme by any standards, and deeply, profoundly alarming. Few, if any, Muslim societies are actually considering executing anybody on the grounds blasphemy or apostasy (although the US-backed “liberated” Afghanistan government did consider such a thing a couple of years ago, though it abandoned the idea under international pressure), and I can’t think of any other society in which politicians are being murdered for defending the rights of people to not be sentenced to death for so-called “blasphemy,” which in this case plainly amounts to the persecution of a religious minority. No doubt this is a very advanced case of religious paranoia, chauvinism and hysteria, the global epicenter of which, unfortunately, presently seems to lie in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area, for complicated historical and cultural reasons. Of course, there are some other Muslim societies that have analogous issues, including Saudi Arabia, northern Nigeria, Sudan and Iran, to mention just a few. But none of these are as disturbing as the Pakistani case is quickly becoming.

However, anyone who thinks that this process could not possibly be extended to other parts of the Muslim world, or indeed places for that matter, is deluding themselves. There are other parts of the Muslim world which already have seen the resurgence of lapidation (stoning) as a punishment for sexual offenses, and the prosecution, persecution and abuse of people who are seen as apostates, blasphemers or heretics. The essential principles for extreme punishments against blasphemy, heresy/or apostasy are present in all three major monotheistic faiths, and could be applied by extremist Muslims, Christians or Jews anywhere in which they feel able and motivated to do so, with plausibly authentic theological justifications. At present, for complex historical reasons, extremist Muslims seem to be most enthusiastic about such unmitigated barbarism, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

My point about secularism is that is the only system that is suited to religious heterogeneity, because it precludes the dominance and tyranny of any particular religious orientation over others. Those societies that claim to be religiously homogenous are lying, and suppressing the diversity that in all cases at least lies beneath the surface. There is no such thing on earth today, and probably never has been, a society united in its religious opinions. I not only can't imagine such a thing, but were one to emerge it would be almost by definition an Orwellian nightmare. As I noted above, self-professed secular government systems have committed unbelievable atrocities, and secularism — whether via the Soviet model of irreligious tyranny, or the French model of gratuitously and pointlessly suppressing innocuous religious expression in public spaces such as schools mainly as a vehicle for cultural chauvinism — can, of course, also lend itself to oppression. The essence of liberty is to maximize the range of available choices individuals and groups in a society may access, as long as they do not impinge on the inalienable rights of others.

As I say, the French version of secularism, Laïcité, is no model to be followed either. It's not the neutrality of the state on matters of faith, but a kind of low-level hostility to religion, or at least innocuous religious expression in public spaces. Secularism is not a panacea, and obviously can be both distorted and deployed for abusive purposes. But the important principle of state neutrality on religious matters has to be upheld, even though it can be abused in the wrong hands, because the alternative makes oppression or discrimination virtually inevitable. And the threat of religious extremism is infinitely more dangerous than the possibility of a misinterpretation or misapplication of secular principles. The unconscionable plight of Asia Bibi who is being persecuted by the state itself, and the outrageous murders of Shahbaz Bhatti and Salmaan Taseer by even more extreme anti-government zealots, is probably the most extreme case in the world today of religious fanaticism run amok. Apparently in Pakistan today it is enough to rhetorically defend the most fundamental principles of secularism and, indeed, basic human decency, to be killed by maniacs.

American Muslims need to speak out forcefully and clearly
There hasn't been total silence from American Muslims about the slide in Pakistan towards unprecedented levels of religious barbarism by both the state and vigilante or terrorist groups, but much more needs to be said by many people and organizations. Of course the primary onus should fall on Muslim American organizations oriented towards the South Asian immigrant community which has the closest links to and information about Pakistan and the rest of the area. Some of the organizations that fall into that category have been disgracefully silent and are maintaining that silence as the situation continues to deteriorate, presumably because they do not want to have an internal argument about the subject or alienate any potential constituents. This is absolutely unacceptable. More broadly, Muslim American individuals and organizations, even those who don't know much about Pakistan and what is happening there, need to wake up to what is spiraling out of control in one of the largest and most influential Muslim societies in the world. I don't believe that Muslim American organizations and individuals have no ability to at least rhetorically try to influence the calamity that's unfolding in Pakistan. The ability to influence is obviously very limited, but I don't accept that it is zero. And, even if Muslim Americans can't really have any influence on Pakistani developments, at least for their own dignity and, of course, their reputation with other Americans, they should make their outrage and disgust crystal clear.

I've often written that it's ridiculous to expect Arab and Muslim Americans to run around commenting on everything bad that happens in every Arab or Muslim society in the world, since such a thing would be impossible and such an expectation is an absurdity. In fact it's a trap, and one we can't possibly allow ourselves to fall into. However, what's happening in Pakistan demands a clear, unequivocal stance and some kind of effort to communicate loudly and unmistakably, especially to whatever Pakistani audiences are reachable as well as to our fellow Americans, that Muslims in the United States and, hopefully, all around the world, are appalled by the behavior both of the Pakistani state towards Bibi and by the murders of politicians by extremists for defending rather basic concepts of freedom and decency. Silence doesn't necessarily imply consent, but in a situation like this it's certainly an abdication of responsibility and a moral, political and religious failure. And as for those many people who took exception to my call for a commitment to secularism in what we all hope will prove an emerging Arab social and political renaissance, I present the tragic, broken body of Shahbaz Bhatti as Exhibit A in my argument.

UPDATE:

On March 2, ISNA issued the following condemnation of the Bhatti murder:

"Islamic Society of North America Outraged by Brutal Killing of Pakistan's Minister for Minorities"

On March 3, MPAC, of course, strongly condemned the murder:

"MPAC Condemns Assassination Of Christian Minister In Pakistan And Will Address Religious Freedom In Geneva"

On March 3, ICNA also condemned the killing:

"Assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti Condemned by ICNA"

This last statement has an interesting relationship to the critique of ICNA's stances by Peter Skerry and Gary Schmitt in the Boston Globe in January.  They noted that "They clearly understood that the killing of Christians by Muslims [as now again demonstrated in the Bhatti case] is not something about which they [ICNA] could remain silent. Now these leaders must confront the reality that in contemporary America, genuine religious pluralism requires them to be just as outraged when Muslims kill Muslims." That wise admonishment still applies, of course.

UPDATE #2:

A reader points out that the Church of England, while an Established church, does not presently derive any ongoing income from the UK taxation system. He's right. But of course its income relies heavily on various endowments and landholdings that were acquired from the state during, and as a result of, it's Establishment. So while my details were wrong, I still maintain that there is an unfair relationship between the C of E, the state system in the UK and all other religious denominations and orientations.

I'm beginning this essay with a bold and possibly foolhardy assumption: that the wave of protests throughout much of the Arab world, and what is increasingly drifting in the direction of a violent revolution in Libya, will eventually lead democratization and real reform in many Arab states. This hasn't happened yet, of course. In Tunisia, where it all began, certainly there's a lot more freedom now by all accounts than there was under Ben Ali, but protesters recently found that when they went into the streets again, there was a rather familiar government response: they were beaten up. The same thing happened when small protests reemerged in Egypt. In both of those countries, the process of reform is underway, but where it will lead is totally unclear as yet. Islamists, led regionally by the elderly fanatic Yusuf Qaradawi, are slowly but surely introducing their agenda into what has, thus far, to all appearances been a secular, ecumenical and fundamentally nationalist set of movements. In Egypt and Tunisia, "people power" did not exactly unseat the hated dictators, but forced the militaries in both countries, which were unprepared to open fire on their own people, to perform “soft coups,” removing the individual dictators from power and shipping them and their families out of the country or to remote areas.

Utopian and dystopian scenarios look the same at this point
The problem is that both the utopian and dystopian scenarios in Tunisia and Egypt would look exactly the same at this stage, so it's impossible to tell where this is all really heading. In Egypt, for example, a real transition towards democracy would involve the dissolving of a parliament elected recently under very dubious circumstances; the suspension of the Constitution and the formation of a committee to draft a new and presumably better one; the release of at least some political prisoners and opening up of political space; and the initiation of a period of transition presided over by the military which can maintain order while working with the remnants of the old regime and with opposition groups to craft a new system that is acceptable to a broad range of society. That's exactly what's happening. Unfortunately, a dystopian scenario leading to Pakistan-style military rule would look about the same at this stage: dissolving of the parliament, suspension of the Constitution, military control of the process through which a new system is developed, etc.

Even if it is the intention, as I strongly suspect it is, of the Egyptian military to oversee a transition in which it once again recedes into the sidelines of Egyptian politics, that may prove difficult to actually accomplish. Certainly Egyptian military culture has held that while it is not only acceptable but expected that former senior officers, once they are retired, can and in many cases will become senior government officials, the Army itself is not supposed to have a role in domestic politics. But now it does. And after months of being in control, and getting a good, long, hard look at the kind of civilian politicians and their petty machinations during the process of crafting a new system, the Army may well start kid itself that it alone can secure peace and stability in Egypt, run the country efficiently, and preserve the national interest. This has happened countless times in numerous developing states around the world. This could happen in Egypt in spite of the best intentions at the moment by the General Staff, assuming they have them. This impulse would be greatly intensified if it appeared that Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood were becoming increasingly well positioned to seize and hold power in a parliamentary process or other democratic structures, or to seize power through extraconstitutional means of one variety or another. So the same process that's underway at the moment could lead to democratization or it could lead to and extended period of military rule, and it's almost impossible to tell at this stage where things are really leading.

Extended violence could lead to extremism and/or national fragmentation
As I've written and said many times in the past, the violence in Libya is a grave threat to the prospect of a positive outcome to the Libyan uprising. The ruthlessness, indeed insanity, of the Qaddafi regime really does have the potential to create national fragmentation if the conflict is protracted, or to produce radicalized, extreme opposition groups that could come to power locally or nationally if the violence is greatly intensified and drags on for a long time. Again, the historical precedents for this grim process are myriad. Qaddafi is threatening his people with incredible violence from himself, and his continuous insistence on invoking the gruesome specter of bin Laden, Zawahiri and even the late, monstrous figure of Zarqawi no less, is designed to frighten Libyans into fearing that because he will not go without a bloodbath, the outcome could produce new leaders or organizations, radicalized to the point of psychosis, as happened in Algeria, Iraq, Peru, Cambodia and many other societies wracked by brutal civil war.

Reasons to hope for an Arab renaissance
So, obviously, while the outcome of the relatively orderly processes underway in Tunisia and Egypt is not clear, the danger is in Libya, and of course in areas where protests are steadily gaining steam, particularly in Yemen, is even more uncertain. However, there are very powerful grounds for optimism that what we are seeing are the birth pangs of a new Arab renaissance after an extended dark age of cultural obscurantism, political sclerosis, misrule and corruption, religious fanaticism and economic decay. The behavior of the Egyptian people in Tahrir Square was anything but that of an anarchical mob baying for blood. It was highly organized under almost impossible circumstances, dignified, nationalistic, secular, ecumenical, respectful, and displayed a very refined degree of social consciousness. Protesters displayed wisdom in maintaining the discipline of nonviolence under grave provocation, and the political sophistication to welcome the military with open arms, which certainly was a crucial factor in avoiding a confrontation and a bloodbath. Books will be written, both worthy and ridiculous (brace yourself for some of the most ridiculous academic anthropology and sociology theorizing coming soon to a peer-reviewed journal or academic press near you on this subject), about the spontaneous organization in the “Tahrir Republic,” the organization of neighborhood watch committees, spontaneous public protection of the National Museum and other crucial installations, and the enforcement of certain kinds of law and order, particularly against looting, by spontaneously organized groups of citizens. This is a people not only yearning for self-governance, but who have proven more than capable of it under very difficult circumstances. The icing on the cake was that, after celebrating the removal of Mubarak by the Army, the protesters returned to the Square the next day and cleaned it up, handing it back to the military authorities in fairly pristine condition. This is a display of national and social consciousness that should leave no one in any doubt that the urban middle, lower-middle, and working classes of Cairo and other cities in Egypt are a people as ready for self-government as any other in the world. They know what the right thing to do is, and they were ready, willing and able to do it at great risk to themselves, animated not by religious gobbledygook but by national and social consciousness.

A very similar attitude has been on display in Tunisia, and in the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain, even though, as I've written before, the Bahraini case is slightly different than many of the other Arab protests. What this suggests is that the protests that we've seen so far were not simply about removing individuals, or even changing systems or expressing pent-up economic and political frustrations, but were also very much about demonstrating the readiness of Arabs to embrace well-functioning, equitable, self-governing social orders. There are also indications of this mentality — a yearning for genuine social order based on real rules and accountability that is equitable — is coming out of liberated parts of Libya such as Benghazi and the other cities free of the control of the Gaddafi regime. So even if military rulers were to try to impose long-term control over these societies, they might find themselves facing another round of major protests, and this is already beginning to happen in Egypt and Tunisia where dissatisfaction with the pace of change and with the continuation of too many facets of the old national security states are starting to boil the pot again.

The dangers ahead
The dangers of this kind of uncontrolled, spontaneous movement for change in many Arab states are significant, and they include military dictatorships, Islamist takeovers through elections and/or seizure of power, national fragmentation, and extended civil conflict. Malefactors are everywhere and, as Qaddafi is proving, some old orders don't only die hard, they kill enthusiastically and for as long as possible. But at a cultural level, the essential elements of an Arab spring, a real cultural, social and political renaissance in the Arab world at long last, are readily discernible for the first time in decades if not centuries. I think that's why the movement spread like wildfire throughout the region and has captured the imagination of Arab peoples in almost every country in the Middle East. It's even inspired the reigniting of the Green Movement in Iran. Anyone who isn't optimistic about where this can go isn't doing justice to the evident animating spirit of the Arab protest movements in general. However, anyone who isn't concerned about dystopian outcomes isn't being realistic about the potential dangers.

There is one serious concern that hasn't received enough attention either from the euphoric, triumphalist voices heralding the new Arab spring/Renaissance, or from the dysphoric, alarmist voices, mainly on the American, European, and above all, Israeli, right wing. Assuming that the three most obvious dystopian scenarios can be avoided in the Arab states that will undergo major transformations in the coming months and years — military dictatorships, Islamist takeovers, and national fragmentation, failed statehood or chaos — the question will then be how best to manage the emergence of a new, democratic order in much of the Arab world and what are the pitfalls to be most assiduously avoided?

Elections alone and majority rule are NOT democracy
There is a danger that too many political orientations in the Arab world have confused democracy with elections and the majority rule, and not fully assimilated the other side of the democratic, republican coin, which is protection of individual and minority rights and limitations on the power of government. The essence of democracy, of course, is a balance between the right of majorities or majority coalitions to exercise the fundamental functions of government on the one hand,  with inalienable rights of individual citizens, minority groups of various kinds, women and others, on the other hand. In other words, a real democracy doesn't merely involve enacting the will of the majority, whatever it might be at any given moment. It means doing so with strict limitations as to how far the government can go in intruding on the rights of individuals and minorities, and other limitations on government actions.

