Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Where U.S. Chooses to Back ‘Armed Struggle’

Nicola Nasser | 04.04.2011 16:15 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Palestine | World

Libya is a “unique situation,” Obama says, where the U.S.-led military intervention and the backing of an armed revolt is the exception and not the rule in U.S. foreign policy.

By Nicola Nasser*

Within a few days, the “Silmiya” (peaceful) popular uprising against the 42-year old rule of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya had turned into an “armed struggle” and in no time the U.S. administration was in full gear backing the Libyan armed violent revolt, which has turned into a full scale civil war, despite being the same world power who officially label the legitimate (according to the charter of the United Nations) armed defense of the Palestinian people against the 34- year old foreign military occupation of Israel as “terrorism.”

Backing the armed struggle of the Libyan people came less than a month since President Barak Obama on February 11 hailed the Egyptians’ “shouting ‘Silmiya, Silmiya’” -- thus adding the Arabic word to the international language lexicon – because the “Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained by violence .. It was the moral force of nonviolence, .. that bent the arc of history toward justice,” he said.

When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009, he viewed the decision less as a recognition of his own accomplishments and more as “a call to action.” Within less than two years, he “surged” the U.S. – led war in Afghanistan, expanding it into Pakistan, stuck almost literary to his predecessor’s war agenda in Iraq, and now has opened a third war theater for the United States in Libya, where his administration ruled out any peaceful settlement of the conflict, insisting on its internationalization, ignored all efforts at mediation, especially by the African Union, and lent a deaf ear to calls for an immediate ceasefire as a prelude for dialogue in search for a way out of the bloody civil war, which were voiced recently in particular by the presidents of China, the world’s most populous country, and Indonesia, the largest Islamic country.

Libya is a “unique situation,” Obama says, where the U.S.-led military intervention and the backing of an armed revolt is the exception and not the rule in U.S. foreign policy. This exceptional and unique situation, it seems, justified his resort to an exceptional and unique process of decision-making that nonetheless doesn’t justify bypassing a consultation with the Congress and explaining his decision to the American public, where his hasty military intervention overseas could not in any way be justified by any immediate or direct threat to U.S. national security.

In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope," Obama wrote: "Instead of guiding principles, we have what appears to be a series of ad hoc decisions, with dubious results. Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur?” Now, Obama seems to have no objection to an “ad hoc decision” on Libya.

His backtracking on his previous pledges to Arabs, Palestinians in particular, would not make any Arab or Palestinian expect him to pose any questions like: Why a U.S. military intervention in an internal conflict in Libya to protect civilians who resorted to arms to defend themselves and not one to protect defenseless Palestinian civilians who have been under military, economic and political siege for the sole purpose of depriving them of any means of defense against the external Israeli military occupation?

The Libyan precedent, of course, according to Obama’s reasoning, could not be applied to Israel because Libya is a “unique situation” where the circumstances are unlikely to recur, but nonetheless dictate arming the “rebels,” a process which the coalition of the intervening western powers are now considering and which the U.S, British, French and other intelligence teams are already on the ground to identify who among the rebels deserve arming and to facilitate the process in support of the Libyan people’s “armed struggle,” at the same time when the occupying Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are publicly threatening a new all-out assault on the besieged Gaza Strip with the declared purpose of uprooting the Palestinian armed struggle in self defense against a foreign power.

A thinly – veiled Arab cover and the UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which was not supported by major powers like Russia, China, Germany, India and Brazil, could hardly give legitimacy to the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya; neither does distancing itself by transferring the leadership to NATO because, as former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told Fox News recently, “Obama may be the only man in the whole world who does not know that we, the United States, run NATO.”

* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Nicola Nasser
- e-mail: nicolanasser@yahoo.com

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech