-
- The conquest and occupation of Libya is first
and foremost a military victory for NATO. Every aspect of the military
offensive was spearheaded and directed by NATO air, sea and ground forces.
The NATO invasion of Libya was basically a response to the "Arab
spring" : the popular uprisings which spread from North Africa to
the Persian Gulf. The NATO assault formed part of a general counter-attack
designed to contain and reverse the popular democratic and anti-imperialist
movements which had ousted or were on the verge of overthrowing US-client
dictators.
-
- Political and military considerations were
foremost in motivating the NATO invasion: As late as May 2009, the U.S.
and European regimes were developing close bilateral military, economic
and security agreements with the Gaddafi regime. According the British
daily, the Independent (9/4/2011), official Libyan documents found in its
Foreign Office described how on December 16, 2003, the US CIA and British
MI6 established close collaboration with the Gaddafi government. The MI6
provided Gaddafi with details on Libyan opposition leaders exiled in England
and even drafted a speech for him as he sought rapprochement with the outside
world.
-
- U.S. Secretary of State Clinton presented
Mutassin Gaddafi to the Washington press during a visit in 2009 stating,
"I am very pleased to welcome Minister Gaddafi to the State Department.
We deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya.
We have many opportunities to deepen and broaden our co-operation and
I am very much looking forward to building on this relationship."(examiner.com
2/26/2011).
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- Between 2004-2010 the largest oil and petroleum service
multinational corporations, including British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton,
Chevron, Conoco and Marathon Oil joined with military-industrial giants
like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, Dow Chemical and Fluor and signed enormous
investments and sales deals with Libya (examiner.com op cit).
-
- In 2009, the U.S. State Department awarded
a $1.5 million dollar grant to train Libyan civilian and government security
forces. The White House budget for 2012 included a grant for training
Libyan security forces. General Dynamics signed a $165 million dollar
deal in 2008 to equip Libya's elite mechanized brigade (examiner.com ibi).
-
- On August 24, 2011 Wikileaks released US embassy cables
from Tripoli, which described the positive assessment a group of leading
Republican senators had made of US-Libyan relations in during their visit
in late 2009. These cables highlighted ongoing security training programs
involving Gaddafi's police and military, as well as the US' strong support
for the regime's repression of radical Islamists, many of whom are now
leading the NATO-backed 'rebel forces' now occupying Tripoli.
-
- What caused the NATO countries to shift abruptly
from a policy of embracing Gaddafi to launching a brutal scorched-earth
invasion of Libya in a matter of months? The key is the popular uprisings,
which threatened Euro-US domination. The near total destruction of Libya,
a secular regime with the highest standard of living in Africa, was meant
to be a lesson, a message from the imperialists to the newly aroused masses
of North Africa, Asia and Latin America: The fate of Libya awaits
any regime which aspires to greater independence and questions the ascendancy
of Euro-American power.
-
- NATO's savage six-month blitz over 30,000 air and
missile assaults on Libyan civil and military institutions - was a response
to those who claimed that the US and the EU were on the "decline"
and that the "empire was in decay". The radical Islamist and
monarchist-led "uprising" in Benghazi during March 2011 was backed
by and served as a pretext for the NATO imperial powers to extend their
counter-offensive on the road to neo-colonial restoration.
-
- NATO's War and the Phony "Rebel Uprising"
-
- Nothing is more obvious than the fact that
the entire war against Libya was in every strategic and material fashion
NATO's war. The casting of the rag-tag collection of monarchists, Islamist
fundamentalists, London and Washington-based ex-pats and disaffected Gaddafi
officials as "rebels" is a pure case of mass media propaganda.
From the beginning the 'rebels' depended completely on the military, political,
diplomatic and media power of NATO, without which the de facto mercenaries
would not have lasted a month, holed up in Benghazi.
-
- A detailed analysis of the main features
of the conquest of Libya confirms this assault as a NATO war.
-
- NATO launched brutal air and sea attacks
destroying the Libyan air force, ships, energy depots, tanks, artillery
and armories and killed and wounded thousands of soldiers, police and civilian
militia fighters. Until NATO's invasion the mercenary 'rebel' ground forces
had not advanced beyond Benghazi and could barely 'hold' territory afterwards.
The 'rebel' mercenaries 'advanced' only behind the withering round-the-clock
air attacks of the NATO offensive.
