As Libyan Rebels Close In On Gaddafi, US And Europe Ramp Up Intervention: Opportunists Or Instigators?
02 March 2011By Barry Grey
With dictator Muammar Gaddafi's control over the
country ebbing, the United States and its European
allies are stepping up their intervention into the
Libyan crisis. Their aim is to ensure that any new
regime will be equally subservient to their economic
and geostrategic interests.
Behind the rhetoric about democracy and humanitarian
concerns, Washington and the European powers are
seeking to exploit the brutality of Gaddafi to
condition public opinion to accept a colonial-style
intervention and the reassertion of imperialist
control over the country's oil fields.
Over the weekend, Gaddafi's hold on power was further
eroded by the defection of additional political and
military figures and the capture of more key cities by
the opposition. Most significant was the fall to the
rebels of Zawiyah, an oil port and refinery city
thirty miles to the west of the capital, Tripoli. The
capture of Zawiyah signified the spread of the
rebellion, heretofore centered in the east of the
country, to the west.
Although Gaddafi's army has reportedly surrounded
Zawiyah, as of early Monday it had not attempted to
retake the town of 200,000 people. The areas remaining
under the dictator's control have reportedly been
reduced to Tripoli and Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte.
Gaddafi's dwindling domain has only accelerated the
imperialist drive to intervene, including by military
means. Over the weekend, the British military carried
out two raids into the Libyan desert to transport
British nationals out of the country. The first,
carried out Saturday by SAS special forces using
Hercules planes, rescued 150 people, mostly British
oil workers, and flew them to Malta. The second, on
Sunday, involved three Royal Air Force planes and
picked up another 150 civilians.
On Sunday, the German military carried out its own
raid. Two military planes landed on a private runway
belonging to the Wintershall AG company, evacuating 22
Germans and 112 others and flying them to Crete.
These raids mark the first open use of military assets
in the Libyan crisis, but they are likely to be
followed by more aggressive actions. There are growing
calls in the US and Europe for the imposition of a
no-fly zone over Libya, to be policed to US warplanes,
and other military measures to aid the anti-Gaddafi
forces.
The main concern in Washington is the prospect of
either a protracted civil war, which would further
inflame world oil prices and destabilize other
oil-producing dictatorships in North Africa and the
Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, or a political
vacuum over which the US would exert little influence.
The New York Times published a front-page article
Sunday under the headline "The Vacuum After Qaddafi."
The article noted that the US exerts far less control
over the Libyan army and other institutions than it
does in Egypt and Tunisia, and ended by suggesting the
possibility of a military occupation under the cover
of humanitarian needs.
"Some experts," the Times wrote, "wonder if Libya
might become the first experiment in the use of the
'responsibility to protect'—the idea that a United
Nations force would be deployed to prevent civilian
deaths in the event of widespread violence…
"With the country now split badly between east and
west, an outside protection force would lend time for
Tripoli to reassert itself as the capital and
establish control."
A raft of measures have been taken over the past
several days by the US and Europe to isolate Gaddafi
and pave the way for a major military intervention.
After announcing Friday the closure of the US embassy
in Tripoli and the imposition of unilateral US
sanctions, President Obama on Saturday for the first
time called for Gaddafi to resign. The White House
published an account of a telephone call to German
Chancellor Angela Merkel in which Obama called for
Gaddafi to "leave now."
Obama is to meet Monday in Washington with United
Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to discuss
further actions against the Libyan regime. Secretary
Hillary Clinton is to speak in Geneva before the UN
Human Rights Council, which over the weekend voted
unanimously to suspend Libya's membership.
The United Nations Security Council on Saturday
unanimously passed a resolution imposing economic
sanctions on Libya and referring Gaddafi and his key
aides for prosecution by the International Criminal
Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO secretary general, held an
emergency meeting of NATO ambassadors on Friday to
discuss possible military assistance for evacuation
efforts.
