The West Goes To War For Oil And Power In Libya

Oldspeak:”30 years ago, President Reagan referred to Qaddafi as the “mad dog of the Middle East” and launched his own war on Libya. 10 years ago President G.W. Bush saw Qaddafi as an ally in the ‘War On Terror”  Today, “The same Western leaders who happily armed and did oil business with the Qaddafi regime until a fortnight ago have now slapped sanctions on the discarded autocrat and blithely referred him to the international criminal court the United States won’t recognize.”-Seamus Milne, The Guardian. This war isn’t about protecting innocents. Innocents are being killed in Bahrain by a U.S. backed dictator. Innocents are being killed in Pakistan by U.S. Drones. Innocents are being killed in Palestine. Innocent children are being killed in Afghanistan by “Coalition Forces”. Children dissidents, and journalists are being killed and detained in Syria. You hear very little about this corporate media. Make no mistake, this war is about oil. CIA/U.S. Special Forces trained and backed Libyan rebels, have given the west the pretext for this war.  This latest war of aggression is the latest example of politically and oil motivated hypocrisy by the U.S. and it’s allies.”

By Tom Arabia & Alan Maass @ The Socialist Worker:

U.S. and European forces began a war on Libya on last week with warplane and missile strikes hitting weapons and defense systems controlled by Muammar el-Qaddafi and his regime.

The Western assault will be portrayed as a “humanitarian” mission to stop Qaddafi from carrying out an offensive targeting the mass rebellion against his regime. But the long record of “humanitarian” intervention shows that the bombs and guns of the U.S. and its allies are never used to save lives or bring justice, but to serve Western interests–and Libya is no different.

Anyone who has been inspired by the wave of revolts against dictators in North Africa and the Middle East–including the one in Libya–must oppose this new attempt by the U.S. and its allies to reassert their domination in the region, because it will be used to try to stifle the struggle for democracy.

The attack by a coalition of countries, with the support of several Arab nations–but with the U.S. acting as the “leading edge,” according to American military officials–is described as the first phase of an operation called “Odyssey Dawn” to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, passed on Thursday. Targets were hit across north Libya, from airports near the capital of Tripoli to military positions on the outskirts of the city of Benghazi, which has been a stronghold of the rebellion against Qaddafi.

The aim, according to the governments carrying out the attack, is to destroy the regime’s ability to resist enforcement of a no-fly zone. But the Security Council resolution lays the basis for a much broader war, and operations are expected to escalate to a “no-drive zone” and possibly the use of ground forces, in parts of Libya or the whole country.

The attack came as Qaddafi’s forces began an offensive against Benghazi, after a scorched-earth campaign that has pounded rebel forces in the past week. Within days of its beginnings in mid-February, the uprising against Qaddafi seemed on the verge of toppling one of the longest-running dictatorships in the world, but the regime has used its overwhelming military advantage over the rebellion to win back most of the northwest of the country around the capital of Tripoli, as well as a string of port cities leading toward Benghazi.

Libya’s government claimed to have implemented a cease-fire on Saturday and invited UN fact-finding missions to verify it, but numerous reports from both Western and other media sources described a stepped-up campaign against Benghazi, with opposition fighters coming under constant mortar and artillery fire.

With attacks from the air, the U.S.-led assault on Libya might prevent some of Qaddafi’s forces from entering rebel-controlled and civilian-populated areas like Benghazi, but as the U.S. intelligences consulting firm Stratfor wrote [1], “it cannot force the withdrawal of those forces from within the city without risking significant civilian casualties…The application of airpower entails civilian casualties, and it remains unclear if that application can be translated into the achievement of political objectives in Libya.”

That raises the potential of large-scale bloodshed among the very people who have rebelled against Qaddafi–and a war that will have to escalate beyond limited missile strikes and air patrols to accomplish the stated objectives of Western governments. D.B. Grady, a former paratrooper with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and veteran of the Afghanistan war, explained the dynamic in an interview on National Public Radio [2]:

I’m unaware of any no-fly zone that’s been imposed by the United States that didn’t ultimately end up with military intervention that actually put soldiers on the ground. Bosnia and Herzegovina started out as Operation Deny Flight…If you look at Iraq, we established the no-fly zone in 1991. The no-fly zone ended in 2003 with Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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IN CHEERLEADING the U.S.-led assault to “stop a massacre,” the American media never stopped for a moment to question Washington’s selective concern about violence and repression.

Even as the Security Council was passing a resolution that U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice insisted was “to protect innocent civilians,” the Washington-allied monarchy in the Gulf state of Bahrain was shooting down anti-government demonstrators. The most that U.S. diplomats could manage in this case was calls for “restraint” and “talks.”

