The puppet show in Libya has been set. Actually it was set before the Libyan revolutionaries revolted against Qaddafi. They will soon have to face the bitter truth when these puppets will negotiate in their name and will sell Oil to their masters..
Mahmud Jibril (right ) and Ali al-Essawi (center) of Libya's rebel national council, and Ali Zeidan (Left ), envoys from Libya's opposition leave on March 10, 2011 the Elysee presidential palace, after a meeting with France's president Nicolas Sarkozy
Also >>
Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links
Βritish funds to the "rebels"Also >>
Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links
The Council is composed of thirty one (31) members representing the various regions and cities of Libya. A number of these members have been named while the names of those representing Ajdabiya, Al Kufrah, Ghat, Nalut, Misratah, Az Zintan and Az Zawiya will not be declared for safety reasons. The Council is eagerly awaiting for the naming of representatives from Central and Southern Libya and Tripoli.
1. Counselor: Mustafa Mohammed Abdul Jalil as chairman of The Council.
2. Mr. Othman Suleiman El-Megyrahi (Batnan Area)
3. Mr. Ashour Hamed Bourashed (Darna City)
4. Dr. Abdelallah Moussa El-myehoub (Qouba Area)
5. Mr. Zubiar Ahmed El-Sharif (Representative of the political prisoners)
6. Mr. Ahmed Abduraba Al-Abaar (Benghazi City)
7. Mr.Dr. Fathi Mohamed Baja (Benghazi City)
8. Mr. Abdelhafed Abdelkader Ghoga (Benghazi City)
9. Mr Fathi Tirbil and Dr. Salwa Fawzi El-Deghali (Representative of youth and women)
It was also announced that Mr. Omar Al Hariri will be responsible for for military affairs in the council, and Mr. Mahmood Jibril and Ali Al Issawi as being responsible for foreign affairs and international liaison.
1. Mustafa Abdul Jalil Fudail
1. Mustafa Abdul Jalil Fudail
he was born in the city of Bayda, east Libya in 1952. He graduated from the department of Shari’a and Law in the Arabic Language and Islamic Studies faculty from The Libyan University in 1975. AbdulJalil was appinted assistant to the Secretary of the Public Prosecutor in the city of Al Bayda, then he was appointed a judge in 1978, then a consultant in 1996. In 2002, he was appointed President of the Court Applea, then President of the Court in Al Bayda before being picked as the Jusice minister in 2007 till February 2011. In January 2010 he attempted to resign on national television over the government's failure to release political prisoners. His resignation was rejected. He resigned on 15 February 2011 after seeing the violence used against protestors in Benghazi, being the first senior official to do so. On 24 February 2011 opposition politicians, former military officers, tribal leaders, academics and businessmen held a meeting in the eastern city of Al Bayda. The meeting was chaired by Abdul Jalil, who quit the government a few days before. The delegates stressed the importance of the national unity of Libya and stated that Tripoli is the capital city. They discussed proposals for interim administration with many delegates asking for UN intervention in Libya. Jalil was stated to be the head of the National Transitional Council in the Council's founding statement of 5 March 2011. He is considered a conservative and devout Muslim, not a radical Islamist. He can often be seen wearing a 'shanna,' the traditional burgundy coloured wool cap used by Libyan men. In classified US diplomatic cables leaked recently by the website Wikileaks, he is described as open and cooperative.
2. Mr Mahmood Jibril: (right in foto below)
Born in Libya n 1952, obtained a BSc in Economics and Political Science from Cairo University in 1975. Holds a masters’ degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1980. He also obtained a Doctorate in Strategic planning and decision-making from the same university in 1984 where he worked as a professor in the same subject field for several years. So far he has published 10 books in Strategic planning and decision making. He led the team who drafted and formed the Unified Arab Training manual. He was also responsible for organizing and administering the first two Training conferences in the Arab world in the years 1987 and 1988. He later took over the management and administration of many of the leaders’ training programs for senior management in Arab countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey and Britain
15 March 2011 - also
Clinton meets Libyan opposition figure Mahmoud Jibril..
