Ahora es tiempo de aniversarios y de memoria. Un reciente
artículo de Alexander Mezyaev, en el sitio Strategic Culture foundation
(http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/03/04/remember-libyan-jamahiriya.html)
recuerda los sucesos de Libia de hace dos años. Bajo el título “Remember Libyan Jamahiriya”, el autor
señala:
“Libya was a
self-sufficient, prosperous state which collapsed two years ago. It makes
remember the dramatic events and what it resulted in. First of all, it was a
new type of war, a «virtual revolution» and the United Nations Security
Council’s resolutions were based on…editing the stages of a TV movie.
After the United
Nations Security Council’s resolution N 1970 was adopted, the UN Human Rights
Council sent the Independent Investigation Commission to Libya. The Libyan
government allowed seeing all the places where public protesters were allegedly
shot at. The Commission members were permitted to go anywhere they wanted to
and they…hastily left the country. Gaddafi invited them for a meeting, but they
didn’t even wait for it! No other investigation by «international community»
followed. Vladimir Chamov, former Russian Ambassador to Libya (2008-2011),
wrote, «The lie used by NATO to justify its war against Libya made pale
even the one concocted as a pretext for invading Iraq». He knows what he is
talking about, he’s was Russian Ambassador to Iraq too.
The UN Security
Council’s resolution envisaged the possibility of «any actions» against Libya.
It is said Russia committed a major mistake when it abstained while the
Security Council voted for the resolution N 1973. And Russian diplomats,
including Oleg Peresypkin, former Russian Ambassador to Libya (1984-1986), say
it was quite possible to oppose the text before the vote. Indeed, for the
first time in the history of international law any states could
take any measures against Libya. The wording was defying, it
needed polishing, and making it more precise, altered, but…it never
happened.
It was also for the
first time ever, a country’s case was transferred to the International Criminal
Court, though Libya is not even a party to it.
After the events in
Libya, election results and adherence to internal law stopped being yardsticks
for judging the legitimacy of state power. It was the statements by foreign
leaders (the President of the United States, for instance) that mattered
now.
The so-called Arab
revolutions brought a lot of harm to Russia’s interests. No doubt, the
cooperation with Arab world was beneficial, multiple contacts are lost now.
Pavel Akopov, president of the Association of Russian diplomats, former Russian
Ambassador to Libya, recalls, «The Soviet economists worked out a system
of granting credits to the Arab States. A loan for ten years was granted with
2.5% interest rate. It was allowed to pay with the commodities produced by a
country’s industry or by the enterprises built with the help rendered by the
Soviet Union at the expense of the loans. That’s how we exported engineering industry
products». The model of developing bilateral mutually beneficial relations
was so attractive that they started to copy it in the West.
For Russia Libya was
the biggest loss in the Middle East. Former Russian Ambassador to Libya
(1991-1992) Veniamin Popov says that while redeeming loans Libya paid to
Russia more than any other country in the history of economic cooperation
between the USSR and other states. The Libyans always paid in cash, if not,
they exported oil supplies. The Libyan crude is a high-quality product, it has
almost no sulfur. According to Alexey Podzerob, Russian ex Ambassador to Libya
(1992-1996), even writing off a part of the debt was beneficial because the
money was used for placing orders for Russian industry!
The elimination of
Libya is a crime against this state, but also an attempt to arbitrarily decree
a new international law. The events in Mali are a direct aftermath of what
took place in Libya. The case is already transferred to the International
Criminal Court and it was done after the legally elected President had
been toppled. On February 19 2013 the UN International Independent
Investigation Commission offered a report to the UN Security Council strongly
recommending to transfer the situation in Syria to the Court too. The
Commission acknowledged that «Anti-government armed groups have committed
war crimes, including murder, torture, hostage-taking and attacking protected
objects. They continue to endanger the civilian population by positioning
military objectives inside civilian areas». Still, according to the Commission
«The violations and abuses committed by anti-Government armed groups did not,
however, reach the intensity and scale of those committed by government forces
and affiliated militia». By the way, Carla Del Ponte, a former Chief
Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals, is a
member of the Commission. Considering civil war cases, she made a one-sided
persecution a norm of international «justice».
The lessons of Libya
are to be drawn to rectify mistakes. Speaking at the press-conference by the
end of December 2012, President Putin said Russia would not repeat the mistake.
