<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">FYI. Swanson does not believe in "humanitarian wars". --mkb<div><br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">David Swanson <<a href="mailto:david@davidswanson.org">david@davidswanson.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">April 21, 2011 1:55:31 PM CDT<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">ufpj-activist <<a href="mailto:ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org">ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>[ufpj-activist] Libya: another neocon war</b><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Reply-To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><a href="mailto:david@davidswanson.org">david@davidswanson.org</a><br></span></div><br>
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<b><big><big>Libya: another neocon war</big></big></b><br>
<div id="article-header">
<div id="main-article-info"><p>By David Swanson, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/21/libya-muammar-gaddafi">The
Guardian</a></p>
<div id="guardian-logo"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/21/libya-muammar-gaddafi"><img alt="guardian.co.uk home" height="22" width="140" id="5beeeae8-eb8c-4d9b-9eba-fa32cf4e58a9" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:part1.08020704.01050102@davidswanson.org"></a></div><p>Liberal supporters of this 'humanitarian intervention' have
merely become useful idiots of the same old nefarious purposes</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="content">
<div id="article-wrapper" data-global-auto-refresh-switch="on">
<div id="article-body-blocks"><span class="inline wide"> <img style="width: 384px; height: 231px;" alt="Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi" id="47ec20a4-567d-431b-aa2f-53e40f5d0349" height="276" width="460" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:part2.01020608.04050100@davidswanson.org"> <span class="caption" style="width: 460px;"> <br>
Muammar Gaddafi's deals with the west may have helped him
tighten his grip on the Libyan people. Photograph: Louafi
Larbi/Reuters </span> </span><p>The <a href="http://davidswanson.org/node/3171">US
department of justice (DOJ) has submitted a written
defence</a> of the US role in this new war in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/libya" title="More
from guardian.co.uk on Libya">Libya</a> to the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/congress" title="More from guardian.co.uk on US Congress">US
Congress</a>. The DOJ claims the war serves the US
national interest in regional stability and in maintaining
the credibility of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/unitednations" title="More from guardian.co.uk on United Nations">United
Nations</a>. Who knew?</p><p>The regional stability line would be a stretch for the UK
but is downright nuts for the US. Who, outside of US
strategic command types working on weapons in space, thinks
Libya and America are in the same region? (In fact, the US
is in Northcom and Libya in Africom, in the lingo of the
Pentagon's structure of global domination. Europe is in
Eucom.) And what has done more good this year for the region
that Libya is actually in than <em>in</em>stability (think
Tunisia, Egypt)?</p><p>The bit about the credibility of the United Nations is
really cute coming from a government that invaded <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq" title="More
from guardian.co.uk on Iraq">Iraq</a> in 2003 – <a href="http://www.progressive.org/mag_rothschild0303">despite
UN opposition and for the express purpose (among others)
of proving the UN irrelevant</a>. This also comes from the
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/11/bradley-manning-juan-mendez-torture">same
government that just this month refused</a> to allow the
UN special rapporteur to visit a US prisoner named Bradley
Manning to verify that he is not being tortured. How does
that maintain UN credibility? And how exactly does <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/us-libya-usa-order-idUSTRE72T6H220110330">authorising
the CIA to violate the UN arms embargo</a> in Libya
maintain UN credibility? How does <a href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/euro-american-land-invasion-libya-imminent">violating
the UN ban</a> on "a foreign occupation force of any form"
in Libya maintain UN credibility?</p><p>So, one of the main justifications offered to the first
branch of the US government is that the war in Libya is
justified by a UNresolution, the credibility of which must
be maintained even while violating it. But the DOJ memo also
stresses that such a justification is not needed. A US
president, according to this memo, albeit in violation of
the US Constitution, simply has the power to launch wars.