-
- NATO air strikes were responsible for the
massive destruction of Libyan civilian and defensive military infrastructure,
bombing ports, highways, warehouses, airports, hospitals, electrical and
water plants and neighborhood housing, in a war of 'terror' designed to
'turn' the loyalist mass base against the Gaddafi government. The mercenaries
did not have popular backing among Libyan civilians, but NATO brutality
weakened active opposition against the 'rebel' mercenaries.
-
- NATO won key diplomatic support for the invasion
by securing UN resolutions, mobilizing their client rulers in the Arab
League, procuring US mercenary trained 'legionnaires' from Qatar and the
financial backing of the rich rabble in the Gulf. NATO forced 'cohesion'
among the feuding clans of self-appointed 'rebel' mercenary leaders via
its ("freezing") seizure of overseas Libyan government assets
amounting to billions of dollars. Thus the financing, arming, training
and advising by "Special Forces" were all under NATO control.
-
-
NATO imposed economic sanctions, cutting off Libya's income from oil sales..
NATO ran an intensive propaganda campaign parading the imperial offensive
as a "rebel uprising"; disguising the blistering bombardment
of a defenseless anti-colonial army as 'humanitarian intervention' in defense
of 'pro-democracy civilians'. The centrally choreographed mass media blitz
extended far beyond the usual liberal circles, to convince 'progressive'
journalists and their newspapers, as well as intellectuals to paint the
imperial mercenaries as 'rebels' and to condemn the heroic 6-month resistance
of the Libyan army and people against foreign aggression. The pathologically
racist Euro-US propaganda published lurid images of Libyan government troops
(often portrayed as 'black mercenaries') receiving massive quantities of
'Viagra' from Gadhafi while their own families and homes were, in fact,
under aerial assault and blockade by NATO.
-
- The main contribution of the mercenary 'conquerors'
in this grand production was to provide photo opportunities of rag-tag
'rebels' waving rifles in Pentagon-style Che Guevara poses riding around
in pickup trucks arresting and brutalizing African migrant workers and
black Libyans. The mercenary 'liberators' triumphantly entered Libyan
cities and towns, which were already scorched and devastated by the NATO
colonial air force. Needless to say the mass media 'adored' them.
-
- In the aftermath of NATO's destruction, the
'rebel' mercenaries showed their true talents as death squads: They organized
the systematic execution of "suspected Gadfafi supporters" and
the pillage of homes, stores, banks and public institutions related to
the defeated regime. To "secure" Tripoli and snuff out any expression
of anti-colonial resistance, the 'rebel' mercenaries carry out summary
executions especially of black Libyans and sub-Saharan African workers
and their families. The "chaos" in Tripoli described by the
mass media is due to the 'self-styled liberation' forces running amok.
The only quasiorganized forces in Tripoli appear to be the Al Qaeda-linked
militants, NATO's erstwhile allies.
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- Consequences of the NATO Conquest of Libya
-
- According to 'rebel' mercenary technocrats,
NATO's policy of systematic destruction will cost Libya at least a 'lost
decade'. This is an optimistic assessment of how long 'reconstruction'
will take for Libya to regain the economic levels of February 2011. The
major petroleum companies have already lost hundreds of millions in profits
and over the decade are expected to lose billions more due to the flight,
assassination and jailing of thousands of experienced Libyan and foreign
experts, skilled immigrant workers and technical specialists in all fields,
especially in view of the destruction of Libyan infrastructure and telecommunication
systems.
-
- Sub-Sahara Africa will suffer a huge set-back with the
cancellation of the proposed 'Bank of Africa', which Gaddafi was developing
as an alternative source of investment finance and the destruction of his
alternative communication system for Africa. The process of re-colonization
involving imperial rule via NATO and UN mercenary 'peace keepers' will
be chaotic given the inevitable strife among hostile armed Islamist fundamentalists,
monarchists, neo-colonial technocrats, tribal warlords and clans as they
carve up their private fiefdoms. Intra-imperial rivalries and local political
claimants to the oil wealth will further enhance the 'chaos' and degrade
civilian life, in a nation which had once boasted the highest per capita
income and standard of living in Africa. Complex irrigation and petroleum
networks, developed under Gaddafi and destroyed by NATO, will remain in
shambles. As the example of Iraq has vividly proven, NATO is better at
destroying than constructing a modern secular state rooted in a modern
civil bureaucracy, universal free public education, secular judicial system
and modern health services. The US policy of rule and ruin reigns supreme
in NATO's juggernaut.