Most people in the Arab world, with the exception of the most extreme Islamists, seem to have understood that government legitimacy must stem from elections that gain the consent of the governed, and this understanding even extends to many Islamists, including many Muslim Brotherhood parties such as the one in Egypt. It's true that Islamists aren't necessarily committed to elections as such, but many of them do seem to have understood that there is no other way to guarantee the legitimacy of a government, and many of them, such as the more mainstream Islamist organizations in Egypt and Jordan, seem to feel it is their best path to power, and they're probably right. It's a grim truth that during the 20th century Salafists and other Islamists have managed to redefine Islam in the eyes of many Muslims in a very narrow-minded, obscurantist, and non-traditional manner in the name of a faux-authenticity and a fatuous and completely fictional “return” to the alleged principles of the early stages of Islamic history. And it's also true that in many Arab societies, Islamist parties would probably do very well in elections, although that may have more to do with their degree of organization and party discipline than their mass appeal.

It's important to note that Islamist rhetoric and religious identity was not only not at the forefront of the Tunisian and Egyptian protests, it was barely evident at all. Of course in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was very much involved in the protests, and deliberately kept their rhetoric off the table and stayed in the background. They strategically decided not to overplay their hand, and it was a smart thing to do. It's clear that their hope is that while a secular, ecumenical and nationalist movement will create a new, open political space in Egypt, and hopefully a parliamentary democracy, that they will be the primary beneficiaries because they are the best organized and most disciplined political party other than the discredited NDP. So, in keeping with their founding Leninist party structure and strategy (although not, of course, content or ideology), they are willing to let the popular uprisings sweep the Ancien Régime from power, confident (rightly or wrongly) that they will be among the main beneficiaries of a newly open political system and can attain great influence if not seize power either through the ballot box or as a result of potential ensuing chaos if things go badly or spiral out of control. In short, the Egyptian protests especially, and the whole wave of change in the Arab world more generally, have been a mixed bag for the Islamists. On the one hand, their ideology was not the one that brought millions of people into the streets, and the political symbolism of the revolution has nothing to do with their own. On the other hand, no doubt they feel that they can sit back and wait for space to open up and be well positioned to gain more power than they have ever had in the past, if not seize control of government outrightly.

The prospect of military dictatorship can probably only be combated by more people power, popular rejection of any kind of extended military rule that is regarded by majorities as unacceptable or simply a continuation of the national security states without the old and essentially symbolic figureheads like Mubarak and Ben Ali. National fragmentation, failed statehood and chaos are, I think, unlikely in most if any Arab cases in the near future (other than Iraq and Lebanon, obviously), and would probably be the result of protracted conflicts to remove dictatorships such as may be emerging in Libya. The cure for this is quick resolution with international support, which is why I have been reluctantly advocating for asset freezes, targeted sanctions, travel bans, weapons sale bans, and even a country-wide no-fly zone in Libya for almost 10 days now. But I do think there are very few regimes, although honestly I can think of at least two others, that might resort to such extreme violence even though they are not led by certifiable lunatics. At any rate, those dangers are largely in the hands of the dictatorships, and the people and the most of the opposition groups are unlikely wish for such an outcome and can be relied upon to work against it at least in the initial phases of any uprising. Of course, if local factions come to power in certain regions, then national fragmentation becomes a very lively possibility because people are loathe to give up quasi-governmental authority once they've got it (the same temptation that will apply to the militaries as they rule for “transitional periods” that might not prove all that transitional in practice).

The threat of tyrannical majorities
The final obvious danger facing the Arab peoples as their revolts/revolutions proceed is the most difficult one to manage, and in many ways the most serious: the installation of democracy resulting in the rule of a tyrannical majority. As I noted above, most people in the Arab world, including many Islamists, have interpolated and accepted the idea that government legitimacy is best secured through elections. However, the notion that there should be strict limitations on the will of the majority may not be as clearly understood by as many people as necessary. The only real way to combat the potential of tyrannical majority rule through parliamentary democracy impinging on individual, minority and women's rights, among other concerns, is the development of constitutions with very strong limitations on government powers, backed up by an army whose loyalty is to the Constitution and not to the elected parliament.

The most obvious case in point is the Algerian model from the early 90s, a veritable textbook of how not to do democratic transitions in the Arab world (or anywhere else for that matter). The Algerian ruling elite and junta decided, for various reasons, to transition to a parliamentary democracy. But they made the most fundamental error possible: they crafted a Constitution that was infinitely and openly amenable by nothing more than a supermajority of Parliament! After the first round of voting in 1991, in a two-round process, it became clear that the Islamist FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), which had already swept local and municipal elections across the country, was poised to almost certainly gain exactly such a supermajority in the very first democratically elected parliament. It would therefore probably have been able to amend the Constitution in anyway it pleased under the law, a prospect that was utterly unacceptable to the military, the ruling party, and much of the secularized Algerian elite. In January 1992, the military canceled the second round of elections, and replaced President Chadli Bendjedid with a new leader, the old revolutionary Mohammed Boudiaf. A state of emergency was declared, FIS leaders rounded up and given lengthy prison terms, and its cadres thrown into concentration camps in the Sahara desert. By 1993 the situation had deteriorated into civil war, which eventually claimed the lives of at least 100,000 Algerians and led to the emergence of some of the most extreme Salafist-Jihadist groups the Arab world has ever seen (as I mentioned in my last Ibishblog essay).

The lessons from the Algerian experience are crystal clear: the problem was not that the military and the junta decided to move towards democratization. That was a good thing, and a good idea. The problem also was not that a (relatively moderate) Islamist party was likely to be elected to a strong majority in parliament, although obviously that's an outcome that would dismay me and many other people. But the presence and possible success of right wing religious parties is not an argument for refusing to create democracies. The problem was that the Constitution was so poorly crafted that it allowed for something as commonplace as a parliamentary supermajority to amend the Constitution in an unimpeded manner. This means that whatever protections were put in place for individual citizens, minorities, women, and other limitations on government power would have been essentially meaningless in the face of an immediate Islamist supermajority in the very first democratic parliament ever elected in Algeria. This initial idiotic mistake led to a second idiotic mistake: the extreme overreaction of the government that led inevitably to a state of civil war which predictably degenerated into a level of savagery on both sides that is still not fully comprehended by most people outside of Algeria.

The need for strong constitutional protections for individuals, minorities and women
Arab democracy is, hopefully, coming, and if it does it's going to include a fairly strong presence of right-wing religious organizations that might do quite well in elections. This is already the case in many democracies, including ultra-conservative Catholic groups in Latin America and elsewhere, the evangelical Christian right in the United States, Jewish fundamentalists in Israel, the RSS and other Hindu extremists in India, and many other examples around the world. They should peacefully and politically be fought tooth and nail, because their message and agenda is divisive and, if they are not restrained, they have a tendency to become extremely oppressive and abusive towards individuals and minorities, and especially to women. Islamism and other right wing religious politics tends, in practice, to look more like misogyny in terms of its policies than anything else, and it's anti-woman agenda is crystal clear.

