The online journal Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is hosting a series of commentaries from left-wing groups and commentators from around the world on the crucial question of whether or not to support the US-NATO military intervention in Libya.
A number of questions have arisen with the intervention, including how progressives outside Libya should respond to calls from Libyan rebels for a “no-fly zone” for protection; whether the Western intervention was a necessary, and lesser, evil than a potential bloodbath carried out by Gaddafi in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi; and whether the action advances or weakens the democratic revolution in Libya and the Arab world.
It includes the “open letter to the left” in support of the intervention by progressive journalist Juan Cole. Cole says: “I am unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on, and glad that the UNSC-authorised intervention has saved them from being crushed … Assuming that NATO’s UN-authorised mission in Libya really is limited (it is hoping for 90 days), and that a foreign military occupation is avoided, the intervention is probably a good thing on the whole …”
Socialist author and commentator Gilbert Achcar raises the need to debate the Libyan intervention as a specific case. He says: “Does it mean that we had and have to support UNSC resolution 1973? Not at all. This was a very bad and dangerous resolution, precisely because it didn't define enough safeguards against transgressing the mandate of protecting the Libyan civilians.
“The resolution leaves too much room for interpretation, and could be used to push forward an imperialist agenda going beyond protection into meddling into Libya's political future. It could not be supported, but must be criticised for its ambiguities.
“But neither could it be opposed, in the sense of opposing the no-fly zone and giving the impression that one doesn't care about the civilians and the uprising. We could only express our strong reservations.”
It also includes the statement by the Australian Search Foundation Committee that “supports the UN Security Council decision to call for a ‘no-fly’ zone and other measures to protect civilians in the civil conflict going on in Libya”.
It says that “as long as the National Transitional Council keeps foreign military forces out of the Libyan territory, and the military forces implementing the UN decision respect the sovereignty of the Libyan people, then the military action under the UN Security Council decision is justified and should be supported”.
Links has also posted a number of replies to Achcar and Cole. Phyllis Bennis and Vijay Prashad respond to Cole’s open letter. Kevin Ovenden, a member of the British anti-war party Respect, and Alex Callinicos, a leader of the British Socialist Workers Party, respond to Achcar.
Other articles on Libya include US socialist Barry Sheppard looking at the role of the left-wing Latin American governments organised into the Boliviarian Alternative of the Americas.
There are also statements on the war from left parties around the world.
Comments
Anonymous replied on Permalink
Hi Bob's office folk,
I have very little hope of your actually bringing this to Bob's attention.
But for your information the US/Israeli 'ready for a color revolution' attitude and stacking the part of the country nearest to the Egyptian border with CIA and MI6 operatives and US French and UK undercover special forces had been operational for many months before the genuine uprising in Egypt.
Preceding this they had been running a low level Gaddafi demonization through their global msm for many years. Demonization is an essential precursor to 'liberation' in the style of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to mention only some of the major. ones in the last thirty years.
I knew that this was the methodology in action in 1990 when I joined the Gulf Peace Team in Iraq at the frontier in the first Iraq war. Some weeks before I had asked Bob in a meeting in Davey street to join us and he gave that possibility a lot of consideration before regretfully saying because of unbreakable commitments that he couldn't do it.
But it looks like Bob and Christine swallowed the 'demon murdering innocent civilians' line this time and gave the party's imprimatur to approval of the no fly zone which they should have known is US code for bombing a country back to the stone age before their agents take it over. If our foreign policy is to be as unsound as our environmental policy is sound one is going to cancel out the other in the long run as the party positions itself for government in its own right with its own complete platform.
Dozens of independents political analysts have been saying this about the demonization and then post invasion Balkanized proposed for Libya. I'll paste just one of these respectable and informed sources below..
Jack Lomax
The Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics
By James Petras and Robin E. Abaya
UQ==>Global Research, March 30, 2011
Introduction
Many critics of the ongoing Euro-US wars in the Middle East and, now, North Africa, have based their arguments on clichés and generalizations devoid of fact. The most common line heard in regard to the current US-Euro war on Libya is that itâs âall about oilâ° Ë the goal is the seizure of Libyaâs oil wells.
On the other hand Euro ËU.S, government spokespeople defend the war by claiming itâs âall about saving civilian lives in the face of genocideâ°, calling it âhumanitarian interventionâ°.