3. Mr. Ali Al Issawi ( Essawi) (center in Foto above)
A political and education Libyan who was born in the city of Benghazi in 1966. Has a PhD in pivatisation obtained from the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Romania. He occupied the position of Minister of Economy, Trade and Investment in Libya, and was the youngest minister to fill such a post. Before taking the ministerial position, he founded the Centre for Export Development in 2006 and became the first Director General for it. He also assumed the position of Director General for the Ownership expansion program (privatization fund) in 2005. Ali Al Issawi, former ambassador to India and one of the first Libyan diplomats to have raised the banner of revolt against Muammar Gaddafi since 20th of February , is the rebels' choice to reach out to the world.
And .....
the wild card ** Ali Zeidan (left in the foto below) .. he is not member of the council ..he has not been appointed by anyone.. always present in the meeting with Sarkozy..
Ali Zeidan doesn't live in Libya he is based in Munich and he worked for oil company having business in Iraq. Ali Zeidan, a Europe-based envoy (appointed by who ?) for the Libyan National Transitional Council, and Mansour Sayfal-Naser, a member of the Libyan Human Rights League !!, speak to the Associated Press in Paris, Monday March, 21, 2011.
Zeidan said air strikes, led by France, Britain and the United States, have helped, but the council do not want international forces to invade the country. "Gaddafi must disappear. He should leave as soon as possible," Zeidan said. "We would like to establish a new state on the basis of democracy ... we do not want an Islamist government."
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Συνοθύλευμα από αργόσχολους οι περισσότεροι που εκπροσωπούν την "επανάσταση" και τους οποίος όρισε σαν συνομιλιτές ο Σαρκοζι..
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Liberals March to War
Συνοθύλευμα από αργόσχολους οι περισσότεροι που εκπροσωπούν την "επανάσταση" και τους οποίος όρισε σαν συνομιλιτές ο Σαρκοζι..
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Liberals March to War
by Justin Raimondo,Well, that didn’t take long.
Now that President Barack Obama has intervened in Libya, his army of apologists is mobilizing to defend his “humanitarianism,” declaring that his war isn’t at all like Bush’s wars. It’s something new, and different – and admirable. I’m not at all surprised. Are you? The anti-interventionist veneer of most American liberals and assorted “progressives” peels off quite readily when a little “humanitarian” lotion is applied – especially if it’s poured on thick by a liberal Democratic President with a domestic agenda they can endorse.
Mother Jones magazine, to cite one exemplar of this chameleon-like transformation, is no stranger to cheerleading the dark side of Obama’s presidency. You’ll recall that the magazine launched a scurrilous attack on Julian Assange, in which the authorcompiled a lot of quotes from self-described “experts” to the effect that WikiLeaks suffers from a lack of “transparency” – to the US government, no less! – and, alternatively, is a CIA “front.” That didn’t sit too well with their readers, as a look at the comments appended to that article attests, but a shill for power’s gotta do what a shill is born to do, and that is “spin” every event to make the team –Team Obama, in this case – look good. And certainly David Corn is up to the task.
“A ghost hung over President Barack Obama,” writes Corn, “as he stood at a podium in the East Room of the White House on Friday afternoon to talk about Libya: the ghost of George W. Bush.”
Well, not really: that was the ghost of Woodrow Wilson. Bush, I would remind Corn, isn’t dead yet. But such details don’t bother a progressive on his way into battle. The latest US attack on a Muslim country in the Middle East may seem very similar to Bush’s wars – “absent references to WMD” – what with the rhetoric (He’s killing his own people! He’s a tyrant! He’s a terrorist!) and the stern Bushian mien. But that just shows how much you know ….
Because, you see, according to Corn, the President “in the second half of his remarks departed from the Bush-like script.” He then cites a single sentence in which the President refers to the “international coalition” arrayed against Gadhafi – one smaller than Bush’s, by the way – and includes some reassuring phrases about how, this time, we’re “shaping the conditions for the international community to act together.”
There – feel better now? Take two bromides that Bush himself could – and did – utter, and call me in the morning.
Here is Corn’s translation of this vague happy-talk:
“That is, we’re not cowboys. This will be, Obama suggested, true multilateralism—one including Arab nations. His administration and the governments of France and Britain had quickly guided a forceful resolution through the Security Council (with China and Russia abstaining), and the United States, Obama noted, would be ‘enabling our European allies and Arab partners to effectively enforce a no-fly zone.’ US leadership, yet European and Arab action. He added, ‘The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya.’”
“Noting that ‘our British and French allies, and members of the Arab League’ will take a lead role in enforcing the resolution, Obama declared, ‘This is precisely how the international community should work, as more nations bear both the responsibility and the cost of enforcing international law.’ That is precisely the opposite of how the neocons of the Bush-Cheney crowd viewed the world. They were not interested in tying their strategic desires to international law or in developing a global order in which the United States would not be the top-dog decider and enforcer.”
We’re not cowboys: we’re social workers, the kind with mean, pinched faces and a moralizing, condescending air – armed with fighter jets, guided missiles, and nuclear weapons, and determined to Do Good.
Now that the United States has bankrupted itself by spending more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined, the “multilateralists” take up the task of convincing the American people they’ve got to pursue the dream of empire to the very end. Oh no, they say, we’re good “liberals,” we don’t dream of empire – only of “international law” and a “global order.” Top dog? Not us! We’ll leave that onerous job to the UN Security Council.
Yes, and you’ll note the Obama-ites went to the Council, not the Congress, to ask permission to strike: and just to show we’re not the Top Dog, they let the Brits and the Frenchies take the lead. What generosity.
The “argument” presented here is the one progressives have salved their perpetually guilty consciences with ever since this manifestly unqualified ex-“community organizer” took up residence in the White House: he’s not Bush! That’s why they remained silent when he extended our perpetual “war on terrorism” into Pakistan, why they kept mum as the PATRIOT Act was reauthorized at the behest of the administration, and why they put the covers over their heads and stuck their fingers in their ears as George Bush’s torture regime continued, unabated and even expanded, under Obama. It’s why they ignored our failure to withdraw from Iraq, as promised by candidate Obama, and why they smiled politely and changed the subject whenever anyone had the poor taste to mention these unpleasant subjects.
Corn supplements the Not Bush argument with a new variation, an ideological rationale for knee-jerk defenders of the Obama regime: the we’re-not-neocons meme. Obama’s war in Libya is an example of what Corn actually dubs “the Anti-Bush Doctrine,” which is “precisely the opposite of how the neocons of the Bush-Cheney crowd viewed the world.”
The Anti-Bush Doctrine – and let’s call it that, because it reflects the partisan nonsense that passes for informed debate in Washington and in the San Francisco offices ofMother Jones – is merely the Bush Doctrine turned inside out, and left side up.
Mandated with a “responsibility to protect,” our self-appointed World Saviors and Bearers of Good Governance in the Obama White House are pledged to police the world in a multi-cultural and politically correct manner, kind of like the Federation onStar Trek, minus that bothersome Prime Directive they hobbled Captain Kirk with. Think of the vision of futurity in Things to Come, that fictional rendition of a parlor pink’s wet dream, where the Airmen take control after a world war, and patrol the earth disabling petty warlords and ragged barbarians with “peace gas.”
This very same “peace gas” is now being emitted by the likes of Corn and Mother Jones, in defense of the Big O’s very own war of “liberation.” This is the same crowd that cheered the Clintons’ war in the Balkans, where American fighter jets bombed some of the oldest cities in Europe at 20,000 ft. The Kosovo of organ-harvester Hashim Thaci, a state run by outright gangsters, is their monument. The gods only know what they’ll do to Libya. By the time they get through with the place, every Libyan will have guaranteed state-run healthcare – and a family member dead or missing.
Consider our Libyan war as a Keynesian exercise in “stimulus” spending: liberals who might otherwise object can take solace in the fact that Operation “Odyssey Dawn” has so far cost us the equivalent of the Republicans’ entire proposed budget cut. Every missile we send sailing into Gadhafi’s bunker costs anywhere from $600,000 to over a million. And by going to war with Libya we won’t just be selfishly stimulating our own economy, we’ll also be helping the Libyans even as we unleash destruction from the skies – at least, that’s the sort of Bizarro-logic employed by champions of the “broken window” fallacy, such as Paul Krugman.
As to the name given this operation by the Psyops department over at the Pentagon, “Odyssey Dawn,” it sounds like a women’s perfume, which brings to mind the true authors of this war, the three Amazons of the State Department: Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power. These busy gals are the real powers-behind-the-throne, who reportedly nagged Obama until he reluctantly agreed to intervene. It’s what you might call an ultra-feminist foreign policy: we’re taking the whole world to America’s maternal breast. With these Amazons at the helm – acting in concert with its European allies, and whichever Third World despots know what’s good for them – the US will act on its “responsibility to protect” – what? Whom? Whatever victim group can be sufficiently valorized to play the lead in a familiar narrative, one that always ends with sending in the Marines.
