Theory of games and Qaddafi

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Oct 21, 2011 at 17:54

Peter Herz wrote :

" Further, none of the "liberated" Arab countries show any sign of giving a fair shake to their religious minorities, or backing down on their demonization of the Jews. I'm not very optimistic about what the future holds."

I fully agree. All this rant and hysteria about "dictators" oppressing "good common people" in the context of the Middle East looks to me like a third-rate joke or worse. I don't know whom it intends to fool by making him believe in the concept of democracy in a culture and region (excepting Israel) that has never had nor in principle can have one?

The interesting thing about theory of games is that it allows by manipulating semantic rules to put an opponent in a situation where he will lose the game the moment he accepts the rules irrespective of what he does and thinks. So defining somebody a "dictator" because he has a bloody political record and omitting anything that goes to his credit is a sure way to make an unperson of him. On the other hand not defining others that do participate in the game and have exactly the same or even worse criminal politicl record like our unperson , say the Saudi or Jordanian or Bahreini royal gangs or other US-supported criminals in power as "dictators" but putting them aside and establishing different semantic rules for them is a sure way to make their position secure and assailable as long as the semantic rules are accepted.

Now the core issue is who establishes the rules and for what reason, What game he is playing in the first place and why I should accept his semantic rules at all as valid ?

I think that even the most inexperienced observer can say with certainty that the rules here are not established according to any valid methodology with the objective of ascertaining the truth of the subject matter.Their sole purpose is winning the game at no or minimal risk which means the game is from the very beginning a fraudulent game as no other rules are accepted for playing it. What am I driving at ? That what the media says about Qaddafi is not dictated by the wish to reflect the reality but to legitimize ex post the fait accompli.

If so ,what other rules can be meant to find out the truth ? The simple answer is that in the Middle East (again excepting Israel) democracy is not an issue at all and so arguing that Qaddafi is a dictator is not serious as all in power the region are dictators as well. So why single out Qaddafi?

What is involved in fact are traditional forces that struggle for power in Libya and the West's, i.e. US, support of or opposition to them. In case of Libya the forces are three - 1/ traditional different rivalling tribes of Western, Central and Eastern Libya ; 2/ pan-Islamist and pan-jihadist movements exemplified by the Moslem Brotherhood, Hizbut Tahrir ( Party of Liberation), al-Qaida and others 3/ Qaddafi's socialism that oppressed and/or balanced between hostile tribal loyalties and their centrifugal tendencies and created and kept alive a unified state with remarkable economic and social benefits to all or most and assured a degree of security (that has been replaced now by a state of endemic violence ) by fighting both tribal feudalism and the Moslem Brotherhood and other pan-Islamist movements.

Now given this deployment of real forces existing in Libya (as we can see none of them stands for "democracy", "freedom of speech" or "women's rights" ;) whom does the US in fact support by fomenting rebellions against Qaddafi, by supporting them militarily and possibly even by assassinating him? The US can support only two forces - tribal feudalism or radical pan-Islamist movements like the Moslem Botherhood? If we look at Egypt maybe we still remember the US warmly supporting radical Islam and a very high-ranking US official in earnest persuading the top US representatives that the Moslem Brotherhood is " largely largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam".

Well, if we understand the perverted semantic rules estabished for the game which people like the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and his bosses are playing we should not be surprised by such statements or others which are by definition not intended to enhance our knowledge of what is going on in the Middle East but only to achieve a number of propaganda and practical goals set by those who establish such fraudulent semantic rules with which we are constantly duped and fooled.

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