[Peace-discuss] Our consistent policy, ii

[C. G. Estabrook]

Published on Saturday, March 19, 2011 by Salon.com
Libya and the Familiar Patterns of War
by Glenn Greenwald


_/The Los Angeles Times/, March 18, 2003_:

    *U.S. Raises Terrorism Alert Amid Concerns of Retaliation*

    Bracing for a backlash from impending war with Iraq, the Bush administration
    put the nation on high alert for a terrorist attack and announced that it
    was redoubling efforts to enhance security at home.

    The decision to raise the terrorism threat level from yellow to orange, the
    third such move in the last six months, followed several months worth of
    intelligence reports indicating a strong likelihood of some type of
    terrorist attack or retaliation if the U.S. went to war with Iraq. Those
    strikes, officials said, could come from organized Al Qaeda cells or groups
    sent here by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, or from individuals or small
    groups who sympathize with them.

_
/The New York Times/, today_:

    *American Official Warns That Qaddafi May Lash Out With New Terrorist Attacks*

    The United States is bracing for possible Libyan-backed terrorist attacks,
    President Obama's top counterterrorism official said on Friday.

    The official, John O. Brennan, said that the military attacks on civilians
    ordered in recent days by Libya's leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, coupled
    with his track record as a sponsor of terrorism, had heightened worries
    within the administration as an international coalition threatens military
    action against Libya.

    Asked if American officials feared whether Colonel Qaddafi could open a new
    terrorism front, Mr. Brennan said: "Qaddafi has the penchant to do things of
    a very concerning nature. We have to anticipate and be prepared for things
    he might try to do to flout the will of the international community."

    Among the threats the United States is focusing on is Libya's stockpile of
    deadly mustard gas, he said.


The attack on Iraq and the intervention in Libya are, in critical ways, vastly 
different, and glib comparisons should be avoided.  Fear-mongering was the 
primary means of selling the Iraq war to the public, whereas purported 
humanitarian goals have taken center stage now (though humanitarian appeals -- 
/rape rooms, mass graves, chemical attacks on his own people, and sadistic 
sons!!/ -- were also prominently featured in 2003 and in virtually every other 
war ever started).  That the Arab League advocated the Libya intervention, and 
it now has U.N. endorsement, lend a perceived international legitimacy to it 
that Iraq so disastrously lacked.  Because both political parties' leaders are 
even more supportive of this military action than they were for Iraq, the 
domestic debate will be much less contentious.  At least for now, Obama is 
substantially more cautious than Bush ever was in limiting the U.S. commitment.  
And given that the Libya intervention has not even begun, no comparisons can be 
made between its execution and the brutal, inhumane slaughter and destruction 
that characterized the eight-year assault on Iraq; it's possible (though far 
from guaranteed) that this intervention could be short, relatively bloodless and 
successful.

All that said, it is striking how wars -- no matter how they're packaged -- 
ultimately breed the same patterns.  With public opinion split or even against 
the war in Libya (at least for now) -- and with questions naturally arising 
about why we're intervening here to stop the violence but ignoring the growing 
violence from our good friends in Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere -- the 
administration obviously knows that some good, old-fashioned fear-mongering and 
unique demonization /(Gadaffi is a Terrorist with "deadly mustard gas" who might 
attack us!!)/ can only help.  Then there's the fact that the same faction of 
war-loving-from-a-safe-distance "hawks" that took the lead in cheering for the 
attack on Iraq -- neocons on the Right and their "liberal interventionist" 
counterparts in The New Republic/Brookings/Democratic Party officialdom world -- 
are playing the same role here.  And many of the same manipulative rhetorical 
tactics are now wielded against war opponents:  the Libyan rebels are the new 
Kurds /(they want us to act to protect them!)/, and just as those who opposed 
the attack on Iraq were routinely accused of indifference toward if not support 
for Saddam's tyranny, those who oppose this intervention are now accused of 
indifference to Gadaffi's butchery (as always:  are those refraining from 
advocating for military intervention in Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Bahrain or the 
Sudan or dozens of other places indifferent to the violence and other forms of 
suffering there?).

Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin reports that Obama just this week changed his mind 
on Libya from opposing to supporting intervention because he became convinced 
that this would change America's posture in the region by placing us on the side 
of freedom and democracy.  But would it really do that?  As our Saudi, Yemeni, 
Bahraini, Jordanian, Kuwaiti, Egyptian and Iraqi close friends continue to 
impose varying degrees of domestic oppression and violence, is yet another 
military intervention in an oil-rich Muslim nation really going to transform 
rather than bolster how we're perceived in that region?  This claim -- we'll be 
viewed as strong and magnanimous in the Muslim world -- was also, of course, a 
featured claim justifying the attack on Iraq.  And just as was true for Iraq, 
how this ends up being perceived, and what it turns out to be in fact, depends 
on a whole slew of unknowable factors, including what we end up doing there, how 
long it takes, and whom we end up supporting.

As for Brennan's warning that this action may trigger Terrorist attacks on the 
U.S., I suppose -- just as was true for the similar 2003 warnings -- that this 
is a possible repercussion of our intervention.  But doesn't that really 
underscore the key point?  If we really want to transform how we're perceived in 
that part of the world, and if we really want to reduce the Terrorist threat, 
isn't the obvious solution to stop sending our fighter jets and bombs and armies 
to that part of the world rather than finding a new Muslim country to target for 
war on a seemingly annual basis?  I have no doubt that some citizens who support 
the intervention in Libya are doing so for purely humanitarian and noble 
reasons, just as was true for some supporters of the effort to remove the truly 
despicable Saddam Hussein.  But the intentions of those who support the war shed 
little light on the motives of those who prosecute the war and even less light 
on what its ultimate outcomes will be.

* * * * *

There's one other difference between Iraq and Libya worth noting:  at least with 
the former, there was a sustained, intense P.R. campaign to persuade the public 
to support it, followed by a cursory Congressional vote (agreed to by the Bush 
White House only once approval was guaranteed in advance).  By contrast, the 
intervention in Libya was presidentially decreed with virtually no public debate 
or discussion; it's just amazing how little public opinion or the consent of the 
citizenry matters when it comes to involving the country in a new war.  That 
objection can and should be obviated if Obama seeks Congressional approval 
before deploying the U.S. military.  On some level, it would be just a formality 
-- it's hard to imagine the Congress ever impeding a war the President wants to 
fight -- but at least some pretense of democratic and Constitutional adherence 
should be maintained.

© 2011 Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator 
in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would 
a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, 
released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush 
legacy. His next book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law 
Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."
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