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UN vote clears way for US-NATO attack on Libya

Bill Van Auken | 18.03.2011 10:29 | Repression | Social Struggles | Terror War | Sheffield | World

The United Nations Security Council Thursday night approved a resolution that paves the way for the United States and other major imperialist powers to conduct a direct military intervention in Libya under the pretense of a “humanitarian” mission to protect civilian lives.

The resolution, sponsored by the US, France, Britain and Lebanon, goes far beyond earlier proposals for a no-fly zone, authorizing the use of military force including “all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” These “areas” include Benghazi, the city of one million which remains the sole stronghold of the revolt that began against the Gaddafi dictatorship one month ago. The sole limitation placed by the resolution is its exclusion of “a foreign occupation force on any part of Libyan territory.”

The vote sets the stage for a bombardment of Libya by US, French and British warplanes. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told France-2 Television that military action could begin within hours of the resolution’s approval. And the Associated Press cited an unnamed member of the British Parliament as saying, “British forces were on stand by for air strikes and could be mobilized as soon as Thursday night.”

American military officials have already warned that even the imposition of a no-fly zone entails the prior destruction of Libya’s air defense capabilities, meaning a major bombing campaign against Libya that will undoubtedly entail “collateral damage” measured in the killing and maiming of Libyan civilians.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Pentagon officials as saying, “Options included using cruise missiles to take out fixed Libyan military sites and air-defense systems … Manned and unmanned aircraft could also be used against Col. Gaddafi’s tanks, personnel carriers and infantry positions, with sorties being flown out of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization bases in the southern Mediterranean.”

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, Gen. Norton Schwartz, the chief of the US Air Force, said that a no-fly zone would take “upwards of a week” to prepare, signaling a sustained bombing campaign. He also warned that in addition to US warplanes based in the US and Europe, aircraft would also have to be diverted from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Like others military officials, Schwartz said that the imposition of the no-fly zone would “not be sufficient” to halt the advance of forces loyal to the dictatorship of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which have swept steadily eastward toward Benghazi over the past 10 days. Clearly, what is being prepared are air strikes against Gaddafi’s ground forces. The prospect of carrying out a bombing raid aimed at assassinating Gaddafi has also been broached.

These plans for war are motivated not by any desire to protect the Libyan people or further the cause of democracy, as its proponents within the UN Security Council proclaimed. The impending intervention in the oil-rich North African country is driven by profit interests and geopolitical imperatives that have nothing to do with the “humanitarian” pretenses of the major powers. The aim is to exploit the civil war in Libya to impose a regime that is even more subordinate to these powers and to the major Western oil conglomerates intent on exploiting the country’s resources.

The gross hypocrisy and cynicism of the imperialist powers backing the intervention was underscored by the choice of French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé to motivate the UN resolution. Juppé, who invoked the “Arab spring” as one of the “great revolutions that change the course of history,” recently assumed his post after his predecessor, Michèle Alliot-Marie, was forced to resign over a scandal involving her close political and private relations with the ousted Tunisian dictator Ben Ali. Juppé’s government was in the process of shipping anti-riot gear to its former colony when the mass protest forced the dictator to flee.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who had worked to insert the “all necessary measures” language allowing for an open-ended military assault on Libya, praised the passage of the resolution, declaring, “The future of Libya should be decided by the people of Libya.”

This is unquestionably the case. The task of overthrowing the right-wing dictatorship of the Gaddafi clique is that of the workers and oppressed of Libya, who had begun to carry it out. The aim of the US-backed intervention, however, is precisely to abort any genuine revolution and ensure that any regime that replaces Gaddafi serves not the interests of the Libyan people, but rather the demands of Washington and Big Oil. The US hopes to use Libya, moreover, as a base of operations for suppressing revolutionary movements of workers throughout the region.

The Security Council vote was 10 in favor and five abstentions. The countries abstaining included Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India. While, as permanent members of the council, both Russia and China had the power to defeat the resolution by casting “no” votes, they chose not to do so, ensuring that the UN continued to fulfill its function as a rubber stamp for the demands of the major imperialist powers.

