Libyan Revolutionary Committees are the real targets of Cameron, Sarkozy and NATO
NATO is a dinosaur. Pretending that NATO is some kind of defender of human rights is a sick joke. And now this transatlantic, anti-communist Frankenstein will coordinate the attack on Libya. NATO, that monstrous cold war regiment, should back off.
But forget the hypocrisy of the intervention for the moment, because it is a reality. Now it is time for the Africans and Arab governments to step up and demand that NATO retire. It is time for the African Union and the Arab League to enter Libya instead, and make sure that there are free and fair elections - with the support of UN troops.
If effective pressure is going to be placed on Qaddafi to resign it is not going to come from the people who killed one of Qaddafi's daughter in a bombing raid in the 80's - the US military. The effective pressure for the colonel to step down and organise fair elections will come from governments he has had a long relationship with: the South African government, the Venezuelan government. These are legitimate players.
The proposal to slice Libya in half has nothing to do with what Libyans themselves need. The intervention in Libya by the US and its partners is all about seizing Libya's natural resources before a hardened Qaddafi regime puts them out of reach. The intervention is neo-colonialist; Africans know this; Arabs know this; Latin Americans know this and we know this.
What we have here is more evidence of the impunity of the establishment. The establishment can do whatever it wants without the support of the population and without feeling the need to fully explain and justify its actions. The real constituency of the 550+ MPs who voted for military intervention are the powerful and the rich, not the electorate.
If we thought democracy looked a little fraudulent after 2 million people marched against the Iraq war and Blair went ahead anyway on the basis of a fabricated threat, then watching this weak coalition go to war at the drop of a hat seems to confirm the impression of an arrogant elite. I wonder when the northern half of the Mediterranean will stop treating the southern half as its back yard?
There is a solution to this problem, but it will take time and Arab, African and UN diplomacy and pressure. It is only a dangerous simpleton who thinks that killing the Qaddafis solves the problem immediately. No, not a simpleton, an idiot. After all we have the example of the shock and awe which followed seeing pictures of US soldiers and their trophy kills, their sexual humiliations of prisoners and the thought of remote drones falling onto Afghan villages. Doesn't that give the idiotic Glenn Becks of this world pause for thought?
Of course a democratic nationalistic Libya might not be to the West's taste. Perhaps the urgency to intervene comes from the fact that Britain, France and the USA do not want a nationalistic democratically elected government to emerge yet, because the government that would emerge might take control of Libya's oil resources and use them for Libya's national interest. Now that would scare the hell out of the corporates and their western government avatars. Perhaps the intervention is actually an investment in a future government and an attempt at puppeteering in the future so that there will NOT be a democratic and nationalistic government.
I think this is the true reason for this precipitous intervention. Intelligence services like MI6 and the French secret service and the CIA know something we don't about the likely outcome of a nationalist uprising against Qaddafi and they obviously did not like the results they were getting from playing the scenarios; so they chose to smash on in and look for puppets to support.
Take a look at Haiti. Did the Americans want a legitimate moral government in Haiti lead by Aristide, a moderate moral man - a legitimately elected leader? No they did not. We socialists have always known that what the corporations and their government representatives really fear is nationalism in lesser developed countries. They fear democratically elected independent governments capable of making independent decisions about what they will do with their own natural resources.
In my view Qaddafi has left a party structure in place. It is characterized by nationalism. If you got rid of the Qaddafis then the only organising base for any political action on a large scale will be the Revolutionary Committees.
Qaddafi's Islam is token. The committees' Islam is token. The result of getting rid of the Qaddafis will be to get a government that primarily concerned with using its oil resources to help its own population. This is what Cameron and Sarkozy and Clinton are frightened of: Libyan nationalism arising from a dormant but existing grass roots structure. That's why they were so eager to intervene and jumped the gun
The chaos is intentional. Better chaos for the west than a new nationalistic government that controls Libya's resources for the benefit of Libyans. This is an intentional cock up. In fact it's not a cock up at all. While the West has Qaddafi, they have time to find and cultivate their puppets.
This is not an unusual view. It is what the west has always done in the Middle East. Why do you think all these friendly Sheiks are still in power. Because the worst nightmare for the west is that democracy and Arab nationalism reaches the Middle East and North Africa.
Look what they did when Nasser was elected leader. They hated his guts. But he was completely legitimate. The reason why they hated him was because he was a nationalist. Our lot prefer puppets. Just, eyes wide open, look at who rules the Middle East and who put them there and who kept them there.
Anyone who has ever lived and worked in Latin America, Asia or Africa knows that the true enemy of capitalism is nationalism. Is the desire of governments to represent the interests of their people and not powerful foreigners. Vietnam and Cuba started out as Nationalist revolutions.
For journalists and academics what I say is a truism not even worth mentioning. If they disagree with it they have a pat answer and change the topic. And yet they do not discuss it because it is the key point to make about Neo-colonialism and it opens a debate that they don not want to have. hey would rather advocate the dependency relationships of Free Trade and Fair Trade. And this is the point relevant to the the discussion about Libya. This is why they are bombing Libya now. To create puppets and bolster Qaddafi and split Libya and in the process bypass Libyan nationalism.
Watch. If the US and Its creepy friends Cameron and Sarkozy cannot put their rebels into government with a lot of behind the scenes deals, then they will keep Qaddafi as a kicking boy in order to justify smashing nationalist Libyan forces. The Revolutionary Committees bereft of Qaddafi would be a powerful force. So long as Qaddafi is able to mobilise the committees the US can target the Revolutionary Committees and call them the enemy. The west will preserve Gaddafi in order to destroy his nationalist political infrastructure.
Look around. Since Nasser the deadliest enemy of Western Neocolonialism has been Arab nationalism. The real name for this operation should be Operation Bypass. Operation Bypass Libyan Nationalism.
To reiterate. This is not a deep analysis, but it needs to be said:
The primary objective of NATO will be to create puppets and to destroy the nationalist political infrastructure created by Qaddafi. After all, even though Qaddafi has failed and though he turned into an oppressive dictator in the end he was constantly reaching out to other Arab and African nations on the spirit of Nasser. He was a nationalist, a Pan Arabist and a Pan Africanist.
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