Harry Targ : Benghazi is the Perfect 'Scandal'

Political cartoon by Daryl Cagle / Cagle Cartoons.

Benghazi:
The perfect 'scandal'

The real 'scandal' is the cover-up of what the U.S. was doing in Libya.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 30, 2013

On the night of September 11, 2012, an armed group attacked a diplomatic post in the city of Benghazi in eastern Libya. The next morning a CIA annex was attacked. Out of these two attacks four United States citizens were killed including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

According to a November 2012 Wall Street Journal article (quoted by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic, May 13, 2013):

The U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation, according to officials briefed on the intelligence. Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said.

On March 17, 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 authorizing humanitarian intervention in Libya. It endorsed “Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory...” Five Security Council members abstained from support of this resolution: Brazil, China, Germany, India, and Russia.

Passage of the resolution was followed by a NATO-led air war on targets in that country. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 as a military alliance to defend Europe from any possible aggression initiated by the Soviet Union. If words mattered, NATO should have dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The United States, so concerned for the human rights of people in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, including in Libya, was virtually silent as nonviolent revolutions overthrew dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt earlier in 2011.

The United States continued to support regimes in Bahrain and Yemen in the face of popular protest and violent response and remained the primary rock-solid supporter of the state of Israel as it continued to expand settlements in the West Bank and blockaded the transfer of goods to Palestinians in Gaza.

And, of course, in the face of growing ferment in the Middle East and Persian Gulf for democratization not a word was said by way of criticism of the monarchical system in Saudi Arabia.

So as the Gaddafi regime in Libya fought its last battles, leading ultimately to the capture and assassination of the Libyan dictator, the NATO alliance and the United States praised themselves for their support of movements for democratization in Libya.

What seemed obvious to observers except most journalists was the fact that the overthrow of the Libyan regime, for better or worse, could not have occurred without the massive bombing campaign against military and civilian targets throughout Libya carried out by NATO forces.

From the vantage point of the Benghazi crisis of September 11, 2012, humanitarian intervention, which in Benghazi included 23 (of some 30) U.S. representatives who were CIA operatives, suggests that the attacks on U.S. targets might have had something to do with the history of U.S interventionism in the country. Great powers, such as the United States, continue to interfere in the political life of small and poor countries. And, the mainstream media continues to provide a humanitarian narrative of imperialism at work.

The post-9/11 Benghazi story is one of Republicans irresponsibly focusing on inter-agency squabbles and so-called contradictory Obama “talking points” after the killings of the four U.S. representatives in Benghazi. They chose not to address the real issue of the United States pattern of interference in the internal affairs of Libya.

And the Obama Administration defends itself by denying its incompetence in the matter, desperately trying to avoid disclosing the real facts in the Benghazi story which might show that the CIA and the Ambassador’s staff were embedded in Benghazi to interfere in the political struggles going on between factions among the Libyan people.

As Alexander Cockburn put it well in reference to the war on Libya in The Nation in June 2011:

America’s clients in Bahrain and Riyadh can watch the undignified pantomime with a tranquil heart, welcoming this splendid demonstration that they have nothing to fear from Obama’s fine speeches or Clinton’s references to democratic aspirations, well aware that NATO’s warplanes and helicopters are operating under the usual double standard -- with the Western press furnishing all appropriate services.

If Cockburn were alive today he would have added that the Libyan operation was about U.S. covert interventionism, anger on the part of sectors of the Benghazi citizenship, and not about the United States encouraging “democratic aspirations” of the Libyan people.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats want to have a conversation about U.S. interventionism but prefer to debate about a “scandal.” The real “scandal” is the cover-up of what the U.S. was doing in Libya.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Tarq : Does U.S. Foreign Policy Respect Human Life?

Libyan men and children queue up to view the corpse of Muammar Qaddafi. Photo from Getty Images.
U.S. foreign policy and
the respect for human life

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / October 26, 2011

"The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner...We value life and human dignity. They don't care about life and human dignity." -- Gen. William Westmoreland interviewed in Hearts and Minds (1974), a documentary about the Vietnam War.

This past week American politics took a peculiar turn. A new narrative about the Obama administration began to be systematically presented to the liberal media audience. Reviewing his three-year-old administration, the new construction is that on the national security front Obama is markedly more tough and effective than Republicans claim.

The brutal murder of Muammar Qaddafi by rebellious opponents on global television, followed by celebratory remarks by the president, his secretary of state, and other members of the administration, capped three years of U.S. violence on people of the Global South.

Many critics of Obama’s less than forceful advocacy of economic justice have shifted their focus to a frame of the president as resolute in protecting American national security in the face of a challenging world. They even have implied that Obama is more of a tough guy than his predecessor ever was.

What is the evidence for this? Frankly, President Obama has unleashed new variants of the U.S. killing machine. Violence against Asian, Middle Eastern, and African people has been visibly celebrated in public view. The numbers of victims killed may not be greater than that of prior administrations but the celebration of public murders seem to have increased.

Early in the Obama administration, the president made a decision to assassinate Somali pirates, pirates who had kidnapped westerners off the Horn of Africa. Last May, with the president’s diplomatic team staring at a television screen during a nail-biting meeting, Navy Seals invaded the compound housing Osama Bin Laden who was unceremoniously killed and dumped in the sea. The media highlighted Americans who celebrated this killing.

Four months after the successful murder of Bin Laden, Obama’s crack team assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, American citizen and alleged leader of Islamic terrorists, who threatened the United States. Abdul Rahman al-Awlaki, his teenage son, and others were summarily executed for crimes for which they had not been accused or tried.

In addition, President Obama agreed to work with allies, Great Britain and France, who held colonial empires in the Middle East and North Africa in the twentieth century. They mobilized a campaign in the United Nations to gain public legitimacy for military intervention in Libya to overthrow the long-time idiosyncratic leader, Qaddafi, whose tiny nation from time to time supported dissidents in the Arab and African worlds.

