Gaddafi and the West’s Cynicism

The passing of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 was an act of utmost cynicism. Instead of preserving peace, the UN Security Council – not for the first time over the past years, by the way, blessed international banditry, the pillage of national assets by Western corporations and banks, the demolition of a sovereign statehood, and the extermination of a whole nation.

At the moment, the international community has serious reasons to put on the agenda of the UN General Assembly the issue of the Security Council’s criminal activities. The grounds for the step are:

1. Article 2 of the UN Charter says: “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII”, which makes it clear that the UN Security Council had no right whatsoever to even talk of sanctions against Libya. All it could do without overstepping the limits was to probe into the possibility of intervening into the situation created by the mutiny in Libya. Therefore, the UN Security Council members who took part in preparing and passing Resolution 1973 should be held accountable for exceeding their legitimate authority with criminal purposes and accordingly face justice in an international criminal court.

2. Even the scope of the lawless Resolution 1973 is limited to imposing a no-fly zone on Libya and in no way authorizes targeting the country’s civilian infrastructures, armed forces or, for example, Gaddafi’s compound. Nor does Resolution 1973 call for supporting the armed opposition in Libya militarily. Consequently, NATO’s actual steps deserve a criminal investigation.

3. The UN Security Council maintains a Military Staff Committee of is own, which is supposed to organize the UN military and peacekeeping missions. It should study the situation when the UN intends to step in, plan the technical aspects of the operation, and suggest issuing a UN mandate for the mission. Why do the US and NATO hold a monopoly on interpreting and implementing the UN Security Council’s Resolution? That alone evidently constitutes a crime against the international law.

The UN Security Council and NATO are jointly committing a series of crimes against the international law and humanity and therefore fall into the category of international organized criminal groups. Convening something akin to the Nuremberg Trials seems appropriate in the light of the above, and chances are such trials will take place in the foreseeable future. It is worth noting that initially Hitler and his clique violated only the Versailles Peace Treaty, and only later moved on to wider offenses against the international law and humanity as a whole. No death – of a civilian, a government forces soldier, an opposition member, or anyone else – should remain unpunished. The US organized secret trials of S. Milosevic and S. Hussein and executed them, secretly in the former case and openly in the latter. The guilt of the two had not been legitimately proven, nor were their alleged crimes comparable in proportions to those committed by the US and NATO. Didn’t US Senator John McCain commit a crime by interfering with the domestic affairs of a sovereign country? How would Washington react if Gaddafi sent, for example, to Wisconsin, the state which recently saw an outbreak of anti-war protests, an official envoy with the mission of calling for the displacement of the current US Administration?

Gaddafi is charged with using force against insurgents whose ranks include Al Qaeda operatives and agents of Western intelligence services as well as with running Libya for four decades without alternatives. In the US, the world’s exemplary democracy, a group akin to a mafia or a family clan has been uninterruptedly at the helm for over a century, as both W. Wilson and JFK wrote. JFK was killed for attempting to call into question the Federal Reserves dollar-printing monopoly and for seeking public support in subjecting the country’s financial community to at least a minimal extent of control. The mafia in the US robs Americans and other nations alike. If the principles of Western democracy have to be observed uniformly, the terms of West Europe’s or Middle East’s monarchies should be limited, say, to a couple of decades. Great Britain would obviously rebel against the idea, and in Jordan one probably could get stoned for voicing the idea. Gaddafi’s long rule gave Libya political and economic independence and put the country’s natural resources to work for its socioeconomic development. On the eve of the invasion, Libya used to be North Africa’s most prosperous country. Gaddafi explained in his political will dated April 5, 2011 that the West wants to ruin Libya for its independence, for its being free of colonialism, stressed that the nation shares his vision, and pledged to fight till the end. Liberals cannot openly charge Gaddafi with making Libya Africa’s top-educated country offering its population serious social guarantees, free medical care and residences, and sustaining the income levels beyond the European average. Gaddafi prides himself in helping other African nations, doing whatever possible for the African Union, and trying to convince nations that his system of rule by public committees is optimal. By the way, appropriately for a country which is a patchwork of tribal areas, an important role in Libya’s decision-making is given to a council of tribes. Wide public debates preceded the decision to implement one of Africa’s biggest infrastructural projects – that of water supply across Libya from underground lakes. As a result,, the country sufferers no potable water shortages despite the fact that much of Libya used to be a desert. Libya also boasts excellent expressways, seaports, airports, and oil terminals, but Washington seems to believe that all of the above is undemocratic. For the US, democracy means control over nations exercised by major financial centers and a pharisaic system of rule leaving real decision-making to an invisible elite and a purely decorative role to presidents and governments. The US bipartisan political arrangement is the brainchild of the same financial tycoons. Obama may be generously dispensing promises to his constituency to withdraw US forces from other countries etc., but he can never act contrary to the will of his country’s invisible elite which constantly wants revenues and power. Truly speaking, the slogan “What’s Good for General Motors Is Good for America” should rather read “What’s Good for Goldman Sachs…“.

What are the reasons behind the hate for Gaddafi among the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Baruchs? First, it is Libya’s and Gaddafi’s personal independence, which is not allowed in a finance-dominated unipolar world. Secondly, Libya’s socially-oriented statehood reflected even by the official title – a Socialist Jamahiriya – used to draw the ire of global elites. The success of Libya’s development model posed a potential risk to the global oligarchy which had invested heavily in discrediting socialism, especially against the backdrop of the identity searches across the currently restless North Africa and the Arab world. Thirdly, over the past years Gaddafi was active in the African Union and in OPEC, where he espoused switching to gold-backed Arab currencies in oil trade.

The above reasons combined prompted the “democratization” of Libya, a process similar to the one which – speaking of the Arab world – left Iraq in ruins. Upon destroying Libya, the global oligarchy will target Syria, Jordan, attempt to induce the disintegration of Iraq and Pakistan, start building an independent Kurdistan, and turn to enforcing the same “democracy” in Yemen along with the republics of Trancaucasia and Central Asia. After that, it will zero in on bigger players…

Leonid Ivashov is the President of the Russian Academy for Geopolitics and Professor with the Moscow University of Linguistics.

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation