Heartbreaking. The tone of all observers is that this is as much a
failure of governance as an environmental catastrophe.
As everyone who was at Burning Man learned, plumbing and drainage is
the basis of civilisation.
Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me
that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively
"washed its hands" of water management.
It was remarkable how one of the first movements after withdrawing from the EU was to change the rules so water companies could dump sewage and render watercourses unsafe and polluted.
Sounds like regulatory capture was already deeply burrowed in the UK.
This doesn't sound remarkable in the sense that you could play industry roulette, and its just another industry could have bought what they wanted instead of the water lobby. The y seemed to bet on brexit and won big. There were likely EU lobby losers on the other side, likely buying influence for years for EU rules to favor them, and we don't know them because they did not happen overnight or they were bigger in scope.
So the questions are,
1) what are the flipsides ? Which EU regulatory captures became undone as a result of brexit , and are massively benefitting the brits ?
2) regulatory capture is not new. So what are the brits doing about it ?
There's a dead comment here about how it was "actually a dam collapse, not a flood" and how no news source is reporting on that. From what I can gather, at a glance, at least the AP, The Guardian and Al Jazeera all state that the flood was the result of two dams collapsing and the cause of the collapse was the storm.
Even the article itself states that the two dams were poorly maintained and the collapse is the result of their state as much as the storm itself.
Given how many places have infrastructure rotting from either corruption or cost savings, I wonder how many more news stories we will see in the future that follow the pattern of "severe weather event results infrastructure failure killing thousands".
The dead comment was from a HN user who, from their comment history, has trouble fitting in with the norms of participation in this forum. They were unhappy with the use of the word flood even though the example sentence for the word flood in the Oxford dictionary is: "the dam burst, flooding a small town"
Would it have failed if it was properly maintained?
I bet somebody knows this. And that is the question that imposes culpability, not the ones you asked.
But if you are not going for culpability and just assumes everybody is honestly trying to improve, the question to ask is "was it properly maintained?"
Infrastructure needs maintenance, culpability only makes sense if there are enough funds for such maintenance and if there is an organization level compatible with the kind and scope of the work. I wouldn't make any assumptions about that in the case of Lybia.
Notably a large number of bridges of the German autobahn was recently found to be dangerously unmaintained to the point where the only recommended recourse was to tear them down and rebuild them. Luckily Germany doesn't normally see significant earthquakes and the storms apparently haven't been severe enough to destroy any of them.
In my part of Germany we had a severe rain storm this week that caused local flooding in part because the sewage treatment plant could not process the intake quickly enough, resulting in the sewers getting backlogged while rain was still pouring down.
Even without outright neglect a lot of infrastructure simply can't handle situations significantly outside the standard range of operation.
> Luckily Germany doesn't normally see significant earthquakes and the storms apparently haven't been severe enough to destroy any of them.
It isn't luck, if Germany had earthquakes they would have built the bridges differently. You don't build things to handle situations that doesn't happen.
Well, yes, but the lucky part is that unlike severe weather events, the frequency and severity of earthquakes isn't likely to significantly change in Germany.
Our forests died because the trees we planted can't cope with the kind of heat waves we're now seeing. Our towns get flooded because our infrastructure wasn't build to handle this much downpour. But luckily earthquakes aren't something we have to worry about as much, climate change or not.
"Dam failing" and "dam failing unexpectedly" are not comparable situations.
Floods happens all the time in the west, people dying from floods however is rare since when they happen we know why and how and when it will happen so we can evacuate people.
Libya failed to warn the people here, that is why so many died, that is the most significant failure and should have been the easiest part, it shows severe problems with their management of the dam. They should have known how much stress the dam can handle, and that this storm was likely to make it fail, and evacuate the people when failure was close.
In the west we would just say "the dam will likely fail due to bad maintenance", the destruction will be costly but lives wont be lost, and in many cases we can prematurely destroy parts of the dam to avoid destroying downstream infrastructure and that way come out of it almost scot free.
>Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively "washed its hands" of water management.
The human loss is enormous. If only we applied our war resources to recovery instead, it would be extraordinary to see the people of the region granted access to the immense technological prowess of humanity, with intent to heal, not harm.
The poor of the region know little more than suffering, already. Worse than us all. If only we had the temerity to drop kettles, not bombs.
In Crete currently, just across the sea some 300km away. We had a brush of storm Daniel, just a week of high wind and occasional rain. Nothing like what poured down there.
There are probably hundreds of bodies swimming in the sea right now just south from me. Sad, crazy, and probably a glimpse of new normal, as usually the poorest are most hit.
