Eric Trager: Do Egyptians Want to Invade Libya?
[Eric Trager is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.]
Egyptian attitudes on Qaddafi are complicated. Approximately one million Egyptians work in Libya, and many are outraged by Qaddafi’s murderous crackdown, which has already claimed the lives of over 1,000 people according to conservative estimates. Many of the Tahrir faithful are disgusted by the crackdown, and pre-Qaddafi Libyan flags and anti-Qaddafi signs are ubiquitous in the square. But when these protesters were asked whether they would support foreign intervention to end Qaddafi’s assault and prevent further carnage, the response was nearly unanimous: The United States should keep out of it. This, they explained, was an Arab problem, for Arabs to solve.
“We are one Arab nation,” said one protester. “We don’t want interference from America. We don’t want to repeat Iraq.” Another was more blunt: “My advice to America is not to put its nose in the Middle East. We can force him [to go], but we need more time. I’m talking about the Middle East—the Islamic countries, the Arab countries. We can do it ourselves.” These views are familiar. Whether it was the United States evicting former Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein from Kuwait or the International Criminal Court bringing charges against Sudanese dictator Omar Al Bashir, Arab publics have always shunned foreign moves against even the most violent Arab dictators. They tend to view non-Arabs’ intervention into the affairs of Arab countries as humiliating, exposing the weaknesses of Arab states and treating them, in the words of one protester, “like kids.”...
Read entire article at The New Republic
Egyptian attitudes on Qaddafi are complicated. Approximately one million Egyptians work in Libya, and many are outraged by Qaddafi’s murderous crackdown, which has already claimed the lives of over 1,000 people according to conservative estimates. Many of the Tahrir faithful are disgusted by the crackdown, and pre-Qaddafi Libyan flags and anti-Qaddafi signs are ubiquitous in the square. But when these protesters were asked whether they would support foreign intervention to end Qaddafi’s assault and prevent further carnage, the response was nearly unanimous: The United States should keep out of it. This, they explained, was an Arab problem, for Arabs to solve.
“We are one Arab nation,” said one protester. “We don’t want interference from America. We don’t want to repeat Iraq.” Another was more blunt: “My advice to America is not to put its nose in the Middle East. We can force him [to go], but we need more time. I’m talking about the Middle East—the Islamic countries, the Arab countries. We can do it ourselves.” These views are familiar. Whether it was the United States evicting former Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein from Kuwait or the International Criminal Court bringing charges against Sudanese dictator Omar Al Bashir, Arab publics have always shunned foreign moves against even the most violent Arab dictators. They tend to view non-Arabs’ intervention into the affairs of Arab countries as humiliating, exposing the weaknesses of Arab states and treating them, in the words of one protester, “like kids.”...