According to him, «We’ll not support any armed groups that try to solve
internal problems by use of force». He also made a statement that just couldn’t
go unnoticed. Speaking at the press-conference in Copenhagen in 2011 he
said nobody has the right of interference into others internal
conflicts. Today this stance acquires specific significance. The
international intervention in other countries is not considered to be
interference into internal affairs anymore. The position made public by Putin
calls for leaving behind fictitious arbitrary decisions presented as legal acts
and getting back to the real international law. It’s something to be remembered
by all advocates of «new» parallel international legal system.
The elimination of
Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was the end of a large-scale
world project, an alternative pattern of society…
Remembering the
Libyan Jamahiriya one should not forget the founder of the country who
sacrificed his life for it. Muammar Gaddafi died and did it with dignity. He
had thought about death for as long time. Almost forty years ago his famous
story called Death saw light. There he wonders if death is male or female. From
the point of view of Gaddafi’s philosophy the difference is significant. If
death is male then it should be resisted at all costs, if it is female – then
it should finally be given place to. The story says death can take any form and
it’s the form that defines your actions. The leader of Libyan Jamahiriya acted
as described he should in his touching story.
***
Este mes de marzo
también se conmemora el 10º aniversario de la invasión a Irak. Leemos un
interesante artículo de Peter Van Buren al respecto (“Mission Unaccomplished. End Times for the American Empire. Why the Invasion of
Iraq Was the Single Worst Foreign Policy Decision in American History” en el
sitio Information Clearing House (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34208.htm):
“I was there. And
“there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the
signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if
you wanted to see the madness -- and oh yes, it was madness -- not filtered
through a complacent and sleepy media that made Washington’s war policy seem,
if not sensible, at least sane and serious enough. I stood at Ground Zero of
what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in
the Greater Middle East.
Not to put too fine a
point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the
Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of
joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the
10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you
want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S.
did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at
the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long,
long time.
The Madness of King
George
It’s easy to forget
just how normal the madness looked back then. By 2009, when I arrived in Iraq,
we were already at the last-gasp moment when it came to salvaging something
from what may yet be seen as the single worst foreign policy decision in
American history. It was then that, as a State Department officer assigned to
lead two provincial reconstruction teams in eastern Iraq, I first walked into
the chicken processing plant in the middle of nowhere.
By then, the U.S.
“reconstruction” plan for that country was drowning in rivers of money
foolishly spent. As the centerpiece for those American efforts -- at least
after Plan A, that our invading troops would be greeted with flowers and
sweets as liberators, crashed and burned -- we had managed to reconstruct
nothing of significance. First conceived as a Marshall Plan for the
New American Century, six long years later it had devolved into farce.
In my act of the
play, the U.S. spent some $2.2 million dollars to build a huge
facility in the boondocks. Ignoring the stark reality that Iraqis had
raised and sold chickens locally for some 2,000 years, the U.S. decided to
finance the construction of a central processing facility, have the Iraqis
running the plant purchase local chickens, pluck them and slice them up with
complex machinery brought in from Chicago, package the breasts and wings in
plastic wrap, and then truck it all to local grocery stores. Perhaps it was the
desert heat, but this made sense at the time, and the plan was supported by the
Army, the State Department, and the White House.
Elegant in
conception, at least to us, it failed to account for a few simple things, like
a lack of regular electricity, or logistics systems to bring the chickens to
and from the plant, or working capital, or... um... grocery stores. As a
result, the gleaming $2.2 million plant processed no chickens. To use a few of
the catchwords of that moment, it transformed nothing, empowered no one,
stabilized and economically uplifted not a single Iraqi. It just sat there
empty, dark, and unused in the middle of the desert. Like the chickens, we were
plucked.
In keeping with the
madness of the times, however, the simple fact that the plant failed to meet
any of its real-world goals did not mean the project wasn't a success. In fact,
the factory was a hit with the U.S. media. After all, for every
propaganda-driven visit to the plant, my group stocked the place with hastily
purchased chickens, geared up the machinery, and put on a dog-and-pony, er,
chicken-and-rooster, show.
In the dark humor of
that moment, we christened the place the Potemkin Chicken Factory. In
between media and VIP visits, it sat in the dark, only to rise with the
rooster’s cry each morning some camera crew came out for a visit. Our factory
was thus considered a great success. Robert Ford, then at the Baghdad
Embassy and now America's rugged shadow ambassador to Syria, said his visit was
the best day out he enjoyed in Iraq. General Ray Odierno, then commanding
all U.S. forces in Iraq, sent bloggers and camp followers to view the victory
project. Some of the propaganda, which proclaimed that “teaching Iraqis
methods to flourish on their own gives them the ability to provide their own
stability without needing to rely on Americans,” is
still online (including this charming image of
American-Iraqi mentorship, a particular favorite of mine).