Following the lead of their imperial powers, most of what passes for the Left in the US and Europe, ranging from Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyists,Greens and other assorted progressives claim they see and support a revolutionary mass uprising of the Libyan people, and not a few have called for military intervention by the imperial powers, or the same thing, the UN, to help the âLibyan revolutionariesâ° defeat the Gaddafi dictatorship.
These arguments are without foundation and belie the true nature of US-UK-French imperial power, expansionist militarism, as evidenced in all the ongoing wars over the past decade (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.). What is much more revealing about the militarist intervention in Libya is that the major countries, which refused to engage in the War, operate via a very different form of global expansion based on economic and market forces. China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Germany, the most dynamic capitalist countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East are fundamentally opposed to the self-styled âalliedâ° military response against the Libyan government - because Gaddafi represents no threat to their security and they already have full access to the oil and a favorable investment climate. Besides, these economically dynamic countries see no prospect for a stable, progressive or democratic Libyan government emerging from the so-called Årebelâ leaders, who are disparate elites competing for power and Western favor.
(1) The Six Myths about Libya: Right and Left
The principle imperial powers and their mass media mouthpieces claim they are bombing Libya for âhumanitarian reasonsâ°. Their recent past and current military interventions present a different picture: The intervention in Iraq resulted in well over a million civilian deaths, four million refugees and the systematic destruction of a complex society and its infrastructure, including its water supplies and sewage treatment, irrigation, electricity grid, factories, not to mention research centers, schools, historical archives, museums and Iraqâs extensive social welfare system.
A worse disaster followed the invasion of Afghanistan. What was trumpeted as a Åhumanitarian interventionâ to liberate Afghan women and drive out the Taliban resulted in a human catastrophe for the Afghan people.
The road to imperial barbarism in Iraq began with Åsanctionsâ, progressed to Åno fly zonesâ, then de facto partition of the north, invasion and foreign occupation and the unleashing of sectarian warfare among the Åliberatedâ Iraqi death squads.
Equally telling, the imperial assault against Yugoslavia in the 1990âs, trotted out as the great âhumanitarian warâ° to stop genocide, led to a 40-day aerial bombardment and destruction of Belgrade and other major cities, the imposition of a gangster terrorist regime (KLA) in Kosovo, the near-total ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian residents from Kosovo and the construction of the largest US military base on the continent (Camp Bondsteel).
The bombing of Libya has already destroyed major civilian infrastructure, airports, roads, seaports and communication centers, as well as Åmilitaryâ targets. The blockade of Libya and military attacks have driven out scores of multi-national corporations and led to the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Asian, Eastern European, Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and North African skilled and unskilled immigrant workers and specialists of all types, devastating the economy and creating, virtually overnight, massive unemployment, bread-lines and critical gasoline shortages. Moreover, following the logic of previous imperial military interventions, the seemingly Årestrainedâ call to patrol the skies via âno fly zoneâ°, has led directly to bombing civilian as well as military targets on the ground, and is pushing to overthrow the legitimate government. The current imperial warmongers leading the attack on Libya, just like their predecessors, are not engaged in anything remotely resembling a humanitarian mission: they are destroying the fundamental basis of the civilian lives they claim to be saving Ë or as an earlier generation of American generals would claim in Vietnam, they are Ådestroying the villages in order to save themâ.
(2) War for Oil or Oil for Sale?
The Åcriticalâ Leftâs favorite cliché is that the imperial invasion is all about âseizing control of Libyaâs oil and turning it over to their multi-nationalsâ°. This is despite the fact that US, French and British multinationals (as well as their Asian competitors) had already âtaken overâ° millions of acres of Libyan oil fields without dropping a single bomb. For the past decade, âBig Oilâ° had been pumping and exporting Libyan oil and gas and reaping huge profits. Gaddafi welcomed the biggest MNCâs to exploit the oil wealth of Libya from the early 1990âs to the present day. There are more major oil companies doing business in Libya than in most oil producing regions in the world. These include: British Petroleum, with a seven-year contract on two concessions and over $1 billion dollars in planned investments. Each BP concession exploits huge geographic areas of Libya, one the size of Kuwait and the other the size of Belgium (Libyonline.com). In addition, five Japanese major corporations, including Mitsubishi and Nippon Petroleum, Italyâs Eni Gas, British Gas and the US giant Exxon Mobil signed new exploration and exploitation contracts in October 2010. The most recent oil concession signed in January 2010 mainly benefited US oil companies, especially Occidental Petroleum. Other multi-nationals operating in Libya include Royal Dutch Shell, Total (France), Oil India, CNBC (China), Indonesiaâs Pertamina and Norwayâs Norsk Hydro (BBC News, 10/03/2005).
Despite the economic sanctions against Libya, imposed by US President Reagan in 1986, US multinational giant, Halliburton, had secured multi-billion dollar gas and oil projects since the 1980âs. During his tenure as CEO of Halliburton, former Defense Secretary Cheney led the fight against these sanctions stating, âas a nation (there is) enormous value having American businesses engaged around the worldâ° (Halliburtonwatch.com). Officially, sanctions against Libya were only lifted under Bush in 2004. Clearly, with all the European and US imperial countries already exploiting Libya oil on a massive scale, the mantra that the âwar is about oilâ° doesnât hold water or oil!
(3) Gaddafi is a Terrorist
In the run-up to the current military assault on Tripoli,the US Treasury Departmentâs (and Israelâs special agent) Stuart Levey, authored a sanctions policy freezing $30 billion dollars in Libyan assets on the pretext that Gaddafi was a murderous tyrant (Washington Post, 3/24/11). However, seven years earlier, Cheney, Bush and Condoleezza Rice had taken Libya off the list of terrorist regimes and ordered Levey and his minions to lift the Reagan-era sanctions.
Every major European power quickly followed suite: Gaddafi was welcomed in European capitals, prime ministers visited Tripoli and Gaddafi reciprocated by unilaterally dismantling his nuclear and chemical weapons programs (BBC, 9/5/2008). Gaddafi became Washingtonâs partner in its campaign against a broad array of groups, political movements and individuals arbitrarily placed on the USâ âterror listâ°, arresting, torturing and killing Al Qaeda suspects, expelling Palestinian militants and openly criticizing Hezbollah, Hamas and other opponents of Israel. The United Nations Human Rights Commission gave the Gaddafi regime a clean bill of health in 2010. In the end Gaddafiâs political Åturnaboutâ, however much celebrated by the Western elite, did not save him from this massive military assault. The imposition of neo-liberal Åreformsâ, his political Åapostasyâ and cooperation in the ÅWar on Terrorâ and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, only weakened the regime. Libya became vulnerable to attack and isolated from any consequential anti-imperialist allies. Gaddafiâs much ballyhooed concessions to the West set his regime up as an easy target for the militarists of Washington, London and Paris, eager for a quick Åvictoryâ.
(4) The Myth of the Revolutionary Masses
The Left, including the mainly electoral social democrat, green and even left-socialist parties of Europe and the US swallowed the entire mass media propaganda package demonizing the Gaddafi regime while lauding the Årebelsâ. Parroting their imperial mentors, the ÅLeftâ justified their support for imperial military intervention in the name of the ârevolutionary Libyan peopleâ°, the âpeace-lovingâ° masses âfighting tyrannyâ° and organizing peoplesâ militias to âliberate their countryâ°. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The center of the armed uprising is Benghazi, longtime monarchist hotbed of tribal supporters and clients of the deposed King Idris and his family. Idris, until he was overthrown by the young firebrand Col. Gaddafi, had ruled Libya with an iron fist over a semi-feudal backwater and was popular with Washington, having given the US its largest air base (Wheeler) in the Mediterranean. Among the feuding leaders of the âtransitional councilâ° in Benghazi (who purport to lead but have few organized followers) one finds neo-liberal expats, who first promoted the Euro-US military invasion envisioning their ride to power on the back of Western missiles .They openly favor dismantling the Libyan state oil companies currently engaged in joint ventures with foreign MNCs. Independent observers have commented on the lack of any clear reformist tendencies, let alone revolutionary organizations or democratic popular movements among the Årebelsâ.
