Of course, it's always easier to detect the manipulations and deceptions in hindsight. In real time, the career pressures on politicians, bureaucrats and journalists can overwhelm any normal sense of skepticism. As the propaganda and disinformation swirl around them, all the "smart" people agree that "something must be done" and that usually means bombing someone.
We are seeing the same pattern play out today with the "group think" in support of a major U.S. military intervention in Syria (supposedly to impose the sweet-sounding goal of a "no-fly zone," the same rhetorical gateway used to start the "regime change" wars in Iraq and Libya).
We are experiencing the same demonization of Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Russia's Vladimir Putin that we witnessed before those other two wars on Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Every possible allegation is made against them, often based on dubious and deceitful "evidence," but it goes unchallenged because to question the propaganda opens a person to charges of being an "apologist" or a "stooge."
Past Is Prologue
But looking back on how the disasters in Iraq and Libya unfolded is not just about the past; it's about the present and future.
Hundreds of refugees from Libya line up for food at a transit camp near the Tunisia-Libya border. March 5, 2016.
(Image by (Photo from the United Nations)) Details DMCA
In that sense, the findings by the U.K. parliament's foreign affairs committee regarding Libya deserved more attention than they received because they demonstrated that the Iraq case was not a one-off anomaly but rather part of a new way to rationalize imperial wars.
And the findings showed that these tactics are bipartisan, used by all four major parties in the U.S. and U.K.: Bush was a Republican; Blair was Labour; Obama a Democrat; and Cameron a Conservative. Though the nuances may differ slightly, the outcomes have been the same.
The U.K. report also stripped away many of the humanitarian arguments used to sell the Libyan war and revealed the crass self-interest beneath. For instance, the French, who helped spearhead the Libyan conflict, publicly lamented the suffering of civilians but privately were eager to grab a bigger oil stake in Libya and to block Gaddafi's plans to supplant the French currency in ex-French colonies of Africa.
The report cited an April 2, 2011 email to Secretary of State Clinton from her unofficial adviser Sidney Blumenthal explaining what French intelligence officers were saying privately about French President Nicolas Sarkozy's real motives for pushing for the military intervention in Libya:
"a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production, b. Increase French influence in North Africa, c. Improve his internal political situation in France, d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world, e. Address the concern of his advisers over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa."
Regarding France's "humanitarian" public rationale, the U.K. report quoted then-French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe' as warning the U.N. about the imminence of Gaddafi engaging in a mass slaughter of civilians: "We have very little time left -- perhaps only a matter of hours."
But the report added, "Subsequent analysis suggested that the immediate threat to civilians was being publicly overstated and that [Gaddafi's] reconquest of cities had not resulted in mass civilian casualties."
The report also found that "Intelligence on the extent to which extremist militant Islamist elements were involved in the anti-Gaddafi rebellion was inadequate," including the participation of Abdelhakim Belhadj and other members of Al Qaeda's affiliate, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. A senior defense official said the jihadist danger was played down during the conflict but "with the benefit of hindsight, that was wishful thinking at best."
The report stated: "The possibility that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion should not have been the preserve of hindsight. Libyan connections with transnational militant extremist groups were known before 2011, because many Libyans had participated in the Iraq insurgency and in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda."
(This year, Belhadj and his jihadist militia were enlisted by U.S. officials to protect the U.S.-U.N.-backed "Government of National Accord," which has failed to win over the support of rival factions, in part, because more secular Libyan leaders distrust Belhadj and resent outsiders deciding who should run Libya.)
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