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Blum's view of the Libya affair, and more
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The Anti-Empire Report</h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 8px; ">November 1st, 2011</span><br>
by William Blum<br>
<a href="http://www.killinghope.org/">www.killinghope.org</a></p>
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It doesn't matter to them if it's untrue. It's a higher truth.</h2>
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"We came, we saw, he died."<br>
US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,<br>
giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi</p>
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Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: "We came, we saw, 3,000 died ... ha- ha."</p>
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Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of thousands ... this tragedy was the culmination
of a series of falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its television station, <em>al-Jazeera</em>) from the declared imminence of a "bloodbath" in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn't intervene to stories of government
helicopter-gunships and airplanes spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by Gaddafi's army. (This last fable was proclaimed at the United Nations by the American Ambassador, as if young soldiers needed Viagra
to get it up!)<sup style="line-height: 12px; "><a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html#note-1" id="link-1" style="text-decoration: none; ">1</a></sup></p>
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The <em>New York Times</em> (March 22) observed:</p>
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... the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.</p>
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The <em>Los Angeles Times</em> (April 7) added this about the rebels' media operation:</p>
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It's not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:</p>
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<li>No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary</li><li>No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)</li><li>No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)</li><li>No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That's [Qaddafi's] propaganda.)</li></ul>
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The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its share of misinformation, but it was the rebels' trail of lies, both of omission and commission, which was used by the UN Security Council to justify its vote for "humanitarian" intervention; followed in Act Three
by unrelenting NATO/US bombs and drone missiles, day after day, week after week, month after month; you can't get much more humanitarian than that. If the people of Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been offered a referendum on it, can it be imagined
that they would have endorsed it?</p>
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In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority of Libyans supported Gaddafi. How else could the government have held off the most powerful military forces in the world for more than seven months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the land, Libya had the
highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, and highest UN Human Development Index in Africa. During the first few months of the civil war, giant rallies were held in support of the Libyan leader.<sup style="line-height: 12px; "><a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html#note-2" id="link-2" style="text-decoration: none; ">2</a></sup></p>
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For further discussion of why Libyans may have been motivated to support Gaddafi, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17H0pG7Yxw8">have a look at this video</a>.</p>
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If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his political opposition over the years and had made some gestures of accommodation to them during the Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime might still be keeping him in power, although the world has plentiful
evidence making it plain that the Western powers are not particularly concerned about political oppression except to use as an excuse for intervention when they want to; indeed, government files seized in Tripoli during the fighting show that the CIA and British
intelligence worked with the Libyan government in tracking down dissidents, turning them over to Libya, and taking part in interrogations.<sup style="line-height: 12px; "><a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html#note-3" id="link-3" style="text-decoration: none; ">3</a></sup></p>
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In any event, many of the rebels had a religious motive for opposing the government and played dominant roles within the rebel army; previously a number of them had fought against the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.<sup style="line-height: 12px; "><a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html#note-4" id="link-4" style="text-decoration: none; ">4</a></sup> The
new Libyan regime promptly announced that Islamic <em>sharia</em> law would be the "basic source" of legislation, and laws that contradict "the teachings of Islam" would be nullified; there would also be a reinstitution of polygamy; the Muslim holy book, the <em>Quran</em>,
allows men up to four wives.<sup style="line-height: 12px; "><a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html#note-5" id="link-5" style="text-decoration: none; ">5</a></sup></p>
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Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90s, the United States has supported Islamic militants fighting against a secular government. The American government has imprisoned many people as "terrorists" in the United States for a lot less.</p>
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What began in Libya as "normal" civil war violence from both sides repeated before and since by the governments of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria without any Western military intervention at all (the US actually continues to arm the Bahrain and Yemen regimes)
was transformed by the Western propaganda machine into a serious Gaddafi <em>genocide</em> of innocent Libyans. Addressing the validity of this very key issue is another video, "<a href="http://www.thehumanitarianwar.com/">Humanitarian War in Libya: There
is no evidence</a>". The main feature of the film is an interview with Soliman Bouchuiguir, Secretary-General, and one of the founders in 1989, of the Libyan League for Human Rights, perhaps the leading Libyan dissident group, in exile in Switzerland.</p>
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Bouchuiguir is asked several times if he can document various charges made against the Libyan leader. Where is the proof of the many rapes? The many other alleged atrocities? The more than 6,000 civilians alleged killed by Gaddafi's planes? Again and again
Bouchuiguir cites the National Transitional Council as the source. Yes, that's the rebels who carried out the civil war in conjunction with the NATO/US forces. At other times Bouchuiguir speaks of "eyewitnesses": "little girls, boys who were there, whose families
we know personally". After awhile, he declares that "there is no way" to document these things. This is probably true to some extent, but why, then, the UN Security Council resolution for a military intervention in Libya? Why almost eight months of bombing?</p>
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Bouchuiguir also mentions his organization's working with the National Endowment for Democracy in their effort against Gaddafi, and one has to wonder if the man has any idea that the NED was founded to be a front for the CIA. Literally.</p>
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Another source of charges against Gaddafi and his sons has been the International Criminal Court. The Court's Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is shown in this film at a news conference discussing the same question of proof of the charges. He refers to
an ICC document of 77 pages which he says contains the evidence. The film displays the document's Table of Contents, which shows that pages 17-71 are not available to the public; these pages, apparently the ones containing the testimony and evidence, are marked
as "redacted". In an appendix, the ICC report lists its news sources; these include Fox News, CNN, the CIA, Soliman Bouchuiguir, and the Libyan League for Human Rights. Earlier, the film had presented Bouchuiguir citing the ICC as one of his sources. The documentation
is thus a closed circle.</p>
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Historical footnote: "Aerial bombing of civilians was pioneered by the Italians in Libya in 1911, perfected by the British in Iraq in 1920 and used by the French in 1925 to level whole quarters of Syrian cities. Home demolitions, collective punishment, summary
execution, detention without trial, routine torture these were the weapons of Europe's takeover" in the Mideast.<sup style="line-height: 12px; "><a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html#note-6" id="link-6" style="text-decoration: none; ">6</a></sup></p>
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