Bombing Libya to “save Libya”: The forces behind this war
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The same global powers that used the
force of arms to colonize Africa, suction out its natural resources and enslave
millions of its people are now raining bombs and missiles down on the
continent’s largest oil producer.
A great irony in the vicious and yet
cowardly attack on Libya is that the same exploiters and enslavers of Africa
explain their most recent act of mass violence as motivated by a tender concern
for democracy and freedom for Libyans.
On Libya’s eastern border is Egypt,
where the U.S. government financed, armed and cheered on the Mubarak
dictatorship until the very last days of the tyrant’s hold on power. Even
during the people’s uprising at Tahrir Square and elsewhere, the spigot of U.S.
“foreign aid” kept flowing to Mubarak. After Israel, Egypt’s torturers were the
second-largest recipient of this “aid.”
The U.S. government is at war again. How
could they get away with launching another war when they tell us the country is
so broke that vital public services must be slashed and public workers must be
fired in massive numbers?
The people of the United States are
opposed to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and would openly oppose a third
U.S. war in a Muslim country. So President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton
and Secretary of Defense Gates are going out of the way to assure the country
that all the bleeding will be exclusively from Libyans.
When U.S./NATO forces destroyed Serbia
and broke up Yugoslavia in the 1999 aerial war, they dropped 23,000 bombs and
missiles on Yugoslavs and not one U.S. soldier died.
As they did in the 19th century, the
colonialists—who have now morphed into modern-day imperialists—bribed or
coerced some indigenous elites to function as their partners and clients.
Today, the so-called Arab League provided some early cover to mask the
imperialist character of the operation.
As U.S. planes drop terror bombs in the
center of Tripoli, CIA-operated drone aircrafts are carrying out missile
attacks on villages in Pakistan, and Pentagon forces are bombing the people of
Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops still occupy Iraq after a war
that took 1 million Iraqi lives.
The dominant force practicing terrorism
in the world today is the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the CIA.
Washington’s goal in Libya is to have
the U.S.-backed rebel leadership of Libya’s civil war take power in all of
Libya or, as an alternative, to become a new governing power in the oil-rich
eastern part of the country.
The
cheerleaders for this “democracy movement” went from right-wing
Republicans to some liberal Democrats. It is a repeat of the political
alignment that led to the first Iraq war in 1991 and the Yugoslav war in
1999. In this case too, they were joined by some in the U.S. anti-war
movement, including some self-described “socialists,” desiring to show
their “democratic” credentials and wanting to accommodate to liberal
mainstream public opinion. By their cheerleading for a rebellion whose
leaders
demanded foreign intervention, and focusing all their fire on the Libyan
government, they only contributed to confusion in the weeks leading up
to the onslaught against Libya. They are embarrassed about their
position now that the imperial carnage is clear for all to see.
The United States needs a real
anti-imperialist movement—a movement that can resist the lies and demonization
schemes that the corporate media churns out to justify military aggression. That’s
why the ANSWER Coalition is mobilizing a movement in the streets that extends a
hand of solidarity to the people of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine who
have both suffered and resisted the terrorism of the greatest war machine in
human history. Please join us in the streets in coming days in demonstrations across the country. Click here to see an up-to-date list of upcoming demonstrations.
For analysis and information on U.S. strategy toward Libya, read the articles below:
After Libya declares ceasefire, U.S. government lays bare its imperialist ambitions
U.S. progressives must tell truth about Libya and impact of foreign intervention
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