As the fighting continues in Libya, and while most are still flabbergasted at the lack of leadership (and consistency) displayed by President Obama and the entire administration, as well as NATO, the question of the willingness of the Libyan rebels is now in play.
In an article by the Guardian, one of the rebels was quoted regarding their “needs”:
“We need what Gaddafi has,” said Ghanem Barsi at a rebel checkpoint. Like many revolutionaries, he blamed their difficulties on weaponry rather than training and tactics. “We need Grads [rockets] like Gaddafi has. We need tanks like Gaddafi has. We need weapons that can kill his rockets and tanks.”
Is this the Revolutionary Spirit that has taken the hearts and minds of the Libyan people? We need more tanks and rockets to fight? Won’t someone give us what we need?
This is not revolutionary spirit, this is the weak-minded acquiescence to failure that will keep the Libyans enslaved and oppressed for the next 100+ years. Thank goodness the American Revolutionaries – who were far out manned, and certainly out gunned! – had the right Spirit. That Spirit includes the willingness to fight, to believe in something bigger than themselves, to understand their cause was just, that there are natural laws that are derived from God, and that Freedom and Liberty (like Patrick Henry taught us) are worth dying for.
Until the Libyan people understand this, all the tanks and guns in the world won’t help them be free.
Have they tried HopenChange yet? It seems to work in the more naive countries.
Every day I see these rebels/freedom fighters on news reports.
I wonder where they are getting the guns and ammo from they shoot
in the air? Do they have jobs? Where do they get gasoline to drive
their cars to the front? Where did the rocket launchers come from,
you know the one used to shoot down their own jet.
“Thank goodness the American Revolutionaries – who were far out manned, and certainly out gunned! – had the right Spirit.”
Benjamin Franklin spent the entire Revolutionary War in France, begging for assistance, which officially began with the Treaty of Alliance. The French fleet was instrumental in the defeat of Cornwallis, and without such active French support and engagement, the American bid for freedom would almost certainly have ended in disaster.
JM Hanes,
I don’t deny the help from the French. My point is to the spirit of being willing to die (or at least sacrifice) for something you believe in. This is not what we are seeing from the Libyan “rebels.” I appreciate the comment, and hope you’ll respectfully agree or disagree with me in the future.
– Tony
Tony Katz:
I appreciate your response to my comment, and yes, I must respectfully, emphatically, disagree. It has seemed to me that a lot of folks use the idea that people have to earn their freedom by winning it on their own like we did as a putative basis for non-interventionist hand washing. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for advocating such restraint, but assuming that our own history provides an adequate template for revolutions everywhere is to ignore the unique pre-existing advantages we had before the first shot was ever fired.
When you look at the world where repression is at its most draconian (and which almost universally includes disarming potential opposition), where else do we find a similarly strong, prosperous, well-armed, middle class, a relatively well educated, experienced political class, along with the remote governance which allowed considerable independence of action, empowered local leadership and posed serious tactical difficulties for the British projection of force? None of which is meant to devalue the importance of the American spirit and resourcefulness to our unprecedented successes, both at our founding and beyond, but even in the best of circumstances, we still needed pivotal external assistance.
I don’t think we actually even know all that much about the Libyan rebels in this instance, but being willing to die for freedom doesn’t mean revolutionaries can make tanks out of whole cloth — or afford to buy them from someone else — no matter how committed to freedom they might be.
Meant to say “no matter how committed to liberty they might be.”