The Greens, Libya and Gaddafi

Another session of great actuality, the workgroup on foreign relations. Which today can not escape from the looming of Libya. A session that started with a brief introduction by Buetikofer, leader of the German Greens in the European Parliament.  Explaining, among other things, that the green group at the EP is quite consensual on the issue of supporting the resolution 1973 of the United Nations. What is far less clear is the extend of the support that this resolution should have. That apparently is the hot potato that the higher powers has given this council to discuss. Which is, if you come to think about it, a bizarre situation. There is, in the general air of the council meeting, a consensus on supporting the rebels in Libya. But if you ask anybody about what form should this support have… A great diversity of opinions, and feelings, come boiling up.

To give an impression of the uncharted waters that we are faring, consider that GroenLinks, the dutch green party, has initially supported the Nato mission, to retire her the support two weeks later. We greens are looking for the right answer, and some of us have decided that what it is going on now, is no solution, but a slippery slope towards chaos.

Coming back to the discussion in this session, a greek delegate introduced a metaphor, linking whatever might be called international police today, with the selective police that a dictatorship has. We can not agree with such a police, because it enforces the law depending on who the criminal is. And in the eyes of this speaker, the intervention going in Libya is just that: a police trying to enforce the law against a criminal, leaving many others free and unmolested. To this position came a rebuttal from Buetikofer, a rebuttal that would be common to many of us greens: if we wait for overall justice, we will never have it. Rather few justice than none. In the eyes of Buetikofer, two possibilities are in the table now, two possibilities that we greens can live with: or a cease fire, or a peace with Gaddafists, after Gaddafi goes away.

An interesting, and last contribution, was about the origin of the problem, in the eyes of the speaker the union of different tribes by the italians colonizers. What do we want to do now? to separate them again?

I believe that we are far away from being capable to have a definitive opinion on the Jazmin revolution. And this discussion shows how many issues get mixed when we begin to really think about it. As I write, a few persons are puzzle out a resolution that this congress will vote upon tomorrow, and then we will see how far we get.