The initial claim was that the force, a NATO operation, would be humanitarian, saving the lives of those who were rebelling against the Libyan dictatorship.

The rebels, unlike the nonviolent activists in Tunisia and Egypt where western support was minimal, were armed, probably by the West, and launched a civil war against the regime. Then NATO air power was used for seven months to pound Libya until the Qaddafi military collapsed.

The “humanitarian” intervention took between 30,000 and 50,000 lives, dissidents as well as Qaddafi loyalists. Shortly after the war ended with the death and mutilation of the dictator’s body on a street in Sirte, President Obama declared victory for the Libyan people -- although who the rebels are remains unclear -- and pronounced what he referred to as a new measured and wise U.S. foreign policy.

The new foreign policy, what might be called the “Obama Doctrine,” has four parts. First, the United States, as the last remaining superpower, and as the defender of the global moral standard, could once again assume the right and responsibility to intervene militarily to preserve and enhance human rights around the world. As the president put it, reflecting on the recent killings in a press conference after the death of Qaddafi was announced, U.S. actions have demonstrated “…the strength of American leadership across the world.”

Second, U.S. humanitarian interventions will be carried out in conjunction with military operations with our friends, presumably equally committed to high moral standards. In Obama’s words; “We’ve demonstrated what collective action can achieve in the 21st century.” NATO, an alliance established in 1949 to protect Western Europe and North America from security threats from “international communism,” now will police the world.

Third, new technologies make it possible for the United States to police the world without “boots on the ground.” Given the new technology, the free world can intervene virtually anywhere, anytime, through the use of incredibly sophisticated drone warfare. In the Libyan case, as the president said, “without putting a single service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives, and our NATO mission will soon come to an end.”

U.S./NATO warriors can target enemies without personal danger to themselves while working in antiseptic offices in the United States or Europe, or on small bases in the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, or Africa. Nick Turse, author of The Complex (2008) estimates that at least 60 drone bases are operational around the world, ready to hit enemy targets virtually anywhere.

Fourth, the Obama Doctrine makes it clear that human life is not sacred and that due process, the hallmark of western legal traditions, is now superseded by the unilateral right of key decision-makers to kill potential, as well as actual, enemies of the United States. To paraphrase the old definition of the state as that institution that holds the monopoly of the legitimate use of force, the state now holds the monopoly of legitimate use of murder.

In the end, the oft-quoted remark by General William Westmoreland about the Vietnamese enemy in the 1960s may more accurately be restated: “The United States government does not put the same high price on human life as other countries.”

Fortunately for progressives, mass movements exist that show the world that many Americans do not stand with their government’s use of violence. Progressives oppose mass murder, targeted executions, the death penalty anywhere, and despicable drone warfare. Progressives also respect the right and responsibilities of others to choose their own political destinies.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]
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David McReynolds : Libya, NATO, and International Law

Political cartoon by Gianfranco Uber / Cartoon Movement.
Bombs away:
Libya, NATO, and international law

By David McReynolds / The Rag Blog / July 13, 2011

The original UN resolution, pressed for by France, Great Britain, and the U.S. (all three led by men who have never been in armed combat) was to use such force as was needed to protect the civilian population of Libya. It was explicit that the NATO operation was not designed to force a regime change -- though Obama has since made it clear that in his view Gaddafi must leave.

The events in Libya are tragic because they are a civil war, not part of the North African Spring. Far more violence has been used in Syria, with no word of NATO intervention. At last report Saudi Arabia had over a thousand troops "loaned" to Bahrain, with no hint of NATO intervention. What makes Libya different? It has oil.

I'm not writing a brief for or against Gaddafi. I am saying that NATO has violated the UN Resolution, that it should cease combat, and accept any of several offers put forward by other countries for an immediate cease fire. In particular the use of air attacks in a transparent effort to murder Gadaffi are completely indefensible.


But it is NATO which I want to look at first, and this carries us back to the early days of the Cold War. There have been books written on the origins of the Cold War but we have time only for a sketch. When WW II ended in 1945, it was won, in Europe, by the extraordinary losses of life by the Soviet Union. From the Western side there was a fear of the masses of Soviet troops and tanks and the reality of the mass Communist Parties in France and Italy.

The Soviet theory, at that time, not to be revised until Khruschev became the Soviet leader, was that conflict (and by this one assumed war) between capitalism and communism was inevitable. The one ace in the hole of the West was the nuclear bomb, and the speed with which the U.S. surrounded the Soviet Union with air bases which would make possible nuclear strikes deep in Soviet territory.

From the Soviet side, their massed troops were exhausted, the lines of communication made any serious attack on the West impossible. What the Soviets did want -- what would have been true of any government in Moscow, regardless of its politics -- was a buffer zone between Russia and Western Europe.

Russia has no natural defenses, no oceans, no rivers, no mountains. It had suffered from the Napoleonic invasion in the 19th century and from two German invasions in the 20th century. The Soviets sought at first to gain security through getting a U.S. and British agreement to a neutral Germany, along the lines that had been worked out with Austria and Finland. But in the climate of 1948 when nerves were raw on both sides and at a time when, possibly, wiser heads on either side might have changed the course of events, the Soviets moved to take control of Czechoslovakia, bringing it into the East European Bloc.

(There was an unintended tragedy here -- in the last free elections in Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party had a strong share of the vote -- the Soviet moves to bring it into the Soviet Bloc was a death blow to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia).

The same year saw the raw testing of nerves when the Soviet Union cut off the land route from West Germany into Berlin, and the West responded with the Berlin Airlift.

Western Europe, essentially under the control of the U.S. (though a much gentler control than Eastern Europe faced from Moscow) responded to events in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin crisis by establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) -- a military defensive shield. That was in 1949.

The Soviets established the Warsaw Pact in 1955, several years after the founding of NATO. The Soviets had waited, still hoping for some kind of demilitarization of Germany, but this hope was ended when West German military forces were admitted to NATO in 1954.

In theory (and in the eyes of almost everyone in Europe), the two military pacts were "mutually defensive pacts." But it was Professor Johan Galtung, a Norwegian academic (and pacifist -- who served time in prison rather than doing military service) who advanced a theory I think proved more accurate.

Galtung felt that the NATO and WARSAW pacts were never intended to protect from outside forces (ie., the West realized Moscow was in no position to send forces into Western Europe, while the NATO forces knew that massive public opposition would make it untenable to invade the Warsaw Bloc). Rather, Prof. Galtung suggested, the two pacts were designed for "vertical control."

If one goes back to that period there is a great deal of evidence of plans by the U.S., and by the military and police forces in France and Italy, to prevent even a free election of the Communist Parties in those countries, and to use NATO forces to achieve this -- ie., a "vertical control"

Looking to the East the examples abound. On June 17, 1953, there was a major workers' uprising in East Germany, put down with Soviet military forces, with at least 125 killed. In Poznan, Poland, in 1956 there were substantial working class riots, put down with Soviet forces, with something close to 200 people killed. Finally, and most dramatically, in Hungary, in October of 1956, there was a revolution which overthrew the government.

The Soviets at first agreed to withdraw and permit the formation of a new government, but then sent in troops. It is estimated that at least 700 Soviet troops and 2500 Hungarian were killed. (Matters were not helped by the fact that in October, 1956, when the world should have been focused on Hungary, Britian, France, and Israel invaded Egypt to seize control of the Suez Canal -- a lesson reminding us that workers should never look to imperial powers for help at a time of need!).

It was at this moment when, if more rational minds were in control in the West, the leaders of NATO would have put through a call to Moscow saying "Look, it is obvious that the Warsaw Pact cannot possibly attack us -- you can't even control the countries in your own bloc. So we are now, unilaterally, dissolving NATO and we urge you to join us, and together see if we can work out some plans for genuine demilitarization of Europe."

But rational minds were not in control. Even when the Soviet Union itself collapsed in a remarkable series on nonviolent revolutions, the West did not say, "Hey, we don't need NATO anymore -- the Warsaw Pact has dissolved, and our only excuse for existing dissolved with it."

No, the "realistic" political minds in Washington, Paris, London, and Bonn began to talk of ways of finding new functions for NATO, admitting the nations that had been under Soviet control, and pushing the Western military machine closer to Russia's borders. Part of this is the fulfillment of the sociological law that no organization goes quietly into the night.

When the March of Dimes realized it had won the fight against polio, it didn't dissolve -- why dissolve when so many people had jobs? They just found a new disease. NATO provides all kind of jobs for Generals and for ordinary bureaucrats in Brussels. To dissolve NATO might threaten the survival of Brussels itself.

And so NATO found new purposes. It deployed military forces to Afghanistan! A most remarkable deployment, since not one of the countries in NATO (with the exception of the earlier ill-fated British Mission) had ever even been to Afghanistan. A new war! A new purpose! No need for generals to find honest work! The bureaucrats at Brussels were safe!

So in this sense it is not surprising that NATO, finding itself firmly locked out of events in North Africa, not invited to play a key role in Tunisia or Egypt or Bahrain, decided it could play a role in Libya, and at least Libya had oil!

My first point has been that NATO -- an organization which probably should never have been formed, and which in any case was formed entirely in relation to tensions in the middle of the 20th century -- should be dissolved now. It should have been dissolved long ago. "Out of NATO" should be the slogan of every socialist and peace group in the NATO bloc.

The second point is international law, which has surfaced since the European courts issued a writ for the arrest of Gadaffi. I do not know if Gaddafi qualifies for the writ -- there is much that I don't know. But I do know that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair qualifies for such a writ, as does the former President of the United States, George Bush. I write this not because I have a special dislike for Blair or Bush, but because the force of law must carry with it some element of logic.

I am very glad that some of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge are being brought to trial. But even in that case I am worried over the process by which the international courts selected who should be prosecuted. All scholars who have followed the deep tragedy of Cambodia know that both China and the United States maintained support for the Khmer Rouge long after the Vietnamese Army had driven it from the cities. Scholars of events in Indochina know that it was the CIA action in installing Lon Nol in Cambodia, which in the process, drove the King from his throne, and opened the door to the Khmer Rouge. Again, scholars know the the heavy air attacks on Cambodia, ordered by Kissinger and Nixon, gave the Khmer Rouge a legitimacy. Nixon, of course, is gone, But Henry Kissinger still makes guest appearances on TV shows. He is still a paid consultant for at least one network.

In no way am I trying to excuse the former leaders of the Khmer Rouge from their day in court -- Cambodia deserves no less. I have been to Cambodia. I have seen the death pits, the skulls with the bullet holes. I want justice.

But the "trick" of international law is that if it is too obviously selective -- in the case of Cambodia we have only four Cambodians on trial -- we are surely mocking the dead, and in the process, using that trial to mock the law itself.

And if -- with the memory of Iraq on our minds, and knowing all that we know about it, knowing all the civilians in Iraq who were killed, all our own men and women who were killed, or who bear injuries that will twist their minds to the final days -- if, given those realties, we bring in a writ only against Gadaffi, does this not turn international law on its head?


Turning to Libya. To admit I do not know enough about Libya, is not to say I know nothing about it. Sheila Cooper, a friend of mine and a woman who liked secretarial work, had been secretary to Peggy Duff, also a good friend, and a leader in the British (and international) peace movement. Of Peggy, Noam Chomsky said she was "one of those heroes who is completely unknown, because she did too much... she should have won the Nobel Peace Prize about 20 times."

