23-10-2011, 02:27 AM
The Arab Revolts from a sports perspective.
With a previous interest in American-Libyan historical relations, I had started a blog on the subject in 2008 [ Remember the Intrepid] and shortly after the Arab Spring revolution spread from Tunisia to Egypt in late January, I wondered if it would affect Libya, which is sandwiched between the two.
Sometime after I started a thread on the subject at the Ed Form, in early February, the first sign of possible unrest came when Gadhafi cancelled a soccer football match against Algeria because of the potential trouble 30,000 people together might cause, and the Algerians agreed.
As unrest started to brew in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and other countries in the region, I began the Revolutionary Program blog with the idea of identifying the dictators and tyrants in the region who were under assault, as well as the leaders of the revolution, and try to document the strategies and tactics of what was going on as a sports program would - listing the players, their positions, numbers, strengths and weaknesses and give odd on the various battles that were developing across the board.
In one of my first posts I predicated, from my knowledge of the history of Libya, that if trouble did start in Libya it would begin in Benghazi, where it began on February 17, two days after I began the blog. I knew that Benghazi is where they hung political dissidents in front of students at a school basketball gymnasium. I found it hard to believe that they even played basketball in Libya, but the United States did have a base there - Wheelus AFB, now Tripoli airport from the end of WWII until Gadhafi took over in 1969. The idea that Gadhafi used a Benghazi basketball court for public execution of politically incorrect youth was what made me think that would someday backfire on him, and the day had come.
The revolution in Libya began, not by the CIA, but with the arrest of a civil rights lawyer in Benghazi who had been retained by the families of the 1,000 victims of the a mass execution of political prisoners in a Tripoli prison. The families of the victims were the first to protest, only a few hundred strong, but when they were violently suppressed by security forces, others came out and defended them and took over the police stations and surrounded the military base. One of the first places the suddenly free Libyans did in Benghazi was to burn down the home of the women mayor who actually pulled the rope in the executions of some of the political prisoners in the basketball gym, and she is now wanted for her crimes by the new regime. News of the success of the Benghazi revolt spread quickly and the citizens of other cities quickly took over and expelled the Gadhafi loyalists, most notably in Misratha and two other strategic cities, one on the coast west of Tripoli and the other in the mountains near the border with Tunisa, where the revolution began in December.
While I lost track of what was going on in the other countries, in Libya the football theme kept returning as Libya was scheduled to hold the African Youth Football Championship, which was relocated to South Africa, and some members of the Libyan national football team joined the rebels and took up the fight. It was also well noted that another Gadhafi son had actually played for the Libyan national team for awhile, but just didn't cut it.
With the Libyan military's violent suppression of the revolution in most cities in the west, including the coast and the mountains, only the city of Misrata stubbornly held out from under a three month siege and artillery bombardment, while the rest of Gadhafi's army marched towards Benghazi. After retaking a half dozen oil towns along the way, they were hours away from Benghazi when Obama ordered the USA to stop them, and he did so with the backing of the UN, the Arab League and NATO. The most conservative analysts, including a former National Security adviser said that Obama was slow and indecisive in making this decision, and many agree with that assessment. Now they say the USA spent millions to kill one man - Gadhafi, but it was spent on saving the thousand of lives that Gadhafi said he was going to kill.
To me it was quite clear who the good guys and the bad guys were in Libya - indeed in every country where the revolution has taken root, so it was hard for me to understand my friends and former associates who were united against the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, yet supported Gadhafi, a cut-throat dictator responsible for the mass murder of thousands. They came out in support of Gadhafi and protesting the NATO intervention in Libya's "sovereign" affairs. They still try to portray Gadhafi as the benevolent dictator who took care of his people, and ignored the thousands of political dissidents he killed, Lockerbee and other crimes. They seem to be saying "us leftists must stick together," and it was okay for okay for one man and one family to own a country and spend its oil revenues on million dollar birthday parties for the kids, as long as they were leftists. Well whether leftest or right wing fascist, a dictator is a dictator and tyrant.
NATO didn't win the war or kill Gadhafi, but it did stop Gadhafi from massacring the people of Benghazi, Misratah, Derna and Tobruk and allowed the Berber revolutionaries in the mountains to take back their towns and then retake the coastal cities and Tripoli with the support of the local citizens.
Soon after Tripoli was liberated, the Libyan soccer football team won its first international match wearing its new colors, and the Gadhafi cricket stadium in Pakistan was renamed.