> The medicane strengthened as it crossed the unusually warm waters of the Mediterranean before dumping torrential rain on Libya on Sunday.
> It brought more than 16 inches (414 mm) of rainfall in 24 hours to Al-Bayda, a city west of Derna, a new record.
This is the top end of the distribution shifting; a powerful storm powered by warm water that would have been nearly impossible without all the heat our extra CO2 has trapped and has been absorbed by the ocean. It's definitely a consequence of climate change, and it will get more frequent and worse.
Dams (and their collapses) are one of those risks which are latent and underappreciated but devastating force-multipliers of weather and climate-related events.
The Derna dam collapses, even with only partial death reports is already the second deadliest recorded dam failure, and is close on the lower-end range of death estimates for the worst, the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure in China, following another weather catastrophe, Typhoon Nina.
(If memory serves, Nina both stalled out over the Banqiao region and intersected with a more northerly cold front, creating a deluge effect similar to that of Superstorm Sandy over New York and New England, where warm tropical moisture was wrung from the atmosphere as it intersected colder air. In Nina's case, over a meter of rain fell within 24 hours.)
Dams are deceptively complex structures which appear simple, and can be built with relatively simple technology and persist for long periods of time with little ongoing maintenance and administration ... until they cannot. Most especially, dams are especially prone to governmental dysfunction in oversight, regulation, maintenance, and emergency planning. That last should include planning, risk assessment, risk mitigating, public education about risks and procedures, warning systems, crisis communications (between dam operators and government, and dam operators and downstream communities), disaster drills, and training in rescue, recovery, and relief operations.
Libya, a failing state divided by conflict, and for over forty years an autocratic dictatorship under a single ruler, lacks autonomous, independent, capable, and effective institutions for operating such infrastructure. It's all but certainly not the only such region.
Even what are considered to be rich and well-functioning democratic states see dam failures, or near failures. The near-failure of the Oroville Dam in California in 2017 followed mismanagement by the state water authority. The actual failures of the Edensville and Sanford Dams in Michigan in 2020 followed years of mismanagement by a private owner and ineffective regulation by the Michigan Deparment of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. In that case, property was damaged but no lives lost. Lake Dunlap in Texas suffered a spillway failure in 2019, again with ineffective management and regulation by this time by the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, though again without loss of life.
One of the highest-risk dams in the United States is Isabella Dam, on the Kern River upstream of Bakersfield, CA. The topography somewhat resembles the images I've seen of Derna: a mountainous upstream terrain, narrow canyon, and a city lying directly in the floodplain of both the river and any potential dam collapse.
The problem presented by such dams with ongoing climate change is that all the factors involved compound:
- Climate change increases risks of extreme weather events, including Mediterranean-basin cyclonic storms as with Daniel.
- Climate-related stresses, including reduced crops and increased food prices, stress already-straining marginal states. The Arab Spring protests which ended up toppling Qaddafi's Libyan regime have been blamed in part on food stress from reduced harvests and increased food prices.
- Governmental corruption and ineffectiveness raise all potential disaster threats. What would be a modest property-related disaster with preparation, warning, evacuation, and response becomes a mass fatality event where one or more element is missing.
- Decreased liberal freedoms also tend to restrain technical concerns and criticisms. This was certainly the case at Banqiao, seems to be the case in Derna, and can be seen in other recent catastrophes such as the 2020 Beirut ammonium nitrate explosion (which also exhibited several other factors mentioned here).
A core problem with disaster and risk planning is that often contributing factors which are treated as independent turn out to be strongly correlated and interrelated. I believe we're seeing that again here.
Another Guardian story examines the contrast between Morocco's response to its earthquake disaster, and Libya to Storm Daniel and resulting dam collapses. It highlights some of the same points I've made above:
Peter Beaumont, a senior Guardian international reporter, has spent this week in the Atlas mountains and is a veteran of several reporting trips to Libya. He says: “Libya is a failed – or semi-failed – state that has been caught up in a protracted civil war since 2011, which has obviously had a massive impact on the country’s infrastructure and social cohesion.
“Morocco, on the other hand, is a functioning modern state. The place works – Marrakech, Tangier, Rabat are all modern cities. Ordinary people have been mobilised on a mass scale, and there is a very strong sense of nationhood.”
There's a good in-depth look at this situation by the NY Times which supports much of what I'd written above, and dives into more specific details and history. HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37534800>
Concerns with these dams dates to 1986, 37 years ago, with engineering studies put off another 12 years, and an attempt at remediation finally committed to only four months before Libya fell into civil war in 2011. And yes, there are broader geopoliticial strategies playing out with multiple parties involved.
When ever I see something like this I can’t help but wonder if it would have happened if EU and America hadn’t assassinated Gaddafi. I know that’s kind of a knee jerk reaction, but really what is happening in lybia now? What’s the plan? Protect the oil pipelines and just don’t look too close anymore?
If the "alternate reality" didn't already erased it, you may recall something called "Arab Spring". It's not like Gaddafi was in a stable position at the time, and even less likely he would skate the whole situation until today.
Gaddafi was "assassinated" because there was a full-on civil war and the EU and America bombed the massive convoy he had sent to crush the rebellion in Benghazi and enforced a no-fly zone otherwise Gaddafi's planes would obliterate the rebel forces and the civilians living in those cities ( which started to happen, before the EU and US moved their asses ). Speaking of "assassinations", I don't think Gaddafi's forces would punish the offenders with only a slap on the wrist. Do I need to mention the shipping containers with bullet holes in the Sun at the desert full of prisoners?
Everyone's "performance" has been bad, but why don't we talk about Syria/Russia dealings in Libya in the last ~5 years? which coincidentally have been the worse and more unstable years since the 2011 war? ( Not to mention the usual bottom feeders of doom that appear in these situations, ie. the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and every other "entrepreneur" group funded by the bored Sheiks in the Arabian Peninsula?
Gaddafi was "assassinated" because there was a full-on civil war and the EU and America bombed the massive convoy he had sent to crush the rebellion in Benghazi and enforced a no-fly zone otherwise Gaddafi's planes would obliterate the rebel forces and the civilians living in those cities
This is just revisionist nonsense. There was no "full on" civil war in Libya until NATO intervened and turned it into such. This video [1] (from 9 years ago) does a good job laying out the counterargument - the US took the opportunity of a small-scale uprising to regime change Gaddafi and plunged the country into now a decade of chaos and destruction with no end in sight, destabilizing most of North Africa and flooding Europe with refugees in the process.
Everyone's "performance" has been bad, but why don't we talk about Syria/Russia/[Al-Qaeda] dealings in Libya in the last ~5 years?
Why don't we talk about how the US illegally invaded Syria, allied itself with Al-Qaeda offshoots and tried to topple another antagonist Ba'athist government, failed, and plunged that country also into now an effectively permanent low-level civil war? Why is it the US and NATO can invade and bomb and occupy the territory of anyone they want by claiming "their leaders are bad" but if anyone else does it to our friends (many of whom are also bad) it's all "territorial integrity" and "national sovereignty" and "the rules based order"?
Because our foreign policy is run by utter amoral hypocrites and liars. We are the flailing, declining hegemon, leaving a path of destruction in our wake. And in cases like Syria or Libya its hard to avoid the conclusion our perspective is "if we can't have it we'll settle for wrecking it".
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I already see there is no point in continue this conversation.
I notice your standards for US/EU intervention are very very high and basically nobody should ever being killed.
Why don't you apply the same reasoning to Gaddafi's regime and Syria/Russia/Al-Qaeda? You seem to have every problem existing in the Universe when the evil West does something ( and also a problem when it doesn't, also a problem that the West exists I suspect ), yet not a peep when these regimes torture and kill people by the thousands, or are you going to tell me that's just a fantasy? Or when they do it it's justify because it's the West's fault too, so those poor victims have no other choice than to kill everyone who doesn't agree with them?
Btw, I'm not even "defending" the US/EU track record in Libya. I think they did a really bad half-assed job, but I also recognize the context of it all.
We didn’t use to call it war, so you’re wrong about that.
We used the term “intervention” to describe limited military action. Countries throughout history have conducted interventions as opposed to full-scale war.
Russia’s assault on Ukraine isn’t an intervention and is instead a war and we know this because of the size and scale of the operation but also the intentions of the operation, which, are to take over the entire country of Ukraine.
If Lybian forces were on the verge of committing war crimes and killing thousands, then "intervention" would be an appropriate word to describe what the Western powers did. They "intervened" to prevent an imminent atrocity, if you believe them.
And I am inclined to believe them, not because of what Western governments have said, but because the whole Arab Spring played out in real time on social media.
I agree that what happened to Gaddafi himself was horrific. It would have been a much better thing if he had been arrested and brought before a tribunal. But he was killed by Libyans, who were angry about the Libyans that Gaddafi himself had killed. The contribution that Western Governments made to those events was to stop the killing of thousands of people who opposed the regime. Arguing against intervention is arguing in favor of what would have happened without intervention—which is, effectively, what we have seen in Syria.