When Peggy died in 1981, Sheila took a secretarial job in Libya. The pay was good and she hoped to make enough to retire. I was in touch with Sheila about Libya, she never conveyed a sense of living in a dictatorship, she chatted about the differences among the Libyans depending on what part of Libya they were from. Sheila, sadly, died of cancer before her retirement, but on the one occasion when I visited her in London, while she was on leave, she did not express any sense of horror or dismay about Libya.

Most of us who are old enough to remember World War II know of Libya from the surge of Allied or Nazi tank battles across the desert, or from an old Humphrey Bogart film set in Libya. What we don't know is that the Nazis, Italians, British, and American armies left vast numbers of land mines behind, but never gave the Libyans the maps which could make possible finding the mines. As a result, even when I visited Libya in 1989 there were still farmers being blown up somewhere in Libya almost every week.

Nor do most of us have any idea of the patriotic struggle of the Libyans against Italy. We may be aware that the name of Libya's leader, Gaddafi, is spelled several different ways. The Libya we know today came into being in 1969, when Muammar Gaddafi took power in a coup, overthrowing the monarchy. But already oil had been discovered and Libya, which had not held much interest to other countries (the exception would be the U.S., which had a major air force base at Wheelus, Libya), was suddenly very much "on the map of world politics."

(This was not the first contact the U.S. had with Libya -- in fact, the first U.S. foreign military action was in 1805 in Tripoli against the "Barbary Pirates.")

One of the first things Gaddafi did was to expel the U.S. from Wheelus -- something for which I don't think the U.S. has ever forgiven him. Libya, under Gaddafi, entered world politics in ways that are confusing. I have a good friend who thinks he is insane. Certainly, with his strange ways of dressing, it is obvious he is not your ordinary political leader. He holds no title, and while he is considered a dictator by his opponents, I think our problem is trying to find some way to think about Libya and Gaddafi -- and it is hard.

Shortly after taking power he changed the name of Libya to "Jamahiriya," an Arabic term generally translated as "state of the masses." Gaddafi did not line up, politically, with either the Soviet Union or the Peoples Republic of China. Instead, he wrote the Green Book, of which I had a copy at one time but found close to incomprehensible and have (I think) lost it.

Remember, he was only 26 when he took power, he found himself in charge of a country which had, almost overnight, moved from being one of the poorest to being one of the most wealthy. He used that wealth to build universities, housing, medical centers. The form of government was -- in theory -- to be based on "direct democracy" without any political parties, governed through local popular councils named "Basic People's Congresses."

Clearly he had to have had considerable charisma to hold things together, and he seems to have hoped that his views, as set forth in his Green Book, would be a guide for the Third World. The best we can do in trying to translate "Jamahiriya" into English is to say it can be rendered as "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahirya." And that really leaves us more confused than before!

Gaddafi's foreign policy has been, at best, erratic. He has extended financial aid to a wide range of groups, acted as a friend to people such as Idi Amin, given aid to the Irish Republican Army, supported armed Islamic rebels in the Philippines, etc.

At some point in the early 1980's (I don't have exact notes) I got an invitation to a conference on Peace and Liberation to be held at Malta. I checked with my friend Sheila Cooper, and she said the Libyans had asked her for any names that she could think of -- and she had sort of turned over her address book. In addition to me and Daniel Ellsberg, there was an old friend from the independent left movement in Japan, a woman from Yugoslavia, two people from the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the U.S. -- perhaps two dozen in all.

My guess that Libyan money was behind it was true enough -- we had to raise the air fare to get to Rome, but from there we had tickets to Malta, and our costs in Malta were covered. The one real give-away was the huge table with Gaddafi's Green Book.

There were only about four Libyans present for the conference, they did not "guide us" to any conclusions. I was interested that there were no representatives from the World Peace Council -- the Soviet Union's front group. It was clear that this was an experiment in trying to reach out beyond the usual group. My own feeling was that the money spent on us was at least not spent on Irish terrorists.

In 1989 the Fellowship of Reconciliation sent a team, including myself, Virginia Baron, an academic -- Dirk Vandewalle -- and a half dozen others for a week to take a look at Libya. Having Prof. Vandewalle with us was very helpful, as he could give us what clearly Obama needs and doesn't have -- a short course in the history of Libya.

We did not meet Gaddafi, but we met with pretty much all the key people in government. But even to say that is tricky. I realize much has changed since 1989, but there were no civil associations as we would know them, no trade unions, no lawyers associations, no political parties. The question of "how" decisions were made was not clear.

None of us found the political climate oppressive. Our hosts were frank and easy in their talks with us, we visited Tripoli without any "minders," and had a chance to see some of the real wonders of the ancient history of Tripoli. And of course we saw the home of Gaddafi, which was hit, on orders from Reagan, in revenge for Libya's alleged involvement in a bombing in Berlin.

Vehicles belonging to forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi explode after an air strike by coalition forces, along a road between Benghazi and Ajdabiyah, March 20, 2011 Photo by Goran Tomasevic / Reuters.
(Proof of that involvement is sketchy -- but the impact of the U.S. bombing was very clear. Not only had one of his daughters been killed, but we saw a part of the French Embassy which had been hit, and an apartment building in a clearly residential neighborhood which had been totally destroyed, along with everyone in it.)

The only contact I had had since was indirect. Someone I've been in email contact with, an American, had gone to Libya recently for a job, and then when the "troubles" began early this year, she had to leave, but in her notes to me after she left she expressed no sense of horror at Gaddafi -- nor any great love for the man. She said that he probably had a fair amount of popular support, wryly noting that even Nixon won two free elections.

The most painful link to Libya was the Lockerbie bombing, since two good friends of mine lost their daughter -- their only child -- who was on the plane when it was destroyed. There are arguments about whether the Lockerbie bombing was actually the responsibility of Libya but the fact is that Libya had been the source of funds for terrorism (or, if you look at it from the Libyan standpoint, the source of funds for various struggles for national liberation). There is also no question that Libya had, on at least one occasion, sent out hit squads to silence Libyans who had left Libya but remained openly critical of Gaddafi

One does need to remember that the late Soviet Union did the same thing, Israel has done this, and I'm afraid the U.S. has also had a hand in this miserable game.

