News Cork Roundtable: What will become of Libya?

This is the first in what we hope to be many roundtable posts here on News Cork. Roger, Dan, and myself have each thrown out our musings on what the new Libyan government will look like and whether or not it will be successful in the world community. As always read, think, and enjoy.

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With Gaddafi in hiding or on the run, it seems as though the rebels’ takeover of Libya is imminent. After 6 months of civil war, most of the country has come to support the overthrow of the longest reigning Arab leader. With Tripoli virtually under rebel subjugation, Gaddafi has fewer places to turn than Saddam Hussein had in Iraq in 2003. Seeing as the rebels have no intention of letting him go free, and Gaddafi himself recently announced he will fight “until victory or martyrdom,”¹ I don’t see him surviving even six months, the length of time for which Hussein managed to hide. Meanwhile, the National Transitional Council (NTC) is already beginning to migrate out of long-held Benghazi into the freshly conquered Libyan capital, Tripoli, where embassies are granting recognition to the new interim government.

Speculation abounds, but here is my two cents. To put it simply, I am optimistic. I see the new government moving toward international recognition, democracy, and equality, as its leaders have expressed. Economically, Libya has lost a lot of ground because of Gaddafi’s expenditures—but with the oil industry, there is potential for a resurgence of wealth and stability. I expect the UN will uphold Libya’s reconstructive efforts, and the country will return to relatively good standing with the United States. Concerning Israel, the NTC seems to be largely neutral at this point, though it does support a two-state Israeli-Palestinian agreement. I suppose Israel will have to proffer recognition to the new Libya first, before the NTC decides how to approach the country. 

-Dan Morton

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              The Libyan crisis has been preeminent for a long time and has almost exasperated the general public to the point where a category 1 hurricane draws more attention in the media. I was originally optimistic towards the UN effort to support Libya’s rebel led transitional National Council, a group of individuals who had the courage to stand up to a fanatic dictator. However, a more skeptic outlook seemed predestined when the mere two sided confrontations metamorphosed into multiple localized attacks across a 1000-mile coastline. The initial goal of the NATO intervention was to protect civilians from the Quadaffi repression but ever since the international support emanated residents seemed more at risk. As a result, military airstrikes developed and increased both danger towards Libyans and international criticism. At one point, long-term civil war seemed unavoidable and the European led coalition seemed irresponsible and unprepared in regard to the events. However, the rapid advancement of troops into Tripoli opened new outlooks for the country and its inhabitants. The rebels have trampled the last stronghold of the colonel even though localized loyalists remain perched on rooftops with snipers. Once again, this intervention held numerous elements that could have led many to abandon the Libyan cause. Nevertheless, the people never gave up hope and clung on to the Declaration of Human Rights, which upholds the individual when confronted by an oppressive state.

In this sense, the Libyan crisis reminds us that the spring revolutions are not about narrow-minded desires for natural resources or other commodities but should rather be focused on the development of the Middle East, which would ultimately benefit everyone.

I have hope that Libya will come out strengthened from this four month long conflict through the restoration of its powerful industries, such as oil refineries, and the utilization of promising opportunities, such as UN sustainable development. The retaliation of loyalist supporters or the division of the rebel force into ethnic fractions remain possible; however, in my opinion the prospect of at least temporary peace for a country ravaged by authoritarianism seems to outweigh the latter pessimistic perspective.

-Roger Mitchell

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                   I won’t consider the government in Libya a success unless it is a modern democracy limited by a constitution. Anything short of that would leave too much room to revert back into an autocracy. Can Libya do it? I am hopeful but skeptical. To be perfectly honest, Libya finds itself in a stronger place than other new democracies (i.e. Iraq). The bureaucracy in place under Gaddafi has remained intact (minus some obvious high-level, corrupt removals). Their presence can aid the building of a new nation and should help the nation secure order quickly (Compare this to Iraq after every governing official was removed, all the way down to the village level). Most importantly, the rebels won the war on their own backs. Sure NATO air support was pivotal to their success and it could be easily argued that the rebels wouldn’t have had a chance without it, but the same could be said about France’s intervention in the American revolutionary war. The fact remains that it was the Libyans and Americans that actually fought their respective wars. In other words they earned their victories. That creates an important national identity that the Libyans can build on.

