Post-revolutionary Libya continues to be poster child for stability

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It began as peaceful protest. The reason why it escalated was because Gaddafi slaughtered his own people.

Oh really?  I'm skeptical.  Anyway what else could he do with a load of Islamists?

Decide to not start killing them out of hand without provocation? (Also: Only some of the protesters were Islamists.)

Anyway, like Sol said, Cyrenaican autonomy is hardly an automatically bad thing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It began as peaceful protest. The reason why it escalated was because Gaddafi slaughtered his own people.

Oh really?  I'm skeptical.  Anyway what else could he do with a load of Islamists?

Decide to not start killing them out of hand without provocation? (Also: Only some of the protesters were Islamists.)

Anyway, like Sol said, Cyrenaican autonomy is hardly an automatically bad thing.

Debatable given the values dissonance between even Muslim-majority states that aren't "Islamist" and non-Islamic states. Why are there more Islamic countries where women are mandated to cover their entire bodies and hold the status of property than where homosexual acts are legal, and why don't "moderate" Muslims take any vocal stand against this?

Oh, are you shifting from a Noam Chomsky act to a Sam Harris one, now?

It is absolutely not debatable that there is a difference between political movements that happen in Muslim countries involving people with Muslim religious and cultural values and the specific set of movements called 'Islamism', even if people sitting in the Northeastern United States gazing eastward across the sea are likely to find both at least somewhat objectionable. It is also absolutely not debatable that the crowds of demonstrators on whom Gaddafi visited unprovoked violence included elements of both, as does Libyan society as a whole.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Er, just for the record, I'm not exactly making the points that I am making out of any love for Islamism either.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I am a Marxist. I therefore stand against all oppressive systems, of which Islam is one. I do not hate Muslims as people.

Okay.

The funny thing about this, with Snowstalker's "Marxist" persona, is that a desire for stability is basically the most stereotypically bourgeoise middle-class concern there is.

I think he's apparently moved on from the teenaged Marxist thing to general Islamophobia and hatemongering as part of some bizarre move to the far right.

Evidence for the "Trotskyist neocon" hypothesis, right?

I think so.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It was 'most developed', yes, but under the auspices of a capricious madman, and as a country it is only slightly less artificial and misbegotten than Iraq. While post-revolutionary Libya has been something of a disappointment--relative to expectations that were really unrealistic to begin with--in many respects, I'm not sure how the previous situation could possibly be seen as having been 'better'.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As I always point out, Iraq is hardly artificial, as the region surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has always been a unified political unit, if not part of a larger political unit.

Yes, there was a time when Mesopotamia-as-a-country was not an artificial concept, but that was predicated on multinational empires being the order of the day in the area and, further back, on Iraq not having the same sort of population that it now has. (I'd be willing to accept Mamluk Iraq as an exception to this; I don't know much about that period at all). The good deal of physical-geographical sense that it makes does not outweigh the currently bizarre human geography of the country.