The best way to restrain them is not to resist democratization, but create democracies in which individual, minority and women's rights, and other clear restrictions on government power are inviolable, and backed up by militaries that are committed to upholding the Constitution but not interfering with the legitimate exercise of constitutional, limited political power. It may be that the Arab world has to go through a period in which Islamists are given a chance to prove that they have no answers, no real economic development program, no sense of how to govern effectively, no less corruption than other political factions, and to give people a taste of how unpalatable their ultra-conservative social programs might be within the limitations of the rights cited above. They should probably be given a chance, if people really want that, to prove their uselessness, and the inherent vapidity of their ideology and political agenda. The nationalistic and ecumenical tendencies clearly evident in the protest movements in Egypt and Tunisia, and indeed elsewhere, indicate that there are strong countervailing political tendencies in the Arab world, and alarmism is no reason to reject democracy. But it has to be done right. And the right way is to create constitutions that provide powerful, inviolable protections for vulnerable groups and individuals, and especially women, restrain government action, and that prevents the emergence of tyrannical majorities.

This evening Pres. Obama signed an executive order blocking assets and prohibiting certain key transactions with Libya, the first major American effort to respond in a practical manner to the outrageous behavior of the Qaddafi regime. In my view, as my readers will know, this is not a moment too soon. For the past few days I've been advocating freezing of assets, various economic sanctions, travel restrictions on Libyan officials, and, with a heavy heart, the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. While I know a great many people agree with me, and increasingly so, numerous friends have questioned the wisdom of any such strong response, so I feel that it's incumbent on me and others who advocate such measures to explain exactly what it is we think is in it for the United States and the rest of the international community.

The downsides of action:
Obviously, a short-term, amoral, and purely self-interested analysis would suggest that the simple answer is nothing, which helps explain the reticence of the West to respond vigorously to the incredibly violent behavior of the Libyan government and the increasingly bloodcurdling threats from Qaddafi himself. My point is that even if we are to take principles such as the Responsibility to Protect and the question of fundamental morality off the table, there are still important strategic and political reasons for getting involved vigorous and quickly. I've been very clear about the risks involved in my recent articles and blog postings, and I've tried not to shy away from the real dangers attached. These include threats to Westerners still in Libya and some Western economic interests; the possibility that Western, and especially American, engagement might be used as an excuse by the Qaddafi regime to bolster its ridiculous accusations that the uprising is a Western and/or Al Qaeda plot; the possibility that these measures may prove ineffective and ultimately might require some kind of more direct intervention (although I think that is relatively unlikely given the speed with which the regime is disintegrating); and the possibility of the fragmentation of Libya into separate zones of influence. This last prospect is especially raised by the possibility of a country-wide no-fly zone, since in other instances, most notably Iraq, that has proven the case.

What economic measures can and cannot achieve:
Moreover, I've been very straightforward about the fact that economic measures will not, in and of themselves, produce regime change, and that a no-fly zone would have limited effectiveness and not stop atrocities on the ground. However, while these measures carry certain risks and have obvious limitations, they would have certain powerful effects that shouldn't be discounted either. The freezing of assets, for example, would make it more difficult for the Qaddafi regime to continue to pay its people, particularly foreign mercenaries on whom it has by all accounts been heavily relying for the worst of its deeds. It would make life more difficult for the government, which at this stage would certainly be a good thing. It would also send an important symbolic message, and Pres. Obama is to be congratulated for his new executive order and encouraged, indeed, to go further. For sanctions to really bite, it will require the cooperation of countries like Russia and China, and that will be difficult, but may not be impossible. Public indications that the United States is working in this direction would be welcome and heartening. Even though economic sanctions take time to really bite, they would send an important signal to the Libyan government that not only domestically but internationally, the noose is tightening.

What a no-fly zone can accomplish:
A no-fly zone would have an even greater impact. It would reduce the ability of the government to try to extend its influence over the parts of the country it still controls, and make it extremely difficult for it to regain control of the apparently large areas it no longer commands. Most importantly, it would make it impossible to quickly and efficiently ferry in additional mercenaries from other parts of Africa or eastern Europe, and might help bring a quicker end to the conflict. It's true that a no-fly zone could increase the risk of fragmentation, but that risk is already there, and from what we have seen, at least rhetorically, the Libyan opposition isn't secessionist or terribly localized yet, and seems driven by nationalist rhetoric that militates against this kind of fragmentation. The real danger would come from a protracted period of instability in which the regime continued to control Tripoli and various other parts of the country, with other parts falling to local factions, tribes or, conceivably even, warlords. In other words, the danger of fragmentation is probably just as severe without a no-fly zone as with one. It emerges more due to an extended period of conflict than from the inability of the Qaddafi regime to use its air power.

The imperative to avoid ground intervention:
I understand that everyone, undoubtedly including the Libyan opposition and the people of the Arab world, have very serious reservations about any kind of direct foreign intervention on the ground, and I very much share those concerns. An international or Western presence on the ground in Libya could produce terrible downsides, raising again the specter of colonialism and creating a platform for international terrorists such as Al Qaeda or local forces to rally around various different self-interested campaigns of violence under the rubric of fighting foreign occupation. No doubt this is a contingency everyone is eager to avoid. I'd argue that strong measures short of that, including the ones I'm advocating above, would actually make such a prospect less and not more likely, even though once the Responsibility to Protect is invoked, it's logical conclusion might lead in that direction. The important thing is that this conflict not drag on, because that leads to almost all the dystopian scenarios one can paint, from extended massacres and atrocities, to fragmentation, or to the need for a very problematic and undesirable international intervention on the ground. I'm not surprised that nobody serious is talking these terms, and they shouldn't. It's far too early to consider such a measure, and it would to require the emergence of a humanitarian crisis of extraordinary proportions, far in excess of the already dreadful violence we have already seen to even begin to consider such a thing.

Broader US interests in taking a stronger stance:
The point I'm trying to emphasize, however, is that beyond these short-term, narrow practical and strategic considerations there is a broader imperative that needs to be borne in mind. The Arab world is being swept by a series of protests against the status quo, characterized by unaccountable governments that are corrupt and incompetent, leaders that have ruled for many decades and groom their children for succession, and a lack of inclusivity and transparency in governance that is simply unbearable. The United States in particular has a powerful strategic interest in not being perceived as the guardian of the status quo, addicted to a regional order that has become anathema to most of the people of the Middle East. It is very much in the American national interest to place itself, and more importantly be perceived as, on the side of the Arab peoples as they rise up to insist on reform, accountability and inclusivity. The Arab citizenry is finding its voice, and asserting its will, and the United States will have to deal with the outcome. Its ability to determine what happens is extremely limited in most parts of the Arab world, for instance in Libya. But I'd argue that the United States has a strong interest in being a part of the process of reform, in a manner that the people of the region can and will understand.

The need to side with the Arab peoples:
After an initially confused and halting reaction to the Egyptian protests, the Obama administration did get it right and sent a clear message that it was not interested in insisting on the survival of its ally, Pres. Mubarak. Nobody would consider Qaddafi a key American client or even really a friend of the United States, in spite of the fact that the Bush administration did make a deal with it to exchange its special weapons program for a degree of international rehabilitation. Standing on the sidelines and doing nothing for so many days while Libya has burned has simply not been in the American interest in my view. The new executive order is a very good step in the right direction. For understandable reasons, NATO is still saying it's not considering any kind of intervention, such as a no-fly zone, in Libya. But I think that as the conflict continues to deteriorate, and especially if Qaddafi and his regime make good on their threats to “cleanse Libya house by house” and turn Libya into “a burning hell,” economic measures will probably not be sufficient to place our country squarely on the right side of history and on the side of the Arab peoples yearning to be free (it sounds like a cliché, and it is one, but nonetheless it's apt).

A no-fly zone, as we've seen in the past, can be quickly organized and Libya is well-positioned around the whole series of NATO bases from which it could be enforced. It would be best if this were done with the backing of a UN Security Council resolution, but a broad-based international coalition need not be entirely dependent on Russian and Chinese acquiescence. I believe the Arab peoples generally, and most of the people of Libya, would welcome such a move and would see it as a very positive indication of where the United States, which is and insists on remaining the regional superpower in the Middle East, sees its role in the emerging order through which Arab citizens are trying to shake off the despotisms of the past. The political and strategic risks, which I certainly acknowledge, are hardly overwhelming, and the military risks are minimal. There are also undoubted political and strategic concerns, and I've never downplayed them, and I'm not doing that now. But I am suggesting that there are far greater and overriding political and strategic costs to being perceived as doing nothing, to giving the impression of being disinterested, relying solely on lip service, being overly attached to regional stability and the status quo at a time when people are rejecting it in a most heroic manner, and, of course, of hypocrisy.

Such accusations would be unjust and untrue, but they are already surfacing and will only grow over time. The Qaddafi regime will almost certainly not be able to survive its current crisis. Simply put, there's no way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again at this point. The loss of control so much of the country, the outrage of so many of its citizens, the defection of so many military, diplomatic and government officials, and the literally pathological performance and behavior of Qaddafi himself mean this regime has no future. The only questions are how long will it take, how much blood will be spilled, how much chaos will ensue, and what kind of order the endgame will produce. Here I do think the United States and its allies could play a role in hastening the end to the regime, which would minimize the risks of national fragmentation due to extended conflict and the emergence of extremist factions in control of certain parts of the country, both of which could be the consequences of a protracted scenario. This government is going to fall. It strongly behooves the United States to be perceived as having helped to play a positive role in bringing about its demise. Not only will that provide our country a great deal of credit in Libya and in the Arab world at large, especially among the ordinary citizens, it would also maximize the ability of the United States to deal positively with a post-Qaddafi order and to have some degree of influence in what comes next.

More importantly, it would send a clear message to the Arab peoples at large: the United States prefers transitions in which national militaries work with remnants of the old regimes and with opposition groups to create new, more equitable, democratic and transparent systems to replace existing autocracies. That process is underway in Tunisia and Egypt, and apparently is just starting in Bahrain as well. Libya is a strategically important country, but it is not a major ally of the United States. However, other important Arab states that are vulnerable to popular protests against autocracy are key allies, and the United States might find itself dealing with situations even more difficult than the one in Egypt, which resolved itself, thus far, relatively peacefully and in a more or less orderly manner. It's very important that the Arab people understand that the United States isn't willing to stand by idly, especially if they wrongly perceive it to be a reflection of an undue attachment to regional stability and preserving an unacceptable status quo, especially when the citizenry of the country is under unrestrained attack by a rogue government.

US interests in joining and helping manage transition in the Arab world:
There will be, almost certainly, many difficult challenges ahead for the United States and some of its key allies in the future as the wave of Arab reform protests proceeds. What happened in Egypt and Tunisia set the stage for what is happening in Libya, and what is also beginning to gain steam in Yemen and elsewhere. Wise strategic thinking would focus on the medium and long-term rather than the immediate, narrow interests that militate against doing anything, and would seek to maximize the American ability to deftly maneuver in the face of what are likely to be difficult transitions in other Arab states. So, just as Egypt and Tunisia were the precursors of the crisis in Libya, so too will the Libyan experience influence what happens next in other Arab countries. American policy should be clearly focused on maximizing our country's ability to deal effectively with those coming storms. Having been perceived to have played a positive role in helping to secure freedom in Libya, or at least an end to the conflict and the Qaddafi regime, is the best thing we could do at the moment to prepare a sound basis for securing our long-term interests and maintaining good relations not just with the governments, but also with the peoples, of our Arab allies.

Well, he finally came right out and said it: “those who do not love me do not deserve to live.” With those words, uttered on Libyan state television today, Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi at least rhetorically outdid all his megalomaniacal and mass murdering predecessors including Saddam Hussein, Ceausescu, Stalin and the whole bunch. Anyone who still doubts that this man is ready and willing to visit the utmost bloodshed upon his people simply isn't paying attention. The question is, is he able? The answer is, at this stage at least, quite possibly.

That should fill everyone with enormous anxiety and put paid to the idea that ideas for minimal interventionist efforts such as a no-fly zone are an overreaction, unjustified or would be counterproductive. My initial reaction to such calls a few days ago was caution and skepticism. After Qaddafi's first speech on TV two days ago, I had to change my mind given the ruthlessness and madness that was on full display. Yesterday in Foreign Policy magazine I came out strongly in favor of economic sanctions, freezing assets and indeed a no-fly zone, even though it conceivably might end up necessitating boots on the ground. I'm pretty sure it won't come to that, and I think these other measures will be enough to help push this madman off his perch. Indeed, his regime can't be saved, and it's only a matter of how many people will be killed, and what kind of political, social and human devastation will be left in his wake. And, let there be no doubt, the more chaos and bloodshed he inflicts, the greater the chance of a terrible outcome in Libya, involving national fragmentation, extended chaos, or the rise to power of extremists of one variety or another. The violence he is threatening has every prospect of radicalizing opposition groups and enough Libyans to produce a very gruesome outcome, and not one limited strictly to vengeance against the regime and those associated with it, which of course would be bad enough.

Let's be very clear about what exactly Qaddafi said today. Since a huge percentage, almost certainly an overwhelming majority, of the Libyan people clearly “do not love” him, including large numbers of his former officials, military officers and diplomats, he's basically issuing a death sentence on most Libyans. It's essentially a secular version of takfir, the bizarre and theologically inadmissible practice by the so-called “Salafist-Jihadist” lunatics of pronouncing other Muslims to be apostates and therefore, in their eyes, worthy of death (for this reason, those who call themselves Salafist-Jihadists have frequently been referred to as “takfiris” in the Arab media, in an attempt to distinguish them from less extreme Islamists like most Salafists such as Muslim Brothers who do not engage in the practice). And it has a grisly precedent: towards the end of the civil war in Algeria, as the Islamist opposition became increasingly deranged, both al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah al-Musallaha (the Armed Islamic Group) and al-Jamaa'atu l-Salafiyyatu li l-Da'wati wa l-Qitaal (the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) — the most extreme of the Algerian radical organizations, realizing they were finally losing the battle against the government, the military and the mainstream of Algerian society — pronounced takfir against the entire Algerian nation that did not join their ranks, not once but twice. And they meant it. These were auto-genocidal sentiments from two of the most radical Al Qaeda-style organizations the Arab world has ever seen. If they had not been small and marginalized by that time, there is no telling how many Algerians they would have massacred, given that attitude. Goodness knows they killed enough as it was, even given their limited means.

Gaddafi has done the same thing, without invoking religion or framing his arguments in a Salafist-Jihadist, pseudo-theological rhetoric. His madness is much more megalomaniacal than it is theocratic-maniacal. It's all personal, and about him: "those who do not love me deserve to die." There's no doubt at all that his regime continues to unravel, but it hasn't lost control yet. There are dire warnings that he still possesses some chemical or biological weapons, although whether he has the means to deliver them or not isn't clear. However, senior defectors from his regime are saying he has these weapons and will not hesitate to use them at the last moment. At the very least, he still seems to command considerable conventional firepower, and doesn't appear in the least bit hesitant to unleash it. Certainly he's acting very much in a Samson-mentality, talking and acting as if he were perfectly content to bring the entire edifice of the Libyan nation down around him if he has to go. Indeed, he's starting to exhibit the same attitude of contempt towards his own people that Hitler reportedly expressed in the final days in his bunker as the Soviet military bore down on Berlin: that his people had let him down, that they therefore didn't deserve to live, and that since he was about to lose power it was only right and just that they perish in large numbers.

I'm a very reluctant supporter of humanitarian international intervention in Libya. But I think it's almost impossible to believe that major international efforts like freezing assets, economic sanctions, travel bans, weapons sale bans and, indeed, a no-fly zone are not urgently required here. In fact, for those who are concerned about the possibility of the international community being forced to intervene on the ground, I'd say the quickest possible implementation of those measures is the best bet of avoiding two very bad scenarios: one, the need to intervene physically to prevent extremely widespread atrocities or possibly even genocide; or two, having to live with the fact that as in Rwanda, the international community had every warning about what was happening and about to happen, and stood by and did virtually nothing. Is there anyone who doesn't feel shame about the global lack of response to the genocide in Rwanda? Do we really want to go through that again in Libya?

I don't think I'm overstating the case here at all. My strong suspicion is of the regime is on its last legs, and that it's quite unlikely that any sort of direct intervention in Libya would be required to finish it off. But I do think these other measures, short of ground actions, while they carry the risks I've outlined in my last blog posting and also in my Foreign Policy article, these are greatly outweighed by the urgent need to take action and the even more serious consequences of failing to do so, not only for the people of Libya, but for the stability of the region and for Western interests in the long run. I'm not sure how intervention on the ground would be regarded in Libya (I'm sure at the moment there is no appetite for any such thing, because it hasn't come close to requiring that… yet), or in the rest of the Arab world. The specter of colonialism cannot be underestimated. However the imposition of a no-fly zone would, I strongly believe, not be regarded by most Arabs and certainly not by most Libyans as an unwarranted Western intrusion, a neocolonial action, or abusive meddling. I think the anxiety for the future of the people of Libya is sufficient to offset any mistrust of the West at this stage, and actually I think it would be regarded as a noble and most welcome form of intervention.

The situation is quite simple: we have a crazed and extremely ruthless dictator desperately clinging on to power, still in possession of considerable armed forces and foreign mercenaries, threatening to massacre his people and declaring that those who do not love him deserve to die. Under such circumstances it seems to me that economic measures and a country-wide no-fly zone are the very least that can be done, and after his speech today, every day that passes without them, assuming his regime doesn't fall quickly, will be an added embarrassment to an international community that has declared that it has a Responsibility to Protect. If the Libyans right now don't need protection from an armed, crazed and homicidal dictator who is openly and on television threatening the overwhelming majority of them with death, I can't imagine who would.

UPDATE:

There is now some dispute over whether Qaddafi said "those who do not love me do not deserve to live" or "if people do not love me, I do not deserve to live." Al Arabiya reports the later here. But first-rate tweeters reporter Muna Shikaki quoted him as "Qaddafi: 'those who don't like me don't deserve to live'" and Sultan Al Qassemi wrote "Gaddafi now in TV 'I'm in central Tripoli now. The people who don't love me don't deserve to live.'" Those are two pretty good sources, in my view. Either way, the thrust of the arguments remain unchanged. At UN today, the Libyan ambassador finally abandoned Qaddafi after sticking by him till now in an open dispute with his deputy. With emotions and tears flowing, Amb. Shalqam embraced Sec. Gen. Ban and asked the UN to "save Libya, we want quick action, save Libya." He rightly said Qaddafi's message to Libyans was if i cannot rule you, "I will kill you." I think that says it all. And there is no dispute that Qaddafi today threatened to turn Libya into "a burning hell."

UPDATE 2:

My tweep @abuhatem says:

Yeah I read it. Al-Arabiyah is wrong. They tend to get a lot of things wrong. You, Munashik, and Sultan are all correct. 100%

Col. Qaddafii's speech on Libyan state TV this evening set a new low not only for him and other beleaguered Arab leaders, but internationally and historically as well. It was one for the ages. Qaddafi rambled and howled, cooed and bellowed, pleaded and, above all, threatened. Surely the most apt adjective to describe the speech is bloodcurdling. Qaddafi essentially threatened to unleash entirely new waves and levels of violence against his own people, suggesting that he has not yet even given the order to fire, but making it clear that he is willing to stop at nothing to keep hold of power if it comes to that. To justify his shameless ruthlessness, he approvingly cited other uses of force by states around the world, particularly permanent members of the Security Council, including US actions in Waco and Falluja, among others, Russian actions against the rebellious Duma, the Chinese military assaults on protesters in Tiananmen Square and so forth. The main point of his address seemed to be to strike fear in the hearts of any Libyan who happened to be listening to him and imply that the blood hasn't yet begun to flow in earnest.

Of course the speech was not only ruthless, but utterly deranged. We're used to that from Qaddafi, but this latest performance took his mania to a whole new level. He appeared unusually disoriented and rambling, at one point pausing to read out “transgressions” worthy of the death penalty under Libyan law. These seem to cover virtually everything other than obsequious fawning before him. At the same time, he produced familiar rhetoric about being a humble man with virtually no possessions and no real ambitions: a simple servant of the nation. In the same breath, he was as megalomaniacal as possible, claiming to be the soul of the nation and “not a normal person” (hardly a revelation, although I doubt most listeners took it in the way he meant.) Moments later, he accused the demonstrators of being both hardened, ultrareligious, fundamentalist "followers of bin Laden and Zawahiri" and of also being shiftless teenage drug addicts. Neither are true, but please, pick one. He repeatedly implied that because of the protests Libya was about to be simultaneously attacked by Al Qaeda AND the United States (as if they work hand in glove), and went so far as to dig up the name of Zarqawi, a menacing figure no one has mentioned for many, many years. It was all part of an incoherent and kitchen-sink parade of horribles and monsters designed to strike terror into the hearts of the listeners. Underneath it all it was clear that the biggest monster in this imaginary evil pantheon is Qaddafi himself, and he made no bones about his willingness to spill blood and burn down his own society.

In terms of Libyan domestic politics, other than promising a bloodbath if the rebellion continues, Qaddafi appealed to tribal leaders in the most paternalistic terms, insisting that he has done a tremendous amount for them and demanding their continued support. Other than those elements of the regime and the military which remain loyal to him for whatever reason, and of course the foreign mercenaries he pays, his only bet is that some kind of deep, local, tribal politics will somehow provide him with a constituency that survives the uprising and his own outrageous conduct. This seems unlikely, but few observers outside of Libya are well informed enough about these deep local politics to be certain. As I've been saying since Saturday morning, it seems to be only a matter of time before the Gaddafi regime falls, and the main question is how many people will be killed in the process and what the endgame will throw up in its place.

Obviously the first impulse of any reasonable person under such circumstances is to ask how this dreadful situation can be most quickly resolved and with the minimum of bloodshed. My initial reaction to calls for foreign intervention, including a no-fly zone, was at least ambivalent and skeptical. Following his speech today, which was mainly a litany of overt threats against the population at large, both the international community and sober observers will have to think twice about maintaining any kind of hands-off attitude and simply leaving it up to the Libyans themselves (which obviously is a preferable scenario, all things being equal.) Clearly there is a strong case to be made for freezing regime assets, wide-ranging economic sanctions and even no-fly zones. A robust international response to not only the violence of the past few days but also the threat of much wider violence from Gaddafi is undoubtedly called for.

