Colonial war on Libya

Stella Calloni

THE perversion of U.S. and European agencies and their subordinates worldwide in calling what is happening in Libya "civil war," demonstrates how a colonial intervention in a country which the United States and its partners want to seize for diverse motives was converted into an internal "rebellion" which had to be aided for "humanitarian" reasons.

The reality is that, since mid-March, the Libyan people have been enduring the savage NATO bombardments of a country of close to six million inhabitants, given that a large part of its territory is desert.

The NATO bombings have caused death and destruction throughout the country in order to open the way to the mercenaries who, from the beginning, were the driving force of the supposed popular "rebellion" against Muammar Gaddafi.

There are no images of that "popular" rebellion, or of the "excuse" – Gaddafi’s bombardments of the civilian population – used as the grounds for a brutal intervention well into the 21st century.

.Meanwhile, the civilian population is being massacred by its NATO "protectors," and their homes, schools, food centers, medical laboratories, universities, hospitals, all destroyed.

Nobody can deny the advances in Libya after Gaddafi headed the rebellion which did away with a colonial monarchy and the country’s colonial status in 1969.

All of that effort is being demolished, while Libyan territory is being sown with depleted uranium, signifying a human and ecological disaster for the future.

Resolution 1973 adopted by the Security Council on March 17 this year to establish a supposed air blockade of Libya was solely intended to prevent the government of that sovereign country from defending itself. The resolution was approved without listening to what direct observers had to say.

They thus insured that Libya had no air defense. And it could be noted as a moral defeat the fact that the country has resisted the bombings for almost six months, making it abundantly evident that, without NATO, the "rebels" would not exist.

In order to gauge the truth that the media is concealing, suffice it to see a recent photograph published by certain media showing alleged "rebel troops," whose physique, clothing and weapons resemble those of the typical mercenaries which the powers took to that region. In order to initiate and sustain the intervention, the United States and its associates utilized the international corporate media which, in real terms, is under their military and security control.

In this case they could also count on the self-interested or disinterested – but fulfilling the same objective – collaboration of certain journalists and intellectuals considered progressive, but who were the accomplices of this intervention and the network of lies utilized to justify it.

In order to justify themselves to themselves, these are now waiting for NATO to win and tell the victors’ story about "the horrific human rights’ violations" committed by the Libyan government in order to cover up what the mercenaries and invading troops are doing. As they did in Afghanistan and Iraq and long before that.

Have they so quickly forgotten the Nicaraguan Contras who attacked Sandinista Nicaragua from U.S. bases in Honduras, destroying villages, killing, torturing and raping women and children? At the time, Ronald Reagan called them "freedom fighters."

Calling groups of mercenaries handled by the CIA and its associates "rebels" is to demonstrate a lack of respect for the real rebels in the world fighting for their liberation.

The Libyan people and government not only had the right but also the obligation to defend themselves. Any country in the world under foreign attack has the duty to do so.

If they manage to hold onto Libya in order to transform the country into "a new Somalia," as Moussa Ibrahim, spokesperson for the Libyan government, stated August 19 in the aftermath of increased NATO bombings, all the countries of the world will be left totally vulnerable.

With the addition that an Argentine attorney at the International Criminal Court (ICC) wants to condemn Gaddafi and, at the same time, protect those responsible for criminal interventions and genocide in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Somalia is a country without government, with a food crisis and that is what the Western powers want to make of Libya by continuing their attacks, "While we are working on peace plans," the Libyan spokesperson also recalled.

Authorities warned on August 19 that the bombardments are to increase in the days leading up to the 42nd anniversary of the so-called Green Revolution which Gaddafi headed on September 1, 1969.