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- Motivation for the Invasion
-
- What motivated NATO to initiate a massive,
six-month long aerial bombardment of Libya, followed by invasion and crimes
against humanity? Civilian deaths and the widespread destruction of Libyan
civil society by NATO flies in the face of its claims that the air assaults
were meant to "protect civilians" from imminent Gaddafi-led genocide,
'rebel' claims which were never substantiated. Bombing Libya's critical
economic infrastructure allows us to categorically conclude that the NATO
assault has little to do with 'economic rationality' or any such consideration.
The primary motivation for NATO's actions can be found in earlier policies
related to a spring counter-offensive against the mass popular movements
that overthrew US-EU puppets in Egypt and Tunisia and were threatening
client regimes in Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere.
-
- Despite the fact that the US-NATO were already
engaged in several colonial wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and
Somalia) and Western public opinion had been demanding withdrawal in light
of the costs, Western imperial leaders felt too much was at stake and calculated
that losses could be minimized. NATO's overwhelming mastery of the air
and sea made short work of Libya's puny military defense capability, allowing
them to bomb the cities, ports and vital infrastructure with impunity and
enforce a total economic blockade. They calculated that massive bombing
would terrorize the Libyan people into submission and bring about a quick
colonial victory without any NATO military losses, the prime concern of
Western public opinion, and permit a triumphant 'rebel' mercenary army
to march into Tripoli.
-
- The Arab popular rebellions were the central
concern and the motor force behind NATO's destruction of Libya. These
mass popular uprisings had toppled the long-standing pillars of US-Israel-EU
dominance in the Middle East. The fall of the Egyptian dictator Hosni
Mubarak and his Tunisian counterpart Ben Ali sent tremors through the imperial
foreign offices. These successful uprisings had the immediate ripple effect
of inspiring similar movements throughout the region. Bahrain, housing
the key naval base for the US navy in the Middle East and neighboring Saudi
Arabia (the US key strategic ally in the Arab world), witnessed a prolonged
massive uprising of civil society, while Yemen ruled by the US- puppet
Ali Saleh, faced mass popular movements and militant resistance. Morocco
and Algeria were experiencing popular demands for democracy. The common
thread in the Arab peoples' movements was their demands to end EU, US and
Israeli domination of the region, an end to massive corruption and nepotism,
free elections and a solution to wide-spread unemployment via large-scale
job programs. As anti-colonial movements grew in breadth and intensity
their demands radicalized from political to social democracy, from a democratic
to an anti-imperialist foreign policy. Workers' demands were enforced
by strikes and calls for the prosecution of repressive police and internal
security and military officials guilty of crimes against their citizens.
-
- The U.S., E.U. and Israel were caught by surprise
their intelligence agencies so deeply embedded in the smelly crevices of
their clients' secret police institutions failed to detect the popular
explosions. The popular uprisings came at a critical and inopportune moment,
especially for the US where domestic support for NATO wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan had declined sharply given the economic crises and major social
cutbacks to pay for these wars. Moreover, in Iraq and Afghanistan the
US-NATO troops were losing ground: The Taliban was, in effect, the real
'shadow government'. Pakistan, despite its puppet regime and compliant
generals, faced overwhelming popular opposition to the air war against
its citizens in frontier villages and towns. The US drone strikes killing
militants and civilians were answered with the sabotage of vital transport
supplying the occupation forces in Afghanistan. Faced with the deteriorating
global situation, the NATO powers, decided that they needed to counter-attack
in the most decisive and visible manner by destroying an independent, secular
regime like Libya and thereby re-affirming their global supremacy, countering
the image of defeat and retreat and, above all, re-energizing the "declining
imperial power".
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- The Imperial Counter-Attack
-
- The US led the way in its counter-offensive
in Egypt, by backing the power grab by the military junta led by Mubarak
loyalists, who then proceeded to disperse and repress the pro-democracy
and workers movements and to end all talk of restructuring the economy.