We weren’t stupid,
mind you. In fact, we all felt smart and clever enough to learn to look the
other way. The chicken plant was a funny story at first, a kind of insider’s
joke you all think you know the punch line to. Hey, we wasted some money, but
$2.2 million was a small amount in a war whose costs will someday be toted up
in the trillions. Really, at the end of the day, what was the harm?
The harm was this: we
wanted to leave Iraq (and Afghanistan) stable to advance American goals. We did
so by spending our time and money on obviously pointless things, while most
Iraqis lacked access to clean water, regular electricity, and medical or
hospital care. Another State Department official in Iraq wrote in his weekly
summary to me, “At our project ribbon-cuttings we are typically greeted now
with a cursory ‘thank you,’ followed by a long list of crushing needs for
essential services such as water and power.” How could we help stabilize Iraq
when we acted like buffoons? As one Iraqi told me, “It is like I am standing
naked in a room with a big hat on my head. Everyone comes in and helps put
flowers and ribbons on my hat, but no one seems to notice that I am naked.”
By 2009, of course,
it should all have been so obvious. We were no longer inside the neocon dream
of unrivaled global superpowerdom, just mired in what happened to it. We were a
chicken factory in the desert that no one wanted.
Time Travel to 2003
Anniversaries are
times for reflection, in part because it’s often only with hindsight that we
recognize the most significant moments in our lives. On the other hand, on
anniversaries it’s often hard to remember what it was really like back when it
all began. Amid the chaos of the Middle East today, it’s easy, for instance, to
forget what things looked like as 2003 began. Afghanistan, it appeared, had
been invaded and occupied quickly and cleanly, in a way the Soviets (the
British, the ancient Greeks…) could never have dreamed of. Iran was frightened,
seeing the mighty American military on its eastern border and soon to be on the
western one as well, and was ready to deal. Syria was controlled by the
stable thuggery of Bashar al-Assad and relations were so good that the U.S.
was rendering terror suspects to his secret prisons for torture.
Most of the rest of
the Middle East was tucked in for a long sleep with dictators reliable enough
to maintain stability. Libya was an exception, though predictions were that
before too long Muammar Qaddafi would make some sort of deal. (He did.) All
that was needed was a quick slash into Iraq to establish a permanent American
military presence in the heart of Mesopotamia. Our future garrisons there could
obviously oversee things, providing the necessary muscle to swat down any
future destabilizing elements. It all made so much sense to the neocon
visionaries of the early Bush years. The only thing that Washington couldn’t
imagine was this: that the primary destabilizing element would be us.
Indeed, its mighty
plan was disintegrating even as it was being dreamed up. In their lust for
everything on no terms but their own, the Bush team missed a
diplomatic opportunity with Iran that might have rendered today’s saber
rattling unnecessary, even as Afghanistan fell apart and Iraq imploded. As part
of the breakdown, desperate men, blindsided by history, turned up the volume on
desperate measures: torture, secret gulags, rendition, drone killings,
extra-constitutional actions at home. The sleaziest of deals were cut to try to
salvage something, including ignoring the A.Q. Khan network of
Pakistani nuclear proliferation in return for a cheesy Condi
Rice-Qaddafi photo-op rapprochement in Libya.
Inside Iraq, the
forces of Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict had been unleashed by the U.S.
invasion. That, in turn, was creating the conditions for a proxy
war between the U.S. and Iran, similar to the growing proxy war between
Israel and Iran inside Lebanon (where another destabilizing event,
the U.S.-sanctioned Israeli invasion of 2006, followed in hand). None
of this has ever ended. Today, in fact, that proxy war has simply found a fresh
host, Syria, with multiple powers using “humanitarian aid” to push and
shove their Sunni and Shia avatars around.
Staggering neocon
expectations, Iran emerged from the U.S. decade in Iraq economically more
powerful, with sanctions-busting trade between the two neighbors now
valued at some $5 billion a year and still growing. In that decade, the U.S.
also managed to remove one of Iran’s strategic counterbalances, Saddam Hussein,
replacing him with a government run by Nouri al-Malaki, who had once
found asylum in Tehran.