Now, was Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the verge of murdering tens of thousands? Were Ukranian forces gathered, ready to rain artillery shells down on a major Ukrainian city? If not, I don't think it would be appropriate to describe the Russian invasion as an "intervention". What would Putin have been "intervening" in? Ukranian self-determination?
> But he was killed by Libyans, who were angry about the Libyans that Gaddafi himself had killed.
Sorry, I suggest you dig deeper. He was killed by Misrata fighters who were directly NATO sponsored and equipped. There were lots of articles on how NATO supported Misrata at the time.
Misrata is in Libya, no? Were the people who captured and killed Gaddafi not Libyans?
Are you saying that these people were working under orders from NATO? What was their motivation, if they were not fundamentally angry about how Gaddafi had treated their fellow countrymen?
> Are you saying that these people were working under orders from NATO? What was their motivation, if they were not fundamentally angry about how Gaddafi had treated their fellow countrymen?
Yes, there were under orders from NATO. They even coordinated air-strikes. This is no real surprise to anyone. Hell, I think some of the NATO generals even complimented the coordination. Can dig that up if needed.
Anger at a nation's leader does not justify NATO intervention. Most of these rebels were quick to take Libya back to the barbaric ages where women were treated as cattle. Libya also became an ISIS HQ. No one talks about human rights violations after Gadaffi was kicked out and tens of thousands killed. Media attention became nil at that point. Of-course NATO nations pat themselves on the back - hey we took out the bad guys. So what if our "good guys" kill 10x more ?
I find the hypocrisy and justification used for NATO wars utterly sickening.
A Russian puppet was overthrown by a revolution of the people, and replaced by a democratically-elected president, followed by multiple successful elections, and the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another, over nearly a decade, and Russian apologists call it a "coup".
A significant fraction of Ukraine voted for him - esp from the south and east. Toppling an elected government whose election was deemed valid by a vetted group of international observers is what split Ukraine and finally led to this bloody situation today.
And if you think the U.S. was not involved, I am afraid that is a extraordinary act of burying your head in the sand. The U.S. was involved even in the earlier Orange revolution in 2004. At that time, the U.S. media was not as sophisticated as it was later. The Guardian and US papers proudly declared the US combating Russian influence and "protecting democracy" by sponsoring protestors! Ukraine was always a tug of war between U.S. and Russian influence but 2014 coup was what broke the Camel's back.
Remember - Nuland is even on record discussing who should hold the reigns after the coup. She didn't want Klitschko in the central government. Too moderate for her. She wanted the Anti-Russian and far-right guy Arseniy Yatsenyuk in power.
And Lo and Behold - Her Prophecy Was Fulfilled! In an interview with Poroshenko, he admitted that Nuland was in Kiev during the time of the Maidan protests. She traveled 3 times during that period, organizing support and supplies for the "democratic movement" - even going to the extent of giving sandwiches to protestors.
Unless Reuters is "naked Russian propaganda" now, there was definitely an uptick in kinetic activity in the Donbas, with most of it falling on the Separatist side of the line of control.
Russia has given each and every excuse that you could possibly come up with in 2014 and again in 2022. If you're a defense industry consultant I'd expect you to be more than conversant with the run-up to the second episode of this war and not to swallow such things hook, line and sinker.
Note that nowhere in that article does it say that the Ukrainian side did that. For all we know this was a provocation, as Russia is won't to do. Alternative explanations have been present many times and none of them have stuck.
Also note that there was an endless build-up prior to the second phase of this invasion which had absolutely nothing to do with that particular incident even if it was done by the Ukrainian side, which I highly doubt given the fact that it was one of the pretexts used.
Finally: in that region there have been many actions by either side and no matter what: the Ukrainians are well within their right to kick out an invader, the myth of the separatists has been debunked solidly, until the little green men showed up there was no meaningful separatist activity.
> Note that nowhere in that article does it say that the Ukrainian side did that. For all we know this was a provocation
If you are asserting that the Helsinki-based OSCE was duped by Russia detonating a bunch of explosions on their own side of the line of control....prove it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The extraordinary claim that Ukrainian shelling of positions in Donbas is why Russia invaded Ukraine is what requires extraordinary evidence. And we already know that claim is nonsense so spare me.
That there was a surge in numbers of explosions in East Ukraine is not Russian propaganda, everyone agrees it happened.