What is interesting is that in recent years Libya seemed to have made a major change in policy, settling British claims over the Lockerebie bombing, agreeing to end any further research into nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. It is this most recent period that I know so little about -- but how strange that Gaddafi and Libya would now have moved to the top of a hit list.

Two things are clear. This is not a revolution but a Civil War. I don't know what forces are involved among the "rebels" but how little real support they have is provided by the fact that months after the French, British, and Americans have destroyed any Libyan air force, and after the murder of one of Gaddafi sons, and repeated attacks on his various compounds, Gaddafi is still there, he has been seen in public, he has received foreign guests, and Tripoli remains in his hands.

It is not surprising that various officials have "defected" since I think any of us might consider defecting as we realized guided missiles are being sent to track down key officials. This is less an appeal to a moral reason to leave the government, than an urgent sense of survival.

The other thing which is clear is that the rebels have also killed people. In one case (documented from press reports) the rebels admitted to having killed a number of prisoners of war they had captured "because they were black and we assumed they were hired killers."

Civil wars are very nasty things. We lost more men in our Civil War than were killed in almost all our wars combined -- WW I, WW II, and the Korean War -- until late in the Vietnam War the total military dead was greater. We lost those men from a much smaller population. Civil wars are not civil. This one is tragic and we should be urging the European forces to rush to the negotiating table.

Certainly the Libyan adventure is one very good reason not to leave NATO in existence -- it is a weapon that has already killed many in Afghanistan and may yet kill many more in Libya.

[David McReynolds is a former chair of War Resisters International, and was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1980 and 2000. He was recently the subject, along with Barbara Deming, of a dual biography by Martin Duberman titled A Saving Remnant. He is retired and lives with two cats on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He posts at Edge Left and can be reached at dmcreynolds@nyc.rr.com. Read more articles by David McReynolds on The Rag Blog.]

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Steve Weissman : Sarkozy's Role in the Libyan Rebellion

President Nicholas Sarkozy shown with embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Did French President Sarkozy
set up Obama's Benghazi nightmare?

By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / March 19, 2011

PARIS -- Even as Barack Obama struggles to reduce America's public role in the Libyan conflict, he and his supporters continue to defend the UN military intervention as necessary to stop a massacre of civilians, primarily in Benghazi. But recent reports in French and Italian media suggest that French President Nicholas Sarkozy was involved in organizing part of the armed faction of the anti-Qaddafi rebellion in Benghazi from as early as mid-November 2010.

Elements of the story are now spreading virally across the Internet, leading many bloggers to condemn Sarkozy's skullduggery, while others reject the story as just another conspiracy theory.

The truth is difficult to track with certainty, but a careful reading of European and Israeli media strongly tends to confirm that the French did support internal defectors from an early date, fueling the crisis to which humanitarian interventionists in Washington felt they had to respond.

This story began last autumn, when a high-ranking Libyan insider turned up in Paris after a brief stopover in pre-revolutionary Tunisia. Nuri Mesmari, Libya's chief of protocol, had worked closely with Qaddafi for some 30 years. As the usually well-informed Maghreb Confidential told its online business and diplomatic subscribers on October 21, 2010, "Normally Mesmari sticks closely to his boss's side so there's some talk that he may have broken his long-standing tie with the Libyan leader."

A month later, on November 18, the influential web site reported that Mesmari, "who seemed to be joined at the hip with Libya's leader," had come to Paris for an operation and wanted to go into retirement. Mesmari was "one of Kadhafi's closest confidantes and knows pretty well all of his secrets."

What happened next is crucial, as reported on March 23 by the Italian journalist Franco Bechis, deputy editor of the right-wing daily Libero, which is owned by Italy's embattled president Sylvio Berlusconi.

Citing documents from the French overseas spy service, the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, and news from Maghreb Confidential that had circulated in French diplomatic circles, Bechis wrote that Mesmari met regularly with French intelligence officials. Given what followed, this seems almost certain, but so far, Bechis remains the only reporter who claims to have seen or heard direct evidence of the meetings.

Bechis offered two other revelations, also uncorroborated by anyone else. On November 16, 2010, at the Hotel Concorde Lafayette, he claimed, Mesmari had a long session with close collaborators of President Sarkozy. And, on December 18, a "strange French delegation" left for Benghazi, ostensibly as part of ongoing discussions to sell wheat to the Libyans.

According to Bechis, the delegation included officials of Sarkozy's Ministry of Agriculture and executives of several companies that Maghreb Confidential mentioned on November 18 as "lining up in battle order for Libyan contracts." But, in its report, the business service made no explicit mention of the Benghazi visit, suggesting only that the French companies would press their case after the end of the Aid el Kebir festivities, which fell last year on November 17.

"A commercial junket, on paper, in search of nothing but juicy Libyan orders," Bechis wrote. "But, the group also includes French soldiers disguised as businessmen."

The soldiers went to Benghazi to meet secretly with a Libyan Air Force officer whom Mesmari had identified, wrote Bechis. The officer had good contacts among Tunisian dissidents and was about to turn against Qaddafi. His name was Col. Abdallah Gehani.

Qaddafi's security services would arrest Colonel Gehani in Benghazi on January 22, 2011, according to a brief account five days later in Maghreb Confidential.

The Libyan uprising began on February 17, initially as peaceful protest, but increasingly with an armed component.

The most telling account came on February 21 from Debkafile, an online Israeli news service that regularly cites unnamed military and intelligence sources. Their report is worth quoting at length. Cyrenaica is Libya's eastern region, with Benghazi as its major city.

"Around two million Cyrenaican protesters, half of Libya's population who control half of the country and part of its oil resources, embarked Sunday, Feb. 20, on a full-scale revolt against Muammar Qaddafi [Kadhafi] and his affluent ruling Tripolitanian-dominated regime," the Israeli service reported.

