[Peace-discuss] Escobar on Obama's "Odyssey Dawn"

[C. G. Estabrook]

"The Obama administration turned George W Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan 
into open-ended occupations; started an air/counter-insurgency war in Pakistan; 
bolstered a war in Somalia; bolstered a war in Yemen; and now started a war in 
Libya..."


On 3/21/11 6:22 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> The Odyssey Dawn top 10
> Pepe Escobar
>
> War is peace. Protesters are now off-camera, missile diplomacy is on camera. 
> Packaged in moral uprightness, Tomahawks, Typhoons, Tornados, Rafales, 
> Mirages, B-2s and F-18s - not to mention sexy European Storm Shadow cruise 
> missiles and possible guest star the F-22 Raptor radar-evading stealth jet - 
> now speak the language of democracy. These "military assets", displaying their 
> "unique capabilities", are now "protecting the Libyan people". Run for cover - 
> or become collateral damage.
>
> And now for our top 10 list:
>
> 10. The return of Ulysses. Operation "Odyssey Dawn"? Gotta hand it to Pentagon 
> ghost writers. Homer's Odyssey is the archetype of all travel writing. So 
> Odysseus/Ulysses roams the Med again. The return of the heroes who conquered 
> Troy is now the return of the heroes who gave you shock and awe. Benghazi is 
> Ithaca, with Tripoli in the waiting list. Muammar Gaddafi plays the Cyclops. 
> But who's Circe? Hillary Clinton? Homeric Ulysses was upgraded from a fishing 
> boat to the USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the US Navy's 6th Fleet. So one 
> must assume that, for now, Ulysses is commander Samuel Locklear III, who's in 
> charge of the bombing.
>
> As for Homer revised by Shakespeare, the trophy goes to chairman of the US 
> Joint Chief of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. He told CNN Operation Odyssey Dawn 
> "isn't about seeing him [Gaddafi] go". But then he told NBC Gaddafi could 
> stay, as in "it's very uncertain on how this ends". No wonder no one in this 
> Odyssey has yet claimed to be Penelope.
>
> 9. The invisible Africom. There's total radio silence about the commander of 
> the US Africom, General Carter Ham. He's in charge of all those Tomahawks, 
> from his office in Stuttgart, Germany; after all, none among 53 African 
> countries offered to host Africom. After the current phase 1, the command 
> switches from Africom to the Anglo-French duo, or to the North Atlantic Treaty 
> Organization (NATO) in Brussels. Africom's main business is to guarantee the 
> rapid deployment of "highly mobile troops" - to fight the never-extinct "war 
> on terror", laser in on all those oil fields, try to offset China's business 
> drive in Africa; talk about an open-ended mission. In short: Africom is about 
> the Pentagon's militarization of Africa - suavely sold as "bringing peace and 
> security". It's all part of the time-tested Pentagon's full spectrum dominance 
> doctrine.
>
> 8. The R2P enigma. Top American humanitarian imperialists - or liberal hawks - 
> include US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US ambassador to the United 
> Nations Susan Rice, and National Security Council senior directors Samantha 
> Power and Gayle Smith. They are all suckers for R2P - "responsibility to 
> protect", the new international norm that supposedly prevents and stops 
> genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
>
> R2P is still hazy. How many civilians must be killed before R2P kicks in? A 
> few thousand? (a fair estimate of Gaddafi's victims before Odyssey Dawn). And 
> where next for R2P? Here's a list of candidates. Yemen. Bahrain. Saudi Arabia. 
> Israel. Uzbekistan. Ivory Coast. Sudan. Somalia. North Korea. Myanmar. Iran. 
> Pakistan. And - remember Xinjiang and Tibet - China. Don't count on the UN to 
> "protect" civilians in any of these destinations.
>
> 7. The new Obama doctrine, or Bush 2.0. The Obama administration turned George 
> W Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into open-ended occupations; started an 
> air/counter-insurgency war in Pakistan; bolstered a war in Somalia; bolstered 
> a war in Yemen; and now started a war in Libya. The Western/Arab League war in 
> Libya perfectly fits the new, two-pronged Obama doctrine of US outreach/regime 
> alteration; outreach (former "regime change") for "evil dictators", alteration 
> for "our" bastards.
>
> That accounts for Washington desperately trying to position itself on the 
> right side of history at least in one chapter of the great 2011 Arab revolt - 
> amid all the geostrategic imperatives of trying to somewhat control the course 
> of the Arab revolutions, and to keep an eye on the oil.
>
> Gaddafi for his part labeled the US/Anglo-French bombing a "crusader 
> aggression" and his regime's resistance, a "long war". He thus managed to mix 
> the Pentagon with al-Qaeda in one sweep. And we always thought they were 
> fighting each other. His Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli has already been 
> bombed. At least his family is not featured in a Pentagon deck of cards - yet.
>
> 6. No R2P for Israel. In late 2008, while no one was watching, Israel bombed 
> Gaza, killed 1,300 people, the absolute majority civilians, and destroyed at 
> least 20,000 buildings. The UN didn't bother to invoke R2P, or impose a no-fly 
> zone over Gaza to protect its civilians (50% of them children). Israel never 
> respected any of countless UN Security Council resolutions. By the way, George 
> W Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 without a UN Security Council resolution.
>
> 5. No R2P for Yemen. President Ali Abdullah Saleh is a "valuable ally" in the 
> "war on terror" - against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP); although 
> he is the Yemeni Gaddafi, he falls into the privileged "regime alteration" 
> category. President Barack Obama said he "strongly condemn[s]" snipers killing 
> Yemeni civilians and says those responsible "must be held accountable". This 
> means Saleh's government. Bit of a problem though; these are the people 
