Humanitarian Intervention is a euphemism for Military Invasion!
Rise! Resist! Liberate!
22 March 2011
The United Nations Security Council on 17th March approved a resolution for the United States and other major imperialist powers to conduct direct military intervention in Libya. It however has maintained the old pretence of this being a “humanitarian” mission to protect civilian lives. The resolution, backed by the US, France, Britain and Lebanon, nullified the earlier proposals for a no-fly zone, and authorized the use of military force including “all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” These “areas” include Benghazi, the city with a population of one million which has been the stronghold of the revolt that began against the Gaddafi dictatorship a month ago. Both British and French rulers had already started air strikes and have confirmed more intensified attack in the coming days on Libya. The American military officials too had warned that even the imposition of a no-fly zone will require the prior destruction of the Libyan air bases. This implies direct bombardment which inevitably will lead into massive civilian killing. Already, there are reportedly two civilian hospitals and a medical clinic that have been bombarded by the ongoing air raids. The US had also made it clear that it is going to use cruise missiles, manned and unmanned drone aircrafts. As per the media reports, so far, the US has already fired 124 Tomahawk missiles on strategic air defense systems across Libya and the Pentagon official did not rule out any additional missile strikes against the Libyan regime in coming days.
Sham of ‘Democracy’= Geo-Politics of Big Oil
These plans for war are not motivated by any intentions to protect the Libyan people or further the cause of democracy, as the imperialists are proclaiming within the UN Security Council. This belligerent intervention by the Iraq-style “coalition of the willing” led by US in the oil-rich Libya is only driven by profit interests and geopolitical imperatives and have nothing to do with any “humanitarian” pretenses of these powers with brutal histories. The aim is to exploit the civil war in Libya to impose a completely titular regime which will remain completely loyal to these powers and to the major Western oil conglomerates to ensure free export of oil in future. The real aim of the US-backed intervention is therefore to suppress any genuine revolution and ensure that any regime that replaces Gaddafi serves not the interests of the Libyan people, but rather the demands of Washington and Big Oil. The NATO has legitimized this intervention by citing that they have ‘regional support’. This support comes from none other than the Arab league which consists of dictators, royalists and emirates who have always served the interests of the imperialists and have often violently repressed popular upsurges in their own countries. The autocrats of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have also indicated that they will send military forces to attack Libya. Right now the two Arab countries who have formally registered their support in the UN and are ready to join the US-NATO assault are Qatar and UAE, both ruled by feudal monarchs and are currently aiding Saudi Arab’s violent intervention in Bahrain to repress the mass upsurge of people against its ruling monarchy.
Parody of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’= Propping up Imperialist Stooges
The sham of ‘humanitarian intervention’ is being trumpeted faithfully in the corporate media. Right after the mass upsurge in Libya started, major sections of the media have been portraying it in a way that suits the imperialist interests. On Feb. 22 BBC showed footage of crowds in Benghazi pulling down the green flag of the republic and replacing it with the flag of the overthrown monarch King Idris – who had been a puppet of US and British imperialism. Right now the media is once again justifying the war on Libyan people by dubbing it as the ‘war against Gaddafi’. The media will never focus on the real imperialist intention which is to tighten its grip over Libya as a semi-colony, ruled by the United States and its fellow predators from Western Europe, who will seize control of the oil reserves and transform the country’s territory into a strategic base of operations against all the mass upsurges which is now sweeping West Asia and North Africa.
Washington, which pretends to be outraged over the killing of Libyan civilians and bent on saving lives, is itself responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the very eve of the UN vote, the US war machine has carried out the cold-blooded murder of around 40 civilians (media count) in a drone attack in Pakistan. The same powers stood by the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak when they massacred demonstrators seeking jobs, democratic rights and an end to the plundering of their country and their resources by the corrupt ruling elite. They offered political, diplomatic and in some cases direct security assistance in an effort to prop up these stooge regimes. In the same two weeks that Gaddafi’s security forces have shot down opposition demonstrators, similar crimes have been committed by US allies in Oman and Bahrain and by the US client regime in Iraq without even any public condemnation by Washington, let alone the organization of an international campaign for military intervention.
The US-European posture of humanitarian outrage has no credibility
Until a few weeks ago, these powers were openly paying court to Gaddafi to obtain lucrative contracts for the exploitation of the oil and gas resources of Libya. They paid no heed then to Gaddafi’s police state and the brutalities that were going on in the Libyan torture chambers. It also continues to back the regimes in Bahrain and Yemen as they scythe down protesters demanding democratic rights. The US and its cronies are silent on the atrocities meted out to the people of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or Bahrain who are also fighting to overthrow their dictatorial rulers. This is simply because the ruling regimes in these countries are declared puppets of US. As for Egypt and Tunisia, the imperialists are pulling every string they can to get the masses off the streets. There was no talk of US intervention to ‘help’ the Palestinian people of Gaza when thousands died from being blockaded, bombed and invaded by Israel. To the contrary, the U.S. intervened to prevent condemnation of the Zionist settler state of Israel. These same forces were criminally silent and thereby complicit on the use of chemical weapons on the people of Tamil Eelam by the fascist Rajapakshey government of Sri Lanka. Since 1945, the US has destroyed or subverted more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and used mass murderers like Suharto, Mobutu and Pinochet to dominate by proxy. In the Arab world, every dictatorship and monarchy has been sustained by America.
Desert Storm in the Arab World: Faultlines of a Worldwide Economic Tyranny
The revolt in the Arab world is not merely against a resident dictator but a worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and World Bank, which have ensured that even relatively rich countries like Egypt are pauperised, with half the population earning less than $2 a day. From Tunisia in January 2011 the desert storm of people’s upsurge had set across the entire Arab world. From Tahrir Square in Egypt to the city of Benghazi in Libya, to Algeria, Bahrain, Sudan, massive protests shook the dictatorial, corrupt regimes most of which are mere stooges of US imperialism. Although the corporate and imperialist media too are forced to talk about these massive protests and their attempts to overhaul the ruling regimes in Tunisia and Egypt; the anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal ethos of these protests are being carefully made inconspicuous and the uprisings are only attributed to the misrule and rampant corruption of the head of states. These protests with their anti-imperialist character, secular overtones and overwhelming participation of women demolished all the vulgar stereotypes of the Muslim world trumpeted by the propaganda machinery of the so-called ‘war against terror’. These mass upsurges in the Arab world have shaken imperialism in and out. They are shaken by the spread of the protests and at the same time are clueless about the road ahead in the region. The military intervention in Libya once again reflects the desperation of the US led imperialist war machine as they have run out of all other solutions.
Revolutionary Democratic Front condemns the ongoing military assault on the people of Libya by the French, American and British imperialist powers. RDF hails the people’s upsurges in the Arab world and expresses its full solidarity with the struggling people who are fighting tooth and nail the mighty forces of imperialism and the feudal/monarchic ruling elites who have lived the time and space that Post-World War II imperialist arrangements have provided them. Down with US led imperialist military intervention. It is the people of Libya who must have the right to shape their future.
Rajkishore
General Secretary
G N Saibaba
Deputy Secretary
Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle 