By Ann Wright, Coleen Rowley, Consortium News
20 June 12
readersupportednews
he new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA – Suzanne Nossel – is a recent U.S. government insider. So it’s a safe bet that AI’s decision to seize upon a topic that dovetailed with American foreign policy interests, "women’s rights in Afghanistan," at the NATO Conference last month in Chicago came directly from her.
Nossel was hired by AI in January 2012. In her early career, Nossel worked for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke under the Clinton Administration at the United Nations. Most recently, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State, where she was responsible for multilateral human rights, humanitarian affairs, women’s issues, public diplomacy, press and congressional relations.
[aiposter]
Amnesty International's "NATO: Keep the Progress Going" poster at a Chicago bus stop.
She also played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council (where her views about the original Goldstone Report on behalf of Palestinian women did not quite rise to the same level of concerns for the women in countries that U.S.-NATO has attacked militarily).
Nossel would have worked for and with Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, and undoubtedly helped them successfully implement their "Right to Protect (R2P)" – otherwise known as "humanitarian intervention” – as well as the newly created "Atrocity Prevention Board."
This cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy (which has served mainly to rationalize the launching of war on Libya) is now being hauled out to call for U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.
"Smart Power" = smart wars?
In fact, Nossel is herself credited as having coined the term “Smart Power,” which embraces the United States ’ use of military power as well as other forms of “soft power,” an approach which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced at her confirmation as the new basis of State Department policy.
An excerpt from Nossel’s 2004 paper on “Smart Power” published in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs magazine sounds a lot like Samantha Power’s (and also traces back to Madeleine Albright’s) theories:
"To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war.
"Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military [our emphasis] — to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD)."
Perhaps the AI’s hiring of a State Department shill as executive director of its U.S. affiliate was merely coincidental to how/why its "NATO Shadow Summit " so closely mimicked the CIA’s latest propaganda assault, but….
The "CIA Red Cell," a group of analysts assigned to think "outside the box" to anticipate emerging challenges, was right to worry in March 2010 when the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) found that 80 percent of French and German citizens were opposed to continued deployment of their countries’ militaries in the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.
Even though public apathy had, up to that point, enabled French and German politicians to "ignore their voters" and steadily increase their governments’ troop contributions to Afghanistan, the CIA’s newly-created think tank was concerned that a forecasted increase in NATO casualties in the upcoming "bloody summer … could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal."
In a "confidential" memo, the "Red Cell" wrote: "The Afghanistan mission’s low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR polling in fall 2009.
"Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters …
"Only a fraction (0.1-1.3 percent) of French and German respondents identified ‘Afghanistan’ as the most urgent issue facing their nation in an open-ended question, according to the same polling. These publics ranked ‘stabilizing Afghanistan’ as among the lowest priorities for US and European leaders, according to polls by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) over the past two years.
"According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, the view that the Afghanistan mission is a waste of resources and ‘not our problem’ was cited as the most common reason for opposing ISAF by German respondents and was the second most common reason by French respondents. But the ‘not our problem’ sentiment also suggests that, so for, sending troops to Afghanistan is not yet on most voters’ radar.
"But Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash
"If some forecasts of a bloody summer in Afghanistan come to pass, passive French and German dislike of their troop presence could turn into active and politically potent hostility. The tone of previous debate suggests that a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal."
The CIA "Special Memorandum" went a step further, inviting "a CIA expert on strategic communication and analysts following public opinion" to suggest "information campaigns" that State Department polls showed likely to sway Western Europeans.
The "Red Cell" memo was quickly leaked, however, furnishing a remarkable window into how U.S. government propaganda is designed to work upon NATO citizenry to maintain public support for the euphemistically titled "International Security Assistance Force" (ISAF) waging war on Afghans. Here are some of the CIA propaganda expert’s suggestions:
"Messaging that dramatizes the potential adverse consequences of an ISAF defeat for Afghan civilians could leverage French (and other European) guilt for abandoning them. The prospect of the Taliban rolling back hard-won progress on girls’ education could provoke French indignation, become a rallying point for France’s largely secular public, and give voters a reason to support a good and necessary cause despite casualties. …
"Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission. … Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences."
‘NATO: Keep the Progress Going!’
Amnesty International struck similar themes in announcements posted online as well as billboard advertisements on Chicago bus stops, telling "NATO: Keep the Progress Going!" beckoned us to find out more on Sunday, May 20, 2012, the day thousands of activists marched in Chicago in protest of NATO’s wars.
The billboard seemed to answer a recent Huffington Post article, "Afghanistan: The First Feminist War?"
"The feminist victory may be complete in America, but on the international stage it’s not doing so well with three quarters of the world’s women still under often-severe male domination. Afghanistan is an extreme case in point in what might be termed the first feminist war … a war that now may not be won even if Hillary Clinton dons a flack jacket and shoulders an M16 on the front lines. Still, since the Bush Administration to the present America ‘s top foreign policy office has been held by women … women who have promised not to desert their Afghan sisters."
Our curiosity was further piqued because we consider ourselves to be women’s rights and human rights proponents and also due to our own prior federal careers in intelligence and military. (Colonel Wright is retired from the State Department/US military and Rowley is from the FBI.)
So along with a few other anti-war activists, we packed into a taxi to head to the Chicago hotel where Amnesty International’s "Shadow Summit" featuring former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other female foreign relations officials was being held. We happened to carry our "NATO bombs are not humanitarian"; "NATO Kills Girls" and anti-drone bombing posters that we had with us for the march later that day.
As we arrived, an official-looking black car dropped off Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, who was to be a main speaker (on the first panel, along with former Secretary Albright; U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois; and Afifa Azim, General Director and Co-Founder, Afghan Women’s Network; along with Moderator Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Deputy Director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Program).
Verveer cast a cold glance at us and would not answer Ann Wright’s questions as she scurried into the hotel with her aides surrounding her and us following behind. At first the hotel security guards tried to turn us away but we reminded the registration desk the Summit was advertised as "Free Admissions" and that some of us were members of Amnesty International.
So they let us register and attend as long as we promised to leave our signs outside and not disrupt the speakers. The hotel conference room was about half full. We stayed long enough to hear the opening remarks and the moderator’s first questions of Albright and the other speakers on the first panel.
All generally linked the protection and participation of Afghan women in government as well as the progress made in educating Afghan women to the eventual peace and security of the country as envisioned by the new strategic "partnership" agreement that Obama had just signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Ms. Verveer said Afghan women do not want to be seen as "victims" but are now rightfully nervous about their future. When we saw that audience participation was going to be limited to questions selected from the small note cards being collected, we departed, missing the second panel as well as kite-flying for women’s rights.
We noted, even in that short time, however, how easy it was for these U.S. government officials to use the "good and necessary cause" of women’s rights to get the audience into the palm of their collective hand — just as the CIA’s "strategic communication" expert predicted!
Secretary Albright?
Not everyone was hoodwinked however. Even before the "Summit" was held, Amnesty realized it had a PR problem as a result of its billboard advertisement touting progress in Afghanistan. An Amnesty official tried to put forth a rather lame defense blaming an accidental poor choice of wording.
But many readers (and AI members) posted critical comments and questions, including concerns about Albright’s involvement given her infamous defense of Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s, which were estimated to have caused the deaths of a half million Iraqi children, with the comment "we think the price is worth it."
Under the blogger’s explanation: "We Get It / Human Rights Now," there were comments like these:
"Could someone from AI please explain why Madeleine Albright was invited to participate in this event? We (and especially those of us who are familiar with AI) should all be able to understand that the wording on the poster was a genuine, albeit damaging, mistake. But why Ms. Albright?"
"The posters are pro-NATO and play into prevailing tropes about so called ‘humanitarian intervention’ via ‘think of the women & children’ imagery. The posters & the forum that includes Albright are neither slight slips nor without context. AI is coping heat because they have miss-stepped dramatically. There is NOTHING subtle about either the imagery nor the message!
"It is not a case of ‘oh sorry we didn’t realize it it could be interpreted that way!’ They used pro Nato imagery & slogans ahead of & during a controversial summit that has thousands protesting in the streets. Tell me again how that is not taking sides?
“They asked a notorious apologist for mass murder of children to speak on the right of women and children…tell me again: how is that not taking sides. So it is absolutely reasonable for past supporters (and board members like myself) to be asking how it is that Amnesty USA so lost its bearings they could make a critical SERIES of errors like this?"
Of course the defensive AI blog author never answered the numerous questions asking why Amnesty had chosen Madeleine Albright as their main speaker. So we will venture an answer that probably lies in the fact that all of the powerful feminist-war hawks who have risen to become Secretary of State (or are waiting in the wings) are now taking their lead from the ruthless Grand Dame who paved the way for them, Madeleine Albright — (see Coleen Rowley’s recent articles: "Obama’s New ‘Atrocity Prevention Board’: Reasons for Skepticism" and "Militarization of the Mothers: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, from Mother’s Day for Peace").
It’s also possible the highest ranks of the feminist wing of military interventionism (i.e. Madeleine Albright, Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, et al) are so passionate and hubristic about the nobility of their goal and "Amercan exceptionalism" that some have simply succumbed to a kind of almost religious (blind faith) type fervor.
The Road to Hell
Nossel’s and Albright’s theories are flawed in many ways but suffice it to say that democracies are actually not less prone to war. A long list of "democracies" – including Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire, the United Kingdom, France and the United States itself – disprove this assertion.
In any event, the U.S. has been terribly hypocritical in its support of "democracies" in foreign countries, often toppling or attempting to topple them (i.e. Iran’s Mossadeqh, Guatemala’s Arbenz, Chile’s Allende) in order to gain easier control of a foreign country through an allied dictatorship.
No one is going to argue that the goals of humanitarianism, preventing atrocities and furthering women’s rights around the world are not "good and necessary" (in the words of the CIA strategic communications expert). We would go so far as to say these ARE truly noble causes!
Testimonials about human rights’ abuse are often true and fundamentalist regimes’ treatment of women seems to vary only in degrees of horrible. But while it’s true that many women lack rights in Afghanistan, some would argue that it’s conveniently true. And that the best lies are always based on a certain amount of truth.
The devil, however, lies in the details of promoting equality and accomplishing humanitarianism. Most importantly the ends, even noble ends, never justify wrongful means. In fact, when people such as Samantha Power decide to bomb the village Libya , to save it, it will backfire on a pragmatic level.
It must be realized that it is the nobility of the U.S.-NATO’s motivation that – as CIA propaganda department has advised – should be relied upon to convince otherwise good-hearted people (especially women) to support (or at least tolerate) war and military occupation (now known to encompass the worst of war crimes, massacres of women and children, torture, cutting off body parts of those killed, as well as increasing mental illness, self-destructive behavior and suicides among U.S. soldiers and the corresponding cover-ups of all such horrible means).
In the decades after Vietnam, a number of military scholars identified declining American public support for that war as the main factor responsible for the U.S. "losing" Vietnam. One lesson learned and quickly implemented was to get rid of the military draft and put the wars on a credit card so fewer citizens would pay attention.
Some control also had to be gained over the type of free media (that led to trusted TV anchor Walter Cronkite broadcasting his public souring on the Vietnam War). A whole series of war propaganda systems, from planting retired generals as "talking heads" on TV to the assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld deciding to "embed the media," have worked pretty well to maintain the necessary level of war momentum in mainstream media and amongst public opinion.
But now, with American polls approaching the same problematic levels as those in Europe cited by the "CIA Red Cell," we suddenly see major human rights organizations like Amnesty International (as well as others) applauding Obama’s (and the feminist war-hawks’) "Atrocity Prevention Board."
Such sleight of hand seems to work to work even better amongst political partisans. By the way, it should be noted that Congress may allow these Pentagon propagandists to target American citizens through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013. Should we connect the dots?
There are some clear lines where the laudable need to further human rights should not be twisted into justifying harsh economic sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of children or, even worse, "shock and awe" aerial bombing that takes the lives of the women and children the "humanitarian" propagandists say they want to help.
Madeleine Albright’s response about the deaths of a half million children on 60 Minutes, that "the price was worth it," illustrates the quintessential falsity of what ethicists call "act utilitarianism" or concocting fictional happy outcomes to justify the terrible wrongful means.
It also seems that a human rights NGO, in this case Amnesty International, which had gained a solid reputation and hence the trust of those it has helped through the years, will be jeopardized in aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO.
This is exactly how the Nobel Peace Prize got corrupted, aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO, which is why Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire withdrew from the Nobel Peace forum held in Chicago during NATO.
Good NGOS and non-profits that want to maintain the trust in their humanitarian work tend to be very careful to maintain their independence from any government, let alone any war-making government. When NGOs, even good ones, become entwined with the U.S./NATO war machine, don’t they risk losing their independent credibility?
Ann Wright is a 29-year U.S. Army/Army Reserve Colonel and a 16-year U.S. diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She returned to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2010 on fact-finding missions.
Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She wrote a "whistleblower" memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures. She retired at the end of 2004, and now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.
Showing posts with label nato. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nato. Show all posts
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Friday, September 02, 2011
Meet Professor Juan Cole, Consultant to the CIA
AUGUST 30, 2011
"Democracy Now?"
by JOHN WALSH
Juan Cole is a brand name that is no longer trusted. And that has been the case for some time for the Professor from Michigan. After warning of the “difficulties” with the Iraq War, Cole swung over to ply it with burning kisses on the day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His fervor was not based on Saddam Hussein’s fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction but on the virtues of “humanitarian imperialism.”
Thus on March 19, 2003, as the imperial invasion commenced, Cole enthused on his blog: “I remain (Emphasis mine.) convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.” Now, with over 1 million Iraqis dead, 4 million displaced and the country’s infrastructure destroyed, might Cole still echo Madeline Albright that the price was “worth it”? Cole has called the Afghan War “the right war at the right time” and has emerged as a cheerleader for Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya and for Obama himself.
Cole claims to be a man of the left and he appears with painful frequency on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now as the reigning “expert” on the war on Libya. This is deeply troubling – on at least two counts. First, can one be a member of the “left” and also an advocate for the brutal intervention by the Great Western Powers in the affairs of a small, relatively poor country? Apparently so, at least in Democracy Now’s version of the “left.” Second, it appears that Cole’s essential function these days is to convince wavering progressives that the war on Libya has been fine and dandy. But how can such damaged goods as Cole credibly perform this marketing mission so vital to Obama’s war?
Miraculously, Cole got just the rehabilitation he needed to continue with this vital propaganda function when it was disclosed by the New York Times on June 15 that he was the object of a White House inquiry way back in 2005 in Bush time. The source and reason for this leak and the publication of it by the NYT at this time, so many years later, should be of great interest, but they are unknown. Within a week of the Times piece Cole was accorded a hero’s welcome on Democracy Now, as he appeared with retired CIA agent Glenn Carle who had served 23 years in the clandestine services of the CIA in part as an “interrogator.” Carl had just retired from the CIA at the time of the White House request and was at the time employed at the National Intelligence Council, which authors the National Intelligence Estimate.
It hit this listener like a ton of bricks when it was disclosed in Goodman’s interview that Cole was a long time “consultant” for the CIA, the National Intelligence Council and other agencies. Here is what nearly caused me to keel over when I heard it (From the Democracy Now transcript.):
AMY GOODMAN: So, did you know Professor Cole or know of him at the time you were asked? And can you go on from there? What happened when you said you wouldn’t do this? And who was it who demanded this information from you, said that you should get information?
GLENN CARLE: Well, I did know Professor Cole. He was one of a large number of experts of diverse views that the National Intelligence Council and my office and the CIA respectively consult with to challenge our assumptions and understand the trends and issues on our various portfolios. So I knew him that way. And it was sensible, in that sense, that the White House turned to my office to inquire about him, because we were the ones, at least one of the ones—I don’t know all of Mr. Cole’s work—who had consulted with him. (Emphases mine.)
That seems like strange toil for a man of the “left.” But were the consultations long drawn out and the association with the CIA a deep one? It would appear so. Again from the transcript:
AMY GOODMAN: Well, the way James Risen (the NYT reporter) writes it, he says, “Mr. Carle said [that] sometime that year, he was approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. [Mr.] Low and [Mr.] Carle have starkly different recollections of what happened. According to Mr. Carle, [Mr.] Low returned from a White House meeting one day and inquired who Juan Cole was, making clear [that] he wanted [Mr.] Carle to gather information on him. Mr. Carle recalled [his] boss saying, ‘The White House wants to get him.’”
GLENN CARLE: Well, that’s substantially correct. The one nuance, perhaps, I would point out is there’s a difference between collecting information actively, going out and running an operation, say, to find out things about Mr. Cole, or providing information known through interactions. (Emphasis mine.) I would characterize it more as the latter.
And later in the interview Carle continues:
On the whole, Professor Cole and I are in agreement. The distinction I make is it wasn’t publicly known information that was requested; it was information that officers knew of a personal nature about Professor Cole, which is much more disturbing. There was no direct request that I’m aware, in the two instances of which I have knowledge, for the officers actively to seek and obtain, to conduct—for me to go out and follow Professor Cole. But if I knew lifestyle questions or so on, to pass those along. (Emphasis mine.)That’s how I—which is totally unacceptable.
It would seem then that the interaction between the CIA operatives and Cole was long standing and sufficiently intimate that the CIA spooks could be expected to know things about Cole’s lifestyle and personal life. It is not that anyone should give two figs about Cole’s personal life which is more than likely is every bit as boring as he claims. But his relationship with the CIA is of interest since he is an unreconstructed hawk. What was remarkable to me at the time is that Goodman did not pick up on any of this. Did she know before of Cole’s connections? Was not this the wrong man to have as a “frequent guest,” in Goodman’s words, on the situation in the Middle East?
This is not to claim that Cole is on a mission for the CIA to convince the left to support the imperial wars, most notably at the moment the war on Libya. Nor is this a claim that the revelation about the White House seeking information on Cole was a contrived psyops effort to rehabilitate Cole so that he could continue such a mission. That cannot be claimed, because there is as yet no evidence for it. But information flows two ways in any consultation, and it is even possible that Cole was being loaded with war-friendly information in hopes he would transmit it.
Cole is anxious to promote himself as a man of the left as he spins out his rationale for the war on Libya. At one point he says to Goodman (3/29), “We are people of the left. We care about the ordinary people. We care about workers.” It is strange that a man who claims such views dismisses as irrelevant the progress that has come to the people of Libya under Gaddafi, dictator or not. (Indeed what brought Gaddafi down was not that he was a dictator but that he was not our dictator.) In fact Libya has the highest score of all African countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) and with Tunisia and Morocco the second highest level of literacy. The HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide.
Whither the Left on the Question of Intervention?
None of this is all too surprising given Cole’s status as a “humanitarian” hawk. But it is outrageous that he is so often called on by Democracy Now for his opinion. One of his appearances there was in a debate on the unconstitutional war in Libya, with CounterPunch’s estimable Vijay Prashad taking the antiwar side and Cole prowar. It would seem strange for the left to have to debate the worth of an imperial intervention. Certainly if one goes back to the days of the Vietnam War there were teach-ins to inform the public of the lies of the U.S. government and the truth about what was going on in Vietnam. But let us give Democracy Now the benefit of the doubt and say that the debate was some sort of consciousness raising effort. Why later on invite as a frequent guest a man who was the pro-war voice in the debate? That is a strange choice indeed.
This writer does not get to listen to Democracy Now every day. But I have not heard a full-throated denunciation of the war on Libya from host or guests. Certainly according to a search on the DN web site, Cynthia McKinney did not appear as a guest nor Ramsey Clark after their courageous fact finding tour to Libya. There was only one all out denunciation of the war – on the day when the guests were Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vincent Harding who was King’s speechwriter on the famous speech “Beyond Vietnam” in 1967 in which King condemned the U.S. war on Vietnam. Jackson and the wise and keenly intelligent Harding were there not to discuss Libya but to discuss the MLK Jr. monument. Nonetheless Jackson and Harding made clear that they did not like the U.S. war in Libya one bit, nor the militarism it entails.
If one reads CounterPunch.org, Antiwar.com or The American Conservative, one knows that one is reading those who are anti-interventionist on the basis of principle. With Democracy Now and kindred progressive outlets, it’s all too clear where a big chunk of the so-called “left” stands, especially since the advent of Obama. In his superb little book Humanitarian Imperialism Jean Bricmont criticizes much of the left for falling prey to advocacy of wars, supposedly based on good intentions. And Alexander Cockburn has often pointed out that many progressives are actually quite fond of “humanitarian” interventionism. Both here and in Europe this fondness seems to be especially true of Obama’s latest war, the war on Libya . It is little wonder that the “progressives” are losing their antiwar following to Ron Paul and the Libertarians who are consistent and principled on the issue of anti-interventionism.
Democracy Now, quo vadis? Wherever you are heading, you would do well to travel without Juan Cole and his friends.
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com After wading through Cole’s loose prose and dubious logic to write this essay, the author suspects that the rejection of Cole by the Yale faculty was the result of considerations that had little to do with neocon Bush/Cheney operatives.
"Democracy Now?"
by JOHN WALSH
Juan Cole is a brand name that is no longer trusted. And that has been the case for some time for the Professor from Michigan. After warning of the “difficulties” with the Iraq War, Cole swung over to ply it with burning kisses on the day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His fervor was not based on Saddam Hussein’s fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction but on the virtues of “humanitarian imperialism.”
Thus on March 19, 2003, as the imperial invasion commenced, Cole enthused on his blog: “I remain (Emphasis mine.) convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.” Now, with over 1 million Iraqis dead, 4 million displaced and the country’s infrastructure destroyed, might Cole still echo Madeline Albright that the price was “worth it”? Cole has called the Afghan War “the right war at the right time” and has emerged as a cheerleader for Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya and for Obama himself.
Cole claims to be a man of the left and he appears with painful frequency on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now as the reigning “expert” on the war on Libya. This is deeply troubling – on at least two counts. First, can one be a member of the “left” and also an advocate for the brutal intervention by the Great Western Powers in the affairs of a small, relatively poor country? Apparently so, at least in Democracy Now’s version of the “left.” Second, it appears that Cole’s essential function these days is to convince wavering progressives that the war on Libya has been fine and dandy. But how can such damaged goods as Cole credibly perform this marketing mission so vital to Obama’s war?
Miraculously, Cole got just the rehabilitation he needed to continue with this vital propaganda function when it was disclosed by the New York Times on June 15 that he was the object of a White House inquiry way back in 2005 in Bush time. The source and reason for this leak and the publication of it by the NYT at this time, so many years later, should be of great interest, but they are unknown. Within a week of the Times piece Cole was accorded a hero’s welcome on Democracy Now, as he appeared with retired CIA agent Glenn Carle who had served 23 years in the clandestine services of the CIA in part as an “interrogator.” Carl had just retired from the CIA at the time of the White House request and was at the time employed at the National Intelligence Council, which authors the National Intelligence Estimate.