            However, Libya is missing something that was essential to the creation of America. There is no unified ideology. In America the colonists fought for the ideas of “no taxation without representation”, religious liberty, and fundamental “inalienable” rights. Just look at the Declaration of Independence. I don’t see that in Libya. There is no document defining what they want and what they believe in. There has been no serious talk on their part about democracy or freedoms. This rebellion was fueled solely on opposition to Gaddafi. That’s what gave them unity. Now that Gaddafi is out of the picture, what remains to give them unity? The national identity that has been created by winning the rebellion will quickly disappear without an ideology to hold onto.

            So to sum up, Libya has the national structure and unity to maintain order and transition smoothly to a new regime. I do not fear a new civil war. However national identity born out of conflict is brittle and short lasting if a strong ideology or a strong leader does not accompany it. Libya right now has neither. And as the general trend of history shows, if a nation doesn’t have a strong ideology to hold to, a strong leader will come to direct the nation. If Libya allows that to happen they will be under the thumb of a new Gaddafi.

-Tyler Holmes

Shenanigans and Hooligans in the Streets of England

All this week, young British folk have been running rampant through the streets of London, looting and burning as they go. British law enforcement has struggled to contain it and news outlets have struggled to explain it. And really, there seems to be no coherent reason delivered by the mob. New sources have suggested that the rioters are simply mad at the rich. Prime Minister David Cameron has suggested that this is the result of gang war. But none of that explains why the rioting has lasted this long, why it involves almost exclusively unemployed 17-24-year-old’s, or why so many people are involved. Why are they rioting? These aren’t race riots. These aren’t political riots. There has been no leadership, no demands, and no organization at all. From all appearances the rioters are rioting because they want to.

This past fall I read a phenomenal book entitled “Life at the Bottom, the Worldview that Makes the Underclass”. In it Dr. Theodore Dalrymple draws from his experience as a doctor in the British slums. His observations are painful to read and indicators of where this uncontrolled behavior might stem from. Throughout the book Dalrymple pushes home the fact that the British welfare system has stripped the poor of their most basic requirements to function in a civilized society. Take this example from the beginning of chapter 2:

“Last week a 17-year-old girl was admitted to my ward with such acute alcohol poisoning that she could scarcely breath by her own unaided efforts…
She had abjured alcohol for four months before her admission, she told me, but had just returned to the bottle because of a crisis. Her boyfriend, aged 16, had just been sentenced to three years’ detention for a series of burglaries and assaults. He was what she called her “third long-term relationship”—the first two having lasted 4 and 6 weeks, respectively. But after four months of life with the young burglar, the prospect of separation from him was painful enough to drive her back to drink.It happens that I also knew her mother, a chronic alcoholic with a taste for violent boyfriends, the latest of whom had been stabbed in the heart a few weeks before in a pub brawl. The surgeons in my hospital saved his life; and to celebrate his recovery and discharge, he had gone straight to the pub. From there he went home, drunk, and beat up my patient’s mother.My patient was intelligent but badly educated, as only products of the British educational system can be after eleven years of compulsory school attendance. She thought the Second World War took place in the 1970’s and could not give me a singular correct historical date.”

Her story is hardly unique. Dalrymple notes many situations where a mother has had 5 or 6 lovers, all of whom have been abusive, and produced 7 children as a result of these relationships. Those children repeat the patterns of the mother and the fathers.

However the grand experience of the youth in Britain is Saturday night when everyone heads out “clubbing”.

“On Saturday night the center of the city has a quite distinct atmosphere… There is a festivity in the air, but also a menace. The smell of cheap perfume mingles with that of take-out food, stale alcohol, and vomit. The young men—especially those with shaved heads and ironmongery in their noses and eyebrows—squint angrily at the world, as if they expect to be attacked at any moment from any direction, or as if they have been deprived of something to which they were entitled.”

The point of welfare is to take care of the basic needs of the people who are on it and the British system is one of the most advanced. Welfare recipients in Britain are assured housing, food, and medical treatment. What is there to strive for? The British government is enabling the poor to stay poor. They have no reason to strive to find a job because they already have what they need. Thus all they look for is what they want; and what they want is to drink beer, go clubbing, and find a relationship that fits them.

This isn’t isolated to a few select cases. This is the reality of the British slums. Despite (or perhaps because) the British government securing all of the basic needs of those on welfare, all sense of personal responsibility is out the window. Any problems that occur in an individual’s life is blamed on the forces of the government, the people around them, genetics and fate; anything to prevent blame from falling directly on themselves.

Are you seeing how this connects to the riots?

