The Arab revolution is still on the march, as the video above graphically shows. That is what Qaddafi’s killing signifies. While the intervention of NATO in the conflict is a threat to the revolution in a tangential sense, at the moment the imperialists are in no position to take on the Arab masses. Instead these opportunist counter-revolutionary interlopers are falling over themselves to take the credit (look at Cameron’s nauseatingly self-congratulatory speech today), and on the other hand desperately hoping that their military intervention, which undoubtedly speeded up Qaddafi’s defeat, will reward them with some semblance of influence over the Arab masses.
The overthrow of Qaddafi should be welcomed by socialists and progressive anti-capitalists. Though it would have been preferable if he had survived to be put on public trial – to shed some light on some of the murky relationships he developed with Bush and others in the ‘war on terror’ . But it looks very much like he was the victim of a swift popular justice, not of some cynical judicial assasination to shut him up as was Saddam Hussein.
This is not the end of the Arab revolution. Not by a long chalk. Syria, Bahrain, Yemen are convulsed by protests and incipient civil war and recently mass unrest has even spread into the oil-rich Shia areas of Saudi Arabia. The upsurge has brought renewed strength to the Palestinians – particularly with regard to the opening up of Gaza to Egypt, the recent invasion of the Israeli embassy in Cairo by supporters of the Palestinians, and now the boost that the Gilad Shalit victory has given them. It can even be seen in the momentum pushing the wretched Abu Mazen to cause the US some inconvenience at the UN.
What happens now in Libya will probably not, when the dust settles, be that different from what his happening in Egypt and Tunisia where the old regimes have previously been overthrown. There will be political struggles between those who wish to deepen democracy and champion the interests of the poor and the oppressed, pitted against those who want to re-consolidate a regime than can ‘discipline’ the masses for the imperialists.
For make no mistake, that is the real real reason for the imperialist intervention. Backing Qaddafi the way they back the House Of Saud was out of the question. There was always too much bad blood between the West and the ‘radical’ regime for that. So the imperialists took the gamble of siding with the insurgents against Qaddafi’s counter-attack against Benghazi in the spring. Reasoning that the only way they can hope to retain some influence over the Arab world if it is convulsed by revolutions is if they can project themselves as ‘friends’ of democracy and the revolution, as long as it does not lay its hands on private property.
Will this stratagem succeed? That is highly problematic. The fact is that, Libya and Syria aside, most of the numerous despotisms are pro-Western and armed by the Western powers and have been for many decades. Most of them are also subservient collaborators of Israel. The imperialist strategy of concentrating their fire on Qaddafi and Assad, the ‘radical’ regimes that are also convulsed by revolution, and trying to portray them as in some way the real cause of despotism and tyranny in the Middle East, is totally at odds with reality and the experience of the Arab masses.
Working class people should cheer the demise of Qaddafi, but demand the Western hypocrites and opportunists get the hell out of the Middle East and keep their hands off the pan-Arab revolution. It is in all our interests to deepen the Arab revolution, to see Saudi Arabia and all the oil sheikhdoms liberated from tyranny by the masses, along with Syria and Libya. And to link the Arab revolution with struggles against capitalism and oppression around the world.
