Libya "Chose" Freedom, Now It Has Slavery

[jamzrockz]

NOVEMBER 27, 2017
Libya “Chose” Freedom, Now It Has Slavery
by JOHN WIGHT
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NATO’s military intervention in Libya in 2011 has justifiably earned its place in history as an indictment of Western foreign policy and a military alliance which since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been deployed as the sword of this foreign policy. The destruction of Libya will forever be an indelible stain on the reputations of those countries and leaders responsible.

But now, with the revelation that people are being sold as slaves in Libya (yes, you read that right. In 2017 the slave trade is alive and kicking Libya), the cataclysmic disaster to befall the country has been compounded to the point where it is hard to conceive of it ever being able to recover – and certainly not anywhere near its former status as a high development country, as the UN labelled Libya 2010 a year prior to the ‘revolution’.

Back in 2011 it was simply inconceivable that the UK, the US and France would ignore the lessons of Iraq, just nine years previously in 2003. Yet ignore them they did, highlighting their rapacious obsession with maintaining hegemony over a region that sits atop an ocean of oil, despite the human cost and legacy of disaster and chaos which this particular obsession has wrought.

When former UK Prime Minister David Cameron descended on Benghazi in eastern Libya in the summer of 2011, basking in the glory of the country’s victorious ‘revolution’ in the company of his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy, he did so imbued with the belief he had succeeded in establishing his legacy as a leader on the global stage. Like Blair before him, he’d won his war and now was intent on partaking of its political and geopolitical spoils.

Cameron told the crowd, “Your city was an inspiration to the world, as you threw off a dictator and chose freedom.”

Pondering the former UK prime minister’s fatuous boast, I am reminded of a conversation I had recently with the driver of a cab taking me home to my apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland. During our exchange he informed me that he was originally from Libya, before going on to reveal that he was forced to flee the country after his family were massacred by Cameron’s freedom-loving revolutionaries in 2011. In Libya, prior to the ‘revolution’ and NATO’s air campaign, he’d been a petroleum engineer with a PhD. Now he was working ten hours a day driving a cab in Scotland in the middle of winter.

The destruction of Libya by NATO at the behest of the UK, the US and France was a crime, one dripping in the cant and hypocrisy of Western ideologues for whom the world with all its complexities is reduced to a giant chessboard upon which countries such as Libya have long been mere pieces to be moved around and changed at their pleasure and in their interests – interests which are inimical to the people of the countries they deem ripe for regime change.

The word extremist is perhaps overused in our lexicon, but it is entirely appropriate when describing the pro-war neocon lobby that exerts inordinate influence on Western foreign policy. We are talking a class of rich, privileged and expensively educated men and women who are bent on purifying the world in the name of democracy. The end result has been a litany of countries destabilized and turned upside down with the lives of their citizens completely upended in the process.

War and regime change without end remains their credo, driving them ever onwards as they lurch from one disaster to the other, intent, per Beckett, on failing once, trying again, and failing better.

In 2011 the Libyan people fell victim to the West’s crude attempt to hijack the momentum of the Arab Spring at the very point at which it came to the end of its reach. The speed of its spread and mass support in Tunisia and Egypt, where it succeeded in toppling two pro-Western dictators in the shape of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, caught Washington and its allies by surprise.

Continue reading at https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/27/libya-chose-freedom-now-it-has-slavery/

Seeing as this is a trending topic with many of my Nigerian friends with more and more horrifying pics and videos being posted on whatsapp message boards day after day(facebook is scrubbing those information seeing as they probably doing to prevent another Russia propaganda campaign :rollseyes: ). Just wanted to remind lots of the people who supported the intervention in Libya and still support it today about the glorious achievement they made in that country.

Another thing is this, according to Rachel Maddow, the post Gaddafi govt paid the US and NATO back for the cost of the 6 month of bombardment of the country. Essentially, it did not cost the country a penny for what they did.

[David__77]

1. The US/NATO intervention was a terrible mistake.

There are those in both parties who have a concept of global democratic revolution facilitated by US military intervention. It’s dangerous and dogmatic.

[jamzrockz]

2. Ofc it is now clear to just about everybody that it was a terrible mistake

But I doubt the planners consider any part of it a mistake. They made the same "mistake" in Iraq, they made the same in Libya and they are trying their darn hardest to make the same mistake in Syria and maybe Iran in a few years. At what point do we stop calling them mistakes?

I hate to say this but I have come to believe that non of this happened because they didn't know any better/mistakes, they lied about their reasons for war in just about every of those countries. In Libya, they told us that Gaddafi used viagra fueled soldiers to terrorize the population and that he planned on killing innocent civilians when he only planned on putting down the armed insurgency in Benghazi a known terrorist safe haven.

I don't even know why I am posting this because most of it is going to be ignored in place of the latest Russia investigation "story" but one thing is for sure is that I feel so sick to my stomach that I cannot do anything about what is going on, none of the 2020 presidential hopeful was against this intervention or is speaking out now about it and that I have a good life in the US while my brothers are sister back home are being attacked.

[jamzrockz]

3. This is the story

of what happened to that beautiful, prosperous African country that Obama and his friend helped liberate. If u were wondering why the news is barely covering this story, you can read up on it here.

The same media who cried crocodile tears when the American supported terrorists were being driven out of Aleppo is no where to be found covering the situation in Libya or the starvation of Yemen. RT covers it but we all know they cannot ever be trusted because Putin, hates gays, eats children, dictator something something and something :rollseyes:

[malaise]

4. THIS

The word extremist is perhaps overused in our lexicon, but it is entirely appropriate when describing the pro-war neocon lobby that exerts inordinate influence on Western foreign policy. We are talking a class of rich, privileged and expensively educated men and women who are bent on purifying the world in the name of democracy. The end result has been a litany of countries destabilized and turned upside down with the lives of their citizens completely upended in the process.

To be kind US foreign policy is undiluted evil.