T. Belman. Ettinger said the US/NATO led invasion of Libya in 2011 was “motivated by noble values of human rights” namely “to prevent a massive slaughter of non-combatant Libyans by Gaddafi” No, that was just the reason given. Why Gaddafi got a red card sets out the real reason. It was to protect the economic interests of Britain and France in Libya and North Africa. Russia and China were growing too powerful there.
Similarly, Ettinger believes that Blinken/US is wrong to believe in the Palestinian cause rather than to have malevolent goals. I believe they are motivated to maintain their own power in the ME at Israel’s expense.
The goal of the US/NATO policy is to extend their hegemony. To this end they undermined the independence of Libya and Serbia, to name a couple, and are trying to do the same to Russia. Also, they align with the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran for the same purpose. They claim to do so in order to extend democracy or to uphold the R2P. Wrong. Its all about self interest
Secretary Blinken’s well-intentioned, but misguided, human rights-driven policy has ignored the only choice facing the United States in the Middle East: that between pro-US human rights violating Arab regimes, or anti-US human rights violating Arab regimes.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Jan. 29-31 visit to Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority marked another milestone in his well-intentioned – but erroneous – Middle East legacy. It has backfired on vital US interests in general, and the pursuit of regional stability and peace in particular.
In Egypt
A major issue raised by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during his meeting with Blinken was the volcanic turbulence in Libya, which has traumatized the region since 2011, fueling Muslim Brotherhood terrorism in Egypt and overall Islamic terrorism in Africa and Europe.
This turbulence was triggered by a US-led NATO military offensive against the Moammar Gadhafi regime, and was masterminded, largely, by key policy-makers in the Obama-Biden administration. They included Blinken, then National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, and were led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her close adviser and Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and Special Assistant to President Barack Obama Samantha Power.
The offensive was motivated by noble values of human rights, but went astray due to an intrinsic misreading of the Middle East in general, and of Libya in particular, where Gadhafi was not fighting innocent bystanders, but anti-US Islamic terrorists. In fact, these terrorists murdered the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, following their US-facilitated victory over Gaddafi.
While the aim of the offensive was to prevent a massive slaughter of non-combatant Libyans by Gaddafi, the outcome has doomed Libya to decades of chaos, turning it into a slaughterhouse that has dwarfed the worst casualty assessments of Clinton and Blinken.
The ill-advised offensive has transformed Libya – the soft underbelly of Europe – into one of the world’s largest platforms for anti-Western Islamic terrorists, drugs and arms traffickers. It energized a global resurgence of Islamic terrorism, and became a home base for scores of terrorist militias as well as an arena for civil war, with the participation of Turkey, Qatar, Italy, Russia, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and France.
Secretary Blinken’s well-intentioned, but misguided, human rights-driven policy has ignored the only choice facing the United States in the Middle East: that between pro-US human rights violating Arab regimes, or anti-US human rights violating Arab regimes.
Refusal to accept this reality has also led to US military, financial and diplomatic pressure on the pro-US President el-Sissi – as well as the pro-US Saudi crown prince and the pro-US UAE crown prince – to desist from the rough-handling of Muslim Brotherhood terrorists and Iran-supported Houthi Yemenite terrorists, which the State Department establishment considers legitimate political, religious and social entities.
This US policy – highlighted by the eagerness to conclude another accord with Iran’s ayatollahs, who threaten the survival of every pro-US Arab Sunni regime – has pushed Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain closer to China and Russia.
In Israel and the Palestinian Authority
As frustrated as Blinken is with the rogue conduct of Iran’s ayatollahs, and notwithstanding the recently expanded US-Israel military drills, Blinken still opposes Israel’s determination that the 43-year-old diplomatic option has dramatically failed.
Blinken rejects the Israeli suggestion (shared by all pro-US Arab regimes) that a credible threat to resort to regime-change and military action is the only way to abort the regional and global threats posed by the Islamic Republic. He still assumes that the apocalyptic ayatollahs can be enticed – via a generous financial and diplomatic package – into good-faith negotiation, peaceful coexistence and abandoning their fanatical 1,400-year-old religious vision.
Blinken’s policy toward Iran’s ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood – which pose a lethal threat to all Sunni Arab regimes – has eroded US strategic credibility in pro-US Arab capitals, and has pushed Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain – reluctantly – closer to China and Russia, militarily and commercially.
