notes on libya for a child's homework

Homework: Ask each member of your family
a) Why are we in Libya?
b) Do you think it's right that we are there?

Some answers

Surely Gadhafi is the new Saddam / Hitler / Stalin and we are stepping in to protect the Libyan people

Unlikely: there are dictators far more evil who treat their people far worse than Gadaffi ever did. Karimov (Uzbekistan) boils people alive. He is our great ally in the war on terror (and we use intelligence from his torture chambers to ‘win’ that war).

Gadhafi is not a nice man. He tortures people (we also used his torture services to gain ‘intelligence’ - rather than doing it ourselves1). But he has done more to raise the living standards of the Libyan people than the leader of any other African state:

“prior to the invasion, Libya had the highest level of well-being, the best economic policies for the quality of life, the lowest infant mortality and the highest life expectancy of any country in Africa, according to the UN's Human Development Index.”2

Other dictators both torture and starve their citizens – much of the unrest in Egypt, Tunisia etc was triggered by economic hardship.

Were we supporting the forces of democracy against evil dictatorship?

1. We didn’t do so in other places – in fact, in all other places, we positively discouraged the ‘rebels’ and continued to support the prevailing poweriii.

The Saudi Arabian royal family are worse than Gadaffi; so is the Syrian president, Bahrain royal family, and the (deposed) Tunisian leader. Mubarak was almost certainly worse overall than Gadaffi. Each of those countries had – or still have - genuine democracy movements which the leaders have used brutal force to quash - in some cases successfully,. We did not support the Egyptian people nor withdraw financial or military support to Mubarak until it became clear he had lost. We gave our approval to the Saudis to send troops into neighbouring Bahrain, where they slaughtered and intimidated the protestors. And we went on sending them arms to do so.

“On this tiny island (Bahrain), a Sunni monarchy, the al-Khalifas, rule a majority Shia population and have responded to democratic protests with death sentences, mass arrests, the imprisonment of doctors for letting patients die after protests and an "invitation" to Saudi forces to enter the country.”3

2. In Libya, of all the Arab nations, it is least likely that the rebels are a genuine democracy movement. They are a hotch-potch of extreme islamists, al qaeda operatives, CIA agents and almost certainly, ordinary people. But they are led by the extremists – who have few democratic principles (as we understand them)4.

Don’t we have a responsibility to protect, at least where we have the power to do so?
We have the power to stop arming dictators around the world, stop encouraging them to use the arms against their own citizens, and stop supporting them financially. Without such military and financial support, a lot of the dictators would fall as a result of genuine democratic movements. If what we’re trying to do is ‘protect’ civilians, why don’t we do this first? Or why not pick off (bomb) the worst dictatorships before the others – if, that is, we really think that our bombing Sirte and Tripoli is better than Ghadafi bombing Benghazi (in fact, there was no evidence that he was using air power to retake rebel strongholds; no evidence that his troops were massacring civilians once he had retaken rebel towns).

If not that...?

All of the above, plus the fact that we have never intervened against the worst examples of totalitarian rule except when our own interests are involved make it highly unlikely that our chief aim in intervening in Libya was to protect civilians or nurture democracy. Our behaviour in other places and the nature of the ‘democratic’ movement in Libya suggest there must have been other motives present. It is also not the case that Libya was the place where we could have most positive effect, save most lives, if we were making choices: in Somalia tens of thousands are about to die from starvation. In Gaza, a population of 1.6 million are living in a huge prison camp (not my words – the words of UN and human rights officials), in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the dictatorships are far more severe and so was the clampdown.

But there must have been some strong reason: both the UK and the US are heavily in debt and severely cutting back on services because they say there’s no money in the coffers. Yet by June, the war had cost 3/4 of a billion dollars – that’s just the US figure.

Here are a few issues which may be relevant:

1. From http://mobile.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2011/06/11/libya/index.html

“Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects

In November 2007, a leaked State Department cable reported ‘growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism’. In his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi had said: ‘Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.’

…in late February 2008, a US State Department cable described how Gaddafi had ‘threatened to dramatically reduce Libya’s oil production and/or expel… U.S. oil and gas companies’.

…even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies."