Any explanations offered to Congress are, just like the
wars, acts of pure benevolence.</p><p>The DOJ memo also argues that this war doesn't really
measure up to the name "war", given how quick, easy and
cheap it's going to be. In fact, President Obama has already
announced the handover of the war to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/nato" title="More
from guardian.co.uk on Nato">Nato</a>. I think we're
supposed to imagine Nato as separate from the US, just as
Congress does when it conducts no investigations of any
atrocities in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/afghanistan" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>
that the US attributes to Nato. Do the other Nato nations
know that this is the purpose Nato serves in US politics?</p><p>But how quick and easy will this war really be? <a href="http://davidswanson.org/content/prediction-20-years-war-libya">One
expert predicts it will last 20 years</a>, with the US
eventually pulling out and allowing the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/eu" title="More from
guardian.co.uk on European Union">European Union</a> to
inherit the illness of empire it had earlier shared with us.
Certainly, the promise of a quick and easy war in Iraq in
2003 was based on the same baseless idea as this one, namely
that killing a president will hand a country over to outside
control (excuse me, I mean, flourishing democracy). The
blossoming democracy in Iraq has just banned public
demonstrations. The fact is that Gaddafi has a great deal of
support, and making him a martyr would not change that.</p><p>Popular "progressive" US radio host <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXDZ2AogetA">Ed
Schultz argues, with vicious hatred in every word he spits
out on the subject</a>, that bombing Libya is justified by
the need for vengeance against that Satan on earth, that
beast arisen suddenly from the grave of Adolf Hitler, that
monster beyond all description: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/muammar-gaddafi" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Muammar Gaddafi">Muammar
Gaddafi</a>. But you can't really fight a war against one
person. The last time we did that to Gaddafi, we killed his
little daughter, while he survived.</p><p>Even if you had the legal or moral right to assassinate
foreign leaders, and even if you independently and
rationally worked up your passion to kill a particular
dictator by sheer coincidence in the same moment in which
your government wanted to bomb him, you couldn't do it
without killing innocent people and shredding the fabric of
international law (with or without UN complicity). Hatred of
a single individual is great propaganda – until people begin
to question what killing him will involve and what will come
next.</p><p>Popular US commentator Juan Cole supports the very same war
that Ed Schultz does, but supports it as a gentle act of
humanitarian generosity. The Libya war has become <a href="http://pollingreport.com/libya.htm">less popular
more quickly in the US than any previous US war</a>, but
it has its supporters. And to them, it doesn't matter that
half their fellow war supporters have a different or even
opposing motive. For years, Americans cheered the slaughter
of the hated Iraqi people while other Americans praised the
Iraq war as a great act of philanthropy for the benefit of
the Iraqi people (whether <em>they</em> wanted it or not).</p><p>But let's examine Cole's claims about Libya, because they
are quite popular and central to the idea of a "good war".
One claim is that the Nato countries are motivated by
humanitarian concern. Another is that this war might have
humanitarian results. These have to be separated because the
former is laughably absurd and the latter worthy of being
examined. Of course, many people in Nato countries are
motivated by humanitarian concern; that's why wars are sold
as acts of philanthropy. Generosity sells. But the US
government, which has become a wing of the Pentagon, does
not typically intervene in other nations in order to benefit
humanity. In fact, it's not capable of intervening anywhere,
because it is already intervened everywhere.</p><p>The <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110307/ap_on_re_us/us_arming_libya">United
States was in the business of supplying weapons to Gaddafi</a>
up until the moment it got into the business of supplying
weapons to his opponents. In 2009, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/medea-benjamin/instead-of-bombing-dictat_b_839068.html">Britain,
France and other European states sold Libya over
$470m-worth of weapons</a>. Our wars tend to be fought
against our own weapons, and yet we go on arming everyone.