It hit this listener like a ton of bricks when it was disclosed in Goodman’s interview that Cole was a long time “consultant” for the CIA, the National Intelligence Council and other agencies. Here is what nearly caused me to keel over when I heard it (From the Democracy Now transcript.):
AMY GOODMAN: So, did you know Professor Cole or know of him at the time you were asked? And can you go on from there? What happened when you said you wouldn’t do this? And who was it who demanded this information from you, said that you should get information?
GLENN CARLE: Well, I did know Professor Cole. He was one of a large number of experts of diverse views that the National Intelligence Council and my office and the CIA respectively consult with to challenge our assumptions and understand the trends and issues on our various portfolios. So I knew him that way. And it was sensible, in that sense, that the White House turned to my office to inquire about him, because we were the ones, at least one of the ones—I don’t know all of Mr. Cole’s work—who had consulted with him. (Emphases mine.)
That seems like strange toil for a man of the “left.” But were the consultations long drawn out and the association with the CIA a deep one? It would appear so. Again from the transcript:
AMY GOODMAN: Well, the way James Risen (the NYT reporter) writes it, he says, “Mr. Carle said [that] sometime that year, he was approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. [Mr.] Low and [Mr.] Carle have starkly different recollections of what happened. According to Mr. Carle, [Mr.] Low returned from a White House meeting one day and inquired who Juan Cole was, making clear [that] he wanted [Mr.] Carle to gather information on him. Mr. Carle recalled [his] boss saying, ‘The White House wants to get him.’”
GLENN CARLE: Well, that’s substantially correct. The one nuance, perhaps, I would point out is there’s a difference between collecting information actively, going out and running an operation, say, to find out things about Mr. Cole, or providing information known through interactions. (Emphasis mine.) I would characterize it more as the latter.
And later in the interview Carle continues:
On the whole, Professor Cole and I are in agreement. The distinction I make is it wasn’t publicly known information that was requested; it was information that officers knew of a personal nature about Professor Cole, which is much more disturbing. There was no direct request that I’m aware, in the two instances of which I have knowledge, for the officers actively to seek and obtain, to conduct—for me to go out and follow Professor Cole. But if I knew lifestyle questions or so on, to pass those along. (Emphasis mine.)That’s how I—which is totally unacceptable.
It would seem then that the interaction between the CIA operatives and Cole was long standing and sufficiently intimate that the CIA spooks could be expected to know things about Cole’s lifestyle and personal life. It is not that anyone should give two figs about Cole’s personal life which is more than likely is every bit as boring as he claims. But his relationship with the CIA is of interest since he is an unreconstructed hawk. What was remarkable to me at the time is that Goodman did not pick up on any of this. Did she know before of Cole’s connections? Was not this the wrong man to have as a “frequent guest,” in Goodman’s words, on the situation in the Middle East?
This is not to claim that Cole is on a mission for the CIA to convince the left to support the imperial wars, most notably at the moment the war on Libya. Nor is this a claim that the revelation about the White House seeking information on Cole was a contrived psyops effort to rehabilitate Cole so that he could continue such a mission. That cannot be claimed, because there is as yet no evidence for it. But information flows two ways in any consultation, and it is even possible that Cole was being loaded with war-friendly information in hopes he would transmit it.
Cole is anxious to promote himself as a man of the left as he spins out his rationale for the war on Libya. At one point he says to Goodman (3/29), “We are people of the left. We care about the ordinary people. We care about workers.” It is strange that a man who claims such views dismisses as irrelevant the progress that has come to the people of Libya under Gaddafi, dictator or not. (Indeed what brought Gaddafi down was not that he was a dictator but that he was not our dictator.) In fact Libya has the highest score of all African countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) and with Tunisia and Morocco the second highest level of literacy. The HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide.
Whither the Left on the Question of Intervention?
None of this is all too surprising given Cole’s status as a “humanitarian” hawk. But it is outrageous that he is so often called on by Democracy Now for his opinion. One of his appearances there was in a debate on the unconstitutional war in Libya, with CounterPunch’s estimable Vijay Prashad taking the antiwar side and Cole prowar. It would seem strange for the left to have to debate the worth of an imperial intervention. Certainly if one goes back to the days of the Vietnam War there were teach-ins to inform the public of the lies of the U.S. government and the truth about what was going on in Vietnam. But let us give Democracy Now the benefit of the doubt and say that the debate was some sort of consciousness raising effort. Why later on invite as a frequent guest a man who was the pro-war voice in the debate? That is a strange choice indeed.
This writer does not get to listen to Democracy Now every day. But I have not heard a full-throated denunciation of the war on Libya from host or guests. Certainly according to a search on the DN web site, Cynthia McKinney did not appear as a guest nor Ramsey Clark after their courageous fact finding tour to Libya. There was only one all out denunciation of the war – on the day when the guests were Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vincent Harding who was King’s speechwriter on the famous speech “Beyond Vietnam” in 1967 in which King condemned the U.S. war on Vietnam. Jackson and the wise and keenly intelligent Harding were there not to discuss Libya but to discuss the MLK Jr. monument. Nonetheless Jackson and Harding made clear that they did not like the U.S. war in Libya one bit, nor the militarism it entails.
If one reads CounterPunch.org, Antiwar.com or The American Conservative, one knows that one is reading those who are anti-interventionist on the basis of principle. With Democracy Now and kindred progressive outlets, it’s all too clear where a big chunk of the so-called “left” stands, especially since the advent of Obama. In his superb little book Humanitarian Imperialism Jean Bricmont criticizes much of the left for falling prey to advocacy of wars, supposedly based on good intentions. And Alexander Cockburn has often pointed out that many progressives are actually quite fond of “humanitarian” interventionism. Both here and in Europe this fondness seems to be especially true of Obama’s latest war, the war on Libya . It is little wonder that the “progressives” are losing their antiwar following to Ron Paul and the Libertarians who are consistent and principled on the issue of anti-interventionism.
Democracy Now, quo vadis? Wherever you are heading, you would do well to travel without Juan Cole and his friends.
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com After wading through Cole’s loose prose and dubious logic to write this essay, the author suspects that the rejection of Cole by the Yale faculty was the result of considerations that had little to do with neocon Bush/Cheney operatives.
Libya - The return of colonialist bondage
Hakeem Babalola,
AfricaNews
Tuesday 30 August 2011
Libya's destruction, a victory for the west; a defeat for ordinary Libyans.
The suffering of Libyans has just begun. For there can never be true liberation when your oppressor is the one who defines what your freedom should be. The ousting of Colonel Gaddafi, Libyan leader for 42 years, by the rebels backed western forces especially NATO is indeed a victory for the west whose fixation on Gaddafi's Libya has become worrisome.
It’s definitely not a victory for ordinary Libyans who would continue to suffer a lot of nervous strain and shock after the destruction. Neither is it a victory for the rebels who have been in excess jubilation since capturing Gaddafi’s official residence. “We are free,” they proclaimed in wild happiness.
But they have forgotten one important thing: that they are now slaves to all the countries that helped them kick out Gaddafi.
Apparently the rebels are not ordinary Libyan but a group of people who want the share of the oil with the help of foreign forces. Gaddafi’s main crime may be the fact that he refused to let the west control Libya’s resources, hence he must be eliminated by all possible means.
In their euphoria and in their haste to get rid of him, they forgot that none of the countries that backed them has the interest of Libyans at heart. Let them for once re-visit Iraq.
Gaddafi's mistake
As for Gaddafi, nothing lasts forever. The man should have known that 42 years of single-handedly ruling or administering a nation is more than too long. There is no doubting the fact that Gaddafi always means well for Libya unlike America, Britain, France, NATO, UN and other bereaved organisations claiming to love Libya more than God loves the Israelites. Ok I detest dynasty rule, and this seems to be Gaddafi`s undoing. A nation can never be the personal property of any man or group.
He should have relinquished power at a point in time and becomes the Father of the Nation or something similar. At 70 and having ruled for 42 years, Gaddafi should have embraced the uprising tactically no matter how painful it might be – at least to prevent his own legacy which the west actually wants to destroy.
But then power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely. He should have known that America, Britain, France and others still consider themselves as the Alpha and Omega of this world – the owner of our earth.
And so they cannot tolerate any opposition from an Arab-African in the spirit of Gaddafi. This man should have realised he was not fighting the "rats" within his own environment but "desperate and hungry lions" outside his environment who have surreptitiously waited to devour him. Perhaps Gaddafi should have been more careful, especially when his colleagues in the African Union (AU) do not like his gut.
Gaddafi should have known that neither America nor its allies forget and forgive. He should have known that the oil in his background is enough to eliminate him by all means. He should have learnt a lesson from Iraq, a nation destroyed by Obama's predecessor on the pretence that the late Iraqi leader possessed Weapon of Mass Destruction which turned out to be a ruse.
It was simply a ploy by Mr. Bush to invade the oil rich nation. There is always an excuse to invade certain countries especially when the rulers of such countries refused to be a stooge.
Attacking a sovereign nation
I have stopped worrying each time the American or British or French government issues public propaganda justifying the need to attack Iraq or Afghanistan or Ivory Coast or Libya etc in order to protect the people.
I have stopped worrying because it is now obvious to me that this so-called "developed nations" must use ideas or statements often exaggerated or false intended for a political cause.
They need to sound as people oriented leaders to gain the much needed support otherwise they become irrelevant. They must use the empty rhetoric of politicians as an excuse to justify the partial occupation - of less powerful nations - especially Africa.
One wonders why United Nations has not ordered the attack on North Korea! And why it is so easy to bombard Libya under the pretext of protecting the civilians in that region. Even though more than 20,000 have lost their lives in the civil war, what’s coming out of people like David Cameron of Britain, Hilary Clinton of America and others is disturbing.
“I pledge support for a new era,” says Mrs Clinton, US Secretary of State. In what I consider a sinister statement, Mr Cameron says we would like to see Gaddafi punished for his crimes, adding: “We need a swift transition to a democratic and inclusive Libya,”
Inclusive Libya? Is it that necessary to include Libya in Libya’s affairs? Ah, to include the Libyan people is to further disrupt the agenda of a purpose. Let America, Britain and France take over Libya completely and divide it among themselves. For this would be the true picture of the main objective. Libyans and Africans in general aren’t capable of taking care of themselves hence the need to bombard every independent African State.
Rhapsody of Gaddafi's elimination
In February, the trouble barely started in Libya when America, France and Britain began to campaign for Gaddafi's exist. Their rhapsody of Gaddafi’s elimination was so soon then that it backfired; because discern minds wanted to know why these three countries were so fixated on Libya. Is it because like Iraq, it is an oil producing nation? Why was it so easy for these three countries to back the rebels? Did they know beforehand that Libya was to face uprising? What was behind their open support for the rebels? Why did they start freezing Libya's asset immediately the trouble started?
Can any African nation freezes Britain or US assets in any circumstance? What happened in Libya at that time was just unfolding but these nations had gone to town calling for the head of Gaddafi, saying he was killing his people. Will American or British or French government fold its arm if a group of rebels come together to topple the government?
"Oyinbo" always right mentality
I suppose it is easy for the western countries to attack or occupy African continent because they have mastered the art of colluding with African rulers. African people it seems hate their own image. Majority still probably believe that "Oyinbo" is always right.
This mental slavery is reoccurring in different forms: it may be the process of "protecting the people of Africa" from their dictators (as if there are no dictators elsewhere) whenever it pleases the western countries to destroy any African nation of their choice. Can't they leave African people to fight for ourselves? Or are we forever tied to their apron?