It just so happens Libya is an oil-rich prize, with the eastern part of the country – now detached from the rest by the “no fly, no go” zone –especially favored. It also just so happens to be the energy-hungry Brits and the equally voracious French who are taking the lead – at Obama’s insistence – in the allied war effort. You’d have to be one of those dreaded “conspiracy theorists” to think there’s some connection between oil and this war, in which case Cass Sunstein – Samantha’s hubby – would like to give you a good talking-to.
“The United States will join in a multilateral fight for democracy and humanitarian aims when it is in the nation’s interest and when the locals are involved and desire US participation.” This is Corn’s reading of the Anti-Bush Doctrine: yet, how, exactly, is this any different that its alleged antipode? Going into Iraq, Bush, too, boasted of the number of his alleged allies, the famous “coalition of the willing.” But so what: is a gang rape better than a one-on-one deal? Not in my book.
Bush, too, assured us “the locals” would be supportive: remember how we were supposed to be greeted as “liberators,” and showered with rose petals? Except it didn’t quite work out that way.
As for the “humanitarian” nature of this intervention, I have my doubts. Obama’s rationale for military action is that
“Left unchecked, we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commitatrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisiswould ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners. The calls of the Libyan people for help would go unanswered. The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun. Moreover, the words of the international community would be rendered hollow.”
The emphasis is mine, and it illustrates just how completely enslaved to the Bush Doctrine the current administration really is. For the essence of the Bush Doctrine was and is the principle of preemption: for the first time, the United States was saying to the world that it would not only respond to actual threats but to any potential threat anywhere in the world. The Obama Doctrine takes this one step further, and says that we have a responsibility to protect not only our own alleged interests, but also the interests of peoples vulnerable to potential violence directed at them by their own governments. Bush told us Saddam was “killing his own people,” and now Obama is telling us Gadhafi could possibly kill “many thousands” of Libyans.
Emblematic of the liberal collapse before the onslaught of the Obama cult is Juan Cole, whose pathetic performance on Scott Horton’s radio program, defending the intervention, is an embarrassment he will not soon live down.
Cole’s “argument” boiled down to a catchphrase that surely has been uttered by every warmongering neocon who ever walked the earth: pressed by Scott to justify his stance in support of the ‘no fly” zone, he declared “I’m not an isolationist!” The ‘i’-word is what every interventionist drags out when cornered: it is a meaningless, content-less coined word, what Ayn Rand would call an anti-concept – like “extremist” – which is meant to end the discussion rather than enable it.
It’s downhill from there: “What’s to stop [Gadhafi] from making a move on Tunisia?” he asks. This is precisely the same argument Bush posed to Iraq war opponents: Saddam, we were told, was a threat to his neighbors – although it seems the Libyan despot has his hands full just keeping control of his own country. Professor Cole then goes on to aver, like any neocon circa 2003, that our chosen Enemy of the Moment is “a terrorist,” and “an element of instability in the region,” one who, left in power, will “go on to play a sinister role.”
This last point is curiously circular, because if we hadn’t intervened then presumably Gadhafi wouldn’t play such a sinister role – indeed, he would have played the same role he played when Tony Blair went to visit him, and the two signed a security agreement. The role he played ever since he came in from the cold, made his peace with the US and its European allies, and donated a lot of money to the London School of Economics and (so I hear) the election campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The capitulation of the “liberals” to the War Party comes as no surprise: we saw this during the Clinton years, and we’re seeing it again. This time around, however, the War Party is even stronger. Although Corn is eager to persuade the readership ofMother Jones that the administration has not been taken over by the neocons, the truth is that the “humanitarians” are in bed with the neocons on this one, just as they were in the run up to the Kosovo war. Back in the 1990s, the neocons lent their names to innumerable “open letters” urging Bill Clinton to strike at the Serbs, with prominent progressives such as Susan Sontag leading the charge. George Soros financed a “grassroots” pro-war campaign, and the neocons were more than happy to jump on board the bandwagon – just as they are today.
Pushed into war by a coven of relentlessly nagging neo-liberal Amazons, and a cabal of round-shouldered flabby-faced neocons, President Obama has been captured by ideologues just as surely as was his predecessor – and, I’ll predict right here and now, with equally disastrous results.