A pro-NATO collective dictatorship of generals replaced the personal autocratic
rule of Hosni Mubarak. The NATO powers provided "emergency"
billions to float the new regime and 'derail' the Egyptian people's march
to democracy. In Tunisia a similar process took hold: The EU, especially
France and the US, backed a reshuffling of the ousted regime bringing to
the fore a new/old cast of neo-colonial politicians. They plied them with
funds, insuring that the military-police apparatus remained intact despite
continued mass discontent with the conformist policies of the 'new/old
regime.
-
- In Bahrain and Yemen, the NATO powers followed
a dual track, unsure of the outcome between the massive pro-democracy movements
and the pro-imperial autocrats. In Bahrain, the West called for 'reform'
and 'dialogue' with the majority Shia population and a peaceful resolution,
while continuing to arm and protect the Bahraini royalty all the
while looking for a pliant alternative if the incumbent puppet was overthrown.
The NATO-backed Saudi invasion of Bahrain in support of the dictatorship
and the subsequent wave of terror effectively showed West's true intentions.
In Yemen the NATO powers continued to support the brutal Ali Saleh regime.
-
- Meanwhile the NATO powers were exploiting
internal discontent in Syria by arming and providing diplomatic support
to the Islamic fundamentalists and their minority neo-liberal allies in
an effort to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. Thousands of Syrian
civilians, police and soldiers have been killed in this simmering civil
war, which NATO propaganda presents as a case of state terror against 'peaceful
civilians', ignoring the killing of soldiers and civilians by armed Islamists
and the very real threat to Syria's secular population and religious minorities.
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- The Counter-Offensive and NATO's Invasion of Libya
-
- The destruction and invasion of Libya reversed
seven years of accommodation and co-operation with Gaddifi. There were
no 'incidents' in Libya or elsewhere that had threatened the NATO countries'
economic and military interests. Libya was still an independent country,
pursuing a pro-African agenda which had spearheaded and funded the establishment
of an independent regional bank and communications system designed to bypass
IMF and World Bank control. Libya's close ties to all the major NATO oil
companies and to Wall Street investment banks as well as its ongoing bilateral
military programs with the US did not shield it from the NATO's attack.
Libya was deliberately destroyed by a 6-month campaign of relentless
bombing by NATO air and naval forces to serve as an example to the Arab
popular movements: NATO's message to the Arab pro-democracy movements was
that it was prepared to launch new offensive wars with the same devastating
consequences as the Libyan people just endured; the imperial powers were
not in decline and any independent anti-colonial regime would suffer the
same fate. NATO's message to the African Union was clear: There will
be no independent regional bank organized by Gaddafi or anyone else. There
is no alternative to imperial banks, the IMF or the World Bank.
-
- Through the devastation of Libya, the West
was telling the Third World that, contrary to the pundits who chattered
about 'the decline of the US empire', NATO was willing to use overwhelming
and genocidal military power to establish puppet regimes, no matter how
backward, vicious and regressive the puppets, because they will ultimately
obey NATO and answer to the White House.
-
- NATO's invasion and destruction of a secular
modern republic, like Libya, which had used its oil wealth to develop Libyan
society, was a stern message to democratic popular movements. Any independent
Third World regime can be rolled back; colonial puppet regimes can be foisted
onto a devastated people; the end of colonialism is not inevitable, imperial
rule is back.
-
- NATO's invasion of Libya sends a message
to freedom fighters everywhere: There is a high cost to independence;
acting outside of imperial channels, even if only to a limited degree,
can bring swift destruction. Moreover, the NATO war on Libya demonstrates
to all nationalist regimes that making concessions to Western economic,
political and military interests-- as Gaddafi's sons and their neo-liberal
entourage had pursued full accommodation---does not offer security. In
fact concessions may have encouraged imperial penetration. The West's burgeoning
ties with Libyan officials facilitated their defections and promised an
easy victory over Tripoli. The NATO powers believed that with a regional
uprising in Benghazi, a handful of defectors from the Gaddafi regime and
their military control of the air and sea, Libya would be an easy victory
on the way to a widespread rollback of the Arab Spring.
-
- The "cover" of an orchestrated
regional military-civilian "uprising" and the imperial mass media
propaganda blitz against the Libyan government was sufficient to convince
the majority of western leftist intellectuals to take up the cudgels for
the mercenary 'rebels": Samir Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Lowy,
Juan Cole and many others backed the mercenary "rebels" demonstrating
the irrelevance and bankruptcy of the remnants of the old left.
