Stopping the bombing in Libya is as important as withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan, ending the occupation of Iraq, and bringing to a close the "war on terror" waged by the US and its allies for the past ten years.
Stop the War Coalition
30 July 2011
British Apache helicopter on the attack in Libya
"It is too early accurately to forecast the cost of UK operations in Libya," the British government said this week, when admitting that £260m had already been spent.
In other words, the cost is higher than the admitted figure and well on the way to £1bn by the Autumn.
Half the cost of Britain's participation in the war has been spent on bombs and missiles. It's worth recalling that on March 22 Britain's finance minister George Osborne told parliament that the total cost of the military operation would be "in the tens of millions, not hundreds of millions".
Nato's war on Libya long ago breached the United Nations resolution 1973, which only sanctioned military action restricted to a no-fly zone for "protecting civilians", and specifically ruled out troops on the ground or anything that could be construed as a campaign of regime change.
After four months of bombing, some of the recent Nato airstrikes have been a return to sites in Tripoli which were flattened by previous air raids, a clear indication that the attacks on Libya's capital city have as much to do with terrorising the civilian population as targeting Colonel Gadaffi's military installations.
That Nato special forces already have "boots on the ground" directing the rebel militias opposing Gadaffi would be obvious -- even if we did not have video evidence from an al-Jazeera report.
The war is quite simply illegal under the terms of the UN resolution. The purpose of the war criminals conducting it is quite bluntly to overthrow the Gadaffi regime and install a government compliant with western interests in the region. Unsurprisingly, some of the leading figures in the anti-Gadaffi opposition have been on the CIA payroll for decades, such as Colonel Khalifa Hifter, who for twenty years lived rather conveniently just five miles from the CIA headquaters in Virginia, before being flown to Libya at the beginning of this year's uprising in Benghazi.
The motivation of the western powers is clear, and goes beyond the obvious one, Libya being home to 3% of the world's oil reserves. The Arab spring uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and beyond, shook to the foundations the network of despots, autocrats and dictators that the western powers had fostered for decades to maintain control of a region which is both strategically and economically pivotal to their interests.
When the Arab Spring spread to Libya, intervention looked at first sight easy pickings for reasserting the domination of western interests in the region.
The years of portraying Gadaffi as a "mad dog" by the western media was a ready-made alternative to the designation "new Hitler", which has been the favoured epithet used to justify recent colonial wars waged by the US and its allies.
There's no talk of a "mad dog" or a "new Hitler" -- and certainly not of a no-fly zone -- in Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet. When the Arab Spring rebellion against King al-Khalifa's brutal regime seemed on the verge of success, 5000 Saudi Arabian troops were sent to shore up the tottering dictatorship. Since then there have been daily reports of the killing, torture and mass imprisonment suffered by democracy campaigners. But some tyrants are more beyond the pale than others, hence the muted criticism of the crackdown in Bahrain by the US secretary of state Hilary Clinton and Britain's foreign secretary William Hague.
As we approach the sixth month of the Nato bombing campaign, which Obama predicted would bring down Gadaffi "within days", Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama know they seriously miscalculated, both in the support that Gadaffi retains and the disarray of the rebels who are opposing him.
According to the Admiral Mike Mullen, commander of the US military, the Libya war "is in stalemate". This explains the British government's rather desperate attempt to justify a war going nowhere with its announcement on 27 July that all of Libya's diplomats were to be expelled, its London embassy closed, and the rebels' National Transitional Council (NTC) recognised as representing the whole country.
Within 24 hours, William Hague's statement that Britain was doing this because of the TNC's "increasing legitimacy, competence, and success" looked preposterous, with the assassination of General Abdul Fattah Younes, the rebels' top military commander. This was almost certainly the work of a faction within the TNC itself.
General Younes had been the highest profile defection from the Libyan regime, having for the previous 40 years been effectively Gadaffi's right hand man. Whatever the reasons for his killing, and whoever the perpetrators were, his murder exposed the reality of the anti-Gadaffi rebels, who are as much at war between themselves as they are against Gadaffi. As the Guardian put it, " The [Nato] backers of the rebels know whom they are fighting against, but have yet to work out whom they are fighting for."
One of the main reasons for the recognition of the TNC was no doubt to give legitimacy to supplying the anti-Gadaffi forces with the funding needed to acquire arms, which is specifically banned under the conditions of UN resolution 1973. Illegal or not, France has admitted already that it is supplying military equipment.
Meanwhile, for his part, Gadaffi has access to the arms Britain supplied him when he was not so much a "mad dog" as someone for the merchants of war to do business with. In 2010, these included ammunition for wall and door breaching projectile launchers, tear gas, crowd control ammunition, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and sub-machine guns. So much for "protecting civilians".
Polls show that a majority in Britain have always opposed David Cameron's Libyan adventurism. Unlike MPs in parliament, who -- with a handful of notable exceptions -- voted for the bombing of Libya, , the British public knows from the crimes of Tony Blair what Britain's involvement in illegal and unjustified wars means for the countries under attack and for the troops sent to kill and be killed.
The longer the farce in Libya continues, the more people in Britain are going to ask how it is possible to find enormous sums to fund another war when we are being told there is no alternative to draconian cuts in public services. To put Libya in this context, the £260m already spent would more than cover the cost of the housing benefit cuts which the homeless charity Crisis says will hit the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society, and could force 11,000 disabled people out of their homes.
Like the war in Afghanistan -- about to enter its tenth year, with no viable "exit strategy" in sight -- western powers are desperately seeking a way to extricate themselves from a futile and unjustified war without losing face and leave behind something that can be dressed up as a "victory". The last thing on their minds is "protecting civilians". The Libyan people will pay a high price for every day that Nato's intervention continues. If the anti-Gaddafi forces, backed up by Nato airstrikes -- which already number over 6000 -- are unable to dislodge Gadaffi, how long before the western powers decide that "winning" will only be achieved by an invasion with ground troops. The history of Iraq and Afghanistan tells us all we need to know about the consequences of that.
The ceasefire plan proposed repeatedly by the African Union, is a basis for ending this disastrous war, and enabling the political future of the country to be determined by the Libyan people, and not western powers who are only looking out to protect their own interests. The African Union plan calls for:
• An immediate ceasefire;
• The unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid;
• Protection of foreign nationals;
• A dialogue between the government and rebels on a political settlement;
• The suspension of Nato airstrikes.
Nato is having none of it. Bringing the killing and destruction in an illegal war to an end is not on the agenda of Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama. They still hope that the fractious rebel militias can be forged into a force that can defeat the Libyan government, or that a lucky airstrike will kill Gadaffi. And with an eye on the elections they face in the near future, they don't want to be seen to lose yet another unjustified war against a Muslim country.
Which is why Libya must be part of the campaign by the anti-war movement to make it politically impossible for our leaders in the US, Britain, and the other Nato countries, to continue waging endless war against the will of the people they are meant to represent. Stopping the bombing in Libya is as important as withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan, ending the occupation of Iraq, and bringing to a close the "war on terror" waged by the US and its allies for the past ten years.
We will be there.
Will you?
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