Simply put, the West bombed Libya into the stone age and killed tens of thousands of Libyans for a barrel of oil. You can’t make a silk purse out of this pig no matter how much you spin it.
Where was the anti-war crowd? Where was the humanitarian crowd? Where was the anti-imperialism crowd? Where was the international law crowd? Where was the proud-to-be-American crowd? Where was the UN crowd calling for a ceasefire? Where was he proportionality crowd? WShere was the war crimes crowd? Where was the main stream media crowd? Either complicit or asleep. Ted Belman
How the West Won Libya
By Pepe Escobar, ASIA TIMES
[..]
From the minute a United Nations resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya became a green card to regime change, plan A was always to capture and kill him. Targeted assassination; that’s Barack Obama administration official policy. There was no plan B.
Let me bomb you to protection
As for how R2P (“responsibility to protect” civilians), any doubters should cling to the explanation by NATO’s secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen; “NATO and our partners have successfully implemented the historic mandate of the United Nations to protect the people of Libya.” Anyone who wants to check NATO’s protection of civilians just needs to jump on a pick-up truck and go to Sirte – the new Fallujah.
United States President Barack Obama said the death of Gaddafi means “we are seeing the strength of American leadership across the world”. That’s as “we got him” as one can possibly expect, also considering that Washington paid no less than 80% of the operating costs of those dimwits at NATO (over $1 billion – which Occupy Wall Street could well denounce would be more helpful creating jobs in the US). Strange, now, to say “we did it”, because the White House always said this was not a war; it was a “kinetic” something. And they were not in charge.
It was up to that majestic foreign policy strategist, US Vice President Joe Biden, to be starkly more enlightening than Obama; “In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn’t lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past.”
World, you have been warned; this is how the empire will deal with you from now on.
Feel my humanitarian love
So congratulations to the “international community” – which as everyone knows is composed of Washington, a few washed-up NATO members, and the democratic Persian Gulf powerhouses of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This community, at least, loved the outcome. The European Union (EU) hailed “the end of an era of despotism” – when up to virtually Thursday they were caressing the helm of Gaddafi’s gowns; now they are falling over themselves in editorials about the 42-year reign of a “buffoon”.
Gaddafi would have been a most inconvenient guest of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as he would have relished recalling all the hand-kissing, the warm embraces and the juicy deals the West was begging to clinch after he was promoted from “Mad Dog” (Ronald Reagan) to “our bastard”. He would also relish detailing all the shady backgrounds of those opportunists now posing as “revolutionaries” and “democrats”.
As for the concept of international law, it lies in a drain as filthy as the one Gaddafi was holed up in. Iraqi dictator Saddam at least got a fake trial in a kangaroo court before meeting the executioner. Osama bin Laden was simply snuffed out, assassination-style, after a territorial invasion of Pakistan. Gaddafi went one up, snuffed out with a mix of air war and assassination.
Power vultures are congesting the skies. London-based Mohammed El Senussi, the heir to the Libyan throne (King Idris was overthrown in 1969) is ready for his close-up, having already established that he “is a servant to Libyan people, and they decide what they want”. Translation; I want the throne. He’s obviously the favorite candidate of the counter-revolutionary House of Saud.
And what about those Washington think-tank donkeys mumbling that this was the Arab Spring’s “Ceausescu moment”? If only the Romanian dictator had improved his country’s standard of living – in terms of free healthcare, free education, incentives for the newlywed, etc – by a fraction of what Gaddafi did in Libya. Plus the fact that Nicolae Ceausescu was not deposed by NATO “humanitarian” bombing. v Only the brain dead may have swallowed the propaganda of NATO’s “humanitarian” 40,000-plus bombing – which devastated Libya’s infrastructure back to the Stone Age (Shock and Awe in slow motion, anyone?). This never had anything to do with R2P – the relentless bombing of civilians in Sirte proves it.
As the top four BRIC members knew it even before the voting of UN Resolution 1973, it was about NATO ruling the Mediterranean as a NATO lake, it was about Africom’s war against China and setting up a key strategic base, it was about the French and the Brits getting juicy contracts to exploit Libya’s natural resources to their benefit, it was about the West setting the narrative of the Arab Spring after they had been caught napping in Tunisia and Egypt.