That the surge in shelling was Ukraine-initiated against Russian-backed separatists (and not vice versa coordinated from Moscow as part of the prelude to its own invasion)—and, even moreso, that even if it was, a Ukrainian offensive against separatists in Ukraine (and not even against the openly Russian-occupied part) was a reasonable basis for seeing a threat of NATO invading (or backing an invasion of) Russia—is the Russian propaganda.
"By February 24th, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Now the [Russian] Defense Ministry attempts to fool society, tries to fool the President, and tell the story of a crazy aggression from the Ukrainian side and they were going to attack us with the whole NATO block."
Not sure how you get more conclusive then that; Putin himself?
The only thing the OSCE documented in the article you cited was explosions in the region and a casualty in the government controlled areas from the attacks.
It does not support your (Russia’s, really) claim of a Ukraine-initiated escalation
On page 2, with the map of the Donbas, the vast majority of the explosions are in northwest Luhansk, NE of Luhansk city itself, and North of Donetsk....on the Separatist side of the line of contact.
Why don't you apply the same reasoning to Gaddafi's regime and Syria/Russia/Al-Qaeda?
What reasoning? First of all I'm an American citizen, so I concern myself more with what my country does with my tax dollars than what other countries do, especially within their own borders or in situations that don't directly affect American citizens. I don't believe America's job is global law enforcement. It's like asking an American "why don't you apply the reasoning that President Trump is corrupt to President Ali Bongo of Niger? Why aren't you calling for President Ali Bongo's arrest? Double standard?"
also a problem that the West exists I suspect
It's fascinating that my criticism of the US/NATO bombing and invading and occupying other countries leads you to suspect I have a problem "that the West exists". In your conception perhaps "the West" would cease to exist as such if it were not the global hegemon?
yet not a peep when these regimes torture and kill people by the thousands
Saudi Arabia tortures and kills people by the thousands. If China or Russia invaded Saudi Arabia and attempted to turn it into a client state using the justification of Saudi misdeeds, would you support them? I suspect not, but we're back to "when the US/NATO does it it's good, when US/NATO adversaries do it it's bad" being the "rules-based order" many believe should exist.
> but we're back to "when the US/NATO does it it's good, when US/NATO adversaries do it it's bad"
You're talking about the hypothetical situation when China or Russia would invade a country to stop the regime from torturing and killing people by the thousands.
And you proceed to claim that when they would do it, the West would say "it's bad".
There have been plenty of occasions in, say, the last 75 years where China or Russia have invaded some country. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but not one single time was it to stop the regime from torturing and killing people by the thousands.
Otoh there have been, and still are, plenty of regimes that are killing and torturing like that, and which receive the full support from China and Russia.
Can you imagine if the US response to CHAZ/CHOP was to drop JDAMs on Seattle?
Now one can counter-argue "not enough people were dying to justify foreign intervention", to which the obvious retort is "who gets to make that determination?"
For accuracy's sake (i can't find the Atlantic article talking about it, and i'm not bored enough to spend my day going through Wikileaks, so right now the source is trustmebro, i hope that someone have the documents/article in favorite), thanks to Hilary's leaked emails, we know that Obama's administration wasn't keen on going in Libya, and only Sarkozy(France) and Cameron(UK) insistence on attacking decided the US to support the invasion (and it was mostly logistical support).
Again thanks to Hillary's emails, we can suspect that the CIA had a hand in eliminating the new candidate that france wanted to support (we had contact with both Kaddafi's son and the leader of a rebel group, both died), but i wouldn't put that war, then civil war, on US. Also, while France supported eliminating Kaddafi here, they supported the dictator in Tunisia with police forces and weapons (that are marked as non-lethal, but since we haven't found many nonlethal weapons after the revolution, either there was a kickback, or a lot were stolen/lost, or a part of what was sent were lethal weapons).
And for Syria it's the same, Obama's administration wasn't really focused on that part of the middle east, and Hollande (France) forced their hand.
Truly, i cannot believe France's reputation in Africa is that low. I wonder why.
> we know that Obama's administration wasn't keen on going in Libya, and only Sarkozy(France) and Cameron(UK) insistence on attacking decided the US to support the invasion (and it was mostly logistical support).
Yep. Can confirm.
This was publicly reported during the 2011-12 period as well. There were a couple press junkets Obama, the State Dept, and DoD did at the time highlighting this stance of non-interventionism. Read some of the older Economist articles from that era as well.
I didn't know Emailgate actually had emails from that time.
For Libya, mostly by giving fake intel to the UN (and by extension to the US), George W Bush 'WMD' style (though it was a bit more compelling). I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if the UK was aware of it or if the Mi6/SIS was fooled.
