Lessons from Events in Libya: The Power of the People and the Critical Question of What Will the Military Do?
Title From Wikipedia: “Brotherly Leader
and Guide of the First of September Great
Revolution of the Socialist People’s
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”
With the military siding with the people, that name has as much clout as the local goat herder. We just call him Gaddafi Duck.
Power always seeks to preserve itself. Governmental power is, along with financial power, a prime example. In Libya, the dictator Gaddafi has vowed to fight to the last bullet (fired by others), to the last drop of blood (other people’s blood, of course), to keep his power. Yet people around the world, since the advent of the Internet, have been learning much about the numbers game.
By that we mean that the average citizen of any nation on earth today knows that there are only a relatively few people in charge of national governments, and there are many people comprising the body of the “governed.” That does not bode well for leaders who fail to satisfy basic expectations within the public at large (such as respect for their natural rights to life, liberty, and property). That’s one thing. The government, however bloated, is always vastly outnumbered by the people. That is a universal truth.What has changed is now the people have now been made fully aware of the power they hold in their own hands, of that power they have always held in their hands. Now, because of the internet, which makes an end run around official state controlled media, they can get information both in and out of a country ruled by an oppressive regime, and organize from the bottom up to resist. They can know their own numbers and communicate easily, where before there had been a lock and monopoly on mass communications that was most favorable to the powers that be, who could hoodwink the people into thinking “there aren’t many who think like I do, we can’t win.” Now the people of the world know better. They CAN win.
Gandhi and Martin Luther King were two giants of liberty who gave a new paradigm to the 20th Century, and the Internet has made their message common around the world. People decide to hold peaceful demonstrations to voice concerns or redress grievances. Recall the million plus Tea Party people who hit Washington D.C. in September 2009. That crowd, the largest ever assembled in Washington D.C., was well-behaved, friendly within their collective presence, but were serious in demanding that the Federal government listen to their voice. What would have happened to that crowd had the government sent riot police or troops down upon those demonstrators in Washington D.C.?
While that demonstration brought no clash between the authorities and the people, this newest wave of public protests in Libya has drawn the wrath of the dictator, and something akin to civil war, or the beginnings of one, now dominates the headlines around the world.
Oath Keepers is of course closely watching the Libyan military’s response to this situation with much interest. As we have always maintained, what the military does is a central question in whether a revolution is relatively peaceful and non-violent or a bloody and desperate fight to the death between a people and it’s government. When the military as a whole sides with the people, peaceful revolution is indeed possible, as it was in East Germany in 1989, where the communist regime was ended by means of simple mass marches, as our recent interview with an East German Colonel shows. And even when the secret police and hired henchmen of a dictatorship obey orders to fire on the people, you can still have a relatively bloodless defeat of a dictator as happened in Romania or in Tunisia, where the secret police were overwhelmed when the military withdrew its consent and support and the dictatorship fell in a matter of days. Without the support of the military, a dictatorship is a paper tiger indeed, and however brutal the dictator may be, he will be swept aside in short order when the people have had enough.
However, when the whole of the military does not side with the people, and troops fight against their own people, it leads to a brutal crack down as we saw during the Prague Spring, at Tiananmen Square, or in Iran in 2009. Or it can lead to a desperate and protracted revolution, pitting the people against the standing military (as was the case in our own Revolution). When some military units side with the people, and others with the government, it leads to civil war.In Libya, there are stories already getting out about soldiers defecting to the side of the people. Let’s look at a few examples:
First, some of what the people there think –
This from Reuters:
“The problem is not the number of those killed but how they were killed. One of the victims was obliterated after being hit by an RPG to the abdomen,” he said. Members of an army unit known as the “Thunderbolt” squad had come to the hospital carrying wounded comrades, he said. The soldiers said they had defected to the cause of the protesters and had fought and defeated Gaddafi’s elite guards.”
CNN has a one-minute video of soldiers who were killed for not killing their people:
Libya burns six soldiers alive for refusing to shoot Libyan people:
More than a hundred Libyan soldiers shot dead for refusing to shoot their people (not verified at this time) :
And there are reports of Mercenaries being used in Libya – to kill protesters for money (the use of mercenaries is a time honored tradition among tyrants):
Gadhafi’s youngest son joins people:
Two Libyan military jet pilots parachute, let jet crash in desert, refusing to bomb protesters:
“On Wednesday, two air force pilots jumped from parachutes from their Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jet and let it crash, rather than carry out orders to bomb opposition-held Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, the website Qureyna reported, citing an unidentified officer in the air force control room. One of the pilots — identified by the report as Ali Omar Gadhafi — was from Gadhafi’s tribe, the Gadhadhfa, said Farag al-Maghrabi, who saw the pilots and the wreckage of the jet, which crashed in the desert outside the key oil port of Breqa, about 700 kilometres east of Tripoli. The anti-Gadhafi forces and the mutinous army units that have joined them were consolidating their hold on nearly the entire eastern half of the 1,000-mile Mediterranean coastline, stretching from the Egyptian border to Ajdabiya, about 800 kilometres east of Tripoli, encroaching on key oil fields around the Gulf of Sidra.”