Destroy and build doctrine
It is interesting how easy our so-called intellectuals often blame their own rulers without asking the occupiers to leave Africa alone. Sad as it is, it's amusing many African intellectuals are yet to understand the game – the game of destroy and build. Let them go read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. That book reveals America’s brutal tactics in dealing with whomever or whatever nation it wants to deal with.
Africa has to be destroyed to enrich the western nations who are always the benefactor of such destruction.
Thereafter they would send their businessmen to get the contract to rebuild. The notorious International Monetary Fund (IMF) would offer to loan in order to further enslave the "protected civilians" even the country at large. Of course with the collaboration of the locals – governments included – whose thinking faculty is all about money.
How long will it take Africans to realise that no other nation or continent – no matter how powerful or rich – would sincerely volunteer to help Africa develop, or help build Africa? Each man to his own problem! It’s only Africans that can genuinely build Africa if we want. I salute Germany, Russia, China and others who have been diplomatic cautious and not aggressive in this regard.
Probing NATO forces
There has always been a double standard policy by the international organisations. Why is NATO spear-heading/spear-headed the attack on Libya while creating the impression that the rebels are acting on their own in the attacks in Tripoli? I agree with South Africa's deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe who has called for probe against possible human rights violations committed by NATO forces in Libya.
Reports have it that NATO conducted 46 strikes sorties in area around Tripoli. The question is whether the (court) will have the wherewithal to unearth that information and bring those who are responsible to book, including the NATO commanders on the ground.
NATO says target is not to kill Gaddafi and that it’s not coordinating with National Transition Council. Oh, really? Did NATO back the rebels with intelligence, logistics, ammunitions, training and aerial cover or not? Is this a violation of the letter and spirit of the UN charter or not? NATO nations clearly contravened UN arms embargo on Libya
Disappointing United Nations
As for the United Nations, the organisation has achieved very little in terms of solving conflicts around the world. It is hard to see what is united in United Nations. Why is the organisation always sending what it calls “Humanitarian Aid” only after the damaged might have been done?
I think the UN should cultivate the habit of preventing conflicts – by all means possible rather than sending aids. The United Nations seems to be failing in its responsibility to inspire peace among nations. The presence of UN since its inception in 1945 should have made the world a living place to live. Unfortunately, nations have been divided more than united. Perhaps this organisation needs to change tactics.
The UN resolution should be to protect and not to take side. On what principle did the UN back the rebels? Malam El-Rufai of Nigeria puts it succinctly: The swiftness at which the UN passes resolutions that water the grounds for the West's intervention in any country is directly proportional to the oil reserves in that country, as well as history of past grudges. The United Nations must not be seen as a partial or stooge of certain powerful countries.
Where is the African Union & Arab League?
African Union? The AU is becoming embarrassment. It’s supposed to be the mouth piece of Africa but has since become useless since the destruction started in Libya. The organisation is so much in slumber that foreign organisations like European Union had to take charge, dictating the pace of the uprising.
AU has further tarnished its image and disgraced the whole of Africa by not being the one in charge of an affair concerning its member state. It doesn’t matter its tactical approach, saying it will not “explicitly recognised the rebels”. Whatever that means! Arab League on the other hand is quick to say it is in “full solidarity with the rebels”. The position of these two important organisations added to the impunity with which the western countries violate Libya’s sovereignty.
Libyan rebels as stooges
My heartfelt sympathy goes to the Libyan people. Sure, people are always the victims in this circumstance. How can the rebels claim victory when it’s obvious the western countries fought the war? The rebels should have done it alone without the help of outsiders. By so doing they committed the same crime they accused Gaddafi of. The rebels like their foreign counterparts are misleading the people by claiming they’re fighting people's fight. I don't believe this.
The rebels are definitely fighting for their own share of the resources. Any insurgence that allows foreigners to attack own country cannot come clean of doing it for the same people they kill. How would they tell these nations to leave after they had helped them win the war? These "hegemonic" nations have come to stay and position themselves for contracts. Of course this is normal after spending a lot to help win the war. It’s the name of the game.
Period
Lindsay German says Libya won’t be able to get rid of pro-west government. Ms German, Convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, London, adds that “rebels will form western imposed government”. The rebels in their murky acceleration for revenge or getting rid of Gaddafi disregarded post war trauma on the people and therefore committed the same crime they accused Gaddafi of. The rebels know quite alright that accepting the west to help fight Gaddafi’s forces would have adverse effect on Libya and its people. Yet no one cares.
Gaddafi and the western press
Gaddafi may not be as bad as being painted by the western press whose bias reporting about the uprising is alarming. Accordingly, every atrocity committed during the uprising is done by Gaddafi’s forces while the rebels are considered innocent. It is Gaddafi and not the rebels that destroyed Libya. It is Gaddafi forces that killed civilians and not the rebels.
Personally despite Gaddafi’s shortcomings, I prefer him to other African rulers who often cringe before America and Britain. For instance, I would choose Gaddafi’s eccentric and dictatorship over Hosni Mubarak and Olusegun Obasanjo’s conventional and “democratic” rule.
When you report in a war that one side is killing its people then the discerning minds of course would like to know what happens to the other side. Is the other side fighting to embrace? The way the international media reported and reporting the happenings in Libya is one-sided which is regrettable.
Gaddafi is not as bad as is being painted by the west. He is much better than many African rulers who are in the good book of America and co. Mubarak who is now facing charges of corruption and murder in a country he once ruled for example enjoyed America’s backing and patronage for more than thirty years until the last moment. However if there’s evidence that Gaddafi killed his own people randomly, then of course he will have to face the charges
National Transitional Council
What is the principle behind the National Transitional Council when in fact many former aids of Gaddafi who had defected may constitute NTC? I predict that NTC will soon run into trouble. And I predict that whatever they do to Gaddafi is what they too will get. But before then, let them be cautious in dealing with the west.
The west obviously is concerned with their own interest. For instance, they have started telling us that Pro-revolt foreign states will get contract to re-build Libya, meaning China, Germany and Russia to lose out because they did not support the revolt. We are told that NTC needs 300 billion euro to rebuild Libya. The money of course would go back the west whose citizens will get most of the contracts. Most importantly, the National Transitional Council should ask itself when last America or Britain or France invited African forces to help them deal with their internal problems!
True liberation
True freedom will come only if each African country can confront its own tyrants without the help of outsiders whose aim would always to turn Africa into a “burning volcano and a fire under the feet of invaders”. For me, the rebels’ proclamation of freedom simply because the west helped them destroy their country is false freedom never to be celebrated. It is bondage in freedom. Libya will now be ruled by their oppressors pretending to be friends. Iraq and Afghanistan are two examples.
Libya like Iraq will never be the same and that is the crux of the matter. Libya’s destruction is a victory for the west; a defeat for ordinary Libyans. Sure Gaddafi has made mistakes but neither a monster nor a mad dog as being painted by several American presidents.
As for me even with his non-conformity, he is not as bad as most jejune African leaders who conform to code of conduct. Gaddafi usually speaks his mind at the UN General Assembly meeting unlike other African representatives who just nod their heads in agreement with the so-called superpowers. Such “being-my-self” attitude is enough to mark him out as the enemy.
Attacking a sovereign nation is the hallmark of destroy and build principle employed by the west especially America to pave way for a stooge government in the African region. It is unfortunate that the international journalists allow themselves to be used in this regard.
I consider NATO’s involvement; even UN as double standard. I believe passionately that the west cannot and will never give Africa and its people true freedom. It is Africans that can liberate themselves without outside help. How long will it take? That is what I don’t know.
AfricaNews
Tuesday 30 August 2011
Libya's destruction, a victory for the west; a defeat for ordinary Libyans.
The suffering of Libyans has just begun. For there can never be true liberation when your oppressor is the one who defines what your freedom should be. The ousting of Colonel Gaddafi, Libyan leader for 42 years, by the rebels backed western forces especially NATO is indeed a victory for the west whose fixation on Gaddafi's Libya has become worrisome.
It’s definitely not a victory for ordinary Libyans who would continue to suffer a lot of nervous strain and shock after the destruction. Neither is it a victory for the rebels who have been in excess jubilation since capturing Gaddafi’s official residence. “We are free,” they proclaimed in wild happiness.
But they have forgotten one important thing: that they are now slaves to all the countries that helped them kick out Gaddafi.
Apparently the rebels are not ordinary Libyan but a group of people who want the share of the oil with the help of foreign forces. Gaddafi’s main crime may be the fact that he refused to let the west control Libya’s resources, hence he must be eliminated by all possible means.
In their euphoria and in their haste to get rid of him, they forgot that none of the countries that backed them has the interest of Libyans at heart. Let them for once re-visit Iraq.
Gaddafi's mistake
As for Gaddafi, nothing lasts forever. The man should have known that 42 years of single-handedly ruling or administering a nation is more than too long. There is no doubting the fact that Gaddafi always means well for Libya unlike America, Britain, France, NATO, UN and other bereaved organisations claiming to love Libya more than God loves the Israelites. Ok I detest dynasty rule, and this seems to be Gaddafi`s undoing. A nation can never be the personal property of any man or group.
He should have relinquished power at a point in time and becomes the Father of the Nation or something similar. At 70 and having ruled for 42 years, Gaddafi should have embraced the uprising tactically no matter how painful it might be – at least to prevent his own legacy which the west actually wants to destroy.
But then power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely. He should have known that America, Britain, France and others still consider themselves as the Alpha and Omega of this world – the owner of our earth.
And so they cannot tolerate any opposition from an Arab-African in the spirit of Gaddafi. This man should have realised he was not fighting the "rats" within his own environment but "desperate and hungry lions" outside his environment who have surreptitiously waited to devour him. Perhaps Gaddafi should have been more careful, especially when his colleagues in the African Union (AU) do not like his gut.
Gaddafi should have known that neither America nor its allies forget and forgive. He should have known that the oil in his background is enough to eliminate him by all means. He should have learnt a lesson from Iraq, a nation destroyed by Obama's predecessor on the pretence that the late Iraqi leader possessed Weapon of Mass Destruction which turned out to be a ruse.
It was simply a ploy by Mr. Bush to invade the oil rich nation. There is always an excuse to invade certain countries especially when the rulers of such countries refused to be a stooge.
Attacking a sovereign nation
I have stopped worrying each time the American or British or French government issues public propaganda justifying the need to attack Iraq or Afghanistan or Ivory Coast or Libya etc in order to protect the people.
I have stopped worrying because it is now obvious to me that this so-called "developed nations" must use ideas or statements often exaggerated or false intended for a political cause.
They need to sound as people oriented leaders to gain the much needed support otherwise they become irrelevant. They must use the empty rhetoric of politicians as an excuse to justify the partial occupation - of less powerful nations - especially Africa.
One wonders why United Nations has not ordered the attack on North Korea! And why it is so easy to bombard Libya under the pretext of protecting the civilians in that region. Even though more than 20,000 have lost their lives in the civil war, what’s coming out of people like David Cameron of Britain, Hilary Clinton of America and others is disturbing.
“I pledge support for a new era,” says Mrs Clinton, US Secretary of State. In what I consider a sinister statement, Mr Cameron says we would like to see Gaddafi punished for his crimes, adding: “We need a swift transition to a democratic and inclusive Libya,”
Inclusive Libya? Is it that necessary to include Libya in Libya’s affairs? Ah, to include the Libyan people is to further disrupt the agenda of a purpose. Let America, Britain and France take over Libya completely and divide it among themselves. For this would be the true picture of the main objective. Libyans and Africans in general aren’t capable of taking care of themselves hence the need to bombard every independent African State.
Rhapsody of Gaddafi's elimination
In February, the trouble barely started in Libya when America, France and Britain began to campaign for Gaddafi's exist. Their rhapsody of Gaddafi’s elimination was so soon then that it backfired; because discern minds wanted to know why these three countries were so fixated on Libya. Is it because like Iraq, it is an oil producing nation? Why was it so easy for these three countries to back the rebels? Did they know beforehand that Libya was to face uprising? What was behind their open support for the rebels? Why did they start freezing Libya's asset immediately the trouble started?
Can any African nation freezes Britain or US assets in any circumstance? What happened in Libya at that time was just unfolding but these nations had gone to town calling for the head of Gaddafi, saying he was killing his people. Will American or British or French government fold its arm if a group of rebels come together to topple the government?
"Oyinbo" always right mentality
I suppose it is easy for the western countries to attack or occupy African continent because they have mastered the art of colluding with African rulers. African people it seems hate their own image. Majority still probably believe that "Oyinbo" is always right.
This mental slavery is reoccurring in different forms: it may be the process of "protecting the people of Africa" from their dictators (as if there are no dictators elsewhere) whenever it pleases the western countries to destroy any African nation of their choice. Can't they leave African people to fight for ourselves? Or are we forever tied to their apron?
Destroy and build doctrine
It is interesting how easy our so-called intellectuals often blame their own rulers without asking the occupiers to leave Africa alone. Sad as it is, it's amusing many African intellectuals are yet to understand the game – the game of destroy and build. Let them go read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. That book reveals America’s brutal tactics in dealing with whomever or whatever nation it wants to deal with.
Africa has to be destroyed to enrich the western nations who are always the benefactor of such destruction.
Thereafter they would send their businessmen to get the contract to rebuild. The notorious International Monetary Fund (IMF) would offer to loan in order to further enslave the "protected civilians" even the country at large. Of course with the collaboration of the locals – governments included – whose thinking faculty is all about money.
How long will it take Africans to realise that no other nation or continent – no matter how powerful or rich – would sincerely volunteer to help Africa develop, or help build Africa? Each man to his own problem! It’s only Africans that can genuinely build Africa if we want. I salute Germany, Russia, China and others who have been diplomatic cautious and not aggressive in this regard.
Probing NATO forces
There has always been a double standard policy by the international organisations. Why is NATO spear-heading/spear-headed the attack on Libya while creating the impression that the rebels are acting on their own in the attacks in Tripoli? I agree with South Africa's deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe who has called for probe against possible human rights violations committed by NATO forces in Libya.
Reports have it that NATO conducted 46 strikes sorties in area around Tripoli. The question is whether the (court) will have the wherewithal to unearth that information and bring those who are responsible to book, including the NATO commanders on the ground.
NATO says target is not to kill Gaddafi and that it’s not coordinating with National Transition Council. Oh, really? Did NATO back the rebels with intelligence, logistics, ammunitions, training and aerial cover or not? Is this a violation of the letter and spirit of the UN charter or not? NATO nations clearly contravened UN arms embargo on Libya
Disappointing United Nations
As for the United Nations, the organisation has achieved very little in terms of solving conflicts around the world. It is hard to see what is united in United Nations. Why is the organisation always sending what it calls “Humanitarian Aid” only after the damaged might have been done?
I think the UN should cultivate the habit of preventing conflicts – by all means possible rather than sending aids. The United Nations seems to be failing in its responsibility to inspire peace among nations. The presence of UN since its inception in 1945 should have made the world a living place to live. Unfortunately, nations have been divided more than united. Perhaps this organisation needs to change tactics.
The UN resolution should be to protect and not to take side. On what principle did the UN back the rebels? Malam El-Rufai of Nigeria puts it succinctly: The swiftness at which the UN passes resolutions that water the grounds for the West's intervention in any country is directly proportional to the oil reserves in that country, as well as history of past grudges. The United Nations must not be seen as a partial or stooge of certain powerful countries.
Where is the African Union & Arab League?
African Union? The AU is becoming embarrassment. It’s supposed to be the mouth piece of Africa but has since become useless since the destruction started in Libya. The organisation is so much in slumber that foreign organisations like European Union had to take charge, dictating the pace of the uprising.
AU has further tarnished its image and disgraced the whole of Africa by not being the one in charge of an affair concerning its member state. It doesn’t matter its tactical approach, saying it will not “explicitly recognised the rebels”. Whatever that means! Arab League on the other hand is quick to say it is in “full solidarity with the rebels”. The position of these two important organisations added to the impunity with which the western countries violate Libya’s sovereignty.
Libyan rebels as stooges
My heartfelt sympathy goes to the Libyan people. Sure, people are always the victims in this circumstance. How can the rebels claim victory when it’s obvious the western countries fought the war? The rebels should have done it alone without the help of outsiders. By so doing they committed the same crime they accused Gaddafi of. The rebels like their foreign counterparts are misleading the people by claiming they’re fighting people's fight. I don't believe this.
The rebels are definitely fighting for their own share of the resources. Any insurgence that allows foreigners to attack own country cannot come clean of doing it for the same people they kill. How would they tell these nations to leave after they had helped them win the war? These "hegemonic" nations have come to stay and position themselves for contracts. Of course this is normal after spending a lot to help win the war. It’s the name of the game.
Period
Lindsay German says Libya won’t be able to get rid of pro-west government. Ms German, Convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, London, adds that “rebels will form western imposed government”. The rebels in their murky acceleration for revenge or getting rid of Gaddafi disregarded post war trauma on the people and therefore committed the same crime they accused Gaddafi of. The rebels know quite alright that accepting the west to help fight Gaddafi’s forces would have adverse effect on Libya and its people. Yet no one cares.
Gaddafi and the western press
Gaddafi may not be as bad as being painted by the western press whose bias reporting about the uprising is alarming. Accordingly, every atrocity committed during the uprising is done by Gaddafi’s forces while the rebels are considered innocent. It is Gaddafi and not the rebels that destroyed Libya. It is Gaddafi forces that killed civilians and not the rebels.
Personally despite Gaddafi’s shortcomings, I prefer him to other African rulers who often cringe before America and Britain. For instance, I would choose Gaddafi’s eccentric and dictatorship over Hosni Mubarak and Olusegun Obasanjo’s conventional and “democratic” rule.
When you report in a war that one side is killing its people then the discerning minds of course would like to know what happens to the other side. Is the other side fighting to embrace? The way the international media reported and reporting the happenings in Libya is one-sided which is regrettable.
Gaddafi is not as bad as is being painted by the west. He is much better than many African rulers who are in the good book of America and co. Mubarak who is now facing charges of corruption and murder in a country he once ruled for example enjoyed America’s backing and patronage for more than thirty years until the last moment. However if there’s evidence that Gaddafi killed his own people randomly, then of course he will have to face the charges
National Transitional Council
What is the principle behind the National Transitional Council when in fact many former aids of Gaddafi who had defected may constitute NTC? I predict that NTC will soon run into trouble. And I predict that whatever they do to Gaddafi is what they too will get. But before then, let them be cautious in dealing with the west.
The west obviously is concerned with their own interest. For instance, they have started telling us that Pro-revolt foreign states will get contract to re-build Libya, meaning China, Germany and Russia to lose out because they did not support the revolt. We are told that NTC needs 300 billion euro to rebuild Libya. The money of course would go back the west whose citizens will get most of the contracts. Most importantly, the National Transitional Council should ask itself when last America or Britain or France invited African forces to help them deal with their internal problems!
True liberation
True freedom will come only if each African country can confront its own tyrants without the help of outsiders whose aim would always to turn Africa into a “burning volcano and a fire under the feet of invaders”. For me, the rebels’ proclamation of freedom simply because the west helped them destroy their country is false freedom never to be celebrated. It is bondage in freedom. Libya will now be ruled by their oppressors pretending to be friends. Iraq and Afghanistan are two examples.
Libya like Iraq will never be the same and that is the crux of the matter. Libya’s destruction is a victory for the west; a defeat for ordinary Libyans. Sure Gaddafi has made mistakes but neither a monster nor a mad dog as being painted by several American presidents.
As for me even with his non-conformity, he is not as bad as most jejune African leaders who conform to code of conduct. Gaddafi usually speaks his mind at the UN General Assembly meeting unlike other African representatives who just nod their heads in agreement with the so-called superpowers. Such “being-my-self” attitude is enough to mark him out as the enemy.
Attacking a sovereign nation is the hallmark of destroy and build principle employed by the west especially America to pave way for a stooge government in the African region. It is unfortunate that the international journalists allow themselves to be used in this regard.
I consider NATO’s involvement; even UN as double standard. I believe passionately that the west cannot and will never give Africa and its people true freedom. It is Africans that can liberate themselves without outside help. How long will it take? That is what I don’t know.
Libya And The World We Live In
"Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?"
– Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011
By William Blum
September 01, 2011
A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.
In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.
Well, let's see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.
The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like "humanitarian".
If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.
If the Triumvirate decides that it wants to overthrow the government of Libya, though that government is secular and has used its oil wealth for the benefit of the people of Libya and Africa perhaps more than any government in all of Africa and the Middle East, but keeps insisting over the years on challenging the Triumvirate's imperial ambitions in Africa and raising its demands on the Triumvirate's oil companies, then the Triumvirate will simply overthrow the government of Libya.
If the Triumvirate wants to punish Gaddafi and his sons it will arrange with the Triumvirate's friends at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for them.
If the Triumvirate doesn't want to punish the leaders of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan it will simply not ask the ICC to issue arrest warrants for them. Ever since the Court first formed in 1998, the United States has refused to ratify it and has done its best to denigrate it and throw barriers in its way because Washington is concerned that American officials might one day be indicted for their many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, said to the world in 1998 that the United States should be exempt from the court's prosecution because it has "special global responsibilities". But this doesn't stop the United States from using the Court when it suits the purposes of American foreign policy.
If the Triumvirate wants to support a rebel military force to overthrow the government of Libya then it does not matter how fanatically religious, al-Qaeda-related,1 executing-beheading-torturing, monarchist, or factionally split various groups of that rebel force are at times, the Triumvirate will support it, as it did certain forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope that after victory the Libyan force will not turn out as jihadist as it did in Afghanistan, or as fratricidal as in Iraq. One potential source of conflict within the rebels, and within the country if ruled by them, is that a constitutional declaration made by the rebel council states that, while guaranteeing democracy and the rights of non-Muslims, "Islam is the religion of the state and the principle source of legislation in Islamic Jurisprudence."
Adding to the list of the rebels' charming qualities we have the Amnesty International report that the rebels have been conducting mass arrests of black people across the nation, terming all of them "foreign mercenaries" but with growing evidence that a large number were simply migrant workers. Reported Reuters (August 29): "On Saturday, reporters saw the putrefying bodies of 22 men of African origin on a Tripoli beach. Volunteers who had come to bury them said they were mercenaries whom rebels had shot dead." To complete this portrait of the West's newest darlings we have this report from The Independent of London (August 27): "The killings were pitiless. They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came."
If the Triumvirate's propaganda is clever enough and deceptive enough and paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi-initiated high tragedy in Libya, many American and European progressives will insist that though they never, ever support imperialism they're making an exception this time because ...
