|
|
|
Re: Libya - reply to Professor Juan Cole ...,
Thoughts and Reflections on the Use of Military Power ...,
Global Financial Crisis ...,
Not Another Terrorist Organization ...,
'Birthers' and Hawaii ...
Dear Juan,
As a professor and an influential voice on the internet, I am appealing to you to stop supporting, be it implicitly or explicitly, the criminal bombardment of the Libyan people by the US/NATO attacks.
The facts, and my opinion, based on same, are these:-
The state of Libya and its political position vis-a- vis rebellion
1. Libya is a tribal society and there is a measure of dissent in the East, and more particularly around the hub of Benghazi.
2. This is not the same kind of ‘Arab spring’ as one has witnessed in Tunisia or in Egypt. The US lent its support to the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt up to the very end then a the last moment professed to welcome the people’s change. In Libya it has been about 2 months of bombardment, and internally it must by now be clear that Gadaffi has significant support amongst his people, for clearly with an extension of another 3 months of planned bombings, NATO must admit that Gadaffi does have strong interna support amongst his people that compels this long extension. One can contrast the use of force by CIA supported “rebels” versus the ground swell of popular support that in a short time, without arms, toppled the leadership in Tunisia and Egypt.
The legal aspects
3. Resolution 1973 is a lawfully passed UN Resolution for the imposition of a no-fly zone. It does not however extend to, nor lawfully sanction, the assassination attempts upon Gadaffi ( cf. point 2 above – for that the failure so far to dislodge Ghadaffi and effect regime change – explains this illegality). The efforts at regime change are under international law – illegal.
4. President Obama has circumvented US domestic law, by reference to the statutory stipulations of the War Powers Act.
continued here
What is evident to me is that the politics of the world increasingly has to be viewed in terms of the raw use of military power. The US, at this juncture of human history, is the nation state with the greatest amount of military power in the world and there is serious cause for concern about how that power is used and projected into the world.
I will explain what I mean.
When the Wall Street mafia raped private funds and brought the world to global economic crisis, the response by Bush was to inject trillions back to the same gangsters, thieves and “banksters” who caused the crisis. Then, when Obama was elected, he did not reverse the process but continued and gave many trillions more back to the same “banksters”. At the same time for decades before, the United States defence budget has increased constantly year after year. At a time when clearly, many citizens of the US are in need in the midst of a serious economic slump, when there is no ‘cold war’ and the wars in which the US are engaged are not in the least wars of defence in response to any nation having attacked the US, it stretches the bounds of credulity to justify the on-going wars and bombardments of other weaker nations by US military forces and attacks by their troops supported by the NATO nations. In this sense, the traditional political ideas of divisions between Democrat and Republican, right and left, become meaningless.
Again, post 9/11, the Bush administration used this event as the casus belli for bombing an already impoverished and war destroyed nation ( i.e. post the Soviet invasion and defeat). How does one catch Bin Laden by bombing carpet bombing Afghanistan is a logical question to ask. How does one target combatants who are not uniformed and do not comprise a standing army in their own country is the next question. How does one legitimize having trained the Taliban, Bin Laden and armed the Muslim combatants at a time when the US/CIA ( read: “Charlie Wilson’s war”) wanted to defeat the Soviets, then post war speak of trying to defeat the so-called Al-Qaeda fighters ( i.e. the very ones who had been trained by the CIA and the US is sacrificing young service persons lives for ) - and so justify this foreign incursion with an iota of credibility? How can it be justified to sacrifice young American lives to run an oil pipeline across Afghanistan and shed US blood on foreign soil in a war that supports a man whose brother along with the CIA has seen heroin production reach its zenith simultaneously while American troops have occupied Afghanistan? How can one legitimately speak of “freedom” when since 2003 the US government knowingly lied to the American people and the world about WMDs and clearly is faced with an unyielding resistance( because the Iraqis do not want illegal US occupation) and continue to sacrifice to a number of one million dead Iraqis and over 4,700 American lives ( officially acknowledged by the US) in a depleted uranium infested nation, due to this unyielding American aggression? How can there be any conceivable decency of US foreign policy when for eight years the US supported in turn Iraq under Saddam and Iran in a war that cost significant numbers of human life, during the longest conventional war of the twentieth century?:-
www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php
continued
Here is Reagan's guru - and when you listen to him, even he - now a man of conscience - speaks honestly about the brutalities unleashed on the world. Can't go round the world making wars - day in day out to maintain dominance. Empires rise and empires fall. The US did have 100 years of ascendance ahead in 2000 - BUSH blew it - Obama and the Republican party afterwards will finish the process that GWB Jr. started.