> getting US cash and weapons to fight "terror".
>
> 4. The oh so democratic Arab League. The voting at the Arab League calling for 
> a no-fly zone over Libya was unanimous. But at first, Algeria and Syria were 
> strongly against it. Damascus publicly justified itself as against another 
> Western intervention in Arab affairs.
>
> This never deterred the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) dictatorships 
> (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates), which 
> lobbied hard for no-fly. American and European diplomats are desperate for the 
> Arab League - and not NATO - to do something, like flying the odd jet and 
> paying most of the bill to provide the illusion that the West is not attacking 
> another Muslim country.
>
> Washington explicitly requested that from Qatar, the UAE and Jordan. Qatar and 
> UAE - which helped Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain - are now invoked to secure 
> "democracy" for Libya. The UAE will support democracy with 24 Mirage 2000-9s 
> and F-16s and Qatar with up to 6 Mirage 2000-5s.
>
> The Arab League first warned against an "attack" on Libya - as if a no-fly 
> zone could be imposed by broomsticks, not bombs. Then supreme opportunist Amr 
> Moussa, head of the Arab League, criticized Odyssey Dawn because of the 
> inevitable collateral damage. And then he backtracked. No one cares, as long 
> as the Arab League rubber stamps Odyssey Dawn to make it look like an Arab 
> decision.
>
> 3. No R2P for Bahrain. The House of Saud invasion of Bahrain to help Sunni 
> "cousins" the al-Khalifa dynasty - with pitiful coverage by otherwise 
> progressive al-Jazeera - smells like a deal between the House of Saud and the 
> emir of Qatar, which implies Washington behind it as well; the immensely 
> corrupt and fearful House of Saud does absolutely nothing without Washington's 
> approval. al-Jazeera reports have called for a "dialogue" between government 
> and opposition in Bahrain; no such calls for Libya.
>
> The GCC dictatorships are basically Pentagon annexes. Since 2007, they've 
> bought no less than $70 billion in weapons - and counting. Libya is part of 
> the African Union (AU). Gaddafi requested support from the AU against his 
> internal opposition; that's exactly the same as Bahrain asking for support 
> from the GCC. The difference is the AU did not vote for a no-fly zone - nor 
> invaded a neighbor, a la Saudi Arabia.
>
> The al-Khalifas in Bahrain have been so scared by the protest movement that 
> they had to physically demolish the Pearl monument at the center of the 
> homonymous square in Manama, with its six white curved beams topped with a 
> huge pearl. This implies also destroying Bahrain's history; before becoming 
> "business friendly", Bahrain was a pearl diving center. Now it's just 
> "bullet-friendly Bahrain."
>
> 2. How good was my dictator. Just yesterday Italian Prime Minister Silvio 
> "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi was literally kissing Gaddafi's hand - and allowing 
> him to pose this tent in Rome. He dropped him like a stone. Same with the 
> Brits who were merrily selling loads of weapons to the colonel.
>
> As for neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi was a godsend 
> - allowing Sarko to officially pose as the new Arab nationalist hero. France 
> in effect prohibited NATO from intervening at the start of Odyssey Dawn, so 
> Sarko's dashing Mirages could get all the glory. Carla Bruni - who calls his 
> husband Chou Chou - must be very impressed; who needs bunga bunga when you can 
> actually bang, bang?
>
> 1. Democratic Saudi Arabia. To have the holy grail of medievalism and 
> repression - the House of Saud - voting in the Arab League to bring democracy 
> to Libya while quashing any progressive moves inside the kingdom (and invading 
> a neighbor) will forever live in infamy as the Top Hypocrisy of the Great 2011 
> Arab Revolt. King Abdullah's billionaire package of "reforms", ie bribes, 
> essentially bolster the House of Saud's two strategic pillars; the 
> security/repression establishment (60,000 new jobs for the Interior Ministry), 
> and the religious clerics (more money to the Commission for the Promotion of 
> Virtue and Prevention of Vice). Even if they have successfully preempted the 
> kingdom's "Day of Rage", this proves how scared they really are.
>
> What many don't know is that Operation Odyssey Dawn is personal - and has 
> nothing to do with Greek heroism but Bedouin hatred. It revolves around the 
> extremely bad blood between King Abdullah and Gaddafi since 2002, in the 
> run-up to the war on Iraq, when Gaddafi accused Abdullah of selling out the 
> Arab world to Washington. So this is not Operation Odyssey Dawn; it's 
> Operation House of Saud Takes Out Gaddafi. With all the heavy lifting 
> subcontracted to the West, of course, and the eastern Libya protesters posing 
> as extras.
>
> Odyssey Dawn - a "just war" - started exactly eight years after the Iraq war. 
> In 2003, at the start of Operation Enduring Freedom - still ongoing, having 
> "liberated" over a million Iraqis from life - George W Bush said, "American 
> and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm 
> Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger".
>
> This Saturday, at the start of Operation Odyssey Dawn, Barack Obama said, 
> "Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a 
> threatened people. And we are acting in the interests of the United States and 
> the world."
>
> Maybe we should call this whole thing Operation Enduring Odyssey - and send 
> the bill to the House of Saud.
>
> Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is 
> Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot 
> of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan 
> (Nimble Books, 2009).
>
> He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com.
>
> http://www.allvoices.com/s/event-8541711/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5hdGltZXMuY29tL2F0aW1lcy9NaWRkbGVfRWFzdC9NQzIyQWswMi5odG1s 
>
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