Wars and Revolutions

BY MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

As NATO targets Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, the cover story, that its bombastic efforts are designed to ‘protect civilians,’ is wearing exceedingly thin.

Daily, NATO’s efforts, including the targeting of Qadhafi for assassination and the killing of members of his family, look like regime change —suspiciously similar to Iraq of several years ago.

As for the assassination charge, Britain’s Sir David Richards, Chief of the Defense staff, answered questions to that effect by declaring, “Absolutely not. It is not allowed under the UN Resolution” (LATUR 94/11, 71). Those assurances were blasted into confetti by leading British politicians.

Indeed, the Iraqi pattern is virtually identical: demonization in the corporate press, no fly zones, bombing aimed at the leader and/or his family, and (once assassination is accomplished) the installation of a compliant, Western-friendly puppet who acquiesces to the looting of his country’s natural resources for foreign profit.

When did the West ever care about Arabs (other than sheikhs or princes, that is)? David Morrison, writing in a recent edition of Labour & Trade Union Review answers the question thusly:

It is inconceivable that the Governments of France and Britain and the U.S. embarked on this mission out of concern for the lives of Libyan civilians. In recent years, the U.S. itself has killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan in drone attacks triggered from the safety of mainland U.S. The slaughter has intensified under the Obama administration and it is still going on. Has France or Britain ever expressed any concern for these civilian killings, carried out regularly by their close ally? Of course not.

Morrison goes on to write of the thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians killed by Israeli bombing in 2006 and 2008-2009, “without any call for a No Fly Zone” from any of the states now leveling Libya.

Morrison notes: “In the case of Lebanon in the Summer of 2006, the U.S. and Britain acted to prolong the conflict, and the killing.”

Clearly, Morrison writes, “another reason, motivates the Western powers other than the suffering or the bombing of Arab civilians, which they, or their allies, do with reckless abandon.

Morrison writes: “Though Qadhafi has accommodated himself to Western interests in recent years, and opposes Al Qaeda, he has maintained the coherence of the Arab nationalist State he has built, and retained a form of Socialism in its structures. This is intolerable to Western interests, which prefer to see a mess a la Iraq, rather than a strong State pursuing the interests of its people in its own way. The plan, therefore, is to destroy the Libyan State under a humanitarian and democratic guise. It is of no concern to the West that it may be unleashing a bloodbath.

First Iraq, then Libya; that leaves the last Arab Socialist State, Syria. That’s why France and Britain and the U.S. are bombing Libya.”

My sentiments, exactly.

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
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