From a cable released by WikiLeaks sent from the US embassy in Tripoli in November 2007. The cable communicated US concerns about the direction being taken by Libya’s leadership:

“Libya needs to exploit its hydrocarbon resources to provide for its rapidly-growing, relatively young population. To do so, it requires extensive foreign investment and participation by credible IOCs [international oil companies]. Reformist elements in the Libyan government and the small but growing private sector recognize this reality. But those who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardize efficient exploitation of Libya’s extensive oil and gas reserves. Effective U.S. engagement on this issue should take the form of demonstrating the clear downsides to the GOL [government of Libya] of pursuing this approach, particularly with respect to attracting participation by credible international oil companies in the oil/gas sector and foreign direct investment.” [NB: they didn’t manage to do this]

2. In case you think the oil is a conspiracy theory, an analysis of 250,000 wikileaks cables (from the US state dept) revealed that 10% of them have to do with oil. 1,800 mention Gazprom (Russian energy giant). A journalist talks about one of the cables:

“on April 20 the big Italian oil company Eni put off its deal with Gazprom, the big Russian oil company, connected to its president, Vladimir Putin, put off a deal that would have given Gazprom a big stake in Libyan oil. That's been an objective of US foreign policy for at least three years. Kevin [Hall] went through WikiLeaks documents and found the following cable. At the time, Silvio Berlusconi was about to become Italy's prime minister, and the embassy urged headquarters to twist his arm, writes Kevin. Then he quotes the cable. Post, meaning the embassy, would like to push the new Berlusconi government to force Eni to act less as a stalking horse for Gazprom interests. The confidential cable said, quoting, Eni, which is 30 percent owned by the government of Italy, seems to be working in support of Gazprom's efforts to dominate Europe's energy supply and against US-supported US efforts to diversify energy supply.”

3. From http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE07Ak01.html

Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.

Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states...

… General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].

The Pentagon guidance document called for military commanders to assist other government agencies "as directed" to "encourage populations dominated by terrorist organizations or their supporters to overthrow that domination".

When this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."

General Clark again, from http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/2/gen_wesley_clark_weighs_presidentia... :

“I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you’re too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don’t know." He said, "I guess they don’t know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it’s worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir."

3. From http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD14Ak02.html

“Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank - this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:

I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.

Alex Newman wrote in the New American:

‘In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the "[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi."’

Newman quoted CNBC senior editor John Carney, who asked, "Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era."

In [an interview with] General Wesley Clark it he says that about 10 days after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Clark was surprised and asked why. "I don't know!" was the response. "I guess they don't know what else to do!" Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers' central bank in Switzerland.

The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that "[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar."

According to a Russian article titled "Bombing of Libya - Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar", Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency.

The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa”

.

• 1. “A Libyan rebel leader who was rendered to Tripoli with the assistance of MI6 said on Monday that he had told British intelligence officers he was being tortured but they did nothing to help him…
  Belhaj was detained by the CIA in Thailand in 2004 following an MI6 tipoff, allegedly tortured, then flown to Tripoli, where he says he suffered years of abuse in one of Muammar Gaddafi's prisons”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/05/abdul-hakim-belhaj-libya-mi6...
• 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#Africa Also: “The lower urban and rural classes also profited from Gaddafi’s socialist ideology. Education to the age of 15 was compulsory for both boys and girls, and in contrast to other Arab or African countries, there is virtually no illiteracy among the younger generations in Libya. In Africa, Libya has one of the most advanced and gender equal education systems.¹ The UN’s Human Development Index ranked Libya as having “high human development” for the Developing Country category – exhibiting a similar level of development to Romania, Croatia, and Bulgaria. In the HDI’s overall ranking in 2010, Libya was ranked 53, Tunisia was 81, Turkey was 83, and Egypt was 101”. http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/31/the-top-ten-myths-in-the-war-against-libya/
• 3. “David Cameron's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region's dictators selling them the most hi-tech weapons of repression available. Nicolas Sarkozy's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: "I would not refer to him as a dictator."
  http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-har.... Sede also http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-no-outcry-over-these-torturing-tyrants-2283907.html
• 4. “For U.S. intelligence services, the man who led the rebel assault on Tripoli, and is now the de facto military governor of the capital, is an old acquaintance. The CIA had tracked down the accused jihadist, and eventually captured him in Malaysia in 2003. The agency is believed to have then transferred him, in total silence, to a “top secret” prison in Bangkok.
  At that time, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, identified under the name of Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, born May 1, 1966, was already known for his long history as a jihad operative. This career began in 1988 in Afghanistan, like many other Islamist activists”. http://www.worldcrunch.com/top-libyan-rebel-leader-has-deep-al-qaeda-tie...