While the US, British and French are firing missiles, loaded with depleted uranium, at the Libyan military and key civilian installations, their Åalliesâ the armed militias in Benghazi, rather than go to battle against the regimeâs armed forces, are busy rounding up, arresting and often executing any suspected members of Gaddafiâs ârevolutionary committeesâ°, arbitrarily labeling these civilians as âfifth columnistsâ°. The top leaders of these ârevolutionaryâ° masses in Benghazi include two recent defectors from what the ÅLeftâ dubs Gaddafiâs âmurderous regimeâ°: Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Justice minister, who prosecuted dissenters up to the day before the armed uprising, Mahmoud Jebri, who was prominent in inviting multi-nationals to take over the oil fields (FT, March 23, 2011, p. 7), and Gaddafiâs former ambassador to India, Ali Aziz al-Eisawa, who jumped ship as soon as it looked like the uprising appeared to be succeeding. These self-appointed Åleadersâ of the rebels who now staunchly support the Euro-US military intervention, were long-time supporters of the Gaddafiâs dictatorship and promoters of MNC takeovers of oil and gas fields. The heads of the ârebelsâ° military council is Omar Hariri and General Abdul Fattah Younis, former head of the Ministry of Interior. Both men have long histories (since 1969) of repressing democratic movements within Libya. Given their unsavory background, it is not surprising that these top level military defectors to the Årebelâ cause have been unable to arouse their troops, mostly conscripts, to engage the loyalist forces backing Gaddafi. They too will have to take ride into Tripoli on the coattails of the Anglo-US-French armed forces.
The anti-Gaddafi forceâs lack of any democratic credentials and mass support is evident in their reliance on foreign imperial armed forces to bring them to power and their subservience to imperial demands. Their abuse and persecution of immigrant workers from Asia, Turkey and especially sub-Sahara Africa, as well as black Libyan citizens, is well documented in the international press. Their brutal treatment of black Libyans, falsely accused of being Gaddafiâs âmercenariesâ° , includes torture, mutilation and horrific executions, does not auger well for the advent of a new democratic order, or even the revival of an economy, which has been dependent on immigrant labor, let alone a unified country with national institutions and a national economy.
The self-declared leadership of the âNational Transitional Councilâ° is not democratic, nationalist or even capable of uniting the country. These are not credible leaders capable of restoring the economy and creating jobs lost as a result of their armed power grab. No one seriously envisions these Åexilesâ, tribalists, monarchists and Islamists maintaining the paternalistic social welfare and employment programs created by the Gaddafi government and which gave Libyans the highest per-capita income in Africa.
(5) Al Qaeda
The greatest geographical concentration of suspected terrorists with links to Al Qaeda just happens to be in the areas dominated by the ârebelsâ° (see Alexander Cockburn: Counterpunch, March 24, 2011). For over a decade Gaddafi has been in the forefront of the fight against Al Qaeda, following his embrace of the Bush-Obama ÅWar on Terrorâ doctrine. These jihadist Libyans, having honed their skills in US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, are now among the ranks of the ârebelsâ° fighting the much more secular Libyan government. Likewise, the tribal chiefs, fundamentalist clerics and monarchists in the East have been active in a âholy warâ° against Gaddafi welcoming arms and air support from the Anglo-French-US âcrusadersâ° - just like the mullahs and tribal chiefs welcomed the arms and training from the Carter-Reagan White House to overthrow a secular regime in Afghanistan. Once again, imperial intervention is based on Åalliancesâ with the most retrograde forces. The composition of the future regime (or regimes, if Libya is divided) is a big question and the prospects of a return to political stability for Big Oil to profitably exploit Libyaâs resources are dubious.
(6) âGenocideâ° or Armed Civil War
Unlike all ongoing mass popular Arab uprisings, the Libyan conflict began as an armed insurrection, directed at seizing power by force. Unlike the autocratic rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, Gaddafi has secured a mass regional base among a substantial sector of the Libyan population. This support is based on the fact that almost two generations of Libyans have benefited from Gaddafiâs petroleum-financed welfare, educational, employment and housing programs, none of which existed under Americaâs favorite, King Idris. Since violence is inherent in any armed uprising, once one picks up the gun to seize power, they lose their claim on Åcivil rightsâ. In armed civil conflicts, civil rights are violated on all sides. Regardless of the Western mediaâs lurid portrayal of Gaddafiâs âAfrican mercenary forcesâ° and its more muted approval of Årevolutionary justiceâ against Gaddafi supporters and government soldiers captured in the rebel strongholds, the rules of warfare should have come into play, including the protection of non-combatants-civilians (including government supporters and officials), as well as protection of Libyan prisoners of war in the areas under NATO-rebel control.
The unsubstantiated Euro-US claim of âgenocideâ° amplified by the mass media and parroted by âleftâ° spokespersons is contradicted by the daily reports of single and double digit deaths and injuries, resulting from urban violence on both sides, as control of cities and towns shifts between the two sides.