From this link we note that ‘authority’ is having difficulty with some of its military, as defections are reported.
From Reuters:
“(Reuters) – Two Libyan Air Force fighter pilots defected on Monday and flew their jets to Malta where they told authorities they had been ordered to bomb protesters, Maltese government officials said.”
From that link - “A former Libyan army officer and head of a leading opposition group says he knows of growing defections among Libya’s military not just by individuals, but in some cases, entire units. Ibrahim Abdulaziz Sahad is the Secretary-General of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, or NFSL, which was organized in in October 1981 by a group of former military officers, diplomats and businessmen with one goal – to end the regime of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi.”
Get the picture? Chaos, revolution, repression, government brutality, general insanity. Gaddafi has thus far acted like a predictable dictator. However, many of Libya’s troops are defecting and joining the protesters, and that will likely prove Gaddafi’s undoing (let us hope!).
Let’s change the pace for a moment. I [Elias] have this old album by an underground band from back in the 1960s anti-war movement. There is a song on that album entitled “What About Me?” In that song is a line I’ve remembered since the album came out in the 1960s –
“You keep adding to my number as you shoot my people down.”
In an article published by the Guardian in England,
…we find this hearkening back to that song –
“Irish-trained surgeon Heitham Gheriani, who was one of the revolution’s organisers in Benghazi, said: ‘Now the people realise the power they have. They started this protest peacefully and then the youths joined them. And when Gadhafi started killing them they rose up. But we honestly didn’t think it would happen so quickly.’”
So it would seem, from this account, that indeed, Gadhafi’s decision to use brute force to suppress public dissent actually became the catalyst for yet more dissent. That bucks conventional wisdom among tyrants, which holds that a brutal crack down will always fix things. But that aint always so! When the people have truly had enough, and a tipping point has been reached, brutal responses only harden their resolve. That’s a mistake King George made long ago in America, and that is a mistake we have seen in the recent uprisings in the Middle East, where turning off the internet and brutalizing peaceful protesters only enraged the people and sped the demise of the dictatorship.
Is this a scenario we may anticipate in America as the people continue to oppose Federal policies which are bankrupting our nation and threatening to throw our economy into chaos? Would a regime devoted to “Continuity of Government” (COG) resort to violent suppression of masses of protesters? And would that only tick the people off all the more, hardening their resolve?
If so, we may wonder what role our troops and peace officers might play in such a scenario. We shall watch what develops in Libya with interest. There are lessons in human nature to be learned from all of this. Certainly, not everything that is happening “over there” would translate over here. But much of it would. What will the military do? And the police? That is a central question in any country where the people have had enough of corrupt, usurping, rights violating rulers and self-anointed power elites.
Let’s look at Libya’s military and security structure briefly. This next webpage is an authentic accounting of Libya’s basic infrastructure, as drawn from the U.S. Government:
Of interest:
Armed Forces Overview: Libyan armed forces consist of an army (Armed Peoples on Duty), air force, Air Defense Command, and navy. The Compulsory Military Service Statute of 1978 made all eligible males between the ages of 17 and 35 subject to a draft commitment of three years of active service in the army or four years in the air force or navy. A 1984 statute mandated compulsory military training for all Libyans coming of age, whether male or female, to achieve total mobilization of the population in the event of national emergency. The law strengthened the People’s Militia (formerly known as the Popular Resistance Force) into a 40,000-member paramilitary force. To this day, all forces are under the control of Qadhafi in his role as commander in chief of the military establishment.
Major Military Units
… Libya also maintains a reserve of 40,000 in the People’s Militia. …
… Libya also maintains a reserve of 40,000 in the People’s Militia. …
Paramilitary Forces:Other security forces include the People’s Militia, ….
…The militia patrols rural areas and desert regions. It is primarily considered to be a means of involving Arab tribes with the regime and is not an effective form of border defense….
…The militia patrols rural areas and desert regions. It is primarily considered to be a means of involving Arab tribes with the regime and is not an effective form of border defense….
