There's No Business Like War Business: The
Anglo-French-American "Humanitarian" Bombing
07 April 2011By Pepe Escobar
Lies, hypocrisy and hidden agendas. This is what
United States President Barack Obama did not dwell on
when explaining his Libya doctrine to America and the
world. The mind boggles with so many black holes
engulfing this splendid little war that is not a war
(a "time-limited, scope-limited military action", as
per the White House) - compounded with the inability
of progressive thinking to condemn, at the same time,
the ruthlessness of the Muammar Gaddafi regime and the
Anglo-French-American "humanitarian" bombing.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 has
worked like a Trojan horse, allowing the
Anglo-French-American consortium - and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - to become the
UN's air force in its support of an armed uprising.
Apart from having nothing to do with protecting
civilians, this arrangement is absolutely illegal in
terms of international law. The inbuilt endgame, as
even malnourished African kids know by now, but has
never been acknowledged, is regime change.
Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard of Canada, NATO's
commander for Libya, may insist all he wants that the
mission is purely designed to protect civilians. Yet
those "innocent civilians" operating tanks and firing
Kalashnikovs as part of a rag-tag wild bunch are in
fact soldiers in a civil war - and the focus should be
on whether NATO from now on will remain their air
force, following the steps of the
Anglo-French-American consortium. Incidentally, the
"coalition of the wiling" fighting Libya consists of
only 12 NATO members (out of 28) plus Qatar. This has
absolutely nothing to do with an "international
community".
The full verdict on the UN-mandated no-fly zone will
have to wait for the emergence of a "rebel" government
and the end of the civil war (if it ends soon). Then
it will be possible to analyze how Tomahawking and
bombing was ever justified; why civilians in Cyrenaica
were "protected" while those in Tripoli were
Tomahawked; what sort of "rebel" motley crew was
"saved"; whether this whole thing was legal in the
first place; how the resolution was a cover for regime
change; how the love affair between the Libyan
"revolutionaries" and the West may end in bloody
divorce (remember Afghanistan); and which Western
players stand to immensely profit from the wealth of a
new, unified (or balkanized) Libya.
For the moment at least, it's quite easy to identify
the profiteers.
The Pentagon
Pentagon supremo Robert Gates said this weekend,
with a straight face, there are only three repressive
regimes in the whole Middle East: Iran, Syria and
Libya. The Pentagon is taking out the weak link -
Libya. The others were always key features of the
neo-conservative take-out/evil list. Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, Bahrain, etc are model democracies.
As for this "now you see it, now you don't" war, the
Pentagon is managing to fight it not once, but twice.
It started with Africom - established under the George
W Bush administration, beefed up under Obama, and
rejected by scores of African governments, scholars
and human rights organizations. Now the war is
transitioning to NATO, which is essentially Pentagon
rule over its European minions.
This is Africom's first African war, conducted up to
now by General Carter Ham out of his headquarters in
un-African Stuttgart. Africom, as Horace Campbell,
professor of African American studies and political
science at Syracuse University puts it, is a scam;
"fundamentally a front for US military contractors
like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. US
military planners who benefit from the revolving door
of privatization of warfare are delighted by the
opportunity to give Africom credibility under the
facade of the Libyan intervention."
Africom's Tomahawks also hit - metaphorically - the
African Union (AU), which, unlike the Arab League,
cannot be easily bought by the West. The Arab Gulf
petro-monarchies all cheered the bombing - but not
Egypt and Tunisia. Only five African countries are not
subordinated to Africom; Libya is one of them, along
with Sudan, Ivory Coast, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.
NATO
NATO's master plan is to rule the Mediterranean as
a NATO lake. Under these "optics" (Pentagon speak) the
Mediterranean is infinitely more important nowadays as
a theater of war than AfPak.
There are only three out of 20 nations on or in the
Mediterranean that are not full members of NATO or
allied with its "partnership" programs: Libya, Lebanon
and Syria. Make no mistake; Syria is next. Lebanon is
already under a NATO blockade since 2006. Now a
blockade also applies to Libya. The US - via NATO - is
just about to square the circle.
Saudi Arabia
What a deal. King Abdullah gets rid of his eternal
foe Gaddafi. The House of Saud - in trademark abject
fashion - bends over backwards for the West's benefit.
The attention of world public opinion is diverted from
the Saudis invading Bahrain to smash a legitimate,
peaceful, pro-democracy protest movement.
The House of Saud sold the fiction that "the Arab
League" as a whole voted for a no-fly zone. That is a
lie; out of 22 members, only 11 were present at the
vote; six are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC), of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. The House
of Saud just needed to twist the arms of three more.
Syria and Algeria were against it. Translation; only
nine out of 22 Arab countries voted for the no-fly
zone.
Now Saudi Arabia can even order GCC head Abdulrahman
al-Attiyah to say, with a straight face, "the Libyan
system has lost its legitimacy." As for the
"legitimate" House of Saud and the al-Khalifas in
Bahrain, someone should induct them into the
Humanitarian Hall of Fame.