Unlike the rights protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, in Libya, one half of the country is rising up against the other half, as well as fighting to overthrow a dictatorial ruler of 42 years.

Since last week, heavy battles have been fought in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Al Marj, Tobruk and at least two other cities. In some places, Debkafile's military sources report protesters stormed army bases and seized large quantities of missiles, mortars, heavy machine guns and armored vehicles -- and used them. The important Fadil Ben Omar Brigade command base in Benghazi was burnt to the ground.

Clearly, and although the grassroots dissidents did have some support in the west of the country, many of the February events in and around Benghazi were less like the nonviolent demonstrations that had just taken place in Tunisia and Egypt and more like a preplanned military rebellion.

In a subsequent report on February 25, the Israeli news service reported that French, British and U.S. military advisers had landed in the region the night before, dispatched from warships and missile boats off the coastal towns of Benghazi and Tobruk.

In March, other international media -- including UPI, The Wall Street Journal and London's Daily Mail -- reported the early presence of foreign arms and military advisers, including some from Egypt.

While all this was going on, Mesmari himself emerged from the shadows in a twist widely reported by Agence France Presse (AFP), Radio France International (RFI) and other French media.

On November 28 or 29, 2010, depending on the report, French police formally arrested and detained him, though none of the news accounts mentioned where he was held, whether in prison or -- as Bechis claims -- at his hotel under house arrest. The arrest was in response to a Libyan arrest warrant accusing Mesmari of embezzling state funds.

On December 15, an appeals court freed him, calling his detention "an irregularity." The court scheduled a hearing on extradition for December 23, but the case formally continued at least into early April.

A fuller picture of the man emerged in the December 7 issue of the Paris-based Jeune Afrique. As reported by the respected Tunisian journalist Abdelazis Barrouhi, Qaddafi had "allegedly slapped and insulted Mesmari" during an Arab-African summit held in Syrte on October 9 and 10. Barrouhi speculated that Mesmari also blamed the Libyan government for the fatal shooting of his son in 2007.

Barrouhi portrayed Mesmari as a character, known for the blond coloring of his hair and goatee and his satin costumes created by famous designers. Mesmari was not a military man, though he often appeared in uniform bristling with decorations. He was instead the son of a government minister in the old Libyan monarchy and a specialist in communications who had worked in the hotel trade.

If Mesmari appeared a comic opera figure, not alone among the Libyan elite, Barrouhi made clear what a huge catch he was for French intelligence.

"Officially director-general of protocol -- a job theoretically under the minister of Foreign Affairs -- he was much more than that," Barrouhi explained. Mesmari organized visits to Libya by foreign chiefs of state as well as Qaddafi's frequent trips abroad, sitting in on the secret conversations aided by his command of several languages, including English and French. He knew Qaddafi's habits, likes and dislikes, sicknesses and medicines, moods, friends and secret networks, enemies, and the beneficiaries of the suitcases stuffed with dollars or euros that Qaddafi had Mesmari pass around.

In a contradictory barrage of reports, Maghreb Confidential similarly emphasized the political and espionage side of the story. On December 2, when news of Mesmari's arrest first became public, the editors declared that Mesmari had bolted. In their words, "His defection has infuriated Kadhafi and undercuts the position of foreign minister Mussa Kussa."

On December 9, the editors went farther. "Fearing for his life, Mesmari has asked for political asylum," they reported. "Formerly close to Muammer Kadhafi, he has been described as a 'Libyan Wikileak' because of everything he knows about the regime."

On December 23, Maghreb Confidential appeared to backtrack, reporting that Mesmari had resumed his normal functions as Qaddafi's protocol chief. "Nuri Mesmari, who is currently residing at the Concorde Lafayette hotel in Paris, met with a number of his Libyan friends in a posh restaurant on the Champs Elysees," they wrote. "According to our sources, he is preparing for his return to Tripoli after making contact with Libyan officials."

But the editors sounded a note of caution, pointedly asking, "Has everyone forgotten his application for political asylum and an arrest warrant issued against him for embezzlement?"

According to Bechis, Mesmari's visitors included three leaders of the February 17 movement that Qaddafi's security police would arrest before the Benghazi uprising, as reported once again by Maghreb Confidential.

Various media continued to tell of Mesmari's murky relations with Tripoli, while Mesmari himself repeated that he had come to France because of heart problems. But, on February 21, as the uprising showed its military planning, Mesmari came in from the cold, appearing in a videotaped press conference at the offices of the Parisian daily Liberation. He wore a straightforward sport coat and sounded like a representative of the Libyan rebels.

Qaddafi was creating "a massacre every hour, every moment and everywhere," he declared. But "with the strength and struggle of the people, the Qaddafi regime will fall."

Mesmari never mentioned how he had given France its biggest intelligence coup in years, nor how Sarkozy used the information to begin working with the armed faction of the rebellion in Benghazi.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he writes on international affairs. This article was also posted to truthout.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Libya and the 'Humanitarian Intervention'

In 2009, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to meet face-to-face with Libyan president Moammar Gadhafi. Photo from AP.
Libya and the dilemma of
humanitarian military interventions

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011

The debate over U.S. efforts to work with NATO in what has been described as an essentially humanitarian effort to prevent Moammar Gadhafi from killing more Libyans underscores problems with U.S. foreign policy. It’s true, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has pointed out, that “we don’t have an exit plan, that (Obama) hasn’t articulated a grand strategy, that our objectives are fuzzy, that Islamists could gain strength.”

Some will argue that we don’t have a consistent foreign policy. After all, we refused to intervene in the slaughter in Darfur, the Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. We did intervene in Kosovo 12 years ago and the outcome seemed to serve humanitarian goals, though our involvement was slow in coming. Ronald Reagan sent troops to Grenada on a mostly foolish humanitarian mission (with ridiculous cold war aspects), and George H. W. Bush prevented Saddam Hussein’s takeover of Kuwait a few years later.

