Corporations from America, Britain and France are leading the gold rush for easy pickings from the ruins caused by 10,000 NATO air strikes that destroyed much of Libya's infrastructure.

Western leaders are breathing a sigh of relief that Gadaffi has been killed, not least Tony Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy whose relationship with the Libyan dictator stinks of corruption.

What the Libyan tragedy has brutally hammered home is that foreign intervention doesn't only strangle national freedom and self-determination – it doesn't protect lives either.

The blatant hypocrisy of "democratic intervention" in Libya, coupled with US support for brutal dictatorships throughout the world, is not considered a legitimate issue for discussion in our political culture.

There's a new sheriff in town, NATO. Those who resist will be publicly humiliated in the most primitive way and then killed. And it's not just leaders who will be punished.

Far from the west conquering all, it is deep in the mire of war. The gloating over Gadaffi should not become an excuse for further interventions that will only spread the carnage further.

John Pilger says US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks disclose the west's panic over Gaddafi's refusal to hand over the greatest source of oil in Africa and his overtures to China and Russia.

For years, Britain's secret services denied any complicity in the rendition operations mounted by the US after 9/11, and the subsequent torture of the victims. They were lying.

When everyone was best pals with Gadaffi, Tony Blair came to Libya with the famous smile and a pocket full of deals, including a communications system which could now be keeping Gadaffi safe.

Surprise, surprise. French foreign minister says when it comes to Libya's oil and reconstruction it "seems fair and logical" for preference to be given to those who helped the rebels.

It's as if Iraq and Afghanistan never happened. This time it's different, say the politicians, knowing the media's ingrained memory loss can be relied on to serve their interests.

The success of the rebels in Libya contains a tragic defeat. The original emancipatory impulse of February 17 lies, for now, among the corpses of "Africans" in Tripoli.

The British and French governments, whose trainers and advisers were the least covert of history's covert operations, will go on pretending the rebels were running their own war all along. But it was NATO's war and now the chips will be cashed in.

It does the Arab uprisings a disservice to glorify NATO's mission in Libya. A "humanitarian intervention" was the hook; but securing assets and resources was, as usual, the real goal. 

If Libya were to become a proxy state, and nothing more than an outpost of Western interests, it will descend into the same chaos that we have seen, over the past decade, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The West's intervention in Libya is driven by a determination to regain control of the region following the overthrow of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt and the spreading of the Arab Spring.