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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 9/1/11

NATO Conquers Libya

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Gadhafi and friends
Gadhafi and friends
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nes and drones attacked North African ground, NATO decided the outcome of the Libyan rebellion. Scratch out all rebel fighters and the Gadhafi led government remained doomed. A relatively strong Yugoslavian army could not repel NATO aerial attacks and eventually surrendered. How could a deficient Libyan military expect to prevail? A powerful world body took advantage of a major dispute between elements of a nation in order to impose its authority and satisfy its wants. NATO certainly wasn't going to permit itself to lose or be involved in a stalemate.

 

Those who regarded the war as a simple rebellion of oppressed masses against an illegitimate and brutal dictator are as naive as those who believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and had to be immediately defeated. Subscribing to Moammar Gadhafi's removal for imposing his dubious Green philosophy on the nation and for his harsh and autocratic tactics might have been correct. Those are issues, but not the issues. Revelations from the Libyan civil war expose the issues, which are significantly disturbing and demand careful attention:

 

  • The internationalization of only this local conflict, which was not different and less compelling than similar conflicts throughout he word, notably in Syria, Bahrain, Nigeria, and other places.
  • Use of an unverified story to justify immediate NATO intervention - prevention of Gadhafi forces from taking violent retribution against the citizens of Benghazi .
  • Media failure to accurately report the conflict, and replaced by an unusual and intensive propaganda that favored the rebels.
  • Rejection of compromises to resolve the conflict while the nation was being destroyed and many were being killed, a contradiction to NATO's reasons for entering the conflict.
  • NATO impolitely going beyond the original Security Council Resolution to only provide a "no-fly" zone and instead leading the rebel offensive by a cowardly method - bombing a defenseless nation that had had no military means to counter the attacks.
  • The constant and one-sided demonizing of leader Gadhafi, while not knowing if antagonists were any better.
  • Neglect of examining Libya 's real problems of being a rentier nation that supports its population from principally oil exports, whose supply is limited and whose derived wealth needs careful distribution.

 

Internationalization of the conflict
Still no satisfactory explanation of how or why NATO, constituted for defense against a Soviet attack on West Europe, and which evolved into an organization that endorses offense before defense against its self-proclaimed enemies, had been threatened by Libya, nor why the voices from Africa's nations, all of whose nations had major reasons to be concerned with the Libyan conflagration, went unheard. At a meeting between the UN Security Council and the African Union (AU) High Level Ad hoc Committee on Libya on June 15, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, Uganda's Permanent Representative to the United Nations summarized the African Union position on NATO's invasion of Libya: "The NATO attacks, noted the Addis meeting, had gone beyond the scope of the United Nation Security Council resolution 1970 and 1973....Whatever the genesis of the intervention by NATO in Libya, the AU called for dialogue before the UN resolutions 1970 and 1973 and after those Resolutions. Ignoring the AU for three months and going on with the bombings of the sacred land of Africa has been high-handed, arrogant and provocative. This is something that should not be sustained."

 

Those whom the conflict affected (Africans) are not consulted. Those whom the confect did not affect (Europeans) make a unilateral decision.

 

No need to discuss the obvious; other rebellions, such as in Syria and Bahrain , which had more urgency than that of Libya , have been brutally suppressed. Bahrain 's self-proclaimed King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, with approval from the world's guardians of oppressed peoples, invited Saudi Arabia to behave opposite to the NATO action by rough necking the insurgency and militarily assisting the oppressor government. In unison and patently contrived, the made for consumption public relations machines of the world's savior nations proclaimed: "We can't do anything, but we must do something." Assistance is selective and random. If you are lucky you get attacked.

 

The reasons for the UN Security Council Resolution points to urgings by the Arab League, all of whose members detest the Libyan leader's exposures of their gluttony and corruption, and a whim by French President Nicholas Sarkozy. France and its aggressive leader provoked the western community into the endeavor with Great Britain following the lead. U.S. President Barack Obama gave an impression of a reluctant suitor, who did not want to spoil the affair. Why did Sarkozy promote the attack on Libya ? To help the rebels? Possibly, but why didn't France assist rebellions in Nigeria and other mutinous nations?

Aug 25, 2011 , PARIS (Reuters) -
" France has taken a leading military role in the NATO force backing the rebels. Britain 's defense minister said on Thursday that NATO was helping with intelligence and reconnaissance in the hunt for Gaddafi and his sons. Many analysts believe France , Britain and Arab allies, notably Qatar , may have some special forces on the ground in Tripoli working with Libyan commandos."

 

One year ago, Muommar Gadhafi came to France and met with Sarkozy. Both leaders were all smiles to one another. What changed?

 

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Dan Lieberman is the editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web based newsletter. His website articles have been read in more than 150 nations, while articles written for other websites have appeared in online journals throughout the world(B 92, (more...)
 
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