During his visit to Israel, once again Blinken failed to distinguish between PA-incited Palestinian terrorists (killed by Israel) and Israeli civilians (murdered by Palestinian terrorists). Inadvertently, moral equivalence energizes Palestinian terrorism, while aiming to constrain Israel’s counter-terrorist efforts.
His visit to Ramallah enhanced the legitimacy of the PA, while the latter has enshrined, since 1993, K-12 hate-education, which has brainwashed Palestinian youth against the existence of the “infidel” Jewish state. This rogue education system has been the most authentic reflection of the Palestinian vision – consistent with the 1959 and 1964 charters of Fatah and the PLO, which focus on the annihilation of the pre-1967 “Zionist entity.” The PA education system has become the most effective hothouse for and production-line of terrorists.
Blinken has accorded more weight to Palestinian talk than to the Palestinian walk. He has ignored the fact that a prerequisite to meaningful negotiation and peace is the uprooting of hate education, mosque incitement, monthly allowances to terrorists’ families, and the glorification of terrorists through public monuments, schools, and other institutions.
He continues to attempt to convince Israel that the establishment of a Palestinian state is a prerequisite for bolstering Middle East stability and concluding an Israel-Saudi Arabia peace treaty. However, such a proposal should be assessed against the backdrop of the systematic failure of all State Department’s proposals to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. They failed because they, too, ignored the Palestinian track record, the non-central role of the Palestinian issue in the Middle East, and the fact that preoccupation with the Palestinian issue created a Palestinian veto power.
In fact, Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan were successfully concluded by bypassing the Palestinian issue, and focusing on Arab – not Palestinian – interests, which are increasingly served by enhanced defense and commercial cooperation with Israel. Arabs do not cut off their noses to spite their faces.
Blinken ignores Middle East reality, which highlights the non-centrality of the Palestinian issue (no Arab-Israel war has erupted due to the Palestinian issue, and no Arab country has flexed its military muscle on behalf of the Palestinians).
Unlike Blinken, the pro-US Arab Sunni regimes are aware of the despotic, corrupt, and terroristic nature of the Palestinian Authority, and the rogue nature of the proposed Palestinian state, as evidenced by the Palestinian intra-Arab track record. Arabs perceive the Palestinians as an intra-Arab role model of subversion, terrorism, treachery and ingratitude, that bites the hands that feed it (Egypt in the 1950s; Syria in the 1960s; Jordan in 1968-1970; Lebanon in 1970-1982 and Kuwait in 1990).
The Arabs are also aware of the systematic Palestinian collaboration with anti-Western rogue entities, such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet bloc, Iran’s ayatollahs, Saddam Hussein, Latin American and other international terrorist organizations, Muslim Brotherhood terrorists, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and North Korea.
The bottom line is that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River would topple the pro-US Hashemite regime east of the river, transforming Jordan into another platform for Islamic terrorism (just like Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen), and triggering a domino scenario into the Arabian Peninsula. It would topple the pro-US Arab oil-producing regimes, undermine regional and global stability and economy and erode the US economy and geo-strategic posture, while advancing the fortunes of Russia, China, Iran’s ayatollahs and anti-US Islamic Sunni terrorism.
With all due respect to the good Ambassador, I frankly have far too much respect for Ettingers intelligence to believe that he believes what he is trying to convince us to believe in this unbelievable lie dressed up to diplomatically rewrite the truth, and the truth is that the crimes he ignores are war crimes. The intention of the US and NATO was to undermine an active ally while supporting a branch of the very same terrorists with whom the US at that time had been at war for over a decade. Profit was the motivation, that and geopolitical interests, and it was very far from being either well intentioned or misguided. It was yet one more tragedy deliberately unfurled upon an unsuspecting nation by the champions of democracy and liberal ideals who did not lose their moral compass, but simply employed the compass as they re-write the meaning of true north to suit their personal profits and geopolitical interests. The truth is that these NATO warmongers have for too long been at the task, not of seeking monsters in distant lands to slay, but of themselves being the monsters running amok, quenching their lust of power and gold with the deliberate slaughter and enslavement of millions, sending modern civilized nations back to the stone age. The attempt to side step the reality of the truth of these crimes serves only to allow these war criminals to continue committing new war crimes in new lands to the destruction and enslavement of new peoples.
https://www.e-ir.info/2019/02/06/to-what-extent-was-the-nato-intervention-in-libya-a-humanitarian-intervention/