Listen to the barbaric whimpers
Welcome to the new Libya. Intolerant Islamist militias will turn the lives of Libyan women into a living hell. Hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans – those who could not escape – will be ruthlessly persecuted. Libya’s natural wealth will be plundered. That collection of anti-aircraft missiles appropriated by Islamists will be a supremely convincing reason for the “war on terror” in northern Africa to become eternal. There will be blood – civil war blood, because Tripolitania will refuse to be ruled by backward Cyrenaica.
As for remaining dictators everywhere, get a life insurance policy from NATO Inc; Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh were clever enough to do it. We all know there will never be R2P to liberate the Tibetans and Uyghurs, or the people in that monster gulag Myanmar, or the people in Uzbekistan, or the Kurds in Turkey, or the Pashtuns on both sides of the imperially drawn Durand Line.
We also know that change the world can believe in will be the day NATO enforces a no-fly one over Saudi Arabia to protect the Shi’ites in the eastern province, with the Pentagon launching a Hellfire carpet over those thousands of medieval, corrupt House of Saud princes.
It won’t happen. Meanwhile, this is the way the West ends; with a NATO bang, and a thousand barbaric, lawless whimpers. Disgusted? Get a Guy Fawkes mask and raise hell.
The ONLY way to neutralize Nothern Sudan is to train the South Sudanese forces to take them on/out. Keep funding Kenya & Ethiopa to kick shit out of wannabee islamic terror groups and let Africa sort itself out with a little help:)
Narvey ENJOY: It’s all relevant
Max Keiser takes offense to Goldman Sachs pt1 of 2 oligarchy
Max Keiser takes offense to Goldman Sachs pt2 of 2 oligarchy
Narvey I think this is relevant to the Gaddafi comment I made above. You have to connect some dots and fill in missing pieces.
Irish govt slaves to IMF terror machine
Libya was free of debt and the IMF , World Bank and the Banksters had little or no leverage on Gaddafi. He withstood sanctions for 20 years and still thrived.
Some contend Gaddafi was the target all along and the rest of the ME upheavals were just preliminaries as cover for Libya.
First thing the rebels did was to constitute a central bank? Some revolutionaries?
https://www.israpundit.org/archives/39169/comment-page-1#comment-121469
Saving the world economy from Gaddafi
Some believe it is about protecting civilians, others say it is about oil, but some are convinced intervention in Libya is all about Gaddafi’s plan to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency made from gold, a true sharing of the wealth.
“It’s one of these things that you have to plan almost in secret, because as soon as you say you’re going to change over from the dollar to something else, you’re going to be targeted,” says Ministry of Peace founder Dr James Thring. “There were two conferences on this, in 1986 and 2000, organized by Gaddafi. Everybody was interested, most countries in Africa were keen.”
Gaddafi did not give up. In the months leading up to the military intervention, he called on African and Muslim nations to join together to create this new currency that would rival the dollar and euro. They would sell oil and other resources around the world only for gold dinars.
It is an idea that would shift the economic balance of the world.
A country’s wealth would depend on how much gold it had and not how many dollars it traded. And Libya has 144 tons of gold. The UK, for example, has twice as much, but ten times the population.
“If Gaddafi had an intent to try to re-price his oil or whatever else the country was selling on the global market and accept something else as a currency or maybe launch a gold dinar currency, any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world’s central banks,” says Anthony Wile, founder and chief editor of the Daily Bell.
“So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward from moving him from power.”
And it has happened before.
In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars. Some say sanctions and an invasion followed because the Americans were desperate to prevent OPEC from transferring oil trading in all its member countries to the euro.
A gold dinar would have had serious consequences for the world financial system, but may also have empowered the people of Africa, something black activists say the US wants to avoid at all costs.
“The US have denied self-determination to Africans inside the US, so we are not surprised by anything the US would do to hinder the self-determination of Africans on the continent,” says Cynthia Ann McKinney, a former US Congresswoman.
The UK’s gold is kept in a secure vault somewhere in the depths of the Bank of England. As in most developed countries, there is not enough to go around.
But that is not the case in countries like Libya and many of the Gulf States.
