THE
ROVING EYE The perfect (desert)
storm By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great
Arab Revolt, please click here.
The
great 2011 Arab revolt, the cry for democracy in
Northern Africa, the mostly Shi'ite revolt in the
Persian Gulf, the Western despair over the price
of oil, and the new United States Middle East
doctrine of "regime alteration" - not to mention
the Pentagon's full-spectrum dominance doctrine -
have been convoluted into the ultimate political
storm in MENA (Middle East/Northern Africa). The
storm deploys devastating gusts of hypocritical
winds.
For starters, the enlightened,
democratic West has decided Muammar Gaddafi has to
be taken down - or out.
The George W Bush
administration invaded both Afghanistan and
Iraq, killing hundreds of
thousands of people in the process, directly and
indirectly; and as everyone knows, with no end in
sight, and with total impunity. Now it's the turn
for the law of the (wild) West to be applied, via
the Barack Obama administration, to the African
king of kings - as in it's OK if we bearers of the
White Man's Burden kill a lot of people, but not
OK if the killer is a John Galliano-dressed
Bedouin weirdo.
This is the absolute
bottom line; either the West arms the eastern
liberated Libya rebels to their teeth, or Muammar
Gaddafi will win this war, by switching the fight
from cities to the desert, and by applying
slightly increasing degrees of force. Thus, in a
slightly duller version of endless plot
advancements in mafia movies, the "debate" from
Washington and Brussels to Riyadh concerns the
most effective method for taking him down (or
out). Enter plans A and B.
People
change beats regime change Plan A -
Washington has placed a "highly classified"
request for the House of Saud to arm the rebels,
as The Independent's Robert Fisk has advanced,
without details (none available in Arab media,
either). So essentially this would be - what else
is new - history repeating itself as farce; a
remix of the Ronald Reagan-era Iran-Contra
scandal, with Washington possibly betting on
control of Libya's oil and gas (echoes of Iraq
neo-conned; make it history twice repeating itself
as farce).
The House of Saud has every
reason to arm liberated eastern Libya with
much-needed anti-tank rockets, mortars and
ground-to-air missiles against Gaddafi - not least
because aging Saudi King Abdullah hates his guts
(no wonder; Gaddafi put a contract to kill the
king over a year ago). According to al-Arabiyya -
a mouthpiece of the House of Saud - Gaddafi is the
only Arab dictator left in power, which proves
once again that the desert family oil hacienda is
indeed impervious to irony.
The added
irony that this scheme also copies the Saudis
distributing weapons for the mujahideen in
Afghanistan in the 1980s via Pakistan (make it
history thrice repeating itself as farce)
obviously escaped everyone in Washington. Hail to
Benghazi as the new Peshawar!
Anyway, the
Saudi reward for riding along is already inbuilt
in the Obama administration's brand new Middle
East strategy of "regime alteration". Everything
one needs to know about the doctrine is here.
Next Friday, an Egyptian-style day of rage
is planned for Saudi Arabia. Preemptive repression
has been fierce - including a ban on all
demonstrations, because, says the Interior
Ministry, they are against sharia law. A big round
of applause here to the hardline Prince Nayef bin
Abdul-Aziz, one of the king's brothers, for his
efforts previous and post-day of rage.
And
then there's the mostly Shi'ite rebellion in
neighborly Bahrain - home of the US 5th Fleet -
which must be contained at all costs, lest it
spills over to oil-producing, Shi'ite majority
northeast Saudi Arabia. So according to "regime
alteration" ("help keep longtime allies who are
willing to reform in power"), and all in the name
of "stability", US President Barack Obama can't
say a word if the House of Saud cracks down big
time over its Shi'ites, or if it helps the
al-Khalifas in Bahrain with tanks and troops to
crack down big time over their Shi'ites.
Translation: screw the democratic aspirations of
the people of Bahrain and a substantial chunk of
the people of Saudi Arabia; Washington just can't
get enough of its valuable allies, the al-Khalifa
monarchy in Bahrain and the House of Saud.
Humanitarian hell-raisers,
rejoice Then there's Plan B - the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) takes over to
fight "crimes against humanity" and "genocide".
Essentially this would be Kosovo all over again
(make it history repeating itself for the fourth
time).
As a no-fly zone over Libya is the
object of fiery debate, NATO has already decided
to increase AWACs surveillance flights over Libyan
territory to 24/7, according to US ambassador to
NATO Ivo Daalder. Translation; they're already
searching for targets. Even as a reticent Pentagon
has admitted on the record that a no-fly zone
means war, febrile NATO secretary general Anders
Fogh Rasmussen insisted NATO is ready to raise
hell until, predictably, he backtracked.
As this is not a remix of Bush and the
neo-conservatives - at least not officially -
first there must be a mandate from the United
Nations Security Council; France and Britain are
feverishly working on a draft resolution. And then
support must be assured from Russia (already said
no), China (already said nothing), the toothless
Arab League (almost a given) and the African Union
(more complicated, because Gaddafi bought a lot of
its leaders).