The Libyan people are being saved from a "massacre", both actual and potential. This massacre, however, seems to have been grossly exaggerated by the Triumvirate, al Jazeera TV, and that station's owner, the government of Qatar; and nothing approaching reputable evidence of a massacre has been offered, neither a mass grave or anything else; the massacre stories appear to be on a par with the Viagra-rape stories spread by al Jazeera (the Fox News of the Libyan uprising). Qatar, it should be noted, has played an active military role in the civil war on the side of NATO. It should be further noted that the main massacre in Libya has been six months of daily Triumvirate bombing, killing an unknown number of people and ruining much of the infrastructure. Michigan U. Prof. Juan Cole, the quintessential true-believer in the good intentions of American foreign policy who nevertheless manages to have a regular voice in progressive media, recently wrote that "Qaddafi was not a man to compromise ... his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to." Is that clear, class? We all know of course that Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron made compromises without end in their devastation of Libya; they didn't, for example, use any nuclear weapons.
The United Nations gave its approval for military intervention; i.e., the leading members of the Triumvirate gave their approval, after Russia and China cowardly abstained instead of exercising their veto power; (perhaps hoping to receive the same courtesy from the US, UK and France when Russia or China is the aggressor nation).
The people of Libya are being "liberated", whatever in the world that means, now or in the future. Gaddafi is a "dictator" they insist. That may indeed be the proper term to use for the man, but it must still be asked: Is he a relatively benevolent dictator or is he the other kind so favored by Washington? It must also be asked: Since the United States has habitually supported dictators for the entire past century, why not this one?
The Triumvirate, and its fawning media, would have the world believe that what's happened in Libya is just another example of the Arab Spring, a popular uprising by non-violent protestors against a dictator for the proverbial freedom and democracy, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt, which sandwich Libya. But there are several reasons to question this analysis in favor of seeing the Libyan rebels' uprising as a planned and violent attempt to take power in behalf of their own political movement, however heterogeneous that movement might appear to be in its early stage. For example:
They soon began flying the flag of the monarchy that Gaddafi had overthrown
They were an armed and violent rebellion almost from the beginning; within a few days, we could read of "citizens armed with weapons seized from army bases"3 and of "the policemen who had participated in the clash were caught and hanged by protesters"4 Their revolt took place not in the capital but in the heart of the country's oil region; they then began oil production and declared that foreign countries would be rewarded oil-wise in relation to how much each country aided their cause
They soon set up a Central Bank, a rather bizarre thing for a protest movement
International support came quickly, even beforehand, from Qatar and al Jazeera to the CIA and French intelligence
The notion that a leader does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state is too absurd to discuss.
Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region. Then the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. As to Why? Take your pick of the following:
Gaddafi's plans to conduct Libya's trading in Africa in raw materials and oil in a new currency — the gold African dinar, a change that could have delivered a serious blow to the US's dominant position in the world economy. (In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars; sanctions and an invasion followed.) For further discussion see here.
A host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: "We've got a big image problem down there. ... Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don't trust the US."5
An American military base to replace the one closed down by Gaddafi after he took power in 1969. There's only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It'll perhaps be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.
Another example of NATO desperate to find a raison d'être for its existence since the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact.
Gaddafi's role in creating the African Union. The corporate bosses never like it when their wage slaves set up a union. The Libyan leader has also supported a United States of Africa for he knows that an Africa of 54 independent states will continue to be picked off one by one and abused and exploited by the members of the Triumvirate. Gaddafi has moreover demanded greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations.
The claim by Gaddafi's son, Saif el Islam, that Libya had helped to fund Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign6 could have humiliated the French president and explain his obsessiveness and haste in wanting to be seen as playing the major role in implementing the "no fly zone" and other measures against Gaddafi. A contributing factor may have been the fact that France has been weakened in its former colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and the Middle East, due in part to Gaddafi's influence.
Gaddafi has been an outstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policies; and on occasion has taken other African and Arab countries, as well as the West, to task for their not matching his policies or rhetoric; one more reason for his lack of popularity amongst world leaders of all stripes.
In January, 2009, Gaddafi made known that he was considering nationalizing the foreign oil companies in Libya. He also has another bargaining chip: the prospect of utilizing Russian, Chinese and Indian oil companies. During the current period of hostilities, he invited these countries to make up for lost production. But such scenarios will now not take place. The Triumvirate will instead seek to privatize the National Oil Corporation, transferring Libya's oil wealth into foreign hands.
The American Empire is troubled by any threat to its hegemony. In the present historical period the empire is concerned mainly with Russia and China. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The average American neither knows nor cares about this. The average American imperialist cares greatly, if for no other reason than in this time of rising demands for cuts to the military budget it's vital that powerful "enemies" be named and maintained.
For yet more reasons, see the article "Why Regime Change in Libya?" by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, and the US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks — Wikileaks reference 07TRIPOLI967 11-15-07 (includes a complaint about Libyan "resource nationalism")
A word from the man the world's mightiest military powers have been trying to kill
"Recollections of My Life", written by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, April 8, 2011, excerpts:
Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us ... I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. ... In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy". They know the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip.
The state of our beloved capitalist system, early 21st century
I pay attention to the fat content of my food, so I was pleased to find a can of Pam canola oil cooking spray that had 0 grams fat per serving. Great, can't do better than zero fat, can you? I used it often for a few months ... until one day I took a closer look at the "Nutrition Facts" ... Yes, it said 0 grams fat per serving. A serving. How big was that? Let's see ... "Serving Size about 1/4 second spray" ... Hmmm, how does one press down on a button for 1/4 second? Is it humanly possible? Even the manufacturer had to say "about". I had been taken. My hat is off to you Capitalist Robber Barons — You're good!
The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks fell 635 points on Monday August 8.
On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.
Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fall again; this time by 520 points.
And on Thursday ... yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.
The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions.
Upon such marvels of mankind countless people build careers, others wager their life savings, philanthropic foundations and universities risk much of their endowments, and conservative sages deliver sermons to the world on the wisdom and sacredness of the free market.
Main Street is the climax of civilization.
That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton store, Hannibal invaded Rome
and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.
– Sinclair Lewis, "Main Street", 1920
Do the economic fundamentals really change dramatically overnight? Or is our economic system as psycho as our foreign policy? The Washington Post's senior economic columnist, Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14th of the four days described above: "I suppose there are some schnooks who actually believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don't radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the market averages last week were gyrating out of control."
Last month "Pope Benedict XVI denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality that he says is behind Europe's economic crisis" as he arrived in hard-hit Spain. "The economy doesn't function with market self-regulation but needs an ethical reason to work for mankind," he declared. "Man must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of profit but rather according to the common good."8
"I am a Marxist," said the Dalai Lama last year. Marxism has "moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits."
"I don't believe in anything," said Barack Obama. "At least not really strongly." (No, I made that one up.)
Perhaps the worst outcome of the United States "winning the Cold War" is that countless progressive people think there's no alternative to the capitalist system. Seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how awful that is.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
– Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author
Notes
For example, see: The Telegraph (London), August 30, 2011: "Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime." There is a plethora of other reports detailing the ties between the rebels and radical Islamist groups.
Washington Post, August 31, 2011
McClatchy Newspapers, February 20, 2011
Wikipedia, Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war, February 19, 2011
The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007
The Guardian (London), March 16, 2011
Reuters, January 21, 2009
Associated Press, August 11, 2011
Agence France Presse, May 21, 2010
"Yikes! Look who just endorsed Obama for 4 more years", WorldNetDaily, August 3 2011
– Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011
By William Blum
September 01, 2011
A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.
In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.
Well, let's see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.
The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like "humanitarian".
If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.
If the Triumvirate decides that it wants to overthrow the government of Libya, though that government is secular and has used its oil wealth for the benefit of the people of Libya and Africa perhaps more than any government in all of Africa and the Middle East, but keeps insisting over the years on challenging the Triumvirate's imperial ambitions in Africa and raising its demands on the Triumvirate's oil companies, then the Triumvirate will simply overthrow the government of Libya.
If the Triumvirate wants to punish Gaddafi and his sons it will arrange with the Triumvirate's friends at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for them.
If the Triumvirate doesn't want to punish the leaders of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan it will simply not ask the ICC to issue arrest warrants for them. Ever since the Court first formed in 1998, the United States has refused to ratify it and has done its best to denigrate it and throw barriers in its way because Washington is concerned that American officials might one day be indicted for their many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, said to the world in 1998 that the United States should be exempt from the court's prosecution because it has "special global responsibilities". But this doesn't stop the United States from using the Court when it suits the purposes of American foreign policy.
If the Triumvirate wants to support a rebel military force to overthrow the government of Libya then it does not matter how fanatically religious, al-Qaeda-related,1 executing-beheading-torturing, monarchist, or factionally split various groups of that rebel force are at times, the Triumvirate will support it, as it did certain forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope that after victory the Libyan force will not turn out as jihadist as it did in Afghanistan, or as fratricidal as in Iraq. One potential source of conflict within the rebels, and within the country if ruled by them, is that a constitutional declaration made by the rebel council states that, while guaranteeing democracy and the rights of non-Muslims, "Islam is the religion of the state and the principle source of legislation in Islamic Jurisprudence."
Adding to the list of the rebels' charming qualities we have the Amnesty International report that the rebels have been conducting mass arrests of black people across the nation, terming all of them "foreign mercenaries" but with growing evidence that a large number were simply migrant workers. Reported Reuters (August 29): "On Saturday, reporters saw the putrefying bodies of 22 men of African origin on a Tripoli beach. Volunteers who had come to bury them said they were mercenaries whom rebels had shot dead." To complete this portrait of the West's newest darlings we have this report from The Independent of London (August 27): "The killings were pitiless. They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came."
If the Triumvirate's propaganda is clever enough and deceptive enough and paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi-initiated high tragedy in Libya, many American and European progressives will insist that though they never, ever support imperialism they're making an exception this time because ...
The Libyan people are being saved from a "massacre", both actual and potential. This massacre, however, seems to have been grossly exaggerated by the Triumvirate, al Jazeera TV, and that station's owner, the government of Qatar; and nothing approaching reputable evidence of a massacre has been offered, neither a mass grave or anything else; the massacre stories appear to be on a par with the Viagra-rape stories spread by al Jazeera (the Fox News of the Libyan uprising). Qatar, it should be noted, has played an active military role in the civil war on the side of NATO. It should be further noted that the main massacre in Libya has been six months of daily Triumvirate bombing, killing an unknown number of people and ruining much of the infrastructure. Michigan U. Prof. Juan Cole, the quintessential true-believer in the good intentions of American foreign policy who nevertheless manages to have a regular voice in progressive media, recently wrote that "Qaddafi was not a man to compromise ... his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to." Is that clear, class? We all know of course that Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron made compromises without end in their devastation of Libya; they didn't, for example, use any nuclear weapons.
The United Nations gave its approval for military intervention; i.e., the leading members of the Triumvirate gave their approval, after Russia and China cowardly abstained instead of exercising their veto power; (perhaps hoping to receive the same courtesy from the US, UK and France when Russia or China is the aggressor nation).
The people of Libya are being "liberated", whatever in the world that means, now or in the future. Gaddafi is a "dictator" they insist. That may indeed be the proper term to use for the man, but it must still be asked: Is he a relatively benevolent dictator or is he the other kind so favored by Washington? It must also be asked: Since the United States has habitually supported dictators for the entire past century, why not this one?