Also the very same day as the UN resolution was passed, U.S. military forces were directly responsible for 40 deaths in Pakistan [3], when missiles fired from American drone planes hit a community assembly or jirga, in the Nevi Adda Shega area of North Waziristan. These deaths come a few weeks after a NATO air attack killed nine Afghan boys in early March [4], and in the wake of at least 29 people killed in protests in U.S.-occupied Iraq in late February [5].

The other element missing from media coverage of the Libya attack is a three-letter word familiar from past U.S.-led wars in the Middle East: oil.

Libya exports about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day and possesses one of the largest oil reserves of any country in Africa. Western oil companies have done a booming business with the dictator Qaddafi over the past decade, devoting huge investments to the country.

That was only possible because of the rehabilitation of the regime as an ally. Qaddafi has been the villain before for U.S. politicians–during the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan called him the “mad dog of the Middle East” and launched his own war on Libya. But in between, the one-time villain became a friend. As Todd Chretien described in an article for SocialistWorker.org [6]:

While the Cold War was still on, the U.S. considered Libya an enemy, and Ronald Reagan targeted the country in the 1980s, including an attempt to assassinate Qaddafi by bombing one of his residences (which killed his 15-month-old daughter).

But in the late 1990s, Qaddafi began to make peace with his former adversaries. And after 9/11, Qaddafi offered Libyan support for the U.S. government’s “war on terror” under George W. Bush. The regime restored diplomatic relations with the U.S., leading ExxonMobil, Chevron and other American corporations to rush into lucrative exploration and production deals.

Before the threat of military intervention escalated, Guardian columnist Seamus Milne commented: “The same Western leaders who happily armed and did business with the Qaddafi regime until a fortnight ago have now slapped sanctions on the discarded autocrat and blithely referred him to the international criminal court the United States won’t recognize.”

Given this record of hypocrisy, neither the U.S. government nor its European allies–and not the Arab states like Qatar that are going along with the war on Libya either–can be trusted to have decent motives. The real reasons for the assault on Libya have nothing to do with saving the Libyan people from Qaddafi. They are about oil profits on the one hand–and reestablishing U.S. and European influence in a part of the world that has experienced two revolutions–in Egypt and Tunisia–since the start of the year.

This war won’t bring justice. It has to be opposed.

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Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [7] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.

1. [1] http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110319-red-alert-libyan-forces-benghazi
2. [2] http://www.npr.org/2011/03/13/134516032/Understanding-No-Fly-Zones-And-Their-Implications
3. [3] http://www.dawn.com/2011/03/18/rare-condemnation-by-pm-army-chief-40-civilians-killed-in-drone-attack.html
4. [4] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/03/2011391229382651.html
5. [5] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/02/27/At-least-29-dead-in-Iraq-protests/UPI-56511298812676/
6. [6] http://socialistworker.org/2011/02/28/taking-sides-about-libya
7. [7] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

Nobel Committee Asked To Strip Obama of Peace Prize

Oldspeak:” It was a very bad joke when he got it, and since; 4 wars and no peace?  ‘A message has been widely retweeted on Twitter today: “Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined.’ Sounds about right. Nuff Said.”

By Joseph E. Lovell @ Digital Journal:

 

The Bolivian President and a Russian political leader have launched a campaign to revoke Obama’s honour after the US attacked Libya.

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader and Vice-Chairman of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement today calling for the Nobel Prize Committee to take back the honour bestowed on US President Barack Obama in 2009.Zhirinovsky said the attacks were “another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States,” and that the attacks demonstrated a “colonial policy” with “one goal: to establish control over Libyan oil and the Libyan regime.” He said the prize was now hypocritical as a result.Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed the call: “How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defence of human rights or self-determination.”Morales won the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights in 2006.He is amongst a number of left-leaning Latin American leaders who have denounced the attacks against Libya. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Cristina Fernandez of Argentina have all criticised western media coverage of the Libyan crisis.

Morales and Chavez repeated calls for peace talks with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.” The Committee praised the “change in the international climate” affected by Obama’s presidency.In his Nobel Lecture, he discussed the “hard truth” of the inevitability of war, saying: “There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”A message has been widely retweeted on Twitter today: “Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined.”

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/304909#ixzz1HMOv2qvJ

 

Intervention In Libya: The ‘not-Iraq’ War

Oldspeak: Ah… The “Politics of Naming” surfaces again…Regime change is under way in Libya. “Under current international law, establishing a no fly zone is an act of war…that in effect declares war on a sovereign nation-state. If the act of massacring innocent civilians is the criterion, The Israelis did the same thing in 2008-2009; did the so-called “international community” establish a no fly zone over Israel or Gaza? The U.S. did the same in Iraq the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion, did the “international community” establish no fly zones over the american air bases? What we have here is the U.S./U.K. that have been providing arms to the Libyan Government and Gadhafi now turning around saying now we’re going to support another body, that by the way is not a democratic representation.” –Hamid Dabashi, Profesor, Columbia University

By Warren P. Strobel @ McClatchy Newpapers

The war, if it comes, could well be called the not-Iraq war.

