Libya is a disaster we helped create. The west must take responsibility
Who could object to the removal of Colonel Gaddafi? But what has happened since shames western interventionists
Owen Jones
The Guardian, Monday 24 March 2014
t's called the pottery store rule: "you break it, you own it". But it doesn't just apply to pots and mugs, but to nations. In the build-up to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, it was invoked by Colin Powell, then US secretary of state. "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," he reportedly told George W Bush. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems." But while many of these military interventions have left nations shattered, western governments have resembled the customer who walks away whistling, hoping no one has noticed the mess left behind. Our media have been all too complicit in allowing them to leave the scene.
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Today's Libya is overrun by militias and faces a deteriorating human rights situation, mounting chaos that is infecting other countries, growing internal splits, and even the threat of civil war. Only occasionally does this growing crisis creep into the headlines: like when an oil tanker is seized by rebellious militia; or when a British oil worker is shot dead while having a picnic; or when the country's prime minister is kidnapped.
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Some human rights abuses began in the tumultuous days that followed Gaddafi's removal, and were ignored by the west. Ever since the fall of his dictatorship, there have been stories of black Libyans being treated en masse as Gaddafi loyalists and attacked. In a savage act of collective punishment, 35,000 people were driven out of Tawergha in retaliation for the brutal siege of the anti-Gaddafi stronghold of Misrata. The town was trashed and its inhabitants have been left in what human rights organisations are calling "deplorable conditions" in a Tripoli refugee camp. Such forced removals continue elsewhere. Thousands have been arbitrarily detained without any pretence of due process; and judges, prosecutors, lawyers and witnesses have been attacked or even killed. Libya's first post-Gaddafi prosecutor general, Abdulaziz Al-Hassadi, was assassinated in the town of Derna last month.
But it is the militias that filled the post-Gaddafi vacuum who represent the greatest threat to Libyans' human rights and security. "Libya has been sitting on the international community's back burner as the country has slipped into near chaos," warns Human Rights Watch. In an attempt to integrate militias into the state machinery, the weak central government pays 160,000 members of these often violent gangs $1,000 a month and charges them with upholding authority.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/24/libya-disaster-shames-western-interventionists
Instead of taking any responsibility, the same war hawks just move on to the next country, squawking about democracy and human rights, without even an apology.
How many more countries? How much more death?
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Once Gadaffi had crushed the rebels, it also would have been the West's fault. Remember: They were on the brink of defeat and Benghazi was about to be conquered within days.
Why did the West drop bombs?
Why did he not drop bombs?
Who had the clever idea to put western boots on the ground in a muslim country?
Why didn't they put boots on the ground?
Please note that the article doesn't even offer solutions in HINDSIGHT. Pathetic.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)K&R
babylonsister
(171,066 posts)is Libya our responsibility? I don't get that mindset at all; aren't we tired of war? Why jump into another one?
Amonester
(11,541 posts)But not a single word about all the human rights abuses (for greed) that occured for decades before?
How one-sided?
Sure, it's a disaster. The entire region is a disaster. Why is that? Is it because the "west" pays a lot of cash for "cheap" oil? So that the "west" can continue to impose it's own disastrous Capitalist Rule$ that are leading the entire population of this small planet to total extinction?
And imposing a disastrous Capitalist system that leads to complete extinction(s) is not a Human Rights' abuse?
How?