In their statements explaining their abstentions, however, the ambassadors of the five countries made clear that the impending attack on Libya has nothing to do with any consensus by the “world community” to protect the Libyan people, but rather is the outcome of a conspiracy worked out in secret between Washington, London and Paris.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said that the measure “opens the door to large scale military intervention” and stressed that questions had been raised in the prior discussions of the resolution as to how it would be enforced, by what military forces and under what rules of engagement, but there had been “no answers.”

India’s ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri noted that while the UN Security Council had appointed a special envoy on the situation in Libya, it had received “no report on the situation on the ground” and was acting despite having “little credible information.” He said that there had been no explanation as to how the resolution was to be enforced, “by whom and with what measures.” He expressed concern over the fate of Libya’s “sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”

Singh also voiced reservations about a range of new economic sanctions, which target, among other entities, Libya’s national oil company. He said that the measures could disrupt trade and investment by member states.

Germany’s ambassador, Peter Wittig, warned that the authorization of the use of military force increased the “the likelihood of large-scale loss of life” and said that Germany’s armed forces would take no part in the intervention.

China’s ambassador Li Baodong, the acting president of the Security Council also voiced reservations, but then justified Beijing’s failure to veto the measure by invoking the vote last weekend of the Arab League calling on the UN to implement a no-fly zone.

NATO has also claimed this vote as somehow legitimizing intervention by demonstrating “regional support.” The reality is that the Arab League is itself composed of a collection of dictatorships, monarchies and emirates that in no way represent the desires or interests of the Arab people. Many of them are actively engaged in the violent suppression of popular upheavals.

While Washington has stressed that any intervention against Libya should include direct participation by the Arab countries, it appears that their involvement will be minimal. Following the visit to Cairo by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a spokeswoman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry told Reuters: “Egypt will not be among those Arab states. We will not be involved in any military intervention. No intervention, period.”

On Thursday, the Arab League could name only two countries prepared to join the US-NATO assault: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Both ruled by royal dynasties, the two emirates are direct participants in Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain to suppress the mass movement against the ruling monarchy. While security forces have shot protesters dead in the streets, invaded hospitals and carried out a reign of terror in Shia villages, none of the supposed champions of democracy in Libya are proposing any UN intervention in Bahrain, the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.

The Gaddafi government warned that any attack on Libya “will expose all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean Sea to danger and civilian and military facilities will become targets of Libya’s counter-attack.”

US Secretary of State Clinton set the new strident US tone towards Libya in a statement made in Tunisia denouncing Gaddafi as “a man who has no conscience and will threaten anyone in his way. … It’s just his nature. There are some creatures that are like that.”

As recently as April 2009, the same Hillary Clinton warmly welcomed Gaddafi’s son and minister of national security to the US State Department, declaring, “We deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya. We have many opportunities to deepen and broaden our cooperation and I am very much looking forward to building on this relationship.”

Like her European counterparts, only months ago Clinton was currying favor with the Gaddafi regime in pursuit of oil profits and the collaboration of his secret police apparatus in prosecuting Washington’s “global war on terrorism.”

Now, under the cover of a crescendo of human rights propaganda, with sections of the media claiming that the repressive actions of the Gaddafi regime amount to “genocide”, Washington together with French and British imperialism are intervening in a civil war in Libya which they themselves had no small part in provoking.

No amount of rhetoric about “saving lives” can mask the fact that what is being carried out is an act of out and out imperialist banditry, comparable to the attempts to partition the Congo and Nigeria during the second half of the 20th century. In those cases, as in Libya, behind the interventions was the drive for control of strategic resources.

The justifications given for the Libyan intervention are full of grotesque contradictions. Washington, which professes to be outraged over the killing of Libyan civilians and bent on saving lives, is itself responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan and, on the very eve of the UN vote, carried out the cold-blooded murder of some 40 civilians in a drone attack in Pakistan.

