Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, right, hugs his brother Mohammed during the the funeral of Gaddafi's youngest son Saif Al-Arab, in Tripoli
Antiwar.com, May 2, 2011
Flying unopposed over Libyan
airspace, NATO’s fighter planes bombed the residence of the Gadhafi
family, killing his youngest son and three grandchildren. What a glorious
victory for the defenders of innocent civilians! The NATO-crats, of
course, deny targeting either Gadhafi or his family members: those much-touted
high-tech weapons, with their "precision" targeting capabilities,
seem to have had a very convenient breakdown. But at least one Republican
Senator wasn’t fooled. Lindsey Graham had this
to say:
"I support what NATO did.
I thought this was a good use of the mandate. This is the way to end
this [conflict]. Thousands of people are subject to dying, the longer
this takes. No one in the world is going to regret Gadhafi being replaced,
however you do it. I want to thank NATO for expanding the scope of these
operations."
"A good use of the mandate" – killing three grandsons of the Libyan dictator, all under the age
of 12? And what about that "mandate," which was proclaimed in the
name of preventing civilian deaths in Libya’s civil war? In
the Orwellian logic of "humanitarian" interventionism, raining death
on 12-year-olds is an act of love. Welcome to Bizarro World: we hope
you enjoy your stay.
Because it looks like we’re
going to be trapped in this alternate dimension – where up is down and truth is lies – for quite a long time to come. Instead of crumbling
like all the other Arab despots who face their day of reckoning, Gadhafi
has survived – in some measure, I would argue, because of UN intervention.
Without that, it’s likely the eccentric tyrant – although he might
have temporarily retaken Benghazi – would’ve fallen victim to the
same seismic forces that toppled his neighbors: Ben Ali, in Tunisia,
and Egypt’s Mubarak. His regime was saved by the cavalry – the NATO
bombers that are daily wreaking devastation on the Libyan people.
A thoroughly despicable – and, within the wider Arab world,
hugely unpopular – tinpot dictator is fighting NATO to a draw. That
has to earn him some credit on the Arab street – and in his own country,
where the much-vaunted "tribes" show no signs of abandoning him.
As I predicted from the outset,
the rebellion is a regionalist phenomenon, roughly centered in – but
not confined to – Benghazi and the eastern part of the country. Libya
was never a real country anyway, and so the rapid reversion to the ancient
borders of Tripolitania (in the West) and Cyrenaica (in the East) is
hardly surprising.
Yet the rebels – and their
Western backers – are hardly content with half the pie. They want
the whole thing, and that’s what this war is really about – it is
a war of aggression by the de facto government of eastern Libya against
the pro-Gadhafi Western half. Actually, the Gadhafi forces enjoy the
support of two-thirds of the country if we include the Fezzan region,
the source of many of the black African "mercenaries" Gadhafi is
accused of importing.
This is why the Gadhafi regime
has repeatedly called for a truce. Upon announcing the death of Gadhafi’s
son, Seif, and the three grandchildren, Libyan government spokesman
Moussa Ibrahim put it this
way:
"This was a direct operation
to assassinate the leader of this country. This is not permitted by
international law. It is not permitted by any moral code or principle.
If people claim they want to protect civilians, we have again and again
declared, we are ready for negotiation, ready for road maps for peace;
ready for political transitional periods; ready for elections; ready
for referendum.
"NATO does not care to test our promises. The West does not care to
test our statements. They only care to rob us of our freedom, our wealth,
which is oil, and our right to decide our future as Libyans."
This isn’t just a desperate
ploy to buy time – Gadhafi really thinks he can win a national election,
even one scrutinized in every detail by the UN. That’s a true megalomaniac
for you. Well, then, why not take him up on his offer? After all, if
Gadhafi is really the monster he’s now portrayed as being – as opposed
to the rather rosy portrait of a "reformed" terrorist which took
hold after he came in from the cold – then he’ll lose, big time,
and the problem is solved without further loss of life.