The problem is that economic measures will take a good deal of time to have any real effect, let alone lead to regime change, while the crisis is urgent and, if it is taken seriously as a moral and political (and maybe even strategic) crisis, really cannot wait for the grinding attrition which such measures can actually inflict. No-fly zones can, and probably should, be quickly imposed, and it would probably fall to NATO to do that, presumably with UN Security Council backing. However, as with economic sanctions, no-fly zones will only attenuate the degree of violence that the regime can visit upon its people. In few instances have governments needed to resort to air power in order to conduct atrocities and massacres, especially if it is a matter of armed forces confronting unarmed or lightly armed populations. So in the end these measures may well not be sufficient, which is probably one of the main reasons it is taking the international community so long to decide whether they want to undertake them or not. No-fly zones, it should be added, carry with them the prospect of dividing countries into irreconcilable or ungovernable antonymous or even independent zones, and setting the stage for future conflicts on that basis as well, by allowing regional forces to establish the prerogatives of governance for an extended time in a given area that may be difficult to reverse.

Once international intervention to protect the Libyan people from the regime is embraced as a principle and a strategy by the international community, there is every reason to suspect it won't and can't end with no fly zones. If world powers, particularly the West, NATO and the United States, make a point of intervening on behalf of the Libyan people and economic sanctions prove effectively meaningless and no-fly zones only slightly curb the violence, and especially if greater atrocities and massacres become widespread, a direct intervention by ground forces will become increasingly hard to avoid. The point is that in a case like this largely symbolic measures like economic sanctions and no-fly zones ultimately won't cut it if the regime does not fall under the weight of its own contradictions and if it continues to increase the use of brute force against essentially unarmed civilian populations.

The United States government has been very cautious in its approach to the crisis in Libya, disappointing a great many people in the process. President Barack Obama has been virtually silent on the issue, and both he and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have spoken of Libya mostly in the same breath with other Arab states subjected to protest movements. One reason is that the United States does not have much leverage with or in Libya, and presumably does not have particularly good or reliable information either. Another is the fear that strong support from the United States for the protesters might serve to discredit the opposition in the eyes of some Libyans and other Arabs who are used to thinking of the Americans as the enemy. In addition, there are American and other Western economic interests at stake. And finally, I do think there is a reticence to be sucked into an interventionist stance in Libya given that the logic of such a policy might not allow itself to be restricted to ineffective economic measures and no-fly zones. Such concerns certainly explain the Obama administration's caution on the subject thus far.

But the United States risks being perceived as disinterested in Libya, hypocritical or too attached to the deal that was struck by the Bush administration with the Qaddafi regime over its special weapons program in exchange for international rehabilitation. I don't think this is an accurate reflection of Obama administration attitudes, but such accusations have already surfaced and are likely to gain momentum over time. The UN Security Council meeting this afternoon will reveal much about how far the international community is willing to go. The United States, whatever it wants to do at this stage, will also perforce have to take into consideration attitudes of states like Russia and China that may have very serious reservations about external intervention in Libyan affairs. The Obama administration so far hasn't given any indication of being interested in unilaterally imposing sanctions or no-fly zones without this kind of international backing, assuming it's willing to consider these steps at all. If the US does opt for intervention, it will almost certainly have to be with the backing of a strong international coalition and it is extremely unlikely to act alone or in the face of strong Chinese, Russian or other opposition.

For the past couple of decades in cases such as Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Kosovo and elsewhere, the international community and the West in particular have been caught between a new rhetoric of international liberal and humanitarian interventionism on the one hand versus the principle of non-interference and rejecting the legacy of colonialism on the other. The Libyan case is quickly becoming the latest conundrum over whether Western interventions (because it is going to have to be Western, I'm afraid) can legitimately take the form of liberal, humanitarian interventions consistent with an enlightened approach to international law and legitimacy or whether they will also be partly, at heart, or inevitably degenerate into new expressions of old-fashioned colonialism or imperialism.

Without question the Tunisian and Egyptian models, in which popular protests were able to unseat hated dictators and kick off a process of reform that has a very realistic fighting chance of producing reasonably democratic systems, is far preferable to most people in the Middle East and around the world than the Iraq model in which American invasion and occupation, not to mention protracted civil conflict, set the stage for the possible emergence of a stable democracy. The problem is that the Libyan case probably looks a lot more like what Iraqis would have encountered from Saddam Hussein if they had risen up in this manner, and it's very difficult to imagine the Iraqi system under Saddam allowing a "velvet revolution" to succeed or his army throwing him out in a soft coup as happened to Ben Ali and Mubarak. And, of course, direct Western intervention on the ground opens space for various forms of extremists, including Salafist-Jihadists of the Al Qaeda variety, to open new fronts against both Western interests and mainstream Arab societies, as happened in Iraq, and for civil conflict driven by communal or power politics to proceed under the guise of combating foreign occupations.

So the problem of international intervention is not nearly as simple as some people are making it out to be because the steps that are being proposed may well prove ineffective and require stronger measures requiring a much more serious committment, and more blowback, internal and external opposition and unintended consequences. On the other hand, following the demonstrated ruthlessness of Qaddafi and, especially, his blatant threats in his speech today of greatly escalated violence, atrocities and massacres and his approving invocation of various dreadful incidents around the world as a model for how to deal with rebellion and insurrection, doing nothing may be even less attractive or defensible than starting to seriously do something on an international basis in spite of the considerable risks.

Last Saturday morning I blogged that I thought that the epicenter of the Arab revolt was now in Libya and that it was the place to watch in the immediate term, and that Yemen probably would be the most volatile and significant in the medium term. This was as opposed to the obsessive and misguided focus on Bahrain that was largely the consequence of the physical presence of international media in that relatively open society and a lack of understanding about the differences between the rather unique political mix in the "Island Kingdom" and the generalized pattern in the broader Arab world. Everything that has happened since then has tended to confirm this view, and reports coming out of Libya today suggests that the situation has become downright abominable. The Gaddafi regime, facing a wave of unprecedented protests throughout the country now including the capital of Tripoli and a pattern of diplomatic and military defections, has unleashed the full force of the Libyan military and its mercenaries on significant segments of the population. Reports suggest that extraordinary atrocities have taken place and that up to 600 people have been killed, although this may be a very lowball estimate. Information is very difficult to come by, and often is unconfirmed and/or not reliable.

Even more ominously, the situation appears to be deteriorating. There are strong suggestions that the Libyan Air Force has been deployed against protesters and rebellious areas, and that the largest city that appears to have fallen into the hands of the opposition, Benghazi, may face a sustained evening of aerial bombardment tonight with potentially unimaginable consequences. The Arab League has remained largely silent, not knowing quite what to say. Most of the international community has condemned the violence, but Italy, the former colonial master in Libya, has actually supported the Gaddafi regime with Berlusconi's Foreign Minister warning about an “Islamic emirate” just to the south of Europe and similar balderdash.

Those calling for international intervention may unfortunately be wasting their breath: no party has the inclination, the means or the ability to launch a direct military intervention in Libya under the present circumstances. It's not going to happen for the foreseeable future. This could quickly change, but for now, the Libyan drama will play out entirely, or almost entirely, based on local forces. The idea of a "no-fly zone," being floated by some dissident Libyan diplomats and others, is not completely out of the question, although who would enforce it remains undefined, and at any rate even if any international forces wanted to do this, it would take some time to organize and would not prevent atrocities on the ground. It seems virtually certain that at the end of the day, when the dust settles and no matter how much blood is spilled, the Gaddafi regime will not survive its outrageous behavior. It's a matter of how many days it takes and how many lives are taken, but at least this aspect of the outcome now seems completely unavoidable.