For Syria, Obama made threats to try to prevent the use of chemical weapons. The UK wanted to avoid another Libya, the other EU countries aren't warmongers, Turkey wouldn't have said anything, so only France did the 'actually, they used chemical weapons, and the US is not alone if you go so you won't have another Iraq!'.
I don't know what happened to Hollande, why he grew a pair suddenly, but I don't think we ever had a president who didn't stir shit at least once in 70 years.
The powers have long divided ‘loot’ — meaning weaker nations that they can exploit — between themselves. Africa is very much French territory. It’s like asking how does a Don from the Council compel the God Father to agree to a hit. “It’s just business”.
Qaddafi got what he deserved from a karmic point of view. He was instrumental in gifting the Islamic Republic to Iran so hope you enjoyed that bayonet Colonel. But obviously his regime was far better for Libya and Africans than the loonies that are cranked up, trained, and armed by Western intelligence agencies as part of their mad approach to managing exploited realms. But again “it’s just business”.
This is almost the offensive realist viewpoint were it not for the intense American exceptionalism. Great powers are going to do what they do. Accept this and everything becomes more hopeful. Otherwise, the world will always seem to be ruled by terrible amoral people and nihilism and despair are all you will ever have. There is no glorious future without rulers or parties, therefore wars and competition. Our western Judeo-Christian morality will never replace other modes of thinking, even in our own government!
Hah. You realize you just said facts are facts and that facts are just that, they are neither right or wrong, hypocritical or amoral or immoral.
Hmmm. That’s tough to argue against when you put it like that.
Another way to put it is that many facts can be true at the same time. Superpowers are gonna Superpower, but they are also hypocrites operating on a double standard.
So then the question is, are all facts the same? The answer I’ve come to is that some facts are more useful than others.
The fact that America is a great power is a very important fact.
The fact the great powers act alike is a useful fact.
The fact that can derived from these, that America does great power stuff, is of no value. It’s just the obvious result of other facts which are more important if your goal is prediction or parsimonious explanations for historical events.
>>>>>>>> Because our foreign policy is run by utter amoral hypocrites and liars.
No. Don't assume malice where ineptitude will be sufficient.
Our Foreign Policy is run by armchair, master-degree wannabe-generals in suits and ties, some dark triad, some not, but always away from real bullets, to instead being preoccupied with their own advancement, protecting their friends, and increasing the size of their portfolio, justifying their grand aims with real (or imagined) claims of good intentions
>to instead being preoccupied with their own advancement, protecting their friends, and increasing the size of their portfolio, justifying their grand aims with real (or imagined) claims of good intentions
This is the essentially same thing the person you're replying to said: amoral hypocrites and liars.
When a government orders their military to openly kill protesters, it's perfectly reasonable to call that a "civil war" (even though I prefer the term "genocide"). And honestly, that makes the government heads free target for anybody willing to intervene.
You won't get any sympathy for that opinion.
Other US military interventions have varying levels of righteousness, but this one is a pretty clear-cut case.
Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, and Less Rocco (sometimes called Western Sahara) are either stable or were not destabilized by the Libyan civil war.
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Why don't we talk about how Obama's "moderate rebels" in Syria metasized into ISIS with full U.S equipment. After in-effectiveness in Syria against battle hardened Assad forces, they decided to go for Mosul and the soft Iraqi forces instead. Believe there was even an interview with the ISIS soldiers where they were very happy with the U.S. sponsorship!
The same story was repeated earlier with Bin Laden. It is like the U.S. never learns. Now once again in 2022/23 the Idlib mujahideen are being courted by the U.S. war apparatus to make problems in Syria as a way to divert Russia.
> The "EU and America" didn't assassinate Gaddafi.
Of-course they did! If you recall, there was even an offer made by Gadaffi and his sons for holding elections and a step-down if he lost. They even agreed to international observers for elections!
Every single concession was rejected by NATO as a "ploy". They wanted Gaddaffi dead.
Exactly. If the EU and US hadn't stopped Gaddafi from killing his own people, the tragedy would also have been terrible. Worse than now? Better than now? Should they have known? It's impossible to say.
So it's not OK for you watching how Gaddafi vanquishes rebels, but it is totally OK for you to watch rebels getting rid of Gaddafi, and aiding them to do so.
We're talking about killing people in a country on the other side of the world.
If not omniscience at least clear evidence that there is no other course of action and that this is absolutely required (spoiler, it wasn't). Reacting irrationally is just what animals do.