Qatar
The hosts of the 2022 soccer World Cup sure know
how to clinch a deal. Their Mirages are helping to
bomb Libya while Doha gets ready to market eastern
Libya oil. Qatar promptly became the first Arab nation
to recognize the Libyan "rebels" as the only
legitimate government of the country only one day
after securing the oil marketing deal.
The 'rebels'
All the worthy democratic aspirations of the Libyan
youth movement notwithstanding, the most organized
opposition group happens to be the National Front for
the Salvation of Libya - financed for years by the
House of Saud, the CIA and French intelligence. The
rebel "Interim Transitional National Council" is
little else than the good ol' National Front, plus a
few military defectors. This is the elite of the
"innocent civilians" the "coalition" is "protecting".
Right on cue, the "Interim Transitional National
Council" has got a new finance minister, US-educated
economist Ali Tarhouni. He disclosed that a bunch of
Western countries gave them credit backed by Libya's
sovereign fund, and the British allowed them to access
$1.1 billion of Gaddafi's funds. This means the
Anglo-French-American consortium - and now NATO - will
only pay for the bombs. As war scams go this one is
priceless; the West uses Libya's own cash to finance a
bunch of opportunists Libyan rebels to fight the
Libyan government. And on top of it the Americans, the
Brits and the French feel the love for all that
bombing. Neo-cons must be kicking themselves; why
couldn't former US deputy defense secretary Paul
Wolfowitz come up with something like this for Iraq
2003?
The French
Oh la la, this could be material for a Proustian
novel. The top spring collection in Paris catwalks is
the President Nicolas Sarkozy fashion show - a no-fly
zone model with Mirage/Rafale air strike accessories.
This fashion show was masterminded by Nouri Mesmari,
Gaddafi's chief of protocol, who defected to France in
October 2010. The Italian secret service leaked to
selected media outlets how he did it. The role of the
DGSE, the French secret service, has been more or less
explained on paid website Maghreb Confidential.
Essentially, the Benghazi revolt coq au vin had been
simmering since November 2010. The cooks were Mesmari,
air force colonel Abdullah Gehani, and the French
secret service. Mesmari was called "Libyan WikiLeak",
because he spilled over virtually every one of
Gaddafi's military secrets. Sarkozy loved it - furious
because Gaddafi had cancelled juicy contracts to buy
Rafales (to replace his Mirages now being bombed) and
French-built nuclear power plants.
That explains why Sarkozy has been so gung ho into
posing as the new Arab liberator, was the first leader
of a European power to recognize the "rebels" (to the
disgust of many at the European Union), and was the
first to bomb Gaddafi's forces.
This busts open the role of shameless self-promoting
philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, who's now frantically
milking in the world's media that he phoned Sarkozy
from Benghazi and awakened his humanitarian streak.
Either Levy is a patsy, or a convenient "intellectual"
cherry added to the already-prepared bombing cake.
Terminator Sarkozy is unstoppable. He has just warned
every single Arab ruler that they face Libya-style
bombing if they crack down on protesters. He even said
that the Ivory Coast was "next". Bahrain and Yemen, of
course, are exempt. As for the US, it is once again
supporting a military coup (it didn't work with Omar
"Sheikh al-Torture" Suleiman in Egypt; maybe it will
work in Libya).
Al-Qaeda
The oh so convenient bogeyman resurfaces. The
Anglo-French-American consortium - and now NATO - are
(again) fighting alongside al-Qaeda, represented by
al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQM).
Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi - who has
fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan -
extensively confirmed to Italian media that he had
personally recruited "around 25" jihadis from the
Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against the US in
Iraq; now "they are on the front lines in Adjabiya".
This after Chad's president Idriss Deby stressed that
AQM had raided military arsenals in Cyrenaica and may
be now holding quite a few surface-to-air missiles. In
early March, AQM publicly supported the "rebels". The
ghost of Osama bin Laden must be pulling a Cheshire
cat; once again he gets the Pentagon to work for him.
The water privatizers
Few in the West may know that Libya - along with
Egypt - sits over the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer; that
is, an ocean of extremely valuable fresh water. So
yes, this "now you see it, now you don't" war is a
crucial water war. Control of the aquifer is priceless
- as in "rescuing" valuable natural resources from the
"savages".
This Water Pipelineistan - buried underground deep in
the desert along 4,000 km - is the Great Man-Made
River Project (GMMRP), which Gaddafi built for $25
billion without borrowing a single cent from the IMF
or the World Bank (what a bad example for the
developing world). The GMMRP supplies Tripoli,
Benghazi and the whole Libyan coastline. The amount of
water is estimated by scientists to be the equivalent
to 200 years of water flowing down the Nile.
Compare this to the so-called three sisters - Veolia
(formerly Vivendi), Suez Ondeo (formerly Generale des
Eaux) and Saur - the French companies that control
over 40% of the global water market. All eyes must
imperatively focus on whether these pipelines are
bombed. An extremely possible scenario is that if they
are, juicy "reconstruction" contracts will benefit
France. That will be the final step to privatize all
this - for the moment free - water. From shock
doctrine to water doctrine.
Well, that's only a short list of profiteers - no one
knows who'll get the oil - and the natural gas - in
the end. Meanwhile, the (bombing) show must go on.
There's no business like war business.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC30Ak01.html
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