Yet this scenario assumes the
stated motivation behind the UN Security Council resolution authorizing
military action – saving lives – has anything to do with NATO’s
mission, which is nothing less than regime change. British Prime Minister
David Cameron, apparently still suffering the aftereffects of celebrating
The Wedding, defended the attack on the Gadhafi compound
by telling the BBC the UN resolution permitted attacks on "command
and control" targets because "their aim was to prevent a loss
of civilian life by targeting Gadhafi’s war-making machine."
They’re killing civilians
in the name of protecting them: I suppose that’s good enough for government
work.
If not for NATO, Gadhafi might very well
be living in exile by now, writing his memoirs. Thanks to Western intervention,
however – and please don’t tell me how the mighty army of Qatar is fighting alongside us – the Daffy Despot is showing some real staying
power. Just how real remains to be seen, but the balance of forces on
the ground, so far, seems to be perpetually favoring Gadhafi’s loyalists.
This impression, it’s true, is due in part to the propagandistic nature
of most war reporting: somehow, the rebels are always on the
edge of disaster (and in dire need of more NATO assistance), and Gadhafi’s
African mercenaries – pumped up with Viagra, according to our UN ambassador,
Susan Rice – are always on the verge of taking some major city,
murdering the males en masse, and raping all the women.
As has been the case for all
the Arab dictators faced with the wrath of their own suddenly-awakened
people, in Libya attempts to parlay have come from the regime. The Americans,
who once urged restraint on the Egyptian masses – and endorsed Mubarak’s
chosen heir, the former head of the Egyptian spy agency – think they
have learned their lesson, and are now ahead of the game.
The game they are playing is
a very dangerous one, tailor made to generate the sort of lethal "blowback"
we saw on 9/11. Because their game involves lining
up with the very enemy they claim to be fighting worldwide.
Abu Yahya al-Libi, a top al-Qaeda
commander born in Libya, issued a statement supporting the rebels, and
radical Islamists throughout the world are rallying to the cause. The last time we saw this NATO/al-Qaeda alliance in action was in the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, where NATO also intervened
for purportedly "humanitarian" reasons. In the Balkans, al-Qaeda’s
janissaries stood shoulder-to-shoulder with NATO forces, fighting to
establish an Islamic beachhead in the heart of Europe: today the pattern
is being repeated in North Africa.
I am reminded of the first
paragraph of Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris:
"As I complete this book,
U.S., British, and other coalition forces are trying to govern apparently
ungovernable postwar states in Afghanistan and Iraq, while simultaneously
fighting growing Islamist insurgencies in each
– a state of affairs our leaders call victory. In conducting these
activities, and the conventional military campaigns preceding them,
U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic
world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial
but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it
fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s
only indispensable ally."
Scheuer meant this last comment
in a purely metaphorical or objective sense, not that the US leadership
was secretly colluding with bin Laden. This latest confluence of interests,
however, verges on active collaboration – and there is nothing secret
about it. A top rebel commander has admitted – or, rather, boasted – that he is fresh from fighting under al-Qaeda’s banner in
Iraq.
In order to establish his Arab
street cred, President Obama is cuddling up to Libya’s jihadists –
and probably arming them, just like we support and arm Jundallah, the
Sunni terrorist group operating in Iranian Baluchistan. With David Petraeus at the CIA, these kinds of covert wars are doubtless the wave of the
Obama-ite future. The COIN doctrine goes global – and
clandestine. Beyond congressional oversight and beneath the radar of
our mainstream journalists, America’s covert wars are setting us up
for a major conflict.
Prediction: More Republicans are going to suddenly discover the electoral benefits of opposing Obama’s
Libyan gambit, a political hot-potato handed to him by old adversary
Hillary Clinton and opposed by over 70 percent of the American people.
I’ll go further out on a
limb and divine the coming political demise of Lindsey Graham: not all
the warmongering in the world is going to save him from the wrath of
Tea Party types who (rightly) consider him a leading RINO. He’s one
of three US Senators who can be counted on to whoop the loudest for
war at the start of any international crisis, the other two being Joe
Lieberman and John "Boots-on-the-ground" McCain. A more desirable
candidate for involuntary retirement from politics has never set foot
on Capitol Hill.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
Take a look at my commentary on the death of Osama bin Laden here.
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