So as I get further from undiluted German television offerings into the sort of bizarro hotel channel assortments that I so enjoy, I’ve had the opportunity to see Libya news run through the 24 hour filters of CNN International (CNNI), Al Jazeera English (AJE), and Russia TV (RT). It might be useful to think about what each of them offers before moving into my own opinions, if only because 24 hour news seems to be reflective of broader trends in the aggregate even if it seems idiotic in small doses.
RT has quickly acquired a reputation as echoing to some degree the positions of its Russian government backer, and they seem to be working along those lines here in their strange crossfire knockoff. What I enjoy ironically are the obvious leading questions from the moderator (especially the shout-out to Kosovo, long a favorite Russian talking point), and yet it’s still something that in between the crazies they dredge up from time to time (earning them the dubious distinction of the Truther channel from some) the guests can be pretty interesting. The Kremlin has a tough position to articulate on this topic, but their focus appears to be discrediting the idea of a humanitarian intervention while trying to figure out how best to leverage this in the long run in the somewhat antiquated pseudo-Cold War they continue to wage unilaterally. It should be interesting if the ongoing subtle Putin-Medvedev divide is further exacerbated by Libya. Good luck painting Russia as the good guy in the developing world!
Meanwhile, AJE has James Bays and others on the ground embedded with anti-Qaddafites while other news networks take the guided tour in Tripoli, and it’s every bit as gripping as you would expect. The news coverage seems cautiously optimistic about NATO’s role in Libya, and I think that’s informed by a clear understanding of just how fragile the opposition forces are at this point. That’s balanced by the wide variety of experts on the editorial content shows like Riz Khan, which does a credible and nuanced job of highlighting the inconsistencies in the big picture regarding Libya. It’s exhausting to follow, but strongly recommended.
Finally, there’s CNNI. Before I had access to International, there was the Feud with Fox which only comedians can cover with the proper level of respect (don’t miss Nancy Grace going full Nancy right before that). This was followed more recently by the intensive coverage of the tragic circumstances surrounding the woman who burst into the reporters’ hotel to try and tell her story about rape and abuse at the hands of Qaddafi’s underlings. This spiraled into a further meta-story of them following up on her capture, etc. Her apparent tragedy certainly qualifies as a valid human interest angle on the situation and I don’t mean this is in any way as a criticism of her, but it’s a little too meta and self-interested as a centerpiece of CNN coverage. Your mileage may vary.
Ultimately, it’s a difficult situation to decipher. AJE’s coverage was most useful to me of the TV sources in determining that UN/NATO intervention was a reasonable choice (rhetoric, international law, and other decorative factors aside) among mostly terrible options for countries observing the situation. Gaddaffi is a foreign policy unicorn among the Tunisian revolution aftershocks in that he represents a combination of notable military strength and control relative to his people, an unhealthily close relationship with a wide variety of democratic countries and major powers, and a deranged willingness to drown his country in blood before yielding his place.
Currently, the opposition forces are making an unfortunate strategic choice in believing that there is strength in numbers and attempting to mobilize across the desert in pursuit of conventional military targets. As Bays’ coverage so plainly shows, they lack the coordination to avoid panicking themselves into stampedes, and without the NATO air coverage would likely be slaughtered en masse were they to move together in large numbers.
In the short term, my guess would be that means we have a stalemate with Qaddafi wisely (an unfortunate word choice, I’ll admit) moving around NATO’s strengths and trying to reclaim as much territory as possible through surgical strikes and the ensuing chaos, and the opposition likely holding in a few conventionally unimportant areas that are nevertheless crucial in the symbolism of asymmetrical war. At that point, it becomes a race between impending opposition collapse whether from humanitarian concerns or infighting and Qaddafite collapse as a result of the money running out for his rogue’s gallery of mercenaries.
This might be a very slow race.
philistinevulgarity 