A gold dinar would have given oil-rich African and Middle Eastern countries the power to turn around to their energy-hungry customers and say: “Sorry, the price has gone up, and we want gold.”
jknmh Some say the US and its NATO allies literally could not afford to ljet that happen.
I believe that Russia and China have/had significant interests and goals in Libya. This helps the EU/West to be less dependent on the Russian oil/gas. China wants all the oil/gas of the world.
“Responsibility to Protect”: Suddenly the West claims to be interested in “Human Suffering” or Responsibility to Protect its own interests (first and foremost) if it happens to coincide with human suffering! Great!
We are all the same under the same sun.
Gaddafi was a time bomb and the West needs the oil and the gas. Not much of MB in Libya.
Syria has no oil/gas and the vast majority is MB.
We still need to solve the Iran-Lokerbie connection.
The best way to neutralize N-Sudan is to assist S-Sudan to become self-sufficient and able to defend herself against S-Sudan belligerence and fanatical Islamism.
Bashir will need to hide
The only reason Qadaffi was targeted was because he fell into disfavour with the Arab League/Saudis which gave the West the green light to spend its own capital to rid the region of Qadaffi and Qadaffi was weak militarily so the West figured acting on their new R2P policy would not cost them that much.
As the NATO effort went beyond the orginal stated purpose of establishing a no fly zone to keep Qadaffi’s air force from attacking rebels, Western liberal media explained it as “mission creep”. B.S. The original intent of course denied by NATO was to unseat Qadaffi, force him out of Libya or failing that, to be executed by the rebels and failing that kill him itself.
Hypocrisy and lies.
Qadaffi’s crimes against his own people, pale by comparison to the crimes committed by Omar Al-Bashir in the Sudan, the Mullocracy in Iran, Bashir al Assad of Syria, for instance and what do our Western leaders do while mouthing R2P platitudes? They sit with their thumbs up their collective asses and mendaciously try to rationalize why they have only gone after Qadaffi.
I have a question. How is this new slogan, “Responsibility to Protect” different from the older slogan “A White Man’s Burden?” Both posit that a particular group of inherently superior people know what is best for the world and with great sighing and reluctances send their armed to the teeth warriors to implement that superior understanding on the rest of the world. Furthermore, this new group of Ubermenchen, like its antecedent group, takes great umbrage at any suggestion that the whole business is just a bluff to excuse their naked aggression and looting of lesser armed countries. So I repeat my question. What is the difference?
Assad is fortunate to have Russia as an ally.
Having seen Qaddafi’s fate, he’ll ramp up the repression. He knows he either kills his opponents or its a bullet in the head for him.
The Arabs are not noted for their regard for human life.
There is ample justification and national interest, at least for the EU, in Libya. For a start, it would be extremely likely, given their demonstrated ability to bomb dipshits out of power that they are going to be independent of the Middle East in terms of Oil in the foreseeable future. It is also kind of amazing just how aggressive the French got all of a sudden, check out this article from the Times of India
Couple that with France telling Pakistan to Stop Being a terrorist haven, while withdrawing heavy arms aid to Pakistan and we have a major turnaround all of a sudden. I mean, France is not precisely a stranger to anti-semitism (see the Dreyfuss Affair), but it is interesting indeed to sit back and watch the French (and Italy) actually grow a set.
Be very entertaining next time around, the minute they open their mouths, it should be suggested that maybe they were “collectively punishing” Libyans? Only trouble is, with France cosying up to India and the UK fighting them in that regard, at the same time as the US is dropping 2/3 of its funding for the
Haqqanni NetworkPakistani Government, we draw ever closer to nuclear war in South Asia. As one poor bunny that is likely to end up carrying a rifle in the same, that is a little daunting, then again, the longer it is left the more weapons they’ll have to throw.He deserved to be snuffed out. There was justification and a national interest in the Afghan and Iraq wars. However there was none in Libya. I wouldn’t put them in the same category.
Oil for France and England since we don’t get oil from Libya. So Americans were sent to fight a war for France and England’s oil needs. And they convinced a gullible Obama to go along. Where is Walt and Mearsheimer who maliciously and falsely claim America fights wars for Israel when we never have. We do fight wars for muslim jihadists and European oil interests.