A Net for Dictators

“From the Halls of Montezuma,To the shores of Tripoli” read the first two lines of the U.S. Marines’ official hymn. Then the song tells us about the many places where this elite military corps has led battles under the stars and the stripes of the American flag.

The first part of these two lines refers to the Mexican battle in the middle of the 19th century. The second part is dedicated to the wars with pirates (and sometimes Frenchmen) in the seas and desserts of North Africa. These wars were the reason why the U.S. Marine Corps was founded 200 years ago. Well, the battle in question that took place by “the shores of Tripoli” in 1805 was conducted by just eight marines and 500 Arab, Greek and Berber mercenaries. It is true that this was the first American military operation abroad and that it actually tightened up the loop around the collective neck of piracy in the Mediterranean area; but it’s also true that, apart from that, it wasn’t very memorable. Hymn-writers, however, were the first PR specialists, and as such sometimes defined history much more effectively than national and military leaders.

Now that North Africa is again in the center of the news, I am for a split second tempted by the idea of that same U.S. Marine Corps being sent to end the reign of the dictator in Tripoli — especially, give that, as an American taxpayer, I provide, at the very least, a pair of boots and two uniforms annually for some Kansas youngster sent to Kandahar to fight the Taliban.

The historians, and not the PR specialists, however, will tell you that this kind of military intervention usually ends up badly, in addition to killing a large number of innocent people along the way. Now, even the United Nations Security Council could not summon the courage to declare the skies of Libya a no-fly zone. In result, the unequal battle of aviation against protesters continues. This is not dictated by any historical reasons. It’s just that the Russians do not allow the no-fly zone — which is an entirely different topic, though.

However you look at all of this, it becomes clear that the best thing the Sixth Fleet can do is stay out of Libya’s territorial waters, while the Marines can play cards and send their friends messages on Facebook instead of invading Tripoli.

Moreover, it seems that, nowadays, other American products prove to be very useful in the fight with dictators. You know already that the Egyptian Revolution was born using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as its obstetricians. There were even newspaper stories about an Egyptian baby named Facebook (the media is very resourceful when it comes to self-praise). What you probably don’t know is that Mark Zuckerberg’s company was asked by the U.S. government to come up with ways to surmount the Internet blockage imposed by Mubarak’s regime. That’s because whenever a lot of people get access to a number of different information channels, it gets hard, even impossible, to maintain control over them. This is one of the main differences between the current Arab revolutionary wave and those of earlier times the world over. I am eagerly following the events originating at the meeting point of 21st-century informational technologies and the 19th-century social order.

I read somewhere that, because of the disabled Internet connection, videos of the clashes between Gadhafi’s soldiers and rebels recorded on mobile phones are physically carried to the Egyptian frontier to enter the international news streams. Illegally obtained weapons travel in the opposite direction. Right now, they are probably regarded as more useful by those who have to lead a bloody battle against Gadhafi’s police forces. Nevertheless, I am sure it will be exactly those grainy videos, captured on someone’s Nokia and uploaded on YouTube, that will be immortalized by history.

Not accidentally, even the writer of The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin, said on Sunday at the Academy Awards (after winning the award for Best Adapted Screenplay) that given what happened in Egypt, he would finally join Facebook.

My sympathies definitely lie with the Net as a means of battling dictatorships, instead of boys from Kansas conquering sandy Arab shores again. Not just in the case of Libya, but in general. But if you want to see a U.S. Marine, you can take a walk to the U.S. Embassy in Sofia. Look up the address on Facebook.