What we are witnessing, then, is a nightmare version of the dream that began in Tunis and Cairo. The Tunisian and Egyptian peoples were able to leave their militaries with virtually no choice but to hand hated dictators one-way tickets out of town. In both cases, when push came to shove, the Army preferred to intervene to restore order and salvage what it could of the national security state rather than confront the protesters and initiate a bloodbath. Whether or not these experiments end up in full-blown democracy or long-lasting major reforms remains to be seen, but the extraordinary displays of “people power” managed to remove the despised symbols of oppression and unseat powerful dictators. In both cases, the protests were almost entirely nonviolent and while police and thugs initially brutalized demonstrators, the militaries intervened to stop that and refused to be drawn into a direct confrontation with unarmed people. Especially after the success of the Egyptian uprising, it was virtually inevitable that the model would be followed in other parts of the Arab world, and quickly. Libya was always a prime candidate, having a sclerotic dictatorship that began in the 1960s and being sandwiched geographically directly between Tunisia and Egypt. So it's not surprising that the next phase of the new Arab uprising/awakening, or whatever it proves to be, would be in Libya.

Unfortunately, it's also not surprising that what Libya is providing is a dystopian version of the euphoric, utopian "velvet revolutions" in Egypt and Tunisia, since this military, or at least significant parts of it, appears to have no compunction in unleashing its firepower on unarmed demonstrators. There is a degree of unscrupulousness and recklessness at work in the Gaddafi regime's response that was simply missing in Tunisia and Egypt and only briefly glimpsed, and in a very limited manner, in Bahrain. But this is what it looks like when the state won't restrain itself and at least some key elements of the military, mercenaries or otherwise, will take orders to open fire on unarmed demonstrators.

What effect this will have on future potential Arab uprisings against autocratic regimes very much remains to be seen, but it will be another major turning point. Assuming that Gadhafi is overthrown, as seems inevitable, there are several obvious possible ramifications to a very bloody, as opposed to velvet, Arab revolution. First it's possible to suggest that if the Libyans can go through what they seem to be willing to endure and shake off their dictatorship in spite of the extreme violence, Arabs generally will have lost their fear of brute force. Certainly the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples were willing to face down the prospect, but the Libyans are currently suffering on the rack in actuality rather than tempting fate. It could serve as an inspiration to those who might have to face much more draconian dictatorships than those in Tunis and Cairo. But it could also be an object lesson about the costs involved, especially since the degree of carnage has yet to be fully realized. It's one thing to enter into a rebellion expecting a scenario more or less analogous to the Tunisian or Egyptian models. It's quite another to have watched what has otherwise been potential brutality actually play itself out like this, and then volunteer for a repetition in your own country. So it's possible Gaddafi's brutality might have as much of an intimidating as an encouraging effect on other Arab populations.

This could particularly be the case if the outcome is long and drawn out, and above all if it is chaotic, uncertain or yields some kind of extremist post-Gaddafi regime. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were gratifyingly secular and ecumenical, and clearly reflected the desire on the part of much of the population, especially the educated, under-employed, urban middle, lower-middle and working classes for democracy and good governance. They were strikingly non-Islamist in their character and reflected a sudden and unexpected resurgence of Arab and local nationalism and an amazingly refined sense of social consciousness. Both of these cultural phenomena — nationalism that transcends ideology and religious and sectarian identity, and a refined social consciousness — had been considered if not dead then at least moribund in the Arab world by most observers. It's extremely heartening to see that these were the animating impulses that were able to bring millions of Egyptians and Tunisians onto the streets, and not narrow-minded, obscurantist religious ideology.

One of the most severe long-term political dangers arising from the kind of brutality currently being visited upon the Libyan people is that it could have a severely radicalizing effect on the opposition and throw up a post-Gaddafi era dominated by extremists rather than reformers. Extreme violence has a historical tendency to radicalize movements in an extremely nasty way and to set the stage for gruesome replacements to grizzly regimes. Extreme American bombardment in Cambodia undoubtedly help to transform the Khmer Rouge into the monstrous regime it proved to be once it seized power. In Algeria, when the military canceled elections in the early 1990s for fear of an Islamist takeover through the ballot box and put FIS members and supporters in concentration camps in the Sahara desert, it set in motion a process of radicalization that ended up with the opposition being characterized by the most extreme version of Salafist-Jihadist mania yet seen anywhere in the Arab world. I'm not predicting that this will be the outcome of what is, without question, a very heroic uprising by the Libyan people, but rather noting that much of the hope for serious, positive reform in Egypt and Tunisia stems from the fact that the military and parts of the ruling elite refused to confront the demonstrators violently and, in the final analysis, were ready to jettison hated dictators and elements of the regime that were just not acceptable to the general public. A period of confrontation gave way to at least some degree of conciliation and compromise, which in both those cases is no doubt still a work in progress. My point is that the kind of brutality being unleashed in Libya makes such conciliation and compromise, and purposive work between elements of the military, remnants of the old regime and opposition groups towards reform, far more difficult. It could, if it goes badly wrong, throw up either a chaotic or deeply oppressive outcome, which would then have its own potential negative influence on the unfolding Arab reform protest movement.

Islamists are beginning to come out of the woodwork after having almost no role in Tunisia and being both marginalized by the protesters and also deliberately holding back in Egypt. Most notably, Yusuf Qaradawi, the elderly Egyptian Salafist who is a client of the Qatari government and a main feature on Al Jazeera Arabic, has been steadily attempting to insert himself into the reform movement limelight on a regional basis. On February 18, Qaradawi gave a speech on the evolution of post-Mubarak Egyptian politics that was not particularly subtle about the direction in which he wants the country to go. Indeed, he went further than his fellow Muslim Brothers based in Egypt ever have, since the revolt at least, in implying that there should be a theocratic element to the country's future. And today, Qaradawi had a remarkable and emotional performance on Al Jazeera Arabic in which he issued a formal fatwa calling for the death of Gaddafi. He said that any soldier or other person who could pull the trigger and end Gaddafi's life should do so immediately. The response of Al Jazeera's anchor at the end of this allegedly religious diatribe was “amen.” I'd agree that any Libyan at this stage who wanted to try to end the conflict by killing the dictator could plausibly claim to be acting in self-defense, given the number of people who've been killed by the regime. But obviously Qaradawi's extraordinary comments are political, not religious, as usual. And it's clearly another effort by the leading Islamist of the Arab world to slowly and methodically usurp the momentum of the Arab uprisings and turn it towards the ends of the Muslim Brothers and similar Salafist forces.

Whether or not anyone will really listen to Qaradawi, or whether, if they do, such efforts will actually succeed in shifting momentum away from the secular, ecumenical character of the Tunisian and Egyptian protests and finally gain some traction for an Islamist turn in the Arab uprisings very much remains to be seen. The fact is that it was nationalism and social consciousness, not Islamism, that brought millions of Arabs out onto the streets, and it may well be the animating force in Libya and elsewhere as the movements progress. As I noted over the weekend, Bahrain is a different case, and in fact does reflect sectarian tensions, although not necessarily Islamist politics as such. If the Arab uprisings and protest movements are to lay the groundwork for a better future, it's essential that notwithstanding brutal repression as being carried out by the Gaddafi regime in Libya, shameless opportunism as being conducted by Qaradawi on Al Jazeera, or sectarian tensions as evident in Bahrain, the visions for the future remain nationalist, secular and ecumenical. The purity of that vision is under serious threat from numerous quarters, but there's every reason at this stage to remain optimistic that it can nonetheless persevere. Such purity is not optional. It is essential.