Truth is the first casualty of war, and especially of civil war. Both sides have resorted to monstrous fabrications of victories, casualties, monsters and victims.
Demons and angels aside, this conflict began as a civil war between two sets of Libyan elites: An established paternalistic, now burgeoning neo-liberal, autocracy with substantial popular backing versus a western imperialist financed and trained elite, backed by an amorphous group of regional, tribal and clerical chiefs, monarchists and neo-liberal professionals devoid of democratic and nationalist credentials Ë and lacking broad-based mass support.
Conclusion
If not to prevent genocide, grab the oil or promote democracy (via Patriot missiles), what then is the driving force behind the Euro-US imperial intervention?
A clue is in the selectivity of Western military intervention: In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar and Oman ruling autocrats, allied with and backed by Euro-US imperial states go about arresting, torturing and murdering unarmed urban protestors with total impunity. In Egypt and Tunisia, the US is backing a conservative junta of self-appointed civil-military elites in order to block the profound democratic and nationalist transformation of society demanded by the protesters. The Åjuntaâ aims to push through neo-liberal economic âreformsâ° through carefully-vetted pro-Western Åelectedâ officials. While liberal critics may accuse the West of âhypocrisyâ° and âdouble standardsâ° in bombing Gaddafi but not the Gulf butchers, in reality the imperial rulers consistently apply the same standards in each region: They defend strategic autocratic client regimes, which have allowed imperial states to build strategic air force and naval bases, run regional intelligence operations and set up logistical platforms for their ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their future planned conflict with Iran. They attack Gaddafiâs Libya precisely because Gaddafi had refused to actively contribute to Western military operations in Africa and the Middle East.
The key point is that while Libya allows the biggest US-European multi-nationals to plunder its oil wealth, it did not become a strategic geo-political-military asset of the empire. As we have written in many previous essays the driving force of US empire-building is military - and not economic. This is why billions of dollars of Western economic interests and contracts had been sacrificed in the setting up of sanctions against Iraq and Iran Ë with the costly result that the invasion and occupation of Iraq shut down most oil exploitation for over a decade.
The Washington-led assault on Libya, with the majority of air sorties and missiles strikes being carried out by the Obama regime, is part of a more general counter-attack in response to the most recent Arab popular pro-democracy movements. The West is backing the suppression of these pro-democracy movements throughout the Gulf; it finances the pro-imperial, pro-Israel junta in Egypt and it is intervening in Tunisia to ensure that any new regime is âcorrectly alignedâ°. It supports a despotic regime in Algeria as well as Israelâs daily assaults on Gaza. In line with this policy, the West backs the uprising of ex-Gaddafites and right-wing monarchists, confident that the Åliberatedâ Libya will once again provide military bases for the US-European military empire-builders.
In contrast, the emerging market-driven global and regional powers have refused to support this conflict, which jeopardizes their access to oil and threatens the current large-scale oil exploration contracts signed with Gaddafi. The growing economies of Germany, China, Russia, Turkey, India and Brazil rely on exploiting new markets and natural resources all over Africa and the Middle East, while the US, Britain and France spend billions pursuing wars that de-stabilize these markets, destroy infrastructure and foment long-term wars of resistance. The growing market powers recognize that the Libyan ârebelsâ° cannot secure a quick victory or ensure a stable environment for long-term trade and investments. The ârebelsâ°, once in power, will be political clients of their militarist imperial mentors. Clearly, imperial military intervention on behalf of regional separatists seriously threatens these emerging market economies: The US supports ethno-religious rebels in Chinaâs Tibetan province and as well as the Uyghur separatists; Washington and London have long backed the Chechen separatists in the Russian
Caucuses. India is wary of the US military support for Pakistan, which claims Kashmir. Turkey is facing Kurdish separatists who receive arms and safe haven from their US-supplied Iraqi Kurdish counterparts.
The North African precedent of an imperial invasion of Libya on behalf of its separatist clients worries the emerging market-powers. It is also an ongoing threat to the mass-based popular Arab freedom movements. And the invasion sounds the death knell for the US economy and its fragile Årecoveryâ: three ongoing, endless wars will break the budget much sooner than later. Most tragic of all, the Westâs Åhumanitarianâ invasion has fatally undermined genuine efforts by Libyaâs civilian democrats, socialists and nationalists to free their country from both a dictatorship and from imperial-backed reactionaries.