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[source]
BEIJING - China escalated its opposition to American-led airstrikes on Libya on Tuesday, joining Russia and India in calls for an immediate cease-fire and suggesting that coalition forces were imperiling civilians by exceeding the United Nations-mandated no-fly zone.
The rising criticism among the so-called BRIC group - Brazil, Russia, India and China - came amid allegations by the Libyan government that allied bombings had killed or wounded scores of civilians, a claim rejected by American military officials.
On Monday, hours after the departure of President Obama, Brazil issued a statement condemning the attacks and urging "the start of dialogue."
China's response to the campaign has been the most forceful, warning that the assault could bring about a "humanitarian disaster." In a news briefing Tuesday, Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, called for an end to hostilities. "We've seen reports that the use of armed force is causing civilian casualties, and we oppose the wanton use of armed force leading to more civilian casualties," she said.
China was one of five countries to abstain from the United Nations resolution that authorized the allied airstrikes against the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, which have been seeking to crush a rebellion against his four-decade rule. Russia, Brazil, India and Germany also abstained, while South Africa joined nine other Security Council members in supporting the resolution approved last week.
In its decision to abstain rather than block the resolution through its veto power, China said it was heeding the wishes of the Arab League and the African Union.
During a meeting with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Tuesday, Russia's defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, added his voice to those calling for a cease-fire, saying it was the best way to avoid civilian casualties, according to The Associated Press. On Monday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin was unsparing in his criticism, comparing the allied campaign against Libya to the invasion of Iraq and likening it to a "medieval call for a crusade." In a rare expression of dissent between the country's two leaders, President Dmitri A. Medvedev later criticized the remarks as unacceptable.
On Tuesday, Indian officials joined those calling for a cease-fire. Pranab Mukherjee, the country's finance minister and a leader of the lower house of Parliament, told lawmakers that the coalition had no right to oust the ruler of a sovereign nation.
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Tuesday that Turkey supported providing humanitarian aid to Libya but that it would "never be the party that points weapons at the Libyan people." Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, had opposed an alliance plan for the no-fly zone.
The Chinese news media, meanwhile, have been vociferous in expressing opposition to the military campaign against the Libyan government, with articles and commentaries depicting the assault as an attempt to grab that country's oil resources and expand American influence in the region.
A front-page article in People's Daily on Tuesday said the United Nations resolution characterizing the Libyan army's attack on civilians as a possible "crime against humanity" was simply cover for what it called the West's hegemonic intentions.
"Historical experience has shown that humanitarian intervention is only an excuse for military intervention into other countries' domestic affairs," wrote the author, Tang Zhichao, a scholar at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. "They claim to be motivated by morality but in fact they are driven by narrow political and economic interests."
An editorial in Global Times, owned by People's Daily, went further, saying that Western nations should be penalized for "abusing" the Security Council resolution that paved the way for the attack. "Just let them agonize there in Libya," the paper said, referring to the United States and its partners. "No matter what happens to Qaddafi, a chaotic Libya will become an unshakable burden for the West forever."
Now that President Barack Obama has intervened in Libya, his army of apologists is mobilizing to defend his “humanitarianism,” declaring that his war isn’t at all like Bush’s wars. It’s something new, and different – and admirable. I’m not at all surprised. Are you? The anti-interventionist veneer of most American liberals and assorted “progressives” peels off quite readily when a little “humanitarian” lotion is applied – especially if it’s poured on thick by a liberal Democratic President with a domestic agenda they can endorse.
Mother Jones magazine, to cite one exemplar of this chameleon-like transformation, is no stranger to cheerleading the dark side of Obama’s presidency. You’ll recall that the magazine launched a scurrilous attack on Julian Assange, in which the authorcompiled a lot of quotes from self-described “experts” to the effect that WikiLeaks suffers from a lack of “transparency” – to the US government, no less! – and, alternatively, is a CIA “front.” That didn’t sit too well with their readers, as a look at the comments appended to that article attests, but a shill for power’s gotta do what a shill is born to do, and that is “spin” every event to make the team –Team Obama, in this case – look good. And certainly David Corn is up to the task.
“A ghost hung over President Barack Obama,” writes Corn, “as he stood at a podium in the East Room of the White House on Friday afternoon to talk about Libya: the ghost of George W. Bush.”
