It is a story told with alarming regularity in Libya. Two rival militias, both nominally allies of the National Transitional Council (NTC) engage in an intense gunbattle. When the guns finally fall silent and one of the factions has taken a base belong to the other, they proceed to take everything that isn’t nailed down.
Even those that weren’t directly involved in the battle rush in and start grabbing loot. Cars are stolen, and more battles break out when rival factions argue over who gets to take what. Mass looting may be a viable strategy in a video game, but it is really starting to wear thin among Libya’s public.
It would be bad enough on its own, surely, but many of the militias don’t stop there. Open-ended detentions and torture, in some cases even leading captives to be tortured to death, are fairly widespread problems.
At the center is the question: where is the NTC? The NATO backed faction talked tough about imposing control over the militias in the wake of Moammar Gadhafi’s killing, but is seemingly unable even to keep its own auxiliaries from killing each other, let alone imposing order the way the NATO forces figured they would.
Washington and NATO are consistent at making things worse, much worse, for the people wherever and whenever they intervene. NATO intervened in Libya; they are responsible for the outcome of their intervention – this is not something that is happening in Libya by Libyans, but a direct result of NATO interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, in other words, another war crime.
Whenever we call the leader of another country names, like dictator, Nazi, or monster, as we have in Iraq and Libya and replace him with something much worse, then what does that make us? Evil can´t get more evil than this.
Thi is all so predictable. It never was agenuine popular uprising. The west just helped any anti-Gadaffi thug to overthrow the regime. The NTC is clearly on borrowed time.
Humanitarian intervention at work and play! So there you go, chumps like Juan Cole were right all along?
…and Jonathon Landay… what the %$#@ was it? Partisanship? They weren't suckers for the GWoT blanket/blank check, but they didn't mind when it's branded as 'saving' the most affluent & educated population on the continent from it's 'oppressor' …
NATO and US is out of options but to create momentum as they have in Libya and Now Syria, they been using their leftovers of terrorist groups from Afghanistan to Egypt creating turmoil taking the country back in ages, meanwhile they are in business of stealing peoples wealth, their Oil. All that is to stop any and every movement that would be against their hegemony around the world. Bush was stupid and a uneducated man, Obama is attorney by profession so is Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton they know the “democracy" in and out and they know how to get around people fooling people by their rhetoric about a falsified democracy, otherwise everything is an old English saying, divid people, create turmoil and then steal their wealth to start with.
""…imposing order the way the NATO forces figured they would."
Did they really think that, Jason? Just excise this last line.
The NATO forces killed Gaddafi, took over Libya, took their oil, took their money, and are now closing in on complete control of anything worth anything. That's what they were after, that's what they got. Mission accomplished.
And if LIbya is left a basket case in perpetual turmoil, everyone without a gun struggling just to survive, and those with guns stealing whatever they want or hiring themselves out for the biggest bribe, then Israel is very very happy. Arabs fighting themselves, oil money flowing to and through the bankers, organized revolutionary, anti-Zionist forces neutralized. Mission Accomplished.
Jeff is right. Same deal as in Iraq, turn a functioning country into a permanent basket case. This was all planned and written in the Clean Break program the Neocons wrote for Likud. They are doing it to Syria now and hope to do it to Iran next.