NATO’S UNCONSCIONABLE WAR ON LIBYA

I'm not entirely surprised that the Jonathan maladministration voted for the UN Security Council resolution -1973 - authorizing NATO's immoral war on a sovereign nation (Libya) legitimately trying to quell a rebellion as any other country would do.


It may well be part of a strategic game plan for Niger Delta/Biafra secession by our traitorous Ijaw-Igbo president who not so long ago held brief for MEND when the latter bombed Abuja.


And when the Nigerian military moves to crush such secessionist insurrection, the Niger Deltans would scream “civilian casualties”, so NATO or the US-led Africom can come bombing Naija on their behalf. After all like rebel controlled eastern Libya, the Niger Delta is rich in crude oil.


Given Ghaddafi's obnoxious legacy of fomenting or supporting armed rebellion in several Black African nations (Liberia, Sierra leone, Senegal), it is tempting to gloat that nemesis has finally caught up with him.


But the Libyan crisis is no longer just about Ghaddafi, more importantly it is about a dangerous precedent being set by the UN that undermines the sovereignty of nations, which apparently can no longer crush rebellions because of undue concern about “civilian casualties”.


Undue because in any military campaign to crush a rebellion, civilian casualties are inevitable and cannot be reason for any government to fold its arms and be run over by insurgents – hence Ghaddafi's apt poser to Obama:


“If you found them (rebels) taking over American cities by force of arms what would you do?”


About 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln, then American president answered Ghaddafi's question in a vicious and bloody manner when he (Lincoln) brutally unleashed America's Union forces to crush the confederates, whose modest demands for autonomy was not unreasonable in contrast to the brazen attempt by east Libya Islamists to overthrow a subsisting government.


Lincoln's generals - William Sherman, Phillip Sheridan and Ulyses Grant perpetrated atrocities so heinous that in a saner world, they and their Commander-in-Chief (Lincoln) would have been arraigned before a war crime tribunal.

Not to forget the massacres and other atrocities against Native Americans who resisted seizure of their land by European invaders.


On the contrary, in the cities Ghaddafi retook (Misrata, Ajdabiya, Ras Lanuf) before the idiotic UN intervention, rebels fled and there were no massacres as hyped by Obama and his sycophantic liberal media. Instead Ghaddafi offered amnesty to all rebels if they lay down their arms.


Obama and his trigger-happy conspirators however, preferred to play up Ghaddafi's initial tough talk to intimidate his rebel opponents, then NATO proceeded to bomb Ghaddafi's forces in the cities they had already won without any massacres, in order to facilitate the rebel onslaught. NATO is thus acting as the rebel airforce to dethrone Ghaddafi.


This is way beyond the UN mandate of establishing no-fly-zone or “protecting civilians”. Obama and Sarkozy say they no longer recognize Ghaddafi as Libya's leader and proceeded to kill him by blasting his residence with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Can someone please tell these two nitwits that it is not up to them to forcibly remove or impose a leader on another sovereign nation?


It is unprecedented and totally unconscionable for the UN to allow itself to be railroaded in this manner by a clique of short-sighted self-serving leaders desperate to shore up their political fortunes. Even the UN's Ban Ki Moon admitted that Resolution 1973 “could have profound implications.”


But for NATO's ill-thought intervention, Libya's civil war would have been over 2 weeks ago as Ghaddafi's forces would have been victorious and Libyans would have begun to rebuild their country.

Instead the UN has plunged the north African country into a protracted conflict that has reignited old clan rivalries. Witness how Ghaddafi's tribesmen in Sirte recently joined forces with his army to repel rebel onslaught on the city.

Libya may well degenerate into another Somalia particularly as Africa's largest crude oil reserve is at stake. The stupid NATO talk of further arming the rebels will only serve to escalate the conflict resulting in many more fatalities and suffering among the civilians the UN purportedly intervened to protect.


In other words the UN/NATO intervention is counter-productive and all the glib politically correct claptrap about “protecting civilians” has little to do with genuine concern for ordinary Libyans.

In any case the distinction between civilians and military in rebel-held eastern Libya has become blurred, as all the major news outlets (BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera) report many civilians taking up arms against Ghaddafi.


Where was Obama's concern for “protecting civilians” when Ahmedinajad/Khamanei's Basiji goons mowed down hundreds of Iranians protesting the rigged June 12 2009 elections?


Why haven't NATO unleashed it's military power on Yemen where President Abdullah Saleh's snipers recently shot dead 45 protesters and wounded over 200? We are still waiting for NATO air strikes on Syria where dozens of anti-Assad protesters were recently gunned down by security forces in Daraa.

And what about civilian casualties from America's drone attacks in Pakistan?


America duplicitous intervention in Libya is particularly galling given that Obama condones Sheik Hamad Al-Khalifa's brutal repression of the uprising by the Shiite majority in Bahrain. All because the ruling Sunni Bahraini monarchy hosts the US Navy 5th fleet that polices the Persian Gulf, which may be lost if the largely pro-Iranian Shiites assume power.


Unlike the other bandwagon Arab protests currently sweeping the Middle East, which are largely by unarmed demonstrators who control no territory; the Benghazi-based east Libyan rebels are armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and even 2 MiG23 fighter jets.


Libya was thus confronted with an armed insurrection that requires firm military response hence Ghaddafi's initial tough talk that was deliberately hyped as an intention to massacre by Obama, Sarkozy and their self-righteous war-mongering conspirators.

The Benghazi-based rebels are Islamists largely derived from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which was founded by veterans of the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad - the same Jihad that spawned the global Islamist terror franchise – Al Qaeda.


In a recent interview published in UK's Daily Telegraph, one of the Libyan rebel commanders acknowledged links with Al-Qaeda. The same rebel commander is reported to have fought against America in Afghanistan.

Idris Derby, President of neighbouring Chad recently drew attention to Al-Qaeda ransacking armouries in eastern Libya and stockpiling weapons including surface-to-air missiles. Even released Guantanamo jihadists are on the rebel side.


Furthermore, a recent US military intelligence report documents that violent Islamists from Eastern Libya where the current rebellion is based, provided more foreign Jihadists fighting America in Iraq than any other Muslim country.

One is therefore perplexed about the sanity and loyalties of the Kenyan caliph in America's White House as he deliberately empowers terror-linked Islamists in Libya.


It's beginning to look like Afghanistan all over again, where America supported Bin Laden and his fellow Islamists against the Soviet Union, only for the same Islamists to later bite the American hand that fed them with a vicious attack on 9/11.


Granted that most Libyans agitating for the end of Ghaddafi's tyranny are probably not interested in a totalitarian Islamist state, but that's what they are most likely to get since armed Al-Qaeda type Islamists initiated the current rebellion and are the best organized anti-Ghaddafi opposition. Never mind all the misleading Taqiyya about “freedom” and “democracy”.


Most Iranians who revolted against the Shah in 1979 weren't Islamists either, but the country ended with a Mullah tyranny, as Islamists are much more brutal and more willing to do what it takes to secure power, than true secular democrats.


Those Americans contemplating impeaching Obama for needlessly plunging the US into war against a country that neither attacked nor posed a threat to America; without Congressional approval, in violation of America's constitution – they should please expedite action and get rid of the bumbling first “black” president.


Nafata Bamaguje

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Articles by Nafata Bamaguje