Great find! He’s against intervention by the west, which has a history of messing up the region. AFAIK he agreed that the people should rise and fight for the right to self determination. He called Libya a civil war, which would imply that Gaddafi has a decent amount of support amongst the population. I assume Chomsky’s sources are better than mine. Civil wars are nasty and leave piles of dead people. Chomsky also mentioned Wisconsin as an example of the people rising to fight corporatist interests that want to despoil the state and its people.

I personally wouldn’t be against targeted air strikes and the use of support staff at headquarters in Benghazi or — more dangerously — inject sappers for covert operations in Gaddafi’s backyard.

The problem is that diplomacy is anything but. The human rights garbage spewed to the media by political leaders in these situations is all rhetoric totally divorced from the realpolitik of back-room dealings happening outside the glare of cameras. What is never mentioned by the media is that military intervention means that the operations will be paid back handsomely afterwards. These exercises aren’t an extension of the public health service. The rebel council would have to agree to some concessions. These could include a US base in Libya, reparation moneys, appropriation of natural resources and land, guarantees of profitable trade, cheap leases of land and sea etc…

Read WWI and what happened to Germany. That was overt, explicit and bankrupted the country’s chance of healing itself. It still happens in smaller conflicts. It is in the interest of the foreign powers to let the situation drag before agreeing to airstrikes as this would mean the rebels are getting desperate and will agree to sell their future for some respite now. Britain had to pay the US for ships and resources before the US got officially involved. Kind of reminds me of Marcus Lucius Crassus. Maybe the European Parliament will abide by a more humanist approach.

In a way Malta should be wary of trumpeting too much for war. We’d look like the lap dog yapping at two pit-bulls fighting. Problem is we are in no one’s lap to keep us warm. What will we get for becoming their megaphone in the med? Britain and Italy are bankrupt, will continue to be so for a decade at least and left a nasty legacy in the region. Time to shift our allegiances within the EU. I assume Germany would like to have a solid presence in the Med. I contend it would be in our interest is to shift our foreign policy to align with France and Germany.

Problem is what are we going to get out of it? how will the government sell it to the people?

Noam Chomsky warns against intervention in Libya

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9419967.stm

The only sentence I disagree with reads, “We should form a Maltese volunteer unit, armed with anything available, and send it to fight alongside the rebels” but my disagreement is limited to the fact that the rebels themselves came out with ‘we don’t want foreign troops on Libyan soil…’

Are they so stubborn as to die to the last man rather than ‘invite’ foreign troops, much better equipped and better experienced?

They seem to have similar DNA as many Maltese who continue to support a political party which, in the past, fed them canned tuna when and if it was their government’s pleasure and which presently has a number of ex-ministers of that same era one of whom is writing its electoral programme for 2013.

Go figure.

It’s the prime minister himself who is not being clear. First, on Bondiplus some weeks ago, he said that Malta should not shirk its responsibilities if asked to cooperate/participate in military action. Now, he categorically says that Malta should take part in humanitarian initiatives only. The mind boggles.

For defence.

There you take me into the realms of psychology, and existentialism, and what it means to be a man. You could ask your friend whose son is in Afghanistan with the Mercian Regiment.

I’ll give you two anecdotes.

In 1996, shortly before that neutrality fanatic Alfred Sant withdrew our Partnership for Peace membership, there was a call for thirty AFM volunteers to go to Bosnia and deliver baby food or whatever it was. Three hundred soldiers applied. Out of 1400 or less, minus those whose duties kept them from being deployed overseas, such as the Maritime Squadron, EOD Section, or the Air Squadron (as it was called back then).

The second anecdote concerns a brilliant article by Stuart Ramsay, who accompanied British soldiers in Afghanistan. The folks back home were shedding tears over their young misguided children forced to fight in another Vietnam. Ramsay says he’d never met happier men. They were, he says, “the happiest blokes I have ever met”.
http://blogs.news.sky.com/frontlineblog/Post:5da879bf-7710-479b-bb1f-fffa3b160bfb

A man’s place is not in an office cubicle. When industrialisation was invented, and when it was followed up by office work, depression cases shot up up. Then we drink and take drugs and spend the weekend desperately trying to get laid to make up for it all. A man would be happier on a battlefield.

And if this counts for the average man, what must it be like for a career soldier? A soldier’s job is to fight, not to mount roadblocks for giddy tittering teenagers returning from Gianpula, or to lay out beds for illegal immigrants, or even to parade on St George’s Square every day.