Meanwhile, Turkey is
now engaged in an open war with the Kurds of northern Iraq. Turkey
is, of course, part of NATO, so imagine the U.S. government sitting by silently
while Germany bombed Poland. To complete the circle, Iraq’s prime minister
recently warned that a victory for Syria's rebels will spark
sectarian wars in his own country and will create a new haven for al-Qaeda
which would further destabilize the region.
Meanwhile, militarily
burnt out, economically reeling from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
lacking any moral standing in the Middle East post-Guantanamo and Abu
Ghraib, the U.S. sat on its hands as the regional spark that came to be called
the Arab Spring flickered out, to be replaced by yet more destabilization
across the region. And even that hasn’t stopped Washington from pursuing
the latest version of the (now-nameless) global war on terror into
ever-newer regions in need of destabilization.
Having noted the ease
with which a numbed American public patriotically looked the other way while
our wars followed their particular paths to hell, our leaders no longer blink
at the thought of sending American drones and special operations
forces ever farther afield, most notably ever deeper into Africa, creating
from the ashes of Iraq a frontier version of the state of perpetual
war George Orwell once imagined for his dystopian novel 1984. And don’t
doubt for a second that there is a direct path from the invasion of 2003 and
that chicken plant to the dangerous and chaotic place that today passes for our
American world.
Happy Anniversary
On this 10th
anniversary of the Iraq War, Iraq itself remains, by any measure, a dangerous
and unstable place. Even the usually sunny Department of
State advises American travelers to Iraq that U.S. citizens “remain
at risk for kidnapping... [as] numerous insurgent groups, including Al Qaida,
remain active...” and notes that “State Department guidance to U.S. businesses
in Iraq advises the use of Protective Security Details.”
In the bigger
picture, the world is also a far more dangerous place than it was in 2003.
Indeed, for the State Department, which sent me to Iraq to witness the follies
of empire, the world has become ever more daunting. In 2003, at that infamous
“mission accomplished” moment, only Afghanistan was on the list of overseas
embassies that were considered “extreme danger posts.” Soon enough,
however, Iraq and Pakistan were added. Today, Yemen and Libya, once boring but
secure outposts for State’s officials, now fall into the same category.
Other places once
considered safe for diplomats and their families such
as Syria and Mali have been evacuated and have no American
diplomatic presence at all. Even sleepy Tunisia, once calm enough that the
State Department had its Arabic language school there, is now on
reduced staff with no diplomatic family members
resident. Egypt teeters.
The Iranian
leadership watched carefully as the American imperial version of Iraq
collapsed, concluded that Washington was a paper tiger, backed away from
initial offers to talk over contested issues, and instead (at least for a
while) doubled-down on achieving nuclear breakout capacity, aided
by the past work of that same A.Q. Khan network. North Korea, another
A.Q. Khan beneficiary, followed the same pivot ever farther from Washington,
while it became a genuine nuclear power. Its neighbor China pursued its own path
of economic dominance, while helping to “pay” for the Iraq War by becoming
the number-one holder of U.S. debt among foreign governments. It now
owns more than 21% of the U.S. debt held overseas.
And don’t put away
the joke book just yet. Subbing as apologist-in-chief for an absent George W.
Bush and the top officials of his administration on this 10th anniversary,
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently reminded us that
there is more on the horizon. Conceding that he had “long since given up trying
to persuade people Iraq was the right decision,” Blair added that new crises
are looming. “You’ve got one in Syria right now, you’ve got one in Iran to
come,” he said. “We are in the middle of this struggle, it is going to take a
generation, it is going to be very arduous and difficult. But I think we are
making a mistake, a profound error, if we think we can stay out of that
struggle.”
Think of his comment
as a warning. Having somehow turned much of Islam into a foe, Washington has
essentially assured itself of never-ending crises that it stands no chance
whatsoever of winning. In this sense, Iraq was not an aberration, but the
historic zenith and nadir for a way of thinking that is only now slowing
waning. For decades to come, the U.S. will have a big enough military to ensure
that our decline is slow, bloody, ugly, and reluctant, if inevitable. One day,
however, even the drones will have to land.
And so, happy 10th
anniversary, Iraq War! A decade after the invasion, a chaotic and unstable
Middle East is the unfinished legacy of our invasion. I guess the joke is on us
after all, though no one is laughing.”
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