As for all those
US-protected beacons of equality in the Persian
Gulf - now hands-free to keep repressing the
democratic aspirations of their people and the
army of Asian slaves who service their elites -
support is a cakewalk. A statement released by the
foreign ministers from the six-member Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) "demands that the UN
Security Council take all necessary measures to
protect civilians, including enforcing a no-fly
zone over Libya".
NATO intervention, if it
happens, will be sold to the whole planet as the
return of humanitarian imperialism. From the point
of view of NATO/ Pentagon/European Union public
relations purposes, that's another cakewalk.
Former terrorist Gaddafi has now been rebranded as
"the new Hitler", after Slobodan Milosevic in
Yugoslavia (as well as Saddam Hussein in Iraq;
make it history repeating itself as farce for the
fifth time). And Gaddafi is a much easier sell;
the total terrorist freak show package.
Cui bono? There's no question
Gaddafi and his gang are practicing "human-rights
abuses" in Libya. But what about those tens of
thousands killed by the Pentagon from Baghdad to
Fallujah and beyond? Were they inhuman, and
holders of no rights, by any chance?
Moreover, the same enlightened West that's
now so worried about the people of Libya did not
give much of a damn to the people of Egypt until
it was absolutely certain that Mubarakism was
gone. (Gaddafi by the way was perfectly aligned
with Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy,
British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian
Premier Silvio Berlusconi in the early days of
Tahrir Square).
While he was servicing the
masters, the walking terrorist freak show with his
portable tent and Ukrainian nurses could not be a
better friend. He merrily embraced neo-liberalism;
he opened up the energy holy grail to European
corporations (BP, Repsol, Total, ENI); he lavishly
bought their weapons (Italy, France, UK and
Germany were the top four providers); he got the
US$70 billion of the Libyan Investment Authority
to prop up European businesses; and most of all he
put a lid over the migratory flux from the Maghreb
and black Africa towards Europe.
And what
about then-US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice
in 2008 extolling the US and Libya's permanent
shared interests, including "human rights and
democracy"?
The problem now is that the
West is simply clueless on what post-Gaddafi Libya
could turn out to be. The "rebels" include
everyone from progressive, secular intellectuals
to hardcore Islamists and neo-liberal-addicted
businessmen. Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt - which
can be monitored and even relatively tamed by
Washington/Brussels.
Libya without Gaddafi
could be a complex collection of clannish tribes
with no experience of Western-style political
culture slouching towards "anarchy". Thus the
reasoning for a NATO intervention; so "we", the
enlightened, can control those barbarians' worst
impulses, facilitate an "orderly transition" (US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, anyone?) and
profit from their energy wealth. Besides, the
Mediterranean is a NATO lake already.
There's NATO - but there's also NATO's
Partnership for Peace. Every single nation in the
27-nation European Union is a member of one or the
other (Cyprus was the last one to adhere, last
month).
NATO is as ubiquitous as death,
taxes and financial corruption. NATO means war in
Afghanistan; Operation Active Endeavor - as in
airborne counter-terrorism in the Middle East (for
instance, the AWACs surveying Libya); and also
Operation Ocean Shield off the Horn of Africa.
Every European nation bordering the
Mediterranean - or in the Mediterranean - is part
of NATO or the Partnership for Peace. And all the
African nations on the Mediterranean - except
Libya - are members of NATO's Mediterranean
Dialogue partnership: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and
Tunisia. Israel is a key member of the
Mediterranean Dialogue. This means that among
Mediterranean littoral nations, only Lebanon
(slapped with a five-year-long naval blockade),
Syria and, of course Libya are not members of NATO
or any partnership program. The bottom line, once
again: the Mediterranean is a NATO lake.
We've seen this movie before True democrats the world over cannot but rate
"regime alteration" as a pitiful, pathetic Obama
administration strategy. Moreover, there's
absolutely no guarantee that NATO won't go for its
own take on regime alteration; a balkanization of
Libya just as it happened in Yugoslavia (or just
like the Pentagon, via local oligarchies, tried in
Bolivia in 2008).
The White House cannot
possibly want a real war against the African king
of kings. Obama is being set up by the neo-cons -
who as the Clintonistas of 1999 and themselves in
2003 in Iraq, brandish the always misleading sweet
sword of so-called humanitarian intervention.
Neo-cons such as the cosmically despicable
John Yoo - the lawyer who told Bush torture is OK
- have virtually ordered the Obama administration
to stuff the UN's "antiquated rules" and cut to
the chase. Compared to it, the proposal by
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for a neutral
mediation sounds like a stone monument to common
sense. Yet no one is listening - not Washington,
not NATO, not the Gaddafi clan, not the rebels.
Here we go again. The first one willing to
send a Stinger missile to the freedom fighters so
they can take down Gaddafi's helicopters gunships,
raise your hand. History repeats itself as farce
for, well, we lost count.
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