BK
Revolutionary Program
With a previous interest in American-Libyan historical relations, I had started a blog on the subject in 2008 [ Remember the Intrepid] and shortly after the Arab Spring revolution spread from Tunisia to Egypt in late January, I wondered if it would affect Libya, which is sandwiched between the two.
Sometime after I started a thread on the subject at the Ed Form, in early February, the first sign of possible unrest came when Gadhafi cancelled a soccer football match against Algeria because of the potential trouble 30,000 people together might cause, and the Algerians agreed.
As unrest started to brew in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and other countries in the region, I began the Revolutionary Program blog with the idea of identifying the dictators and tyrants in the region who were under assault, as well as the leaders of the revolution, and try to document the strategies and tactics of what was going on as a sports program would - listing the players, their positions, numbers, strengths and weaknesses and give odd on the various battles that were developing across the board.
In one of my first posts I predicated, from my knowledge of the history of Libya, that if trouble did start in Libya it would begin in Benghazi, where it began on February 17, two days after I began the blog. I knew that Benghazi is where they hung political dissidents in front of students at a school basketball gymnasium. I found it hard to believe that they even played basketball in Libya, but the United States did have a base there - Wheelus AFB, now Tripoli airport from the end of WWII until Gadhafi took over in 1969. The idea that Gadhafi used a Benghazi basketball court for public execution of politically incorrect youth was what made me think that would someday backfire on him, and the day had come.
The revolution in Libya began, not by the CIA, but with the arrest of a civil rights lawyer in Benghazi who had been retained by the families of the 1,000 victims of the a mass execution of political prisoners in a Tripoli prison. The families of the victims were the first to protest, only a few hundred strong, but when they were violently suppressed by security forces, others came out and defended them and took over the police stations and surrounded the military base. One of the first places the suddenly free Libyans did in Benghazi was to burn down the home of the women mayor who actually pulled the rope in the executions of some of the political prisoners in the basketball gym, and she is now wanted for her crimes by the new regime. News of the success of the Benghazi revolt spread quickly and the citizens of other cities quickly took over and expelled the Gadhafi loyalists, most notably in Misratha and two other strategic cities, one on the coast west of Tripoli and the other in the mountains near the border with Tunisa, where the revolution began in December.
While I lost track of what was going on in the other countries, in Libya the football theme kept returning as Libya was scheduled to hold the African Youth Football Championship, which was relocated to South Africa, and some members of the Libyan national football team joined the rebels and took up the fight. It was also well noted that another Gadhafi son had actually played for the Libyan national team for awhile, but just didn't cut it.
With the Libyan military's violent suppression of the revolution in most cities in the west, including the coast and the mountains, only the city of Misrata stubbornly held out from under a three month siege and artillery bombardment, while the rest of Gadhafi's army marched towards Benghazi. After retaking a half dozen oil towns along the way, they were hours away from Benghazi when Obama ordered the USA to stop them, and he did so with the backing of the UN, the Arab League and NATO. The most conservative analysts, including a former National Security adviser said that Obama was slow and indecisive in making this decision, and many agree with that assessment. Now they say the USA spent millions to kill one man - Gadhafi, but it was spent on saving the thousand of lives that Gadhafi said he was going to kill.
To me it was quite clear who the good guys and the bad guys were in Libya - indeed in every country where the revolution has taken root, so it was hard for me to understand my friends and former associates who were united against the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, yet supported Gadhafi, a cut-throat dictator responsible for the mass murder of thousands. They came out in support of Gadhafi and protesting the NATO intervention in Libya's "sovereign" affairs. They still try to portray Gadhafi as the benevolent dictator who took care of his people, and ignored the thousands of political dissidents he killed, Lockerbee and other crimes. They seem to be saying "us leftists must stick together," and it was okay for okay for one man and one family to own a country and spend its oil revenues on million dollar birthday parties for the kids, as long as they were leftists. Well whether leftest or right wing fascist, a dictator is a dictator and tyrant.
NATO didn't win the war or kill Gadhafi, but it did stop Gadhafi from massacring the people of Benghazi, Misratah, Derna and Tobruk and allowed the Berber revolutionaries in the mountains to take back their towns and then retake the coastal cities and Tripoli with the support of the local citizens.
Soon after Tripoli was liberated, the Libyan soccer football team won its first international match wearing its new colors, and the Gadhafi cricket stadium in Pakistan was renamed.
BK
Revolutionary Program