Global financial crisis-On the Edge with Max Keiser
CB
www.globaljusticeonline.com
With the recent attempted assassination of Muammar Ghadaffi, NATO is now worthy of the acronym:-
Not Another Terrorist Organisation
Stated seriously, the dual choices are of viewing the situation of the attempted assassination of Ghadaffi in abstracto or viewing it in concreto.
In abstracto, the United States, Britain and France can be seen as having considerable military advantage over the Libyan state it is presently attacking. Likewise, with a UN Resolution in hand, namely UN Resolution 1973, one would think that it would not only be the de facto responsible thing to do by operating within the confines of Resolution 1973, but there remains a de jure legal obligation to conduct international relations within the confines of the established rules of international law. To the extent that a UN resolution was sought and obtained, there was an attempt to establish parameters for lawful international engagement against Libya. To that extent, in abstracto, the US/NATO powers have acted responsibly, but as we shall observe in concreto, the US/NATO have now dislodged the supporting beam of lawful credibility via their most recent actions.
Before moving forward to the second limb, there is a need to observe that the United States has been trending towards reliance on its own domestic laws, inverting same against the standards of international law ( within which its own domestic laws should be congruent and compliant). Thus, as with such self-styled contrivances as "enemy combatants", the US has sought to justify wanton disregard for international law.
The broad legal parameters permitting the use of lethal force are for legitimate acts of law enforcement –and – in situations of self-defence ( see: UN Charter Article 51).
There are two sides to the argument – in abstracto. On one side of the coin is justification of acts of attack on a targeted leader because of alleged state sponsored terrorism. However, "terrorism" finds itself classified as a crime. The legal stretch which the US has been using is to misinterpret to seek justification for their own connivances to use excessive lethal and oftentimes indiscriminate force by classifying the individual criminal act of terrorism as an act of war. The other side of the coin is that use of excessive force in situations of incursions into countries where asymmetrical warfare of resistance to US occupation is being waged, places the occupying forces at the disadvantage of facing guerilla warfare, thus the occupying forces seek to validate and legitimate their actions against non-uniformed and non-governmental forces.
In concreto, the incident of Eichmann is a helpful case in point. Israel overstepped the boundaries of international law, sought justification on the basis of "hostes humanis generis" ( i.e. common enemies of humankind) and thus felt free to exercise universal jurisdiction. The UN Security Council did not deem the violation of sovereignty permissible and lawful.
What we are witnessing in Libya is, in very colloquial language – stretch – and over-reach. 'Stretch' in the sense of extending Resolution 1973 to a situation that it was not designed to extend to. 'Overreach' in the sense of commencing with a Resolution that is lawful, but then carrying it well outside the boundaries of legality by launching, funding and actively supporting a civil war.
continued
In all the 'birther' brouhaha I haven't seen one comment about the insult, not to Obama, but to the state of Hawaii and all the states that accept the certificate of birth they use. After all, is Hawaii a state? Will the federal government issue a passport on the basis of this short certificate of birth? Well, if the federal government has accepted it previously and now it is not considered adequate proof of citizen's birth, it follows that the State of Hawaii must change its requirements and abolish this usage. Why does Hawaii have a different requirement than other states? Or is that so? It seems to me that the State of Hawaii should have aggressively defended itself and the President
Back to the index of the Vagabond
William Markiewicz