Well, not really: that was the ghost of Woodrow Wilson. Bush, I would remind Corn, isn’t dead yet. But such details don’t bother a progressive on his way into battle. The latest US attack on a Muslim country in the Middle East may seem very similar to Bush’s wars – “absent references to WMD” – what with the rhetoric (He’s killing his own people! He’s a tyrant! He’s a terrorist!) and the stern Bushian mien. But that just shows how much you know ….
Because, you see, according to Corn, the President “in the second half of his remarks departed from the Bush-like script.” He then cites a single sentence in which the President refers to the “international coalition” arrayed against Gadhafi – one smaller than Bush’s, by the way – and includes some reassuring phrases about how, this time, we’re “shaping the conditions for the international community to act together.”
There – feel better now? Take two bromides that Bush himself could – and did – utter, and call me in the morning.
Here is Corn’s translation of this vague happy-talk:
“That is, we’re not cowboys. This will be, Obama suggested, true multilateralism—one including Arab nations. His administration and the governments of France and Britain had quickly guided a forceful resolution through the Security Council (with China and Russia abstaining), and the United States, Obama noted, would be ‘enabling our European allies and Arab partners to effectively enforce a no-fly zone.’ US leadership, yet European and Arab action. He added, ‘The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya.’”
“Noting that ‘our British and French allies, and members of the Arab League’ will take a lead role in enforcing the resolution, Obama declared, ‘This is precisely how the international community should work, as more nations bear both the responsibility and the cost of enforcing international law.’ That is precisely the opposite of how the neocons of the Bush-Cheney crowd viewed the world. They were not interested in tying their strategic desires to international law or in developing a global order in which the United States would not be the top-dog decider and enforcer.”
We’re not cowboys: we’re social workers, the kind with mean, pinched faces and a moralizing, condescending air – armed with fighter jets, guided missiles, and nuclear weapons, and determined to Do Good.
Now that the United States has bankrupted itself by spending more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined, the “multilateralists” take up the task of convincing the American people they’ve got to pursue the dream of empire to the very end. Oh no, they say, we’re good “liberals,” we don’t dream of empire – only of “international law” and a “global order.” Top dog? Not us! We’ll leave that onerous job to the UN Security Council.
Yes, and you’ll note the Obama-ites went to the Council, not the Congress, to ask permission to strike: and just to show we’re not the Top Dog, they let the Brits and the Frenchies take the lead. What generosity.
The “argument” presented here is the one progressives have salved their perpetually guilty consciences with ever since this manifestly unqualified ex-“community organizer” took up residence in the White House: he’s not Bush! That’s why they remained silent when he extended our perpetual “war on terrorism” into Pakistan, why they kept mum as the PATRIOT Act was reauthorized at the behest of the administration, and why they put the covers over their heads and stuck their fingers in their ears as George Bush’s torture regime continued, unabated and even expanded, under Obama. It’s why they ignored our failure to withdraw from Iraq, as promised by candidate Obama, and why they smiled politely and changed the subject whenever anyone had the poor taste to mention these unpleasant subjects.
Corn supplements the Not Bush argument with a new variation, an ideological rationale for knee-jerk defenders of the Obama regime: the we’re-not-neocons meme. Obama’s war in Libya is an example of what Corn actually dubs “the Anti-Bush Doctrine,” which is “precisely the opposite of how the neocons of the Bush-Cheney crowd viewed the world.”
The Anti-Bush Doctrine – and let’s call it that, because it reflects the partisan nonsense that passes for informed debate in Washington and in the San Francisco offices ofMother Jones – is merely the Bush Doctrine turned inside out, and left side up.
Mandated with a “responsibility to protect,” our self-appointed World Saviors and Bearers of Good Governance in the Obama White House are pledged to police the world in a multi-cultural and politically correct manner, kind of like the Federation onStar Trek, minus that bothersome Prime Directive they hobbled Captain Kirk with. Think of the vision of futurity in Things to Come, that fictional rendition of a parlor pink’s wet dream, where the Airmen take control after a world war, and patrol the earth disabling petty warlords and ragged barbarians with “peace gas.”
This very same “peace gas” is now being emitted by the likes of Corn and Mother Jones, in defense of the Big O’s very own war of “liberation.” This is the same crowd that cheered the Clintons’ war in the Balkans, where American fighter jets bombed some of the oldest cities in Europe at 20,000 ft. The Kosovo of organ-harvester Hashim Thaci, a state run by outright gangsters, is their monument. The gods only know what they’ll do to Libya. By the time they get through with the place, every Libyan will have guaranteed state-run healthcare – and a family member dead or missing.