The British Guardian newspaper on Saturday cited
unconfirmed reports that former Prime Minister Tony
Blair had telephoned Gaddafi warning that NATO troops
might be sent in. The claims were made by one of
Gaddafi's sons, Saadi, in a telephone interview from
Tripoli.
The New York Times on Saturday quoted Tom Malinowski,
the director of the Washington office of Human Rights
Watch, as saying, "Even if people aren't explicitly
talking about no-fly zones, the fact that NATO met
today suggests there is more on people's minds than
diplomacy… I sense military contingencies are on the
table." Malinowski has participated in White House
meetings on the Libyan crisis.
The Financial Times on Saturday wrote that European
officials have raised the possibility of armed rescues
of the thousands of EU nationals still stranded in
Libya. The newspaper quoted a "senior EU official" as
saying: "It's one of the possibilities we're working
on. We are in contact with EU member states to see
whether their facilities, civilian and military, can
be deployed for this."
In taped interviews from Cairo broadcast on Sunday's
television talk shows, Republican Senator John McCain
and Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman—who was the
Democratic vice presidential candidate in
2000—attacked Obama for not going far enough in Libya.
They called for a no-fly zone and military aid to the
opposition.
The two noted that while the US had sent only a ferry
to collect American civilians, Britain had sent a
warship and Hercules aircraft.
Later on Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
suggested the administration was open to such moves,
declaring that it was "reaching out" to opposition
groups and was prepared to offer "any kind of
assistance" to Libyans seeking to overthrow the
regime.
The crocodile tears being shed by the US and its
European allies over Gaddafi's atrocities against
protesters are utterly cynical. For days Obama and his
European counterparts were silent over the massacres
carried out by Gaddafi in Benghazi, Tripoli and other
cities. Having established the closest relations with
the regime over the past decade, which had allowed
them free rein to once again exploit Libya's oil
resources, they hoped that Gaddafi would be able to
quickly crush the uprising and restore order.
Only when it became clear that was not about to happen
and the crisis began to seriously disrupt oil
production and spark a panic rise in global market
prices did they shift gears and denounce their former
ally. Obama, Clinton, Sarkozy and company had all
feted the dictator in recent months, following Tony
Blair's 2004 "deal in the sand" with Gaddafi and the
Bush administration's restoration of full diplomatic
relations in 2008.
They had conveniently dropped the issue of Gaddafi's
role in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight
103, which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270
innocent civilians, mainly Americans. Exposing the
fraud of the "war on terror" and its function as a
cover for the aggressive pursuit of US imperialist
interests around the world, Washington converted the
former "mad dog" and "rogue" into an ally in the
anti-terror cause and force for stability in the
region.
Only last November, the International Monetary Fund
issued a glowing report on Libya, praising the regime
for its aggressive pursuit of neoliberal, pro-market
policies. The IMF praised Gaddafi's "continued efforts
to modernize and diversify the economy," commending in
particular "efforts to enhance the role of the private
sector in the economy." These very policies led to
mounting economic hardship for the working class and
rural poor, fueling the social anger that erupted
earlier this month.
Gaddafi is a criminal who deserves to be brought to
justice, but none of the imperialist leaders currently
denouncing him have any standing to point the finger
elsewhere. They are all complicit in wars of
aggression and colonial-style occupations that have
killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and
Afghanistan and are implicated in all of the attendant
crimes, including torture, rendition and indefinite
detention.
The staggering hypocrisy of the US government is
summed up by the fact that it supports bringing
Gaddafi before the International Criminal Court, but
refuses to sign on to the court and rejects its
authority over Americans. It asserts the right of US
officials to commit war crimes with impunity.
In the UN Security Council resolution against Libya
passed Saturday, the US insisted on a clause declaring
that people from countries not signed up to the
International Criminal Court could not be punished by
it for crimes in the Libyan attacks. American
officials insisted on the paragraph to prevent setting
a precedent for prosecution by the ICC of American
soldiers and officials.
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