The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa" title="More from guardian.co.uk on United States">United
States</a> can no more intervene in Yemen or Bahrain or
Saudi Arabia than in Libya. We are arming those
dictatorships. In fact, to win the support of Saudi Arabia
for its "intervention" in Libya, the <a href="http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html">US
gave its approval</a> for Saudi Arabia to send troops into
Bahrain to attack civilians, a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/medea-benjamin/instead-of-bombing-dictat_b_839068.html">policy
that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly
defended</a>.</p><p>The "humanitarian intervention" in Libya, meanwhile,
whatever civilians it may have begun by protecting, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/20/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110320">immediately
killed other civilians with its bombs</a> and immediately
shifted from its defensive justification to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/africa/21benghazi.html?_r=2">attacking
retreating troops and participating in a civil war</a>.
The United States has very likely used depleted uranium
weapons in Libya, leading <a href="http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/530">American
journalist Dave Lindorff to remark</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>"It would be a tragic irony if rebels in Libya, after
calling for assistance from the US and other Nato
countries, succeeded in overthrowing the country's
long-time tyrant Gaddafi, only to have their country
contaminated by uranium dust – the fate already suffered
by the peoples of Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo."</p>
</blockquote><p>Irony is one word for it. Another is hypocrisy. Clearly,
the military power of the west is not driven by humanitarian
concerns. But that still leaves the question of whether, in
this particular case, such power could accidentally have
humanitarian results. The claim that a massive massacre of
civilians was about to occur, on careful review, <a href="http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-14/bostonglobe/29418371_1_rebel-stronghold-civilians-rebel-positions">turns
out to have been massively inflated</a>. This doesn't mean
that Gaddafi is a nice guy, that his military wasn't already
killing civilians, or that it isn't still killing civilians.
Another irony, in fact, is that Gaddafi is reportedly using
horrible weapons, including landmines and cluster bombs,
that much of the world has renounced – but that the United
States has refused to.</p><p>But warfare tends to breed more warfare; and cycles of
violence usually, not just occasionally, spiral out of
control. That the United States is engaging in or supporting
the killing of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen,
Bahrain and elsewhere, while ignoring the killing of
civilians in various other countries, is not a reason to
tolerate it in Libya. But escalating a war and doing nothing
are, contrary to Pentagon propaganda, not the only two
choices. The United States and Europe could have stopped
arming and supporting Gaddafi and – in what would have been
a powerful message to Libya – stopped arming and supporting
dictators around the region. We could have provided purely
humanitarian aid. We could have pulled out the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/cia" title="More
from guardian.co.uk on CIA">CIA</a> and the special forces
and sent in nonviolent activist trainers of the sort that
accomplished so much this year in the nations to Libya's
east and west. Risking the deaths of innocents while
employing nonviolent tools is commonly viewed as horrific,
but isn't responding with violence that will likely cause
more deaths in the end even more so?</p><p><a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/26/111109/new-rebel-leader-spent-much-of.html">Washington
imported a leader for the people's rebellion in Libya</a>
who has spent the past 20 years living with no known source
of income a couple of miles from the CIA's headquarters in
Virginia. Another man lives even closer to CIA headquarters:
former US Vice President <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/dickcheney" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Dick Cheney">Dick
Cheney</a>. He expressed great concern in a speech in 1999
that foreign governments were controlling <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/oil" title="More
from guardian.co.uk on Oil">oil</a>. "Oil remains
fundamentally a government business," he said. "While many
regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Middle East">Middle
East</a>, with two thirds of the world's oil and the
lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."</p><p>Former supreme allied commander Europe of Nato, from 1997
to 2000, <a href="http://securingamerica.com/printready/Univ_Alabama_061013.htm">Wesley
Clark claims that in 2001, a general in the Pentagon
showed him a piece of paper and said</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>"I just got this memo today or yesterday from the office
of the secretary of defence upstairs. It's a, it's a
five-year plan. We're going to take down seven countries
in five years. We're going to start with Iraq, then Syria,
Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan, we're going to come
back and get Iran in five years."</p>
</blockquote><p>That agenda fit perfectly with the plans of Washington
insiders, such as those who famously spelled out their
intentions in the reports of the thinktank called the
Project for the New American Century. The fierce Iraqi and
Afghan resistance didn't fit at all. Neither did the
nonviolent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. But taking over
Libya still makes perfect sense in the neoconservative
worldview. And it makes sense in explaining <a href="http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1104/S00139/when-war-games-go-live.htm">war