What distinguished these interventions from those we passed on is that they were of limited scope and duration. Militarily, their goals and objectives were possible, and relatively easy to obtain. Sending American troops to Rwanda or the Ivory Coast would bog us down in a military situation that would likely result in as great a loss of life as we would have sought to prevent. Worse still, the involvement would likely not end for decades, as has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So Obama’s calculation seems to be that we will intervene if we have lots of help from other countries and alliances, if the possibility of a short-duration intervention is realistic, and if the chances of success appear great. No matter how compelling the suffering in other locales, we will not commit military might if these criteria are not met.

I don’t like the policy and I don’t like the alternatives. But the world is not an orderly place, where all problems are solvable. Sometimes there are nonmilitary steps that can be taken in various trouble spots around the globe if we have the will, which we do not have, for instance, in the case of preventing Israel from taking more land from Palestinians, which continues unabated by humanitarian concerns.

University of Colorado-Boulder law professor Paul Campos offered this analysis of the Libyan military campaign:

Perhaps it's desirable, or even morally imperative, for Western nations in general, and America in particular, to enter another civil war in the Middle East. But the framers of the Constitution had very good reasons for making it difficult for America to go to war. They knew that even wars that begin with the best of intentions often end up being driven by the worst ones.

They also knew that while war is almost never in the interest of a nation's people, it is often in the interest of a nation's rulers, who reap the political and economic benefits of war while bearing little or none of its costs. That's why they designed a system of barriers to action -- which is, after all, what the rule of law is supposed to be -- before politicians could send others off to kill and be killed in the name of the noble national goal of the moment.

While I take the constitutional requirements discussed by Professor Campos seriously and believe that the Congress should have a vigorous debate before the U.S. ever embarks on making war for whatever reasons, no matter how good those reasons seem to the executive or to me, I realize that the Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority with respect to war-making.

Since World War II, the Congress has not ever declared war, yet the U.S. has embarked on military campaigns in over 70 countries by executive fiat. Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution provides that Congress has the sole power "to declare war [and] grant letters of marque and reprisal." And Article II, Section 2, provides that "The president shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States."

While it seems clear, from the history of the Constitutional Convention and the views of most of the drafters of the Constitution, that they intended for Congress alone to declare war, presidents nevertheless often act unilaterally, or after some minimal consultations or discussions with members of Congress.

These arguably competing provisions in Article I and Article II have created a constitutional conundrum that will always be used by presidents to engage in war unless we find a way to reconcile the two positions.

After tiring of war by Executive fiat, in 1973 Congress passed the War Powers Act in response to the prosecution of the Vietnam War by both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, a war that had proceeded without a congressional declaration for at least eight years with devastating consequences for both American soldiers and Vietnam fighters and civilians.

Under the War Powers Act, the president is supposed to obtain congressional approval of military action within 90 days after introducing troops into hostilities. Presidents have generally ignored the War Powers Act, using Article II, Section 2 as their constitutionally-mandated authority to send troops into combat. While a few Congressional voices have been raised periodically against such Constitutional abuses by the Executive, Congress as a whole has failed to resolve this Constitutional dilemma.

But candidate Barack Obama, as a U.S. senator in 2007, said, “the president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Apparently, he has changed his mind.

The author William Blum identifies the following purposes used by presidents to take military actions. They do not include humanitarian concerns:

• making the world safe for American corporations to do business;
• enhancing the financial status of U.S. defense contractors who have contributed generously to members of congress;
• preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the American capitalist model;
• extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power" -- a sort of exceptionalist argument that gives the U.S. license to do as it pleases.

While I believe that there is a humanitarian impulse that guides some U.S. foreign policy, I always look for other reasons, as well. Usually, I find another rationale from Blum’s list that is in play when we use our military might anywhere in the world.

In the case of Libya, Sen. Bernie Sanders has revealed in the last few days that Gadhafi’s Central Bank of Libya owns a 59% stake in the Arab Banking Corporation (ABC), which is based in Bahrain and has two branches in New York City. The ABC received at least 45 emergency, low-interest loans (0.25%) from the Federal Reserve between December, 2007 and March, 2010.

The U.S. Treasury Department has exempted the ABC from economic sanctions that have been applied to Gadhafi’s regime. Such contradictory relations with Libya make Obama’s military actions even more perplexing and suggest that Blum’s fourth reason for war may be in play.

The more we understand about our relations with Libya and other countries, the more difficult it is to accept Obama’s humanitarian rationale. As syndicated columnist David Sirota has pointed out, U.S. foreign policy had mostly ignored the humanitarian crises in Egypt before the recent fall of Mubarak, a dictator that we warmly supported financially and militarily for over 30 years.

We consider the totalitarian Saudi royal family a friend and ally, and our government continues to praise Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, as a reformer even as he slaughters his own people. Sirota sees the Libya war-making as related to oil, defense contracts, and the “Pentagon’s brand-new Africa Command establishing its first foothold on the resource-rich continent, ... but it is not primarily about saving lives.”

Given these contradictions and the seemingly unassailable facts of U.S. interventions for nearly 65 years and the inability of the Congress to assert itself to limit the Executive’s war-making powers, the most palatable policy to me is one that involves cooperative international efforts to protect the helpless from slaughter or death.

Building and strengthening these international cooperative humanitarian efforts needs more attention and, if done properly, at least will not subject the U.S. to hatred and retribution for imposing our will in the pursuit of our own geopolitical objectives.

While I am not sanguine about what we are doing in Libya, it is a far less destructive policy than were the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is faint praise, but until Congress begins to care more about foreign affairs than it does about its domestic agenda, we cannot expect fealty to Constitutional principles.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]

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Ed Felien : Obama and the Lies About Libya

Political cartoon by Mike Keefe / Denver Post / inToon.com
What's really up in Benghazi?
Obama's lies about Libya

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / April 5, 2011

Barack Obama tried to explain the U. S. war against Libya on Monday, March 28, and he said a number of things that simply are not true.