This is not exactly a fair comment. It's the same reasoning when you attempt to justify /any/ action. You can't do it for a guaranteed outcome (because no such states can be guaranteed) but that doesn't mean you can't try to achieve a desired outcome.
One reason is because they didn't intervene in Rwanda, and got widely criticised for that. I believe it was decided that genocide demands intervention.
That's part of it. Because the West usually does these things for purely self-interest, but likes to play the "world police" card to justify things, then gets frustrated when people say "well, if you're the world police, why are you not stopping the genocide in Rwanda?" and the West shrugs, but the answer is generally obvious, "because there's no benefit we can glean from it".
I guess that's why we now get the piecemeal support for Ukraine. No real intervention, but we've got to do something, but not too much, but not too little either.
Not sure what you're trying to say here. Surely getting your own military personal involved is not entirely nothing? Also, launching missiles from NATO airspace does not have to be the next step.
Two things that sound to me like obvious next steps is sending NATO air defense with NATO personel into Ukraine to provide better cover from Russian missiles. And after that, a no-fly zone. Actual combat support is probably too much to ask.
EU/US has supported a rebellion in Lybia (equals created a rebellion in Lybia) and then used direct military force to topple Lybian regime.
I'm not even sure who administered the city which was crushed by the flood in 2023 considering the free-for-all in Lybia ever since.
As usual with Western-induced rebellions, everybody ended up losing. I'm also not sure why you are confident that Gaffafi was going to "obliterate the civilians" (read - his own citizens).
You said it yourself, he was well on his way to crushing the rebellion. Libya's Arab Spring might have ended like Bahrain's [1], in which case the country might still have one of the highest levels of development in Africa.[2]
I cannot believe I am actually reading this. What kind of god syndrome people have here to think that they can just play Age of Empires with real people? You know you are talking about a sovereign nation right?
It's not clear. His son seemed to be heading, at the time, for a middle-east style re-construction of the country. He essentially replaced his father but the revolution didn't let anything materialize as it happened shortly after that. He still has significant support: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/2/libya-court-reinsta...
> what is happening in lybia now?
Nothing much. But a big problem of lack of governance is that critical infrastructure (like dams) gets neglected.
> What’s the plan?
No plans.
> Protect the oil pipelines and just don’t look too close anymore?
Clearly doesn't work but no one wanted this situation except for some people located across the Atlantic.
> When ever I see something like this I can’t help but wonder if it would have happened if EU and America hadn’t assassinated Gaddafi.
Gaddafi would have died sooner or later anyway, and he was a kleptocrat like all other dictators were and are.
> but really what is happening in lybia now? What’s the plan? Protect the oil pipelines and just don’t look too close anymore?
What would be needed is an intervention force that takes over the entire country and stabilizes it similar to the current setup in Bosnia and Kosovo - the warlords are in a stalemate. The problem is, NATO is too busy with Ukraine (and even that engagement is sadly controversial enough despite there being no troops involved), the US wants to focus on China, Europe can't be arsed to actually do anything (not that we could, we can't even supply Ukraine without seriously endangering the capabilities of our own armies), the French are even more reviled than Islamists are in Africa (see the recent putsches), the African Union is more of a paper tiger that's additionally focusing on the before-mentioned putsches, and China doesn't care as it's not part of their New Belt Road.
And even assuming that there would be someone interested in intervening in that shitshow, they won't get the UNSC mandate required for that, as either Russia or the US will veto such an operation.
The only way that any troops will deal with Libya is when Islamists make a resurgence because that is about the only threat that neither the US, Russia nor China really want to be able to rise.
> What would be needed is an intervention force that takes over the entire country and stabilizes it
An occupation force is not tenable in the modern era.
Per a Washington Post article from 2004[1], the post-WW2 occupation of Germany had an initial force ratio of one occupying soldier per 40 civilians. At that level, occupying forces could assume direct command of civil structures, without needing to sign deals with the least-bad bandits or warlords in waiting to act on our behalf.
Per Wikipedia, Libya's current population is a bit above 7 million. With a similar force ratio, that means an occupying force would require 175,000 soldiers. A Fermi estimate of cost is $100k/yr/soldier ($10k doesn't pay for salary, $1m is implausibly large), giving an occupation cost of $17.5bn/yr[2] before any special funding like (re)building major infrastructure projects.
This kind of cost is insupportable in a modern democracy, where voters will rightly ask why 'we' should bother. Libya was not and is not an existential threat like WW2-era Germany, and we're not in the imperial/colonial era where occupying forces could loot the country to pay for its own occupation.
[2] -- This is also why meaningful intervention in Haiti will not happen, if you believe the calling-for-intervention reports that civil government has more or less collapsed in that nation.