-
- The Long Term, Large Scale Consequences of NATOs War
-
- The invasion and conquest of Libya marks
a new phase in Western imperialism's drive to reassert its primacy in the
Arab-Islamic world. The ongoing offensive is clearly evident in the mounting
pressures, sanctions, and arming of the Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad,
the ongoing consolidation of the Egyptian military junta and the demobilization
of the pro-democracy movement in Tunisia. How far "backwards"
the process can be pushed depends on the revitalization and regrouping
of the pro-democracy movements, currently in ebb.
-
- Unfortunately, NATO's victory over Libya
will strengthen the arguments of the militarist wings of the US and EU
ruling class who claim that the 'military option' brings results, that
the only policy that "the anti-colonial Arabs" understand is
force. The Libyan outcome will strengthen the hand of policymakers who
favor a continued long-term US-NATO presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and
promote a military offensive against Iran and Syria. Israel has already
capitalized on NATO's victory against Gaddafi via its expansion of huge
colonial settlements in the West Bank, increasing bombing and missile raids
on Gaza, a major naval and army build-up in the Red Sea region adjoining
Egypt and confrontational posturing toward Turkey.
-
- As of early September, members of the African
Union, especially South Africa, have yet to recognize the mercenary "transition"
regime imposed by NATO on Libya. Aside from the Libyan people, Sub-Saharan
Africa will be the biggest immediate loser in the overthrow of Gaddafi.
Libya's generous aid, grants and loans, bought the African states a degree
of independence from the harsh conditions of the IMF, World Bank and Western
bankers. Gaddafi was a major sponsor and backer of regional integration
including the African Union. His large scale development programs,
especially oil and water infrastructure and construction projects, employed
hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan African immigrant workers and specialists
who remitted billions to their home countries, helping the balance of payments
and reducing deficits and poverty at home. In place of Gaddafi's positive
economic contribution, Africa now faces Tripoli transformed into a colonial
outpost, fortifying US military command in Africa and a new push to strengthen
military ties with the empire.
-
- However, beyond the present-day celebrations
of their imperial military success in Libya, the war only exacerbates the
weakening of Western economies by diverting scarce domestic resources to
wage prolonged wars with no decisive victories. Ongoing social cuts and
harsh austerity programs have undercut any ruling class efforts to whip
up phony mass chauvinist celebrations for "democratic victories over
tyrants". The naked aggression against Libya has heightened Russian,
Chinese and Venezuelan security concerns. Russia and China will veto any
UN Security Council sanctions on Syria. Venezuela and Russia are signing
new multi-billion dollar military co-operation agreements, strengthening
Caracas's military defense in the wake of the Libyan invasion.
-
- For all the ruling class and mass media euphoria,
the 'win' over Libya, grotesque and criminal in the destruction of Libyan
secular society and the ongoing brutalization of black Libyans, does not
solve the profound economic crises in the EU-US. It does not affect China's
growing competitive advantages over its western competitors. It does not
end US-Israeli isolation faced with an imminent world-wide recognition
of Palestine as an independent state. The absence of left-wing western
intellectual solidarity for independent Third World nations, evident in
their support for the imperial-based mercenary "rebels" is more
than compensated by the emergence of a radical new generation of left-wing
activists in South Africa, Chile, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere.
These are youth, whose solidarity with anti-colonial regimes is based
on their own experience with exploitation, "marginalization"
(unemployment) and repression at home.
-
- Is it too much to hope that a War Crimes
Tribunal could be organized to prosecute NATO leaders for crimes against
humanity, for genocide against the people of Libya? Can the brutal link
between costly imperial wars abroad and increasing austerity and domestic
decay lead to the revival of an anti-imperialist peace movement based on
withdrawal of imperial troops abroad and public domestic investments for
jobs, health and education for the working and middle class?
-
- If the destruction and occupation of Libya
marks a time of infamy for the NATO powers, it also establishes a new awareness
that a people can struggle and resist 6 months of intense, massive bombings
from all the NATO powers. Perhaps when their heroic example becomes clear
and the fog of media propaganda is lifted, a new emerging generation of
fighters can vindicate the battle of Libya, as a continuation of the struggle
for the definitive emancipation of the Afro-Arab and Islamic peoples from
the yoke of Western imperialism.
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