And so now, another war. Led by the United States and the religious extremists in Saudi Arabia, the UN Security Council voted to intervene on behalf of one side in the Libyan civil war. Having already armed and trained Moamar Gadafy's armies and security forces, the Western war-profiteers have now decided to do the same for his opponents.

These opponents, it must be noted, are at present led by top players who only weeks ago were at the center of Gadafy's murderous, repressive regime -- which was itself, only weeks ago, considered a worthy partner by Western governments and business interests.

 

 

As As'ad AbuKhalil -- a fierce critic of Gadafy for many years -- noted today, before the UN vote:

"The Libyan people have been betrayed.  Their revolution against the Libyan tyrant has been hijacked by US and Saudi Arabia.  That lousy henchman for Qadhdhafi,  Mustafa Abd-Al-Jali [leader of the rebel's Libyan National Transition Council], is now a Saudi stooge who hijacked the uprising on behalf of a foreign agenda.  I mean, what do you expect from a man who until the other day held the position of Minister of Justice in Qadhdhafi's regime, for potato's sake? And don't you like it when Western media constantly refer to him as "the respected Libyan minister of Justice."  Respected by who?  By Western governments."

It should also be noted that the Saudis are even now staging a military intervention in Bahrain to help the autocratic regime there put down -- with deadly force and brutal repression -- a peaceful resistance movement seeking democracy and justice. "“We want to support the opposition who are standing against the dictator,” Hillary Clinton declared today. But she was talking about the dictator in Libya, not the dictator in Bahrain, who has willingly turned his country into a fueling station for the projection of American dominance in the Middle East.

Finally, it should be noted that the UN Resolution is not in any way restricted to establishing a "no-fly zone" to keep Gadafy from bombing Libyan cities. This has been the holy grail of our humanitarian interventionists who, despite the evidence of their own eyes over several decades, still seem to believe that military action -- the application of massive, violent force -- can be done without hurting anybody but the mean old bad guys whom we suddenly don't like anymore for whatever reason.

But this is no "light touch" intervention. The UN decree greenlights everything short of an outright land invasion of Libya. Indeed, within minutes of the resolution's passing, American officials were already talking about a "no-drive zone": direct attacks on Libyan tanks and artillery. What's more, US officials were already considering sending in "military personnel to advise and train the rebels."

AbuKhalil also points us to this article by Michael Brull of Independent Australian Jewish Voices. The piece, which also came out before the UN vote, is worth quoting at length:

"When asking what should the West do, it seems to skirt over what it can and ought to do. A no-fly zone in Libya is a drastic step, with dubious popular support at best, and little evidence has been presented that it would help anyone in Libya. On the other hand, there are places where we could more easily impose a no-fly zone. For example, Hamid Karzai has been begging us to stop bombing Afghanistan for years. We could impose a no-fly zone by ending our bombardment, which would also stop us from killing more civilians.

"We could also stop bombing Yemen, which WikiLeaks reveals we’d been doing, and lying about. We could end the drone attacks on Pakistan. WikiLeaks shows that president Zardari thinks “Collateral damage worries you Americans. It doesn’t worry me”. Plainly, it doesn’t worry us either. Over a thousand people have been killed, primarily civilians. Yet again, in this case, the evil isn’t so bad that the West is called upon to intervene. The reason is straightforward: intervening would mean stopping our crimes, and it is considered far more morally courageous in the West to call for an end to their crimes. ....

"The point of all this: we in the West should not be wringing our hands over what to do. There is plenty of good we can do. We could withdraw support for dictatorships in the Middle East, end support for repression in Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, end our occupation of Afghanistan, stop drone attacks in Pakistan, and withdraw military support from Israel, which is used to brutalise and oppress the Palestinians.

"However, there are (as always) those who say what is happening in Libya is evil. We must do something. Surprisingly it has come most strongly from the Left, against the Left, in the form of Guy Rundle. He describes the request for a no-fly zone “from a legitimate revolutionary leadership”.

"Who’s that? The Libyan National Transition Council. He admits its “composition of ex-Gaddafi ministers and others... But that's not important”. As’ad AbuKhalil, a columnist with the left-wing Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar, describes its leader Mustafa Abd-Al-Jalil as “a Gaddafi stooge”. He, along with other Gaddafi appointees leads “an Islamist tendency in the opposition movement which stands opposed to the more secular and radical trend represented by the professional association of the lawyers for example, and which-unlike Abdul-Al-Jalil refuses the secret messaging with the Gaddafi junta”.

"What popular legitimacy does this Council have? It doesn’t matter to Rundle. Anyone who doesn’t support it doesn’t “have solidarity with the Libyans but will simply watch passively and let them be defeated, and then murdered”....

"I guess we have no choice, right? After all, surely we in the West can’t just sit by and let evil happen. We have a responsibility to intervene. Anyone who cares will if necessary support an invasion of Libya, otherwise they don’t have solidarity with the Libyans but will simply watch passively and let them be defeated, and then murdered.

"Just be sure to avert your gaze from Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Honduras, Haiti and any other country where we are already intervening, but on the wrong side."

Today Hillary Clinton decried the "terrible things" that Gadafy will do "to Libya and its neighbors." And why will he do this? Because he is, of course, a monster: "It's just in his nature. There are some creatures that are like that."

But this creature has now spent the past several years as a staunch ally of the West, especially in the "counterterrorism" fight. The Americans and the British have given him arms, training, equipment, expertise and other support. (Just as they did, for years, with Saddam Hussein.) He was precisely the same "creature" then as he is now. Western elites knew that Gadafy had done "terrible things to Libya and its neighbors" for years before they embraced him -- and his oil money --- with open arms. None of this bothered them before.

But now that Gadafy is doing exactly what the United States government would do if an armed faction took over whole swathes of its territory -- respond with furious, murderous force -- he has suddenly become a monster again.

Luckily for Washington, the Libyan opposition -- "the more secular and radical trend represented by the professional associations" noted by AbuKhalil -- has, as he said, been hijacked by ex-Gadafy goons and Saudi tools who will now, with the West's military intervention, avidly seek to provide the same kind of profitable "stability" in Libya that we see in such wondrous beacons of democracy and enlightenment as Bahrain.