games used by Britain and France to simulate the invasion
of a similar country</a>.</p><p>The <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/10091402?story_id=E1_TDDJTQDN">Libyan
government controls more of its oil</a> than any other
nation on earth, and it is the type of oil that Europe finds
easiest to refine. Libya also controls its own finances,
leading <a href="http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/libya-all-about-oil-or-all-about-banking">American
author Ellen Brown to point out an interesting fact</a>
about those seven countries named by Clark:</p>
<blockquote><p>"What do these seven countries have in common? In the
context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of
them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for
International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them
outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers'
central bank in Switzerland. The most renegade of the lot
could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been
attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on <a href="http://Examiner.com">Examiner.com</a>,
noted that '[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to
take down <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/saddam-hussein" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Saddam Hussein">Saddam
Hussein</a>, the oil nation had made the move to accept
euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat
to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve
currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.' According
to a Russian article titled 'Bombing of Libya – Punishment
for Gaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar', Gaddafi
made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to
refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and
African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold
dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African
continent, with its 200 million people using this single
currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by
many Arab countries and most African countries. The only
opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head
of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed
negatively by the US and the European Union, with French
President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the
financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed
and continued his push for the creation of a united
Africa. […] If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will
be interesting to watch whether the new central bank
[created by the rebels in March] joins the BIS, whether
the nationalised oil industry gets sold off to investors,
and whether education and healthcare continue to be free."</p>
</blockquote><p>It will also be interesting to see whether Africom, the
Pentagon's Africa Command, now based in Europe, establishes
its headquarters on the continent for which it is named. We
don't know what other motivations are at work: concerns over
immigration to Europe? Desires to test weapons? War
profiteering? Political calculations? Irrational lust for
power? Overcompensation for having failed to turn against
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak until after he'd been
unseated? But what about this one: actual fear of another
Rwanda? That last one seems, frankly, the least likely. But
what is certain is that such humanitarian concern alone did
not launch this war, and that the continued use of war in
this way will not benefit humanity.</p><p>The United Nations, far from being made credible, is being
made the servant of wealthy nations making war on poor ones.
And within the United States, where the United Nations is
alternatively held up as a justification or mocked as
irrelevant, the power to make war and to make law has been
decisively placed in the hands of a series of single
individuals who will carry the title "president" – precisely
the outcome American revolutionaries broke with Britain in
order to avoid.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<style type="text/css">
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Times New Roman}
p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Times New Roman; color: #001af9}
span.s1 {text-decoration: underline}
</style><p class="p1">David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie"<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p1"><a href="http://warisalie.org/">http://warisalie.org</a></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://davidswanson.org/">http://davidswanson.org</a></span></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://warisacrime.org/">http://warisacrime.org</a></span></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319">http://facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319</a></span></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson">http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson</a></span></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://youtube.com/afterdowningstreet">http://youtube.com/afterdowningstreet</a></span></p>
</div>
</div>
_______________________________________________<br>ufpj-activist mailing list<br><br>Post: <a href="mailto:ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org">ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org</a><br>List info: <a href="https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist">https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist</a><br><br>To Unsubscribe<br> Send email to: <a href="mailto:ufpj-activist-unsubscribe@lists.mayfirst.org">ufpj-activist-unsubscribe@lists.mayfirst.org</a><br> Or visit: <a href="https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/ufpj-activist/brussel%40illinois.edu">https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/ufpj-activist/brussel%40illinois.edu</a><br><br>You are subscribed as: <a href="mailto:brussel@illinois.edu">brussel@illinois.edu</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>