The poor have reaped the fruits of the intellectual. All the aspersions of the intelligentsia: sexual liberation, total security of basic needs, and propagating the idea that all ills, social or otherwise, can be cured through medicine, as though they were the common cold, are all on display in the underclass of Britain in shining glory. They are not grateful; they are bored. There is nothing to stimulate them, nothing to motivate them. They live their lives for themselves, no concept of responsibility to family or society. Family gets in the way and society is built to ensure the handouts keep coming. These rioters saw an opening, I’m sure something sparked them and inspired them with an excuse, and they ran with it.

There is something to be said about the virtue of personal responsibility. Can we really say that the poor in Britain—with their “families” of 7 children fathered by 5 absent fathers, their constant mindless entertainment and clubbing, and lack of any interest to better themselves—are better off than the poor in other countries who daily struggle to provide the very basics for their families? I’m not saying that all the lower class in Britain are worthless slobs who set fire to buildings when they’re bored and I’m not saying that all poor people in countries without a welfare program are saints. I’m just questioning whether or not government intervention, as in the form of British welfare, has substantially improved the welfare of the people it serves. 

Tyler Holmes

Proverbs 14:15

Debt Deal Reached! So... What's that mean?

As of August 2^nd, the political powers that be finally worked out a compromise that was able to pass Congress and get signed into law by the President. It was certainly a painstaking process, and not just for the lawmakers, the general voting public felt the strain and frustration too. The last three weeks of political anguish on the part of citizens and politicians has amounted to this new law, and no one seems particularly pleased about it. So what does this bill do and should anyone be happy about it?

The new law works out spending reform in a two-step process. The first step is an immediate $900 billion reduction in discretionary spending spread out over 10 years. (Discretionary spending is the spending that Congress has to create a budget for each year. That includes spending for defense and education. That does not include Social Security and Medicare. They are considered mandatory spending and are dealt with separately. Discretionary spending in 2010 amounted to $1.3 trillion which accounted for 38% of total government spending.)

Step one is already set and can’t change; Step two has some wiggle room. For the second step of spending reform Congress must put together a committee of 12 members: 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats from the House and 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats from the Senate. This committee is tasked with figuring out about 1.6 trillion dollars in additional savings. Nothing is off the table for the committee. They can consider tax reform and entitlement reform. At least 7 of the 12 members must agree on the savings plan for the plan to be moved onto Congress. Congress must then vote on the proposal. If they vote to reject it, or if the committee fails to create a plan, automatic cuts of 1.2 trillion dollars in discretionary spending occur. (Also to be spread out over 10 years.) This cut will also be divided equally between military spending and non-military spending. The committee must come up with a proposal by November 23 and Congress must vote on it by December 23.

On top of all that, the law mandates spending caps of about 1.04 trillion dollars in discretionary spending for every year of the next 10 years. Also Congress must vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, however the specifics on what exactly that amendment would look like are pretty slim.

So who won? As far as the actual bill goes, I think Republicans got more of what they wanted, despite what some Tea Party Republicans are saying. First and foremost the Republicans in the House didn't allow Obama to get his "clean" increase in the debt ceiling that he wanted. The fact that the debt ceiling increase was connected to spending reform should be considered a victory for Republicans. The Republicans were able to prevent tax increases in the first round of deficit reduction, which was their pledge from the beginning. Crucially, this law stands in stark contrast to the bailout bill Obama was able to secure at the beginning of his term. The mindset of Congress seems to have changed, albeit only slightly. This change is the result of the appearance of the fiscally conservative Tea Partiers. 

Meanwhile the Democrats gave up increases in taxes and were forced to allow the spending cuts that they had fought against through. And all this happened while the GOP only controlled one half of one branch of the federal government.

That's not to say that this is the greatest deal since 99-cent Tuesdays at the bowling alley. Despite all the cuts and potential cuts, projections suggest that the total deficit will still increase by at least $7 trillion over the next ten years. With that in mind one can understand why some Republicans still voted no on the compromise. They feel the law simply didn’t do enough. And frankly no one, on the right or the left, should be satisfied with this level of spending reform. The government is still way too far in the red and it’s still sink farther in.

All that being said, step two of spending reform is where the battle lies. Both Republican and Democratic leaders must carefully choose their representatives for this 12-person committee. Neither side wants to stalemate the whole process but neither side wants to give up too much ground either. Both Republicans and Democrats want to avoid the automatic cuts. It is a battle of ideologies in Washington. There are those who wish to continue to increase the scope and authority of government and those who want to see government shrink. This new law is certainly a victory for small government. But it was only a small victory; when round two kicks off in a couple weeks the real battle will just be beginning.

Tyler Holmes

Proverbs 14:15