The wisdom of Robert Fisk. And its limits.

There is no doubt that Robert Fisk is the most knowledgeable, analytically astute and ideologically well-intentioned, as well as correct, of all the commentators on Middle East affairs.

And yet his latest comment in the London Independent concerning the military action just commenced in Libya does leave a few crucial questions begged. It is indeed helpful to underscore the duplicity, the hypocrisy and the naked militarism of past strategic interventions by the West in the Middle East that left the field strewn with countless innocent victims while at the same time empowering the very forces they claimed to fight.

It is also highly salutary to include in the crackpot leaders that the passions of the area throw up not only the usual suspects on the Arab side but also someone like Avigdor Lieberman, and by implication the entire Israeli extreme right effectively in power there at the moment.

It is, further, illuminating to emphasize that the western assessment of leaders such as Saddam and Arafat changed in proportion as these individuals either veered off from or alternatively capitulated to western strategic interests. These interests stayed pretty much unchanged over the past generation, remaining unswervingly inimical both to the aspirations of the Palestinians as well as the democratic yearnings of the Arab masses at large. He could have included in that list both Hamas, a creature of Shin Bet to counter the Intifada-minded PLO of the time, as well as the Afghan Mujaheddin famously praised by Zbig Brzezinski (mounted on a barrel) as the righteous agents of God -only to mutate later into the fountain of all earthly evil. Clearly Kadhaffi also belongs to this list.

But on the basis of this analysis it is not at all clear what the actual policy implications are for the present. There is a cogent case to be made (and it was made very eloquently by a distinguished spokesman of the left such as Michael Walzer) that despite past miscalculations and misdeeds the American military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 was clearly justified, in law, in politics as well as in morality, and that if it had been pursued effectively Al Qaeda would have been obliterated as it ought to have been. The Iraq adventure, clearly misconceived as well as criminal on all the above counts, diverted resources and political energies from that legitimate target, leaving us with the present mess in both places.

It is true that the west went to bed with Kadhaffi after he renounced WMD and joined the anti-terrorist camp after 2003. But was this politically wrong under the conditions of the time? Even with the present hindsight it is not at all clear that it was. Kadhaffi continued to be the same crazed and odious ruler that he was before his about-turn. This is, and was at the time, clear.

But the suggestion that the foreign policies of the great powers ought to be based on the primary consideration of opposing (and overthrowing?) odious rulers is tantamount to the demand that the international arena should turn into a field of perpetual violent conflict -even if we assume that the criteria of who is odious and who is not are clear and settled.

The pursuit of morality and justice in international affairs is definitely a crucial consideration. But it functions within a constellation of other, pragmatic concerns. Each of these competing requirements ought to be assessed with a view to the general interest of humanity at any given historical juncture. The Stalinist empire was indeed as odious as they get, but the west was categorically justified in striking deals which legitimized its tyrannical control of Eastern Europe (such as Helsinki 1975), rather than attacking it outright. To avoid a nuclear holocaust was certainly a legitimate (and moral) goal under the circumstances, a consideration that trumped other pursuits (each one highly worthy in isolation), such as the forcible liberation of the "captive nations" as the extreme right demanded.

The Hungarians, in particular, paid for this dearly -but who in good conscience can say that the cause of human welfare and political freedom in Hungary and the world would have benefited through a military invasion of Hungary from the west to counter the Soviet one in 1956? How would the Hungarian nation be served by being extinguished along with many others? As it was the revolution was military crushed but was morally and politically victorious: there was indeed regime change in Hungary, for the eventual Kadar system (even under Soviet occupation) was vastly different from the Rakosi tyranny, even nursing the seeds of the overthrow of the dictatorship altogether in 1989. The logic of historical freedom is long-term and pragmatic policies are not necessarily inimical to it.

All in all, the morality of the politician, as Max Weber showed, is one of responsibility and not one of conscience, if by the latter we mean a stance of fiat iustitia pereat mundus. For if the world perishes, then so does justice. So the dalliance with Kadhaffi had things going for it, even though Tony Blair could have spared us the ostentatious embracing (Berlusconi is beyond the pale anyway) and Anthony Giddens the subtlety of his analyses of the "moderation" of the Jamahiria.

The point, now, with regard to Fisk is that the undoubtedly unpalatable prehistory that he brings out cannot predetermine present and future action. If the sins of the past and the uncertainties of the present mean that one cannot actually attempt anything for fear of going wrong, this signifies simply the forfeiture of political responsibility. This paralysis can only benefit the sundry monsters, filled with the "passionate intensity" that Yeats laments in his great poem, that the unchecked flow of life throws up.

The situation in Libya developed in such an unpredictable way that (despite Blair's and Giddens' missteps, not to speak of the institutional venality of the LSE) a threshold was crossed that made forceful intervention imperative. The ruthlessness with which the regime attacked its own population was clearly reminiscent of (if not on the same scale with) the events in Rwanda in 1994. That the Arab league came out backing the military imposition of flight interdiction and that the Security council provided the necessary legal authorization clearly distinguishes this case from Iraq in 2003. Fisk is right to underscore that military action had to be organized hastily and that it involves enormous uncertainties and risks with regards to the post-Kadhaffi era. But the alternative was to simply sit back and watch the regime squash its opponents under the boot like so many worms, "zenga zenga" in the Colonel's immortal phrase. These opponents are indeed not all saints as Fisk rightly reminds us. Still there is less risk now of the rebellion evolving into something equally or more nasty than the present government.

When the west was dithering the left was complaining that the only thing they cared about was Libyan oil controlled by their friend Kadhaffi. Now that it has intervened the same accusation is being leveled, i.e. that they went in to seize the oil. But if they had the oil under Kadhaffi in the first place, why bother take this highly expensive, dangerous and uncertain gamble? These are the stupidities that one hears here in Greece, where "anti-imperialist" demonstrations are being organized. One would expect such a response from the Greek left, which is definitely "the worst in Europe" as it has been correctly labeled. Fisk would do great disservice to his own intellectual and moral stature to fall into the same pit.