Consider our Libyan war as a Keynesian exercise in “stimulus” spending: liberals who might otherwise object can take solace in the fact that Operation “Odyssey Dawn” has so far cost us the equivalent of the Republicans’ entire proposed budget cut. Every missile we send sailing into Gadhafi’s bunker costs anywhere from $600,000 to over a million. And by going to war with Libya we won’t just be selfishly stimulating our own economy, we’ll also be helping the Libyans even as we unleash destruction from the skies – at least, that’s the sort of Bizarro-logic employed by champions of the “broken window” fallacy, such as Paul Krugman.
As to the name given this operation by the Psyops department over at the Pentagon, “Odyssey Dawn,” it sounds like a women’s perfume, which brings to mind the true authors of this war, the three Amazons of the State Department: Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power. These busy gals are the real powers-behind-the-throne, who reportedly nagged Obama until he reluctantly agreed to intervene. It’s what you might call an ultra-feminist foreign policy: we’re taking the whole world to America’s maternal breast. With these Amazons at the helm – acting in concert with its European allies, and whichever Third World despots know what’s good for them – the US will act on its “responsibility to protect” – what? Whom? Whatever victim group can be sufficiently valorized to play the lead in a familiar narrative, one that always ends with sending in the Marines.
It just so happens Libya is an oil-rich prize, with the eastern part of the country – now detached from the rest by the “no fly, no go” zone –especially favored. It also just so happens to be the energy-hungry Brits and the equally voracious French who are taking the lead – at Obama’s insistence – in the allied war effort. You’d have to be one of those dreaded “conspiracy theorists” to think there’s some connection between oil and this war, in which case Cass Sunstein – Samantha’s hubby – would like to give you a good talking-to.
“The United States will join in a multilateral fight for democracy and humanitarian aims when it is in the nation’s interest and when the locals are involved and desire US participation.” This is Corn’s reading of the Anti-Bush Doctrine: yet, how, exactly, is this any different that its alleged antipode? Going into Iraq, Bush, too, boasted of the number of his alleged allies, the famous “coalition of the willing.” But so what: is a gang rape better than a one-on-one deal? Not in my book.
Bush, too, assured us “the locals” would be supportive: remember how we were supposed to be greeted as “liberators,” and showered with rose petals? Except it didn’t quite work out that way.
As for the “humanitarian” nature of this intervention, I have my doubts. Obama’s rationale for military action is that
“Left unchecked, we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commitatrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisiswould ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners. The calls of the Libyan people for help would go unanswered. The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun. Moreover, the words of the international community would be rendered hollow.”
The emphasis is mine, and it illustrates just how completely enslaved to the Bush Doctrine the current administration really is. For the essence of the Bush Doctrine was and is the principle of preemption: for the first time, the United States was saying to the world that it would not only respond to actual threats but to any potential threat anywhere in the world. The Obama Doctrine takes this one step further, and says that we have a responsibility to protect not only our own alleged interests, but also the interests of peoples vulnerable to potential violence directed at them by their own governments. Bush told us Saddam was “killing his own people,” and now Obama is telling us Gadhafi could possibly kill “many thousands” of Libyans.
Emblematic of the liberal collapse before the onslaught of the Obama cult is Juan Cole, whose pathetic performance on Scott Horton’s radio program, defending the intervention, is an embarrassment he will not soon live down.
Cole’s “argument” boiled down to a catchphrase that surely has been uttered by every warmongering neocon who ever walked the earth: pressed by Scott to justify his stance in support of the ‘no fly” zone, he declared “I’m not an isolationist!” The ‘i’-word is what every interventionist drags out when cornered: it is a meaningless, content-less coined word, what Ayn Rand would call an anti-concept – like “extremist” – which is meant to end the discussion rather than enable it.
It’s downhill from there: “What’s to stop [Gadhafi] from making a move on Tunisia?” he asks. This is precisely the same argument Bush posed to Iraq war opponents: Saddam, we were told, was a threat to his neighbors – although it seems the Libyan despot has his hands full just keeping control of his own country. Professor Cole then goes on to aver, like any neocon circa 2003, that our chosen Enemy of the Moment is “a terrorist,” and “an element of instability in the region,” one who, left in power, will “go on to play a sinister role.”
This last point is curiously circular, because if we hadn’t intervened then presumably Gadhafi wouldn’t play such a sinister role – indeed, he would have played the same role he played when Tony Blair went to visit him, and the two signed a security agreement. The role he played ever since he came in from the cold, made his peace with the US and its European allies, and donated a lot of money to the London School of Economics and (so I hear) the election campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The capitulation of the “liberals” to the War Party comes as no surprise: we saw this during the Clinton years, and we’re seeing it again. This time around, however, the War Party is even stronger. Although Corn is eager to persuade the readership ofMother Jones that the administration has not been taken over by the neocons, the truth is that the “humanitarians” are in bed with the neocons on this one, just as they were in the run up to the Kosovo war. Back in the 1990s, the neocons lent their names to innumerable “open letters” urging Bill Clinton to strike at the Serbs, with prominent progressives such as Susan Sontag leading the charge. George Soros financed a “grassroots” pro-war campaign, and the neocons were more than happy to jump on board the bandwagon – just as they are today.
Pushed into war by a coven of relentlessly nagging neo-liberal Amazons, and a cabal of round-shouldered flabby-faced neocons, President Obama has been captured by ideologues just as surely as was his predecessor – and, I’ll predict right here and now, with equally disastrous results.
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'CHINA LEADS GLOBAL OPPOSITION TO EMPIRE AGGRESSION IN LIBYA'
China Urges Quick End to Airstrikes in Libya
[source]
BEIJING - China escalated its opposition to American-led airstrikes on Libya on Tuesday, joining Russia and India in calls for an immediate cease-fire and suggesting that coalition forces were imperiling civilians by exceeding the United Nations-mandated no-fly zone.
The rising criticism among the so-called BRIC group - Brazil, Russia, India and China - came amid allegations by the Libyan government that allied bombings had killed or wounded scores of civilians, a claim rejected by American military officials.
On Monday, hours after the departure of President Obama, Brazil issued a statement condemning the attacks and urging "the start of dialogue."
China's response to the campaign has been the most forceful, warning that the assault could bring about a "humanitarian disaster." In a news briefing Tuesday, Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, called for an end to hostilities. "We've seen reports that the use of armed force is causing civilian casualties, and we oppose the wanton use of armed force leading to more civilian casualties," she said.
China was one of five countries to abstain from the United Nations resolution that authorized the allied airstrikes against the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, which have been seeking to crush a rebellion against his four-decade rule. Russia, Brazil, India and Germany also abstained, while South Africa joined nine other Security Council members in supporting the resolution approved last week.
In its decision to abstain rather than block the resolution through its veto power, China said it was heeding the wishes of the Arab League and the African Union.
During a meeting with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Tuesday, Russia's defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, added his voice to those calling for a cease-fire, saying it was the best way to avoid civilian casualties, according to The Associated Press. On Monday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin was unsparing in his criticism, comparing the allied campaign against Libya to the invasion of Iraq and likening it to a "medieval call for a crusade." In a rare expression of dissent between the country's two leaders, President Dmitri A. Medvedev later criticized the remarks as unacceptable.
On Tuesday, Indian officials joined those calling for a cease-fire. Pranab Mukherjee, the country's finance minister and a leader of the lower house of Parliament, told lawmakers that the coalition had no right to oust the ruler of a sovereign nation.
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Tuesday that Turkey supported providing humanitarian aid to Libya but that it would "never be the party that points weapons at the Libyan people." Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, had opposed an alliance plan for the no-fly zone.
The Chinese news media, meanwhile, have been vociferous in expressing opposition to the military campaign against the Libyan government, with articles and commentaries depicting the assault as an attempt to grab that country's oil resources and expand American influence in the region.
A front-page article in People's Daily on Tuesday said the United Nations resolution characterizing the Libyan army's attack on civilians as a possible "crime against humanity" was simply cover for what it called the West's hegemonic intentions.
"Historical experience has shown that humanitarian intervention is only an excuse for military intervention into other countries' domestic affairs," wrote the author, Tang Zhichao, a scholar at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. "They claim to be motivated by morality but in fact they are driven by narrow political and economic interests."
An editorial in Global Times, owned by People's Daily, went further, saying that Western nations should be penalized for "abusing" the Security Council resolution that paved the way for the attack. "Just let them agonize there in Libya," the paper said, referring to the United States and its partners. "No matter what happens to Qaddafi, a chaotic Libya will become an unshakable burden for the West forever."
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