He said, “Gaddafi has lost the confidence of his people.” Compared to most other Arab countries, Gaddafi seems to enjoy widespread if not universal support. The city of Benghazi is an isolated exception. Thomas C. Mountain has been following events in Libya for 25 years. Here is his assessment:

In 1969 when Col. Gaddafi came to power by overthrowing the Libyan king in a military coup, Libyans were one of the poorest people in the world with an annual per capita income of less than $60.

Today, thanks to the “Arab Socialism” policy of the government as well as bountiful petroleum exports, the Libyan people enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the Arab world. Most Libyan families own their own homes and most Libyan families own an automobile.

The free public health system in Libya is one of the best in the Arab world and Libya’s free education system up to the graduate level is as good if not better than any other in the region.

So the question is, why has a revolt broken out?

The answer, which I have been intensely researching for the past month is not a simple one.

The revolt started in Benghazi in eastern Libya. A very important point not mentioned anywhere in the international media is the fact that due to geographic location, being one of the closest points to Europe from the African continent, Benghazi has over the past 15 years or so become the epicenter of African migration to Europe. At one point over a thousand African migrants a day were pouring into Libya in hopes of arranging transport to Europe.

The human trafficking industry, one of the most evil, inhumane businesses on the planet, grew into a billion dollar a year industry in Benghazi. A large, vicious underworld mafia set down deep roots in Benghazi, employing thousands in various capacities and corrupting Libyan police and government officials. It has only been in the past year or so that the Libyan government, with help from Italy, has finally brought this cancer under control.

With their livelihood destroyed and many of their leaders in prison, the human trafficking mafia have been at the forefront in funding and supporting the Libyan rebellion. Many of the human trafficking gangs and other criminal elements in Benghazi are known for racist pogroms against African guest workers where over the past decade they regularly robbed and murdered Africans in Benghazi and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Since the rebellion in Benghazi broke out several hundred Sudanese, Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean guest workers have been robbed and murdered by racist rebel militias, a fact well hidden by the international media.

Benghazi has also long been a well-known center of religious extremism. Libyan fanatics who spent time in Afghanistan are concentrated there and a number of terrorist cells have been carrying out bombings and assassinations of government officials in Benghazi over the past two decades. One cell, calling itself the Fighting Islamic Group, declared itself an Al Queda affiliate back in 2007. These cells were the first to take up arms against the Libyan government.”

Obama said, “Gaddafi chose to escalate his attacks.” From the outset the Libyan revolt was different from the rest of the nonviolent revolts in the Middle East and North Africa: it was a violent revolt led by gangster elements and Islamic fundamentalists. The press has conveniently ignored this distinction.

Obama said, “I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973.” The very first statement of the UN resolution says, “1. Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;” The U.S. has spearheaded an offensive against Libyan forces in direct violation of a ceasefire and an end to violence.

The resolution, “Decides to establish a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians;” The U.S. with its allies has established air superiority, but it is not complying with the ban on all non-humanitarian flights. It is not possible to verify, but it is very likely that the U.S. is sending mercenaries and arms to aid the rebels in direct violation of the UN Resolution establishing an arms embargo.

Obama said he had promised “we would not put ground troops into Libya.” While it is obviously true that no combat troops in uniform have landed on “the shores of Tripoli,” it seems very likely that with hundreds of thousands of paid mercenaries in the immediate area and tons of military hardware, the U.S. is most certainly playing a covert support role to the rebels with boots and guns on the ground.

And the Obama administration has admitted that CIA operatives have been on the ground with the rebels (in violation of the UN resolution) for more than three weeks.

Obama said, “Our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives.” Clearly the mission is to support the rebels, continue advancing to Tripoli and overthrow Gaddafi.

Then Obama tried to articulate the Obama Doctrine to justify intervention,

Some question why America should intervene at all -- even in limited ways -- in this distant land. They argue that there are many places in the world where innocent civilians face brutal violence at the hands of their government, and America should not be expected to police the world, particularly when we have so many pressing concerns here at home.

In Bahrain the King brought in foreign troops from Saudi Arabia to fire on protesters, and the U.S. did nothing. There have been demonstrations against the feudal autocracies in Morocco and Saudi Arabia and the U.S. did nothing. We have been mildly critical of President Saleh, but we continue to supply him with guns and technical support to suppress dissent. We are outspoken against Syria because Syria, like Libya, is a socialist country.

Most people in the world understand that the main reason the U.S. and NATO want to bring down the Libyan government is because they produce millions of gallons of oil, and a more sympathetic government would make it more profitable for American and British oil companies to do business there.

Obama concluded his explanation by saying, “That is why we are going after al Qaeda wherever they seek a foothold.” This was the most bizarre lie of the evening. Gaddafi has been fighting al Qaeda since 1995. Al Qaeda elements were part of the Benghazi uprising. We are allied with al Qaeda. They are a major part of the rebels.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, who fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan, said he has recruited around 25 men to fight against Gaddafi. According to Praveen Swami of the Guardian, “U. S. and British government sources said Mr. Al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.”

Obama knows we are allied with al Qaeda. He knows there has been a civil war in Libya between the secular, feminist, and socialist government of Gaddafi and Islamic fundamentalists for almost 20 years.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. The major theme of American foreign and domestic policy for the last hundred years has been anti-communism. From the intervention against Russia in the 1920’s and the Red Scare in the U.S., through the Cold War and the McCarthy hearings, American foreign and domestic policy has been driven by a defense of capitalism and a hatred of socialism or communism.

That fixation and oil are the reasons we intervened against the Baath Socialist government in Iraq. And those are the reasons we are intervening against the government of Libya.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly.]

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