The US and its allies have shown no inclination to seek a resolution authorizing the use of military force in the Ivory Coast, where a conflict comparable to that in Libya is unfolding. The obvious explanation is that cacao is not considered to have the same strategic importance as oil.

And, while claiming that the intervention in Libya is needed to ensure the triumph of democracy in the Middle East, Washington continues to back the regimes in Bahrain and Yemen as they mow down protesters demanding democratic rights.

There is an element of extreme recklessness in the US-NATO intervention. What will it produce? One likely variant would be Libya’s partition and the resurrection of Cyrenaica, the colonial territory set up by Italy in Benghazi in the 1920s. Any elements coming to power under such a regime would be right-wing puppets of imperialism, comparable to Karzai in Afghanistan or Maliki in Iraq and would inevitably carry out an even bloodier slaughter of the Libyan people.

Bill Van Auken
- Homepage: http://wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/liby-m18.shtml

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

Unpopular Uk Government to play "Go to war get out of jail" card yet again

18.03.2011 13:53

I think the get out of jail card has been used up a little now only mindless blindly obedient patriots will be impressed by Cameron if British troops are deployed oh wait thats actually a rather large portion of the population....sick to th...e back teeth of the "Back our boys come what may" mentality.I think Cameron should smell the shit in his own backyard UK anger is growing over the Cuts,150 million contract for Uk census going to arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin and now another War....Revolution in desperate times is now not as unthinkable in Britain as it once was......

Headcorn


grow up

18.03.2011 20:31

"the Libyian LEGITIMATE government "

Look - the tyrant Gadhaffi is in conflict with the US and its allies. You disapprove of the US and its allies. That does not stop the tyrant Gadhaffi from being a bastard.

The 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' bollocks is the sort of shit that the most cynical CIA cold warriors came out with: can't you ovrecome your bitterness and do a bit better than that?

oh ffs


Story of economic purity gone sour

19.03.2011 00:32

"The bitter twisted fighter in me can't help but desire some outrage to be committed against those responsible for this disgusting spectacle - the loving compassionate humanist in me accepts the logical and practicable response of the Libyian LEGITIMATE government to call an immediate ceasefire - if only because the aggressive parties in this will have to contort their position and language to breaking point to justify their desire to replace the Libyian national authorities with one more amenable to international resource piracy.

Ain't going on no march no more - waste of time, appropriated by liberal shrills and patronized by quacking marxists.

Will seek to destroy oil company property silently, anonymously and persistently."


Understand your sentiments completely.

I think its now clear that the revolts that have taken place in a number of muslim countries have been a genuine threat to the west/east capitalist order. A great many people on the left have routinely speculated that the CIA have been backing these revolts, which is standard form for the left in all situations, But as we can now see, only AFTER the rebels are stalled do we see action by the UN security council and the deployment of US and UK air resources. This is not so much an action in support of pro democracy supporters, this is a police action to restabilise the western backed Gaddafi regime in order to prevent further threats to the oil supply lines by "unknowns". If it fails, the action will revert to plan B, remove Gaddafi and claim an alliance with the winning movement.

This should serve as an excellent example of how the capitalist's work, but also how the socialist's work too. The capitalist's can be counted on to go for the money and resources, every time. And the Socialist's can be counted on to render opposition to that policy one-dimensional and completely ineffective, every time.

The liberals? Inactive on all fronts.

You will find, that there will now be a great deal of mis-identification about who is who in Libya. If there is targeted bombing of forces on the ground in Libya, it will be directed against the "unknowns" that constitute the threat to Gaddafi and the oil supply. This tactic will be limited in scope and time-scale, but every bit as lethal as the United States secret war of terror against the worlds dissident's.

It is not safe to talk about this situation being plausibly a road to revolution, this IS the revolution. The west was not in control of this recent bout of protests in these muslim countries, it struggled to hijack the momentum while it was happening and clearly has decided that military action is now called for as a last resort.