(end quoted passages from above link)
What we can see at the above link is that the “militia” of Libya is under national control, much as America’s States’ “national guard” units are subject to Federal control. That is in stark contrast with Oath Keepers’ view on the “Constitutional Militia”. Please be aware, when reading countless reports regarding the marauding “militia” in Libya firing on the citizens at random, that this “militia” is not “of the people”, but instead is an arm of the Gadhafi government. I mention this because this situation is ripe to be abused by the progressive media in the West, as a subtle association between rampant violence by Libya’s “militia” and the current militia movement in America.
Let’s look at how the Western press is already using the “m” word in coverage of Libya’s conflict. We note that we find rampant splashing of the term “militia”. Oath Keepers asks, “Is the Western press deliberately attempting to misuse the term militia?” Could this be an intended attempt to alienate the renewed American movement to re-establish their local Constitutional militias across the several States? Let’s see how coverage is handling this abuse of the word “militia”.
In this article by the New York Times,
…we read:
CAIRO — The faltering government of the Libyan strongman, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, struck back at mounting protests against his 40-year rule as security forces and militiamen backed by helicopters and warplanes besieged parts of the capital on Monday, according to witnesses and news reports from Tripoli. Hundreds of Qaddafi supporters took over the central Green Square in the capital after truckloads of militiamen arrived and opened fire on protesters, scattering them. Residents said they now feared even emerging from their houses. “It was an obscene amount of gunfire,” said one witness. “They were strafing these people. People were running in every direction.” The police stood by and watched, the witness said, as the militiamen, still shooting, chased after the protesters. The death toll could not be determined. The escalation of the conflict came after six days of revolt that began in Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, where hundreds of people were killed in clashes with security forces, according to witnesses.
From here – http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_LIBYA_PROTESTS?SITE=TXMCA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
…we read:
“In two nights of bloodshed, Tripoli residents described a rampage by pro-Gadhafi militiamen – a mix of Libyans and foreign mercenaries – who shot on sight anyone found in the streets and opened fire from speeding vehicles at people watching from windows of their homes.” And – “The night before, he had spent barricaded in his home, blankets over the windows – sitting with a kitchen knife on the table in front of him – as militiamen opened fire in nearby districts. Buses unloaded militia fighters in several locations, he said. Others sped in vehicles with guns mounted on the top, opening fire, including at people watching from windows.”
Additionally, from CBS news,
…we read: “in the square, they found groups of Qaddafi supporters, but the larger number of protesters appeared to be taking over the square and surrounding streets, he and two other witnesses said. That was when the backlash began, with snipers firing down from rooftops and militiamen attacking the crowds, shooting and chasing people down side streets. they said. Qaddafi supporters in pickup trucks and cars raced through the square, shooting automatic weapons. “They were driving like mad men searching for someone to kill. … It was total chaos, shooting and shouting,” said the 28-year-old.”
More. This from MSNBC:
“Militiamen and Gadhafi supporters — a mix of Libyans and foreign African fighters bused in — roamed the capital’s main street” and, “In many neighborhoods, residents set up watch groups to keep militiamen out, …”
And there is this from Fox News:
“So far, the crackdown has been waged chiefly by militias and so-called “revolutionary committees,” made up of Libyans and foreign fighters, many hired from other African nations.”
So the Western press is happy to use the word “militia” often in recent days, and the word is used in conjunction with Gadhafi’s suppression of the protesters.
Oath Keepers is not making a call on this at present moment, but we note the question about the Libyan militia as an aside, a matter to watch as things develop in Libya.
Oath Keepers is also watching the bigger picture, a trick we learned from Obama adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission and author of the infamous geostrategic outline entitled “The Grand Chessboard” (1998).
At present rate, we’re seeing the swift upheaval of several neighboring nation-states’ governments by popular uprisings. We must ask this question – will these newly-freed nations fall into the clutches of radical Islam to form a new “block” of Islamist nation-states in array against Western culture, economics, and systems of governance? That is probably the most significant question for thinking Americans to evaluate. How does all this relate to a global economy’s push to engender a world-wide state of chaos from which to emerge a one-world currency administered by a one-world system of “world governance”? How does the expressed intention of the G-20 now appear in light of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya? Will other nation-states quickly follow suit?
Special Request: Anyone who can translate, please give us a read on this site:
Also of note, no one seems to know for certain how to spell Gaddafi’s name. It is “Gaddafi” or is it “Gadhafi”? Reliable news sources compete with different spellings. Perhaps he has a birth certificate which we may consult to finally know just who he really is. Or perhaps not. He’s in power with or without a birth certificate. It would help if there were one sure way to know how to spell the man’s name.
Your civil and rational comments are invited.
Stewart Rhodes (Oath Keepers Founder)
and Franklin Shook (aka “Elias Alias” – Montana Chapter President and Board Member)
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