First, I sincerely want to thank you all for your comments in response to my “cage rattling”. I have to tell you that with time I have learned to greatly respect your insights into many topics and since Libya was one country about which I knew the least, your inputs helped me a great deal to make sense of what is going on.
Let me repeat here that I never envisioned this blog as the blog of one guy dispensing the ultimate truth to a silent audience of followers, but as a meeting place in which different people could exchange views, compare notes, and sometimes argue with each other. Sure, I did voice my opinions and even vent my frustrations here and there, mostly on topics I hoped to at least somewhat understand, but I always did this with an open standing invitation to all of you to comment or criticize.
In the case of Libya, you helped me make sense of my own suspicions and doubts about what was going on, and for that I am deeply grateful to all of you!
Now, I would like to share with you where I think all this might be going and I hope that you will tell me what you think.
What is taking place is a US/NATO aggression against Libya and the so-called “opposition” is composed of CIA/MI6/DGSE/Mossad puppets.
Whatever the past successes and failures of the Gaddafi regime in the past, it is now objectively fighting to keep Libya a free country. One need not admire this regime to admit that it is now the sole political force defending the sovereignty and independence of Libya.
NATO has now flown 15’000 sorties, including close to 6’000 bombing missions. For comparison, over Kosovo NATO few 38’000 sorties and 10’000 bombing missions. In both of these air campaigns NATO has achieved exactly nothing. The corporate media is doing its best not to notice this abject failure of NATO airpower.
As in Bosnia and Kosovo, a massive static PSYOP propaganda campaign is underway. While the laughable “Viagra as a weapon of war” canard has faded away, the demonization of Gaddafi, his entourage and his regime will continue. If NATO is seriously contemplating a ground operation against Gaddafi, then a Libyan “Markale market attack” or “Racak massacre” is probably already being prepared by CIA/MI6/DGSE/Mossad.
Unlike Milosevic – Gaddafi will not believe that the Empire will let him a way out and he will not surrender Benghazi or any other part of Libya like Milosevic betrayed the Bosnian Serbs and handed Kosovo to the USA.
In Kosovo the threat of a land invasion was probably real, and many observers are warning that an land invasion of Libya might be next. I am not so sure. Yes, just like in Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan, the entry of the invading force into Libya would probably swift and only sporadically opposed. But unlike Kosovo and Afghanistan where the Empire could count on local paramilitary forces and militias to assist the invading force, there are no indications that the mostly hapless Libyan insurgency can provide much support to the NATO invasion.
Two more factors would complicate an invasion: Libya is a very large country and, by all accounts, the population has been armed to the teeth by Gaddafi (this, by the way, contradicts the thesis that the regime has no support in the general population).
Lastly, it would be hard to distinguish a viable exit strategy for any invading force. If anything at all, the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that it is far easier to invade a country than to then withdraw from it.
So, if no invasion, then what? After all, it is quite unthinkable for our imperial overlords to admit that they screwed up and that their “short and easy” war on Libya has failed. In the absence of victory and in the absence of (admitted) defeat, the Empire will have to fall back to the “solution” it has adopted in Afghanistan and Pakistan: a punitive “Somalization” of Libya which could last for decades. After all, it is far easier (and cheaper!) to destroy then to built, and turning a rather prosperous country into yet another “failed state” is well within the means of this basically broke Empire.
What do you guys think about this? Do you have any hope for a halfway acceptable outcome of this latest NATO war?
The Saker
One student at Tripoli’s Al Fatah University commented:
What your US government has done in the region to destroy yourselves since 9/11 is amazing to Libyans. Now you are going to fight us? Why? You already had all our oil you wanted at a bargain prices; we stupidly put our sovereign funds in US banks and we did not even bother Israel much. Every day that NATO bombs it kills more Libyan civilians. We sacrificed nearly 1/3 of our population, or more than one million of our brothers and sisters, expelling the Italians 70 years ago. Doesn’t anyone in your government study history? We are not Bahrainis or Syrians. We are armed and will use our weapons. Among the errors our leadership has made, one of the worst is that it believed the US agreements we made in 2004. The Iranians and North Koreans laugh at us for trusting you and giving up nuclear and biological weapons programs. Believe me, if Qadaffi leaves power you will miss him because the Libyan people will be tougher against your projects than he has been.
Destabilizing Libya would seem to have its limits, because of direct blow-back into Italy via refugee flows. At the same time, I am suspicious of simplistic labels for the “opposition” as “Al-Qaida” and “bought by the West and Saudi Arabia”. The Libyans don’t seem in need of a buyer: they already have oil.
Great write up Saker. You saw it coming long before I did. As to what the empire does now, I’m thinking they will bite the bullet and invade. They can’t just give up as it would truly put NATO in the embarrassing position of loosing two wars in a row. First Afghanistan and now Libya.
I do not think Somilization is in the cards. They are certainly not above trying it, but taking two million barrels of oil a day off the market…and not just any oil, but Libyan sweet crude…would be too devastating to the world economy. Europe is coming apart at the seems economically as it is. Not to mention 100$ plus oil puts Iran in the cat-bird seat.
Gunthman is also correct about the Euro fear of refugees.
Anon’s point about putting ones money is western banks is also well taken. I hope in the future, every third world country is smart enough to keep all its assets at home, or in reliable allied banks.
‘Colonel Muammar Qaddafi is an easy figure to hate. Given his eccentric behaviour, he is the butt of many jokes that are easily conflated into hate against the man and his policies. Qaddafi need not be our favourite tyrant but the West’s attack on his regime as well as the country’s infrastructure is not motivated by the desire to rescue the Libyan people’
not so great…this article has some personal assertions with zero documented support, take the above: accordig to the author, gadafi is easy to hate…well not by Nelson Mandela:
‘”This man (Gaddafi) helped us at a time when we were all alone, when those (Britain and the US) who say we should not come here (Libya) were helping the enemy.”
Nelson Mandela, 1997
why is he the but of jokes? because hes an arab!
hes not tyrant, but this lie has gone round the world so often ist now in perpetual freefall!
Ignorant but credulous people reading this will assume Gadafi is a hated tyrant!
Please beware of what you are reading