[as first posted 3-31-11, corrente]
What the US corporate media is not telling us, told below:
What started – only days ago actually – as an international mission to protect anti-Gaddafi civilians, under the guise of a no-fly zone over Libya, is quickly turning into a full-scale war. As of Thursday, there are signs that Washington may start arming Libyan rebels in a conflict that resembles a civil war neither side can win on the ground. This would be still another violation of the United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 1973. This is an all-important sign that a “humanitarian intervention” is taking on a toxic life of its own.
I will not recount here the failures of “humanitarian interventions” in Kosovo, Iraq and other places and people who never deserved a visit from the US military. Sadly, this paradigm is being played out in Libya now. A regime and its leader are identified for destruction and/or removal by the West and its “coalition of the willing” because of our value system. The leader, in this case Muammar Gaddafi, undergoes a sudden PR hatchet job and is portrayed as evil and illegitimate.
A month ago Gaddafi was a dictatorial tyrant, but legitimate enough to be embraced by Western leaders, particularly by Europeans like France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. At the same time, Western allies in the Arab world, like Saudi Arabia, crush a truly democratic and legitimate protest movement in Bahrain. But there is no mention of a humanitarian intervention there.
Oh, and let’s not forget the misery of the folks in the Ivory Coast, where there is no humanity and no intervention. And I bet you the people of Gaza would accept a UNsponsored no-fly zone in a heartbeat!
[snip]
To prove my point, anti-Gaddafi rebels are called democratic in Western media and in the corridors of power in Washington and Europe. But where are their democratic virtues on display? What I see is armed men killing their own countrymen. When these democrats start killing unarmed Gaddafi supporters, will the coalition of the willing enter the fray to stop this? Probably not. Western sponsored “humanitarian intervention” always picks a side – and the winning side does what it pleases. This is one of the unspoken spin-offs of “humanitarian interventionism”.
Let’s return to Gaddafi and his fate. The west’s doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” most assuredly means he will eventually be killed though all of this. You see, it simply has to happen this way. Gaddafi is stuck between the rhetoric of “he has to go” and “we aren’t aiming for regime change.”
The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” does not allow for negotiations – it is a doctrine that is played out as a zero-sum game. Remember, Western values are absolute and should never be questioned, particularly when the West will enforce its values on anyone its wants, backed up with overwhelming military power.
I have watched closely all 23 wars and/or military conflicts the US has been involved since the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Almost all have been rationalised or legitimised as humane and in the name of “superior Western values”.
“As Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than keeping this country safe,” the president declared, adopting his predecessor's favorite title for himself. “I’ve made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies and our core interests.”
Put another way, President Obama says he will only start a war – without consulting Congress, much less the public – when it is absolutely necessary for defending the “homeland” or for, you know, whatever he deems an “interest.”
Enter Muammar Gaddafi, a caricature of a tyrant who the Obama administration just a matter of weeks ago was looking to sell $77 million in weapons, including more than 50 armored troop carriers. Back then – mid-February – Gaddafi was a thuggish but reliable client in his old age. And he happened to rule over a country that has the largest oil reserves in Africa.
Funny how friendship works.
But a few short weeks ago, Gaddafi became unreliable – a public relations nightmare – when he started using the weapons he purchased from his erstwhile allies against his own people. Like Saddam Hussein before him, he became a liability.
So now Obama believes Gaddafi to be a “tyrant” who has lost his “legitimacy” – as if there was anything “legitimate” about his previous 42 years of dictatorial rule. On Monday, the president argued war was necessary to prevent Gaddafi from massacring rebel forces and their supporters in Benghazi. Such a massacre “would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,” said the war president. “I refused to let that happen.”
[snip]
But if the threat of a massacre is what spurs President Obama to action, what are we to make of his reaction to Israel’s massacre of more than 1,400 Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, or what Amnesty International calls “22 days of death and destruction," giving Israel an additional $30 billion in American weapons is a rather curious response, no?
And what about the hundreds of civilians killed by drone attacks in Pakistan since Obama took office – as many as 1,850 according to the New America Foundation? In early March, the very administration cloaking its new war in moralizing rhetoric carried out a massacre of 40 Pakistani civilians – a massacre the president who authorized the attack couldn't even be bothered to comment on.
Right now, the Obama administration is actively supporting brutal regimes in Yemen, Iraq and Bahrain – to name a few – where protest movements are being violently suppressed on the American taxpayers' dime. And the Obama administration is selling $60 billion in weapons to the Saudis, who not only oppress their own dissidents but recently occupied neighboring Bahrain and violently cracked down on peaceful protesters there with the U.S.'s stamp of approval.
So if one thing's clear, it's that the U.S. government is fine with tyranny – when it's “pro-American” (business). Fancy rhetoric aside, there is no “freedom agenda.”
Speaking to reporters this week, Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough conceded as much, saying that the White House doesn't “make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent.” Rather, “We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region.”
And as history professor and war supporter Juan Cole helpfully notes, the rebels control significant swaths of oil-rich territory and have taken “key oil towns” thanks to the U.S.-led bombing campaign – of 200 cruise missiles fired so far, 193 have been fired from American warships. They are also on the verge of taking 80 percent of the Buraiqa Basin, writes Cole, which “contains much of Libya's oil wealth.”
Bingo: We just found “our interests.” And unsurprisingly, they don't involve protecting innocent people from being killed so much as they do protecting the natural resource on top of which they're dying – and then having the freshly liberated locals pick up the tab for American contractors to rebuild everything American missiles destroyed.
[snip]
Indeed, The Los Angeles Times reports that while the intervention is sold as in defense of human rights, the Libyan rebels on whose behalf the U.S. is intervening are actively rounding up hundreds of their perceived political opponents and imprisoning them without charge in Gaddafi's former torture chambers. Those being rounded up are primarily black immigrants, with rebel spokesman Abdelhafed Ghoga telling the paper that suspected Gaddafi mercenaries who don't voluntarily turn themselves in will be subjected to extra-judicial “justice” (read: murder) for being “enemies of the revolution.” If they seize the country, who will stop roundups – and massacres – in Tripoli and elsewhere of those deemed to be supporters of the Gaddafi regime, perhaps for no reason other than the color of their skin?
U.S. official have publicly acknowledged an al-Qaeda presence among the rebels, bringing to mind U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s. And with the self-proclaimed leadership consisting of former top-level Gaddafi cronies who had no problem with the regime's human rights abuses four weeks ago, those lionizing the rebels – and suggesting the U.S. illegally arm them -- should take a closer look at who the U.S. and its allies are preparing to put in power when Gaddafi's gone.
The Obama administration and supporters of the war -- who a month ago couldn’t tell the difference between Benghazi and Baghdad -- portray the intervention in Libya as a simple morality tale, with evil on one side and good on the other. But the reality is more nuanced than the applause lines the president laid out in his speech. In the real world, peace is rarely achieved by dropping bombs and installing the most avowedly “pro-American” locals you can find in power. Just look at Afghanistan and Iraq, where George Bush started wars that Barack Obama has only continued – and in the case of the former, escalated.
Another shit sandwich, anyone?
[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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