Obama-administration and the Western allies exposed

For the record, this is no apology for Gaddafi. As a matter of fact, in the end in the streets of Sirte, the Brother Leader probably got what he deserved. That he was allowed to get away with so much for so many years is however also an indictment of the  hypocritical role played by the West in general and the Obama administration in particular, to force regime change in Libya.

Green card for regime change

When the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1973 authorising the enforcement of a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians against attacks from their own government was unilaterally turned by the US and its Nato allies into a green card for regime change, the writing was on the wall.

Serving US and Western interests was obviously the mission’s ultimate goal and if it required the death of Gaddafi then so be it!

The new US ambassador to Libya said it all a couple of days ago in a briefing to  some 150 American businessmen interested in what is on offer when he remarked, “We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources.”

The Obama administration’s involvement with Africa is increasingly by way of military assistance and lately remote-controlled drones to patrol those regions in Africa that Washington views as harbouring threats to its national security and other interests.

Human rights and humanitarian assistance to the downtrodden, which is often touted as the centrepiece of US foreign policy, comes a distant second.

Double standards

The Libyan episode once again highlighted the double standards of American foreign policy.

What, can be asked, is the difference between Gaddafi and the repressive regimes of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain?

Take Bahrain for example; The monarchy in Bahrain adopted the same approach to popular dissatisfaction and responded in the same fashion as Gaddafi. But the US conveniently overlooked the similarity with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pontificating that, “security alone cannot resolve the challenges facing Bahrain. Violence is not the answer, a political process is".

The difference in approach is that Bahrain is a US ally, home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and part of Washington's geo-political architecture in the region.

Gaddafi’s mistake was his unwillingness to “pay ball”,

Business as usual

There is enough reason for Gadaffi to have been called to justice a long time ago. His support and financing of international terrorism is well documented but all attempts to bring him to book, sanctions and limited military operations included, all failed.

Perhaps they were meant to fail because business was thriving.

Some Western governments at least had the decency to conduct business with the Gaddafi regime under a layer of secrecy and go-betweens. Others, such as the multinational energy companies had no qualms to do business in the open

It was not so long ago when Western leaders including Britain’s Tony Blair, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, described by Gaddafi as his “good friend” and the man he turned to in a last plea for help before succumbing to his executioners, and the Secretary of State in the Bush administration , Condi Rice, still met with Brother Leader officially.

President Obama himself was not unwilling to meet the Libyan leader and his sons were welcome visitors to American military establishments and were treated in grand fashion by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

Tony Blair’s appeasement effort to get lucrative oil and defence deals for Britain is but one example of Western hypocrisy. The British government was so desperate to sell arms to Libya that it was even prepared to sell an air defence system which would have been able to thwart the type of attacks with which Nato helped to unseat Gaddafi.

Big business and multinational oil companies were also not shy or reluctant to openly do business with a dictatorial and his oil billions.

To top it all WikiLeaks two months ago treated its readers with diplomatic cables revealing how the administrations of Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama were set on developing deep “military to military” ties with Gaddafi.

In August 2009, according to WikiLeaks, a high-level American delegation including senators from Obama’s Democratic Party, secretly met with Gaddafi  and senior officials to sell arms to Libya. Another member of the delegation Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, strongly supported US arms sales to Libya and personally pledged to Gaddafi that he would push to get such transfers approved by the US Congress. McCain also revealed that the US was training officers in Gaddafi’s army.

Notably, none of the WikiLeaks cables reporting on this and other high-level meetings between the US and Gaddafi  made any mention of American concerns about “human rights” in Libya.

The WikiLeaks cables, matter of fact, support the view that the decision to go to war against Gaddafi – in the name of “protecting civilians” -- was more opportunistic, riding on the back of the “Arab Spring”.

Death Warrant

It is likely that after the toppling of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents by popular uprisings, top American and Nato decision-makers became convinced that once protests started against it, the Gaddafi regime would be too unstable and unreliable to deal with.

And a Libya without Gaddafi in charge would be preferable. Brother Leader was always too mercurial and unreliable for the liking of the US and its Western allies. Too often did he obstruct the geopolitical and economic aspirations of the West.

Gadaffi not only vehemently opposed Africom (the new US military command for Africa) but he allegedly promised handsome financial compensation to any country in Africa contemplating housing Africom’s headquarters on its territory. Gaddafi also fiercely opposed the idea of a Mediterranean Union, a dream of President Sarkozy which would bring 44 countries and 800 million people closer under the stewardship of France and the West.

Gaddafi’s vision of a United States of Africa, hardly feasible considering the leadership role he saw for himself, did not sit well with the West. Also irritating was the fact that Libya was without debt and therefore free of the suffocating prescriptions of the IMF, the World Bank and other Western financial institutions that enslave their debtors.

To make things worse Gaddafi even announced plans for a unified currency ­– the African dinar that would have been measured directly in terms of gold, which would mean a country’s wealth would depend on how much gold it had rather than how many dollars it traded, allowing a greater sharing of the wealth and self-determination in Africa, posing a threat to the dollar-dominated world economy.

The African dinar would have been measured directly in terms of gold, which would mean a country’s wealth would depend on how much gold it had rather than how many dollars it traded, allowing a greater sharing of the wealth and self-determination in Africa posing a threat to the dollar-dominated world economy.

Observers claiming that Gadaffi  signed his own death warrant when he ordered foreign oil companies operating in Libya to start paying more for the right to do business in his country might not be exaggerating. Oil companies do not like anyone tampering with their profits.

Fallacy

For the Obama administration to try and explain that the US was prepared to spend US$1 billion to help further the “aspirations of the Libyan people” is plain dishonesty.

It rather looks like a well calculated investment.

With Libya’s oil industry now up for grabs with oil companies linked to Libya’s “liberators” getting preference and the contracts to rebuild what 7 000 Nato bombings destroyed running into billions of dollars, a US$1 billion investment seems like money well spent.

The scramble for Libya’s loot is well underway and it cannot get any better when all of this was attained without any US casualties.

Victory is sweet indeed!

American arrogance

It is said that the sign of any great leader is humbleness in victory.

Sadly, this is glaringly missing in the reaction of Barack Obama and his administration. Their arrogance is astounding.

Responding to the death of Gaddafi President Obama reportedly said, "We are seeing the strength of American leadership across the world."

But, even worse, is the boasting of US Vice-President Joe Biden who could hardly contain himself when he claimed that, "In this case, America spent US$1 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."

The "Son of Africa"

Referring to Libya someone wrote somewhere, “This is now the gift of Barack Obama, the ‘Son of Africa’," and then ironically quotes the great Frantz Fanon who wrote in Black Skin, White Masks, “What matters are not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.”

In the same vein someone else remarked, “Whether Obama becomes either a one-term or two-terms President- after all is said and done, he will be remembered as Kenya’s only begotten son, who sold out Africans to his globalist overlords- the man who eventually broke the back of Africa. Ironic, as we still remember how much hope some people had of him, way back then.”