Does NATO Have Any Pretext for Its Libyan Onslaught?

The alleged purpose of U.N. Security Council resolution 1973, passed on March 17, was to seek to protect Libyan civilians from violent attacks by both sides. In NATO's eager hands, it has rapidly mutated into a straightforward bid to destroy Gadhafi's regime, specifically to murder Gadhafi, by missile or bombardment and no doubt by land-based teams of Special Force assassins now deployed in the desert.

NATO says more than 10,000 sorties have been flown over Libya since operations began. This includes 3,794 "strike" bombing raids across the country. In the heaviest strikes yet, concentrating on attacks in Tripoli, NATO launched 157 strike missions on Tuesday, more than three times the previous daily average.

In fact, NATO's first 30 days, they flew about 5,000 sorties. Since then, nearly another two months, they have flown another 5,000, so despite the trumpeting about intensifying the campaign, the tempo of operations has actually been falling over time — which, as one seasoned military observer remarks, is "not a surprise, considering what we know about readiness, spare parts inventories, and the capacity to ramp up spares production."

Pierre Sprey, one of the design team that produced the F-16 and A-10, remarks acidly that "the flea bites inflicted on Gadhafi's army by the all-out efforts of the entire NATO air armada are a lovely demonstration of the fruits of our overarching strategic principle of pursuing unilateral disarmament at maximum expense."

Sprey continues, "Libya also provides empirical verification of the most expensive component of the principle of unilateral disarmament at maximum expense: bombing the enemy's homeland lengthens every war in which it is attempted. There have been no documented exceptions in the hundred years since Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti's heroic first bombing of a Libyan oasis in 1911." Clearly, 2011's equally heroic bombing of Tripoli is no exception."

It is clear that despite the Benghazi rebels' pretensions and effusive coverage in the NATO powers' homelands, the rebels have been unable to make any effective military showing. In other words, the only serious challenge to Gadhafi is a pirate coalition of NATO forces operating without the slightest mandate in international law, currently engaged in bombing a major city — Tripoli — filled with civilians. The indifference of the Western press, not to mention the liberal/left in the United States, to these obvious facts has emboldened the coalition to ever more brazen affronts to law, with bluff calls from British generals amid the embarrassing stalemate to cut the cackle and send in the troops.

On June 6, the independent International Crisis Group, stocked with well-informed regional experts and former diplomats, issued a report "Making Sense of Libya." It stated forthrightly that NATO was in the business of "regime change" and was strongly critical of NATO's refusal to respond to calls for ceasefire and negotiation, a stance which the ICG says is guaranteed to prolong the conflict, and the tribulations of all Libyans.

The ICG then address the topic of Gadhafi's alleged "crimes against humanity", even genocide.

On the issue of Gadhafi's alleged war crimes, the International Crisis Group noted reports of mass rapes by government militias, but declared that at the same time, "much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime's security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no real security challenge. This version would appear to ignore evidence that the protest movement exhibited a violent aspect from very early on. ... (T)here is also evidence that, as the regime claimed, the demonstrations were infiltrated by violent elements. Likewise, there are grounds for questioning the more sensational reports that the regime was using its air force to slaughter demonstrators, let alone engaging in anything remotely warranting use of the term 'genocide.'"

In this context, since the International Criminal Court's record of subservience to NATO's requirements is one of near 100 percent compliance, one can view with reasonable cynicism its timing in issuing accusations of mass rape against Gadhafi's militia immediately in the wake of NATO bombing onslaughts on Tripoli on Tuesday.

A hundred years down the road, the U.N./NATO Libyan intervention will be seen as an old-fashioned colonial smash-and-grab affair.

Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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