Not necessarily. A total prohibition there would give free reign to tyrants to oppress their own people or even invade their insufficiently-allied neighbours without fear of consequence. The second world war is widely regarded as a just conflict (on the balance), even if it did topple the governments of the Axis powers.
However, my thinking above raises cost-estimation from a practical problem (can we afford the war?) to a moral one. An optimistic belief in a 'short victorious war' gives the intervenor at least partial culpability for the harms of state failure following insufficient occupation and reconstruction.
> give free reign to tyrants to oppress their own people
Come on, North Korean regime exists for 70 years now and it is relatively stable. You're not going to heal the world. China will continue to do whatever it wants in Tibet and Cental Asia. The only thing you get by doing interventions against the regimes you do not like, is encouraging other countries to do interventions against the regimes that they do not like.
You can nudge tyrants into becoming milder and perhaps transitioning power sometimes in the future, and that would also have a benefit of not starting civil wars and having refuge crises.
Gaddafi was bad but his regime did manage to make Libya one of the most developed countries of the region before Western sanctions eventually hit, and they did that without borrowing any money abroad thanks to their oil reserves.
> the French are even more reviled than Islamists are in Africa
Is it? Yes, a lot of what led to the recent putsches was Russian propaganda, but "Françafrique" has been collapsing for years now - understandably, given that France's attitude towards Africa hasn't been positive in any kind, it was mostly "we're happy to support whatever dictator is in charge as long as we get cheap natural resources".
France especially, but also the rest of the old European empires, never really managed to properly heal its relationship with its former colonies, and now it's biting us in our collective arses as these nations re-orient themselves to Russia and China.
It’s not like Libyan society was ripe for democracy. We see that those who replaced him aren’t democratic leaders, but savages. Was he a merciless ruler? I mean, maybe. More interesting question is whether his methods were appropriate for the challenges of ruling that kind of society.
My impression is, that Libya is at least split into two major factions and as they are bound in their internal conflict there is no international politic any more. Which conveniently allowed the west to mostly forget about Libya.
I saw a heartbreaking report about the disaster region yesterday. One interesting aspect were hints that this disaster might have stimulated more cooperation inside Libya. May be this is a starting point for sorting out their internal political problems. I would really wish it to the people of Libya.
I was in the US on Thursday September 6th and Thursday September 13th.
From everything I observed in the days and weeks following, there was a massive increase in feelings and expressions of unity. (These were also temporary.)
I envy you guys. It is so easy to live under the "America is to blame for everything, even floods" mentality. Everything is so easily and readily explained.
> .. if EU and America hadn’t assassinated Gaddafi
Gaddafi was assassinated by his own people. America and a few European countries gave military support to the rebels after Gaddafi had started trying to violently suppress the rebellion of his people, that is true.
If they wouldn't have done that, he might have succeeded in murdering enough of his people to stay in power, who knows.
If a working government existed (ie, before the US/EU destroyed a functioning one in the 2010s) then they might have been able to fix it in the past 10 years.
Sure, and when I hire an assassin I don't kill the target, I just provide the monetary support. Still makes me a killer. Even worse if I crush someone's leg to let assassin do its job.
I mean that I haven’t kept up to date with the situation there, and I don’t know if in the past this region and this dam were administered any better or not.
I’m just assuming that the NATO intervention and the fracturing of the country into civil wars is to blame here.
according to Derna's deputy mayor quoted in [1] "the dams have not been maintained since 2002", so it seems unlikely that NATO intervention is to blame (though that was my kneejerk assumption too). the situation in Libya post NATO intervention certainly contributed to the negligence, but it has been going on for years at that point.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
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Ugh, first I'm hearing of this. Some of that is my fault; I'm using Marl's* news aggregator which craps up the default feed with celebs and sportsball. I've had it set to National to avoid drowning in fluff-poo.
> I wish the West was set up where we could volunteer family members
This sounds insane so I surely must be misreading. Do you not mean "where we could volunteer [ourselves]"? I'm imagining a scene in the style of "The Death of Stalin" where I am woken up in the middle of the night and told "your brother has nominated you for relief efforts in Morocco, you have 10 minutes to gather your things."
All good, appreciate the explanation. I was goofing around imagining an intersection of the Baker Act and Red Cross volunteering, but on rereading my language was too strong. I don't ever want to come across like the language police, please don't change your verbiage on my account.
As everyone who was at Burning Man learned, plumbing and drainage is the basis of civilisation.
Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively "washed its hands" of water management.