When the war in Afghanistan started, countries without even an armed forces were queueing up to contribute (Iceland comes to mind). Do you think there was any economic or political motivation? Hell no. It’s just that after fifty years of endless training for a Soviet invasion, and soldiers twiddling their thumbs on the Fulda Gap, here was a real war, with real bullets.

Whatever the politicians and intellectuals might have said, soldiers all over the world were rejoicing. Because finally they would be doing their job.

I’ve written about the Maltese attitude to neutrality, which has much deeper roots than a simple article in the constitution. We are convinced it is the only moral choice to be made. We are pacifists at heart, like the early Christians who were devoured by lions.

The AFM holds an open day every year. It is always a huge success, full of excited kiddies with their parents. A couple of years ago, someone sent an angry letter to The Times over a photo of a young boy holding a rifle. Children shouldn’t begiven guns, he said, because it teaches them to kill, and they shouldn’t be taken to visit the army, because the army is there to kill people and that is evil.

Even if we beat our swords into ploughshares, what then? Shall we all till the fields and be happy? Competition is part of human nature. And competition means conflict. Over anything from your neghbours goats to that hot chick standing by the bar. What is better, to advance and engage the enemy at bayonet-point, or to struggle to climb the corporate ladder in your nine-to-five shithole?

Those who’d rather wear a suit and have their Maltese platter on weekends should look at the other side, at the losers in the corporate battlefield. I yearn for a war to sweep over Malta. Then they’d be shitting themselves because they’d lose everything. I would have nothing to lose except my life or my limbs. So be it.

We now have a just war just crying out to be fought. We should form a Maltese volunteer unit, armed with anything available, and send it to fight alongside the rebels. They wouldn’t have to be professional soldiers, and there wouldn’t be any age limit. I’d be the first to join. And Gonzi and Tonio Borg can keep their precious neutrality. They are family men with succesful careers and I can understand that. But please don’t force your lifestyle on everyone.

I am aware the question was not addressed to me but here goes anyway. My reply assumes Malta is on its own.

Considering our coastal defences are nonexistent, the chances of our army being utilised effectively in defence of our state against an invasion of an amphibious brigade or higher strength is nil.

Our offensive capability is neutered since we cannot effectively project any force above platoon strength (or maybe 2) beyond our shores.

Basically, it is a way to employ a couple of thousand men.

The way I understand the neutrality clause it does not at all prevent us from allowing Malta to be used by foreign military forces.

There is an exception, something like ‘unless requested by the government of Malta’. (I don’t have the text at hand at this time)

That means that the only thing needed for us not to go against the constitution is that rather than let the UN ask us to use our facilities our government would instead ask the UN to intervene in Libya and make use of our facilities.

Of course I am not a lawyer so I may be completely misunderstanding it.

[Daphne – A question for Baxxter: why do we have Armed Forces if we are neutral and never plan on using them except for road blocks and in detention camps? What’s all that training about then, walking around in freezing water at Chadwick Lakes and the rest?]

Our reputation is a royal mess, courtesy of our man in the EU commission, the persistent prevarication at home, and our history of sucking up to the dictator a few hundred miles south.

And why would Malta refuse to allow attacks/no-fly zone aircraft to depart from Malta despite UN sanctions, if all along our defence has been our constitutional clause on neutrality? That same clause allows Malta to take action and allow action to be taken from Maltese territory.

Are we now to interpret this latest announcement as “we don’t want to be involved in military action under any circumstance, but please go ahead if the UN says yes even though it’ll be a logistical nightmare without the use of our territory, territorial waters and air space?”

Truth be told, the neutrality clause in the Constitution was supported by the Nationalist Opposition at that time as a bargaining tool for the Socialist regime’s agreement to change the electoral districts and to a new formula that recognizes the most number one votes rather than the number of elected candidates.

Otherwise in all probability Labour would have ruled again in 1987 having clung to power as it did in 1981 even if the NP had more number one votes. The same would have happened in 2008.

These things are often forgotten, but once reminded, it becomes much more obvious why the choice of an NP government is vital in Malta’s circumstances at least until the LP is no longer led by dangerous clowns like Joseph and his predecessors.

Can you imagine had Joseph been the prime minister now? How many consultations would he have had with AST, Vella, KMB, Joe Grima et al before risking opening his mouth and maybe come up with a bit of substance?

The Mirages would today be strafing the rebels and surely he would have been cocky enough to buck the system and tell the EU to take a hike since his party will not be used to censor Gaddafi who after all paid for family allowances some thirty years ago. Il-Pixtu would almost certainly have supported Joey.