The Triumvirate, and its fawning media, would have the world believe that what's happened in Libya is just another example of the Arab Spring, a popular uprising by non-violent protestors against a dictator for the proverbial freedom and democracy, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt, which sandwich Libya. But there are several reasons to question this analysis in favor of seeing the Libyan rebels' uprising as a planned and violent attempt to take power in behalf of their own political movement, however heterogeneous that movement might appear to be in its early stage. For example:
They soon began flying the flag of the monarchy that Gaddafi had overthrown
They were an armed and violent rebellion almost from the beginning; within a few days, we could read of "citizens armed with weapons seized from army bases"3 and of "the policemen who had participated in the clash were caught and hanged by protesters"4 Their revolt took place not in the capital but in the heart of the country's oil region; they then began oil production and declared that foreign countries would be rewarded oil-wise in relation to how much each country aided their cause
They soon set up a Central Bank, a rather bizarre thing for a protest movement
International support came quickly, even beforehand, from Qatar and al Jazeera to the CIA and French intelligence
The notion that a leader does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state is too absurd to discuss.
Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region. Then the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. As to Why? Take your pick of the following:
Gaddafi's plans to conduct Libya's trading in Africa in raw materials and oil in a new currency — the gold African dinar, a change that could have delivered a serious blow to the US's dominant position in the world economy. (In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars; sanctions and an invasion followed.) For further discussion see here.
A host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: "We've got a big image problem down there. ... Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don't trust the US."5
An American military base to replace the one closed down by Gaddafi after he took power in 1969. There's only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It'll perhaps be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.
Another example of NATO desperate to find a raison d'être for its existence since the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact.
Gaddafi's role in creating the African Union. The corporate bosses never like it when their wage slaves set up a union. The Libyan leader has also supported a United States of Africa for he knows that an Africa of 54 independent states will continue to be picked off one by one and abused and exploited by the members of the Triumvirate. Gaddafi has moreover demanded greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations.
The claim by Gaddafi's son, Saif el Islam, that Libya had helped to fund Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign6 could have humiliated the French president and explain his obsessiveness and haste in wanting to be seen as playing the major role in implementing the "no fly zone" and other measures against Gaddafi. A contributing factor may have been the fact that France has been weakened in its former colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and the Middle East, due in part to Gaddafi's influence.
Gaddafi has been an outstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policies; and on occasion has taken other African and Arab countries, as well as the West, to task for their not matching his policies or rhetoric; one more reason for his lack of popularity amongst world leaders of all stripes.
In January, 2009, Gaddafi made known that he was considering nationalizing the foreign oil companies in Libya. He also has another bargaining chip: the prospect of utilizing Russian, Chinese and Indian oil companies. During the current period of hostilities, he invited these countries to make up for lost production. But such scenarios will now not take place. The Triumvirate will instead seek to privatize the National Oil Corporation, transferring Libya's oil wealth into foreign hands.
The American Empire is troubled by any threat to its hegemony. In the present historical period the empire is concerned mainly with Russia and China. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The average American neither knows nor cares about this. The average American imperialist cares greatly, if for no other reason than in this time of rising demands for cuts to the military budget it's vital that powerful "enemies" be named and maintained.
For yet more reasons, see the article "Why Regime Change in Libya?" by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, and the US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks — Wikileaks reference 07TRIPOLI967 11-15-07 (includes a complaint about Libyan "resource nationalism")
A word from the man the world's mightiest military powers have been trying to kill
"Recollections of My Life", written by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, April 8, 2011, excerpts:
Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us ... I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. ... In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy". They know the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip.
The state of our beloved capitalist system, early 21st century
I pay attention to the fat content of my food, so I was pleased to find a can of Pam canola oil cooking spray that had 0 grams fat per serving. Great, can't do better than zero fat, can you? I used it often for a few months ... until one day I took a closer look at the "Nutrition Facts" ... Yes, it said 0 grams fat per serving. A serving. How big was that? Let's see ... "Serving Size about 1/4 second spray" ... Hmmm, how does one press down on a button for 1/4 second? Is it humanly possible? Even the manufacturer had to say "about". I had been taken. My hat is off to you Capitalist Robber Barons — You're good!
The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks fell 635 points on Monday August 8.
On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.
Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fall again; this time by 520 points.
And on Thursday ... yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.
The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions.
Upon such marvels of mankind countless people build careers, others wager their life savings, philanthropic foundations and universities risk much of their endowments, and conservative sages deliver sermons to the world on the wisdom and sacredness of the free market.
Main Street is the climax of civilization.
That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton store, Hannibal invaded Rome
and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.
– Sinclair Lewis, "Main Street", 1920
Do the economic fundamentals really change dramatically overnight? Or is our economic system as psycho as our foreign policy? The Washington Post's senior economic columnist, Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14th of the four days described above: "I suppose there are some schnooks who actually believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don't radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the market averages last week were gyrating out of control."
Last month "Pope Benedict XVI denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality that he says is behind Europe's economic crisis" as he arrived in hard-hit Spain. "The economy doesn't function with market self-regulation but needs an ethical reason to work for mankind," he declared. "Man must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of profit but rather according to the common good."8
"I am a Marxist," said the Dalai Lama last year. Marxism has "moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits."
"I don't believe in anything," said Barack Obama. "At least not really strongly." (No, I made that one up.)
Perhaps the worst outcome of the United States "winning the Cold War" is that countless progressive people think there's no alternative to the capitalist system. Seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how awful that is.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
– Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author
Notes
For example, see: The Telegraph (London), August 30, 2011: "Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime." There is a plethora of other reports detailing the ties between the rebels and radical Islamist groups.
Washington Post, August 31, 2011
McClatchy Newspapers, February 20, 2011
Wikipedia, Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war, February 19, 2011
The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007
The Guardian (London), March 16, 2011
Reuters, January 21, 2009
Associated Press, August 11, 2011
Agence France Presse, May 21, 2010
"Yikes! Look who just endorsed Obama for 4 more years", WorldNetDaily, August 3 2011
Libya and the shameless rewriting of history
The repackaging of NATO’s reckless intervention as a clever war for liberty would make Orwell’s Ministry of Truth beam with pride.
By Brendan O’Neill
Spiked
September 01, 2011 "Spiked" -- Not since Winston Smith found himself in the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, rewriting old newspaper articles on behalf of Big Brother, has there been such an overnight perversion of history as there has been in relation to NATO’s intervention in Libya. Now that the rebels have taken Tripoli, NATO’s bombing campaign is being presented to us as an adroit intervention, which was designed to achieve precisely the glorious scenes we’re watching on our TV screens. In truth, it was an incoherent act of clueless militarism, which is only now being repackaged, in true Minitrue fashion, as an initiative that ‘played an indispensable role in the liberation of Tripoli’.
Normally it takes a few years for history to be rewritten; with Libya it happened in days. No sooner had rebel soldiers arrived at Gaddafi’s compound than the NATO campaign launched in March was being rewritten as a cogent assault. Commentators desperate to resuscitate the idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’, and NATO leaders determined to crib some benefits from their Libya venture, took to their lecterns to tell us that their aims had been achieved and they had ‘salvaged the principle of liberal interventionism from the geopolitical dustbin’. In order to sustain these bizarre claims, they’ve had to put the real truth about NATO’s campaign into a memory hole and invent a whole new ‘truth’.
Over the past few days every aspect of NATO’s bombing campaign has been, as Winston Smith might put it, ‘falsified’. Since everybody now seems to have forgotten the events of just five months ago, it is worth reminding ourselves of the true character of NATO’s intervention in Libya. It was incoherent from the get-go, overseen by a continually fraying and deeply divided Western ‘alliance’ and with no serious war aim beyond being seen to bomb an evil dictator. It was cowardly, where all alliance members wanted to appear to be Doing Something while actually doing as little as possible. This was especially true of the US, which stayed firmly on the backseat of the anti-Gaddafi alliance. And it was reckless, revealing that military action detached from strategy, unanchored by end goals, can easily spin out of control.
Yet now, courtesy of the Ministry of Truthers, these deep moral flaws and political failings are being reinterpreted as brilliant stratagems. So the determination of Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama to present their bombing of Libya, not as a Western initiative but rather as a UN-approved act of uber-multilateralism, is now depicted as a brilliant, oh-so-sly decision that massively aided the rebellion by giving the impression that it was more an organic uprising than a power play aided by ‘evil’ Western outsiders. Commentators write about the West’s adoption of ‘humility’ as a ‘strategic device’. They claim the downplaying of America’s role in the setting up of the anti-Gaddafi alliance in March was designed to enhance the likelihood of success. As one observer now claims, ‘It suited everyone for America to appear to take a backseat. It suited the uprising.’
Here, the profound crisis of identity of the West, its increasing inability to project any kind of mission into the international sphere, is refashioned as the knowing adoption of ‘humility’, designed to boost Western influence in tyranny-ruled lands. In truth, the West-in-denial nature of the anti-Gaddafi alliance, where NATO presented its campaign as a non-American, non-gung-ho initiative, spoke to the corrosion of American authority in international affairs and to the post-Iraq moral paralysis of that entity once known as ‘the West’. So in March, it was reported that Washington was being distanced from the alliance and that Cameron was desperately seeking Arab League backing, in order to make sure ‘this did not look like a Western initiative’. It was shamefacedness about what the West is seen to represent today, and a recognition that American authority is now way more divisive than it was during the Cold War, which gave rise to this orgy of Western sheepishness.
Yet now, the moral hollowness and political incoherence of Western institutions revealed during the formation of the anti-Gaddafi alliance are being presented as clever disguises, designed to boost the fortunes of the rebels. Indeed, since the rebels took Tripoli, some observers have even started claiming that we’re witnessing the emergence of a ‘new era in US foreign policy’, a new ‘model for intervention’. According to Fareed Zakaria of CNN, it might have looked as if Obama’s approach was ‘too multilateral and lacked cohesiveness’, what with his decision to withdraw his fighter planes just 48 hours after the intervention started in March, but actually that was all part of a brilliant new strategy called ‘leading from behind’. Others sing the praises of ‘Obama’s light-footprint approach’, claiming that his strategy of ‘limited engagement’ has now produced a ‘nuanced victory’ in Libya. Here, disarray is repackaged as deftness, and a ‘model’ is retrospectively projected on to the mayhem that reigned during the creation and launch of NATO’s mission.
Likewise, the risk-aversion and commitment-phobia of the venture are being rehashed as superb strategies. So America’s insistence that its involvement in Libya would be ‘time-limited and scope-limited’, and Britain and France’s refusal to entertain the idea of posting troops in Libya, are apparently not signs of their almost pathological unwillingness to do anything that might incur a high moral or existential cost, but rather reflect their discovery, through careful analysis, of the fact that ‘intervention lite’ is the best way to shape world affairs. We’re told that the taking of Tripoli is a success for the new ‘model for intervention’, where the focus is, in the words of one commentator, ‘strike from the skies but keep Western boots off the ground, [as a way of] doing the right thing and ridding the world of a horrible dictator’.
Where the Ministry of Truth’s topsy-turvy slogan was ‘Ignorance is strength’, the Libya lobby’s rallying cry could be: ‘Cowardice is courage.’ In refashioning the risk-aversion of Western powers as a coherent strategy, a choice made by governments that have forensically worked out the best way to reshape nations, these Minitrue cheerleaders of NATO overlook the profound paralysis of the West and its armies today. The ‘no boots’ rule in relation to Libya sprang, not from clever strategic vision, but from the pusillanimous nature of modern governments, which are keen to intervene in foreign states’ affairs (for the perceived PR benefit of appearing tough) yet which want to avoid devoting life, limb or even much time to such interventions. The no-boots rule really speaks to a deep, conflictual trend in modern politics: our rulers, lacking any meaningful legitimacy at home, feel the urge to seek political purpose in foreign theatres – yet their very lack of legitimacy, their moral disarray, means that their foreign ventures are cautious, fearful things.