Eight years ago Saturday, President George W. Bush launched the U.S. invasion of Iraq, without an explicit mandate from the United Nations and without much concern over which U.S. allies went along.

France vehemently opposed the invasion and had tried to scuttle it diplomatically a month earlier.

Fast forward to 2011, and the diplomatic picture is turned upside-down: France has led the charge to intervene in Libya to protect civilians from Moammar Gadhafi’s rampage, and President Barack Obama is the reluctant warrior, insisting that every step must have international backing and deferring to the Europeans to lead.

Instead of American “shock and awe,” there is time-consuming diplomacy and careful consideration of options.

While the Iraq war and the Libya crisis differ fundamentally in many ways, the question now, according to outside experts, is whether Obama’s multilateral approach will turn out any better than Bush’s unilateralism.

Will the mere threat of military action begin a slap of dominoes that leads to Gadhafi’s departure? If French and British jets bomb Gadhafi’s military assets with little effect, will the U.S. be pressured to take a more active, even leading, military role? Who will rebuild Libya once Gadhafi is gone — or if his country fractures into two demi-states?

“However this ends, it ends with heavy burdens,” said Daniel P. Serwer, a retired U.S. diplomat with experience in conflict and post-conflict reconstruction in the Balkans, Iraq and elsewhere.

The prospect of such burdens has, by all accounts, made Obama averse to rushing into Libya and willing to cede the lead role to others. The legacy, and costs, of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seem written all over his policy.

In remarks Friday on Libya, the president didn’t attempt to hide his unease with a third U.S. intervention in a Muslim-majority nation in a decade.

“The United States did not seek this outcome,” he said. With U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan and winding down a mission in Iraq, the decision “is only made more difficult,” he added.

Obama carefully circumscribed the U.S. role. The U.S. will not deploy ground troops in Libya or “use force to go beyond a well-defined goal,” the protection of civilians, he said.

White House officials declined Friday to specify what military support the U.S. will provide to a European-led military operation in Libya.

Nor have they detailed the factors that have gone into Obama’s weighing of how deeply to get involved in Libya.

But judging by the words of the president and his advisers, those factors include a determination not to inject the U.S., widely distrusted by Arab populations, into the region’s political unrest; concern about military overstretch; and the cold, hard fact of a depleted U.S. Treasury.

White House officials have vigorously defended the pace of Obama’s response since Gadhafi turned his military power on peaceful protesters. “The speed of the international reaction here has been quite remarkable,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday, adding, “We are moving with a great deal of haste.”

A broad spectrum of political figures, from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., to conservatives such as John Bolton, have complained that the president has moved too cautiously, wasting precious time as Gadhafi’s forces have advanced against rebels in eastern and western Libya.

“We’ve lost a huge opportunity by allowing over a month to go by without taking action,” said Bolton, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and Bush’s ambassador to the U.N.

Waiting for the Arab League to endorse a no-fly zone, as Obama did, was unnecessary, Bolton said. Even without such an endorsement, Arab states “would have grumbled,” but would have gone along with military action in Libya, he said.

Serwer, now at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, agreed in part, saying “I was very impatient with how long they were taking. I do think they could have started earlier and moved faster.”

But Serwer called the U.N. Security Council’s authorization Thursday of military action in Libya “a diplomatic achievement of considerable dimensions.”

Obama and the Europeans managed to avoid a veto by skeptical Russia and China, while keeping the U.S. somewhat in the background and the Europeans in the foreground. The resolution permits “all necessary measures” short of “a foreign occupation force” to protect Libyan civilians.

European diplomats expressed confidence that the French, British and other European air forces are up to the job of enforcing a no-fly zone and prevent Gadhafi attacks on rebels, albeit with U.S. logistical and intelligence support.

But as the U.S. experience in Iraq shows, military interventions often take unexpected turns.

If Obama needed a reminder, he could have looked out front of the White House to Lafayette Park on Friday, before he left for a trip to South and Central America, to see protesters gathering to mark the anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

The U.S. and the international community writ large have limited “spare capacity” remaining for military intervention or reconstructing shattered nations, Serwer said.

A post-Gadhafi Libya could see revenge killings on a large scale, he said, and because of Gadhafi’s complete dominance of society for nearly 42 years, there are no independent state institutions, as in Egypt or Tunisia.

“I see a state-building task here that hasn’t been talked about at all,” he added. “The point is, this is just the beginning.”

 

(Margaret Talev contributed to this article.)