During the recent Egyptian protests, BBC state broadcaster carried interviews with baseball cap wearing CIA agents posing as humanitarian workers who ended every sentence with "we're just here to help". They were not helping because it wasn't safe for them to be seen on the streets. They were there to turn disaster into miracle just by "being seen" in-situ. This is what the CIA do when confronted by the reality of a world that is universally hostile to its every aim. The CIA are as effective as the conspiracies fermented around them by the idiot left. It is the idiot left that prop up the CIA and continue to ensure it existence.

Both capitalist's and their socialist referee's have lost the narrative and are now collectively struggling to maintain control. The fact that military forces are being deployed, when there is a perception of reduced defence funds concurrent with active austerity at home, and while British and American forces remain entrenched in a failed resource war in Afghanistan, should confirm the scale of the risk being taken and, therefore, the depth of the situation now realised. This realisation is what will ensure this deployment cannot, and will not stop. Even if, as before, the deployment quickly becomes quagmire. What is now being done under the auspices of the UN, is not a new approach to a long running resource problem, but the continuance of the long running resource crisis brought about by the west/east cartel problem.

The established order is now failing. We are now moving into a final period in which the western order is likely to lash out at anything nearby in order to save itself. Joining them, will be the dictators of the eastern order who have long worked with the west to consolidate the tyranny of worldwide commercial empire funded on the blood of the poor and dispossessed.

Knot-Eyed Jaguar


none of the west's business

19.03.2011 14:30

Libya is none of the west's business oh wait OIL ahh that's it then

Headcorn


Oh Dear

19.03.2011 23:20

We have LONG since been telling people who wouldn't listen...that the UN is a military charter and NOTHING BUT a military charter.
It has nothing much to do with Peace....not then, not now.

Set up in 1947? weren't we at war then?
Oops...still are...always have been......so, let's try the (tired - yawn) old ploy of divert attention from the cuts and recessions.....and then let's make and sell some more toys, erm weapons, lots of them......and create more taxes......and then we will be RICH again...yeay.!

Doesn't matter WHO you vote for....The U.N. ALWAYS gets in.....Scum.

Auntie War


The March of 'history"?

20.03.2011 02:44

In a speech given recently by that champion of free(masonic)dom(ination) Barak Obama in connection with the situation in the Middle East, he clearly states that any who are against the direction that ;history' is taking is an enemy of the free(masonic) world. I think that I have explained the entire situation concisely and coherently to any who wish to understand! Yours Tony.

Tony Assassin
mail e-mail: tony_assassin2003@yahoo.com


OIL INSPIRED AIR RAIDS

20.03.2011 11:12

Governments of Bahrain and Yemen declare war on their protesters ! have the major western powers gone to the UN and demanded action no they have not why because The "Saudis" our allies ha ha are dealing with it and there is no OIL at stake.Wake up people smell the shit.Cameron and Sarkozy are "Zionist" puppets the office of British PM has been like that for decades.
If the student protests in London last Nov had dragged on for a week or so and Cameron had sent the army in do you think that the Arab league would have been able to go to the UN and demand action against the British Government No because there is no OIL at stake.Gaddaffi as much as I dislike dictators like him is dealing with an internal Libyan matter same as Saddam did with the Kurds in Northern Iraq we only get involved when its in our interests ie OIL.With no unrest in the country The UK was quite happy to sell arms to Gaddaffi allow British companies to be located there send the Lockerby bomber back home (which was an outrage and an insult) and not pursue those responsible for the senseless gunning down of PC Yvonne Fletcher........ABSTRACT WESTERN HYPOCRISY

Josh Dreamspirit


t is not about whether Gaddafi is an ally or not

20.03.2011 12:18

It is about whether Libya must expect to be betrayed by the West or not.

contaminated defiance
- Homepage: http:// http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/03/17/18674828.php?show_comments=1


We yawn deaths in ALL nations

21.03.2011 00:49

Last night - another soldier.

Auntie War