The part of the NATO campaign that has received the most thorough Minitrue makeover is the bombing of recent days. These raids are being reimagined as the final and decisive acts of a West determined to get rid of Gaddafi and install a new government. NATO’s ‘meticulously targeted’ assaults have created a ‘pathway’ for the rebels, we’re told. In truth, NATO’s latest outburst is best seen, not as the creator of new opportunities for the rebels, but rather as an opportunist stab by NATO forces to make political mileage from the disintegration of the Gaddafi regime. The decisive event in Libya in recent weeks has been the further corrosion of Gaddafi’s authority – and NATO is responding to that rather than having consciously brought it about.
Far from dealing a fatal blow to Gaddafi or providing a golden opportunity to the rebels, NATO’s bombing has been primarily reactive – to the internal combustion of Gaddafi’s writ. That is why this military venture has lasted six months, despite the fact that it consists of massive Western forces rallied against the isolated has-been Gaddafi: because NATO has adopted the role of observing and reacting to events rather than determining them. Thus only when it became clear even to faraway military observers that Gaddafi’s authority was beyond repair did NATO decide to up the ante. The recent bombs were less about achieving ‘pathways’ for a rebel takeover and more an attempt by NATO leaders to derive some political benefits from the slow-burning chaos in Libya, through firing PR missiles at a country whose authoritarian government had disintegrated.
The Ministry of Truthers are repackaging a reckless, strategy-free campaign launched by a deeply divided NATO as the principled act of super-clever men who have now liberated Libya. You’d never know from this Minitrue makeover that this apparently brilliant mission came close to collapse many times, as everyone from Obama to Berlusconi wondered out loud if it should be called off. What we’re witnessing is the shameless projection of active decision-making on to what was in fact a passive, decadent venture driven by PR imperatives rather than political vision. What really happened in Libya is that Gaddafi’s regime fell apart – yet now everyone is reading history backwards and locating this falling apart in the decisions made and actions taken by Western leaders. It’s not hard to see why they’re indulging in this falsification of history: it allows Cameron to pose as ‘brave but not bombastic’, and it allows laptop bombardiers to claim they were right about the wonderfulness of Western intervention. For these self-serving reasons, the buffoonish entry of cowardly NATO forces into a conflict involving a ridiculous dictator is hysterically talked up as a modern-day Normandy.
There’s one difference between the rewriting of the Libya venture and what went on in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Our history-warpers haven’t actually physically destroyed all the evidence showing that the bombing of Libya was in fact a reckless and vain military venture (and there’s mountains of such evidence). They don’t have to. Their powers of self-delusion are so strong, and the critical climate surrounding ‘humanitarian intervention’ so weak, that they simply need to magic up a few flimsy myths and, hey presto, the past is forgotten.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked.
By Brendan O’Neill
Spiked
September 01, 2011 "Spiked" -- Not since Winston Smith found himself in the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, rewriting old newspaper articles on behalf of Big Brother, has there been such an overnight perversion of history as there has been in relation to NATO’s intervention in Libya. Now that the rebels have taken Tripoli, NATO’s bombing campaign is being presented to us as an adroit intervention, which was designed to achieve precisely the glorious scenes we’re watching on our TV screens. In truth, it was an incoherent act of clueless militarism, which is only now being repackaged, in true Minitrue fashion, as an initiative that ‘played an indispensable role in the liberation of Tripoli’.
Normally it takes a few years for history to be rewritten; with Libya it happened in days. No sooner had rebel soldiers arrived at Gaddafi’s compound than the NATO campaign launched in March was being rewritten as a cogent assault. Commentators desperate to resuscitate the idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’, and NATO leaders determined to crib some benefits from their Libya venture, took to their lecterns to tell us that their aims had been achieved and they had ‘salvaged the principle of liberal interventionism from the geopolitical dustbin’. In order to sustain these bizarre claims, they’ve had to put the real truth about NATO’s campaign into a memory hole and invent a whole new ‘truth’.
Over the past few days every aspect of NATO’s bombing campaign has been, as Winston Smith might put it, ‘falsified’. Since everybody now seems to have forgotten the events of just five months ago, it is worth reminding ourselves of the true character of NATO’s intervention in Libya. It was incoherent from the get-go, overseen by a continually fraying and deeply divided Western ‘alliance’ and with no serious war aim beyond being seen to bomb an evil dictator. It was cowardly, where all alliance members wanted to appear to be Doing Something while actually doing as little as possible. This was especially true of the US, which stayed firmly on the backseat of the anti-Gaddafi alliance. And it was reckless, revealing that military action detached from strategy, unanchored by end goals, can easily spin out of control.
Yet now, courtesy of the Ministry of Truthers, these deep moral flaws and political failings are being reinterpreted as brilliant stratagems. So the determination of Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama to present their bombing of Libya, not as a Western initiative but rather as a UN-approved act of uber-multilateralism, is now depicted as a brilliant, oh-so-sly decision that massively aided the rebellion by giving the impression that it was more an organic uprising than a power play aided by ‘evil’ Western outsiders. Commentators write about the West’s adoption of ‘humility’ as a ‘strategic device’. They claim the downplaying of America’s role in the setting up of the anti-Gaddafi alliance in March was designed to enhance the likelihood of success. As one observer now claims, ‘It suited everyone for America to appear to take a backseat. It suited the uprising.’
Here, the profound crisis of identity of the West, its increasing inability to project any kind of mission into the international sphere, is refashioned as the knowing adoption of ‘humility’, designed to boost Western influence in tyranny-ruled lands. In truth, the West-in-denial nature of the anti-Gaddafi alliance, where NATO presented its campaign as a non-American, non-gung-ho initiative, spoke to the corrosion of American authority in international affairs and to the post-Iraq moral paralysis of that entity once known as ‘the West’. So in March, it was reported that Washington was being distanced from the alliance and that Cameron was desperately seeking Arab League backing, in order to make sure ‘this did not look like a Western initiative’. It was shamefacedness about what the West is seen to represent today, and a recognition that American authority is now way more divisive than it was during the Cold War, which gave rise to this orgy of Western sheepishness.
Yet now, the moral hollowness and political incoherence of Western institutions revealed during the formation of the anti-Gaddafi alliance are being presented as clever disguises, designed to boost the fortunes of the rebels. Indeed, since the rebels took Tripoli, some observers have even started claiming that we’re witnessing the emergence of a ‘new era in US foreign policy’, a new ‘model for intervention’. According to Fareed Zakaria of CNN, it might have looked as if Obama’s approach was ‘too multilateral and lacked cohesiveness’, what with his decision to withdraw his fighter planes just 48 hours after the intervention started in March, but actually that was all part of a brilliant new strategy called ‘leading from behind’. Others sing the praises of ‘Obama’s light-footprint approach’, claiming that his strategy of ‘limited engagement’ has now produced a ‘nuanced victory’ in Libya. Here, disarray is repackaged as deftness, and a ‘model’ is retrospectively projected on to the mayhem that reigned during the creation and launch of NATO’s mission.
Likewise, the risk-aversion and commitment-phobia of the venture are being rehashed as superb strategies. So America’s insistence that its involvement in Libya would be ‘time-limited and scope-limited’, and Britain and France’s refusal to entertain the idea of posting troops in Libya, are apparently not signs of their almost pathological unwillingness to do anything that might incur a high moral or existential cost, but rather reflect their discovery, through careful analysis, of the fact that ‘intervention lite’ is the best way to shape world affairs. We’re told that the taking of Tripoli is a success for the new ‘model for intervention’, where the focus is, in the words of one commentator, ‘strike from the skies but keep Western boots off the ground, [as a way of] doing the right thing and ridding the world of a horrible dictator’.
Where the Ministry of Truth’s topsy-turvy slogan was ‘Ignorance is strength’, the Libya lobby’s rallying cry could be: ‘Cowardice is courage.’ In refashioning the risk-aversion of Western powers as a coherent strategy, a choice made by governments that have forensically worked out the best way to reshape nations, these Minitrue cheerleaders of NATO overlook the profound paralysis of the West and its armies today. The ‘no boots’ rule in relation to Libya sprang, not from clever strategic vision, but from the pusillanimous nature of modern governments, which are keen to intervene in foreign states’ affairs (for the perceived PR benefit of appearing tough) yet which want to avoid devoting life, limb or even much time to such interventions. The no-boots rule really speaks to a deep, conflictual trend in modern politics: our rulers, lacking any meaningful legitimacy at home, feel the urge to seek political purpose in foreign theatres – yet their very lack of legitimacy, their moral disarray, means that their foreign ventures are cautious, fearful things.
The part of the NATO campaign that has received the most thorough Minitrue makeover is the bombing of recent days. These raids are being reimagined as the final and decisive acts of a West determined to get rid of Gaddafi and install a new government. NATO’s ‘meticulously targeted’ assaults have created a ‘pathway’ for the rebels, we’re told. In truth, NATO’s latest outburst is best seen, not as the creator of new opportunities for the rebels, but rather as an opportunist stab by NATO forces to make political mileage from the disintegration of the Gaddafi regime. The decisive event in Libya in recent weeks has been the further corrosion of Gaddafi’s authority – and NATO is responding to that rather than having consciously brought it about.
Far from dealing a fatal blow to Gaddafi or providing a golden opportunity to the rebels, NATO’s bombing has been primarily reactive – to the internal combustion of Gaddafi’s writ. That is why this military venture has lasted six months, despite the fact that it consists of massive Western forces rallied against the isolated has-been Gaddafi: because NATO has adopted the role of observing and reacting to events rather than determining them. Thus only when it became clear even to faraway military observers that Gaddafi’s authority was beyond repair did NATO decide to up the ante. The recent bombs were less about achieving ‘pathways’ for a rebel takeover and more an attempt by NATO leaders to derive some political benefits from the slow-burning chaos in Libya, through firing PR missiles at a country whose authoritarian government had disintegrated.
The Ministry of Truthers are repackaging a reckless, strategy-free campaign launched by a deeply divided NATO as the principled act of super-clever men who have now liberated Libya. You’d never know from this Minitrue makeover that this apparently brilliant mission came close to collapse many times, as everyone from Obama to Berlusconi wondered out loud if it should be called off. What we’re witnessing is the shameless projection of active decision-making on to what was in fact a passive, decadent venture driven by PR imperatives rather than political vision. What really happened in Libya is that Gaddafi’s regime fell apart – yet now everyone is reading history backwards and locating this falling apart in the decisions made and actions taken by Western leaders. It’s not hard to see why they’re indulging in this falsification of history: it allows Cameron to pose as ‘brave but not bombastic’, and it allows laptop bombardiers to claim they were right about the wonderfulness of Western intervention. For these self-serving reasons, the buffoonish entry of cowardly NATO forces into a conflict involving a ridiculous dictator is hysterically talked up as a modern-day Normandy.
There’s one difference between the rewriting of the Libya venture and what went on in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Our history-warpers haven’t actually physically destroyed all the evidence showing that the bombing of Libya was in fact a reckless and vain military venture (and there’s mountains of such evidence). They don’t have to. Their powers of self-delusion are so strong, and the critical climate surrounding ‘humanitarian intervention’ so weak, that they simply need to magic up a few flimsy myths and, hey presto, the past is forgotten.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked.
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