Sunday 7 April 2019

West's Responsibility For Libya

Edwin Starr asked what War was good for and concluded absolutely nothing but it was good for the undertaker and they must be rubbing their hands with glee in Libya as yet another of the West's humane intervention turns into bloodbath.
For those keeping track, after Afghanistan in and Iraq and before Syria came Libya who we in the West bombed in 2011 after it pushed for a UN Resolution to enforce a no-fly zone to protect civilians but very quickly slipped into being about regime change and NATO being the air support for the rebels.
The rebels were the same terrorists who we had been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan who only stopped fighting each other to take on Gaddafi and when he was removed went back to warring against each other as we congratulated ourselves and left them to their own devices which was to fight each other for power and resources.
And so from 2011 to today there has been conflict but the killing which we have largely ignored, has gone up a level and suddenly deaths on a large scale are being reported and call are bring made for a humanitarian truce as the UN-backed government of National Accord in Tripoli is under threat from a large group of warlords, jihadists and fundamentalists under General Khalifa Haftar advancing from the east of the country who have already taken over the nations oilfields.
While nations pull their people out of Tripoli, Washington says it is too dangerous for American troops to stay on the ground and the US Africa Command have announced that it was pulling out it's contingent as the fighting escalates.
As the West was directly responsible for what happened in Libya, it is a case of we broke it so we have to fix it because we have been alarmingly slow to learn the lesson that charging in, removing a government, get them to 'democratically elect' a western friendly puppet government, then leave after we're satisfied that the country resources are nice and safe for the West hasn't worked.
Then again, it has worked for us in the West even if not so much for any of the recent places where we have intervened where the undertakers of another country where we have sent our military have been kept in full employment, courtesy of the West.

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