Harry Targ
Britannica.com
Thursday, May 23, 2013
THE PERFECT
"SCANDAL": BENGHAZI
Harry Targ
On the night of
September 11, 2012, an armed group attacked a diplomatic post in the city of
Benghazi in eastern Libya. The next morning a CIA annex was attacked. Out of
these two attacks four United States citizens were killed including U.S.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens. According to a November, 2012 Wall
Street Journal article (quoted by Conor Friedersdorf in The
Atlantic, May 13, 2013):
“The U.S. effort in
Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation, according to officials briefed on
the intelligence. Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from
Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State
Department. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover,
which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said.”
On March 17, 2011, the
United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 authorizing humanitarian intervention
in Libya. It endorsed “Member States, acting nationally or through regional
organizations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect
civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while
excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan
territory….” Five Security Council members abstained from support of this
resolution: Brazil, China, Germany, India, and Russia.
Passage of the
resolution was followed by a NATO-led air war on targets in that country. The
North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 as a military
alliance to defend Europe from any possible aggression initiated by the Soviet
Union. If words mattered, NATO should have dissolved when the Soviet Union
collapsed.
The United States, so concerned for the human rights of people in the Persian
Gulf and Middle East, including in Libya, was virtually silent as non-violent
revolutions overthrew dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt earlier in 2011.
The United States continued to support regimes in Bahrain and Yemen in the face
of popular protest and violent response and remained the primary rock-solid
supporter of the state of Israel as it continued to expand settlements in the
West Bank and blockaded the transfer of goods to Palestinians in Gaza. And, of
course, in the face of growing ferment in the Middle East and Persian Gulf for
democratization not a word was said by way of criticism of the monarchical
system in Saudi Arabia.
So as the Gaddafi regime in Libya fought its last battles, leading ultimately
to the capture and assassination of the Libyan leader, the NATO alliance and
the United States praised themselves for their support of movements for
democratization in Libya. What seemed obvious to observers except most
journalists was the fact that the overthrow of the Libyan regime, for better or
worse, could not have occurred without the massive bombing campaign against
military and civilian targets throughout Libya carried out by NATO forces.
From the vantage point of the Benghazi crisis of September 11, 2012,
humanitarian intervention, which in Benghazi included 23 (of some 30) U.S.
representatives who were CIA operatives suggests that the attacks on U.S.
targets might have had something to do with the history of U.S interventionism
in the country. Great powers, such as the United States, continue to interfere
in the political life of small and poor countries. And, the mainstream media
continues to provide a humanitarian narrative of imperialism
at work.
The post-9/11 Benghazi
story is one of Republicans irresponsibly focusing on inter-agency squabbles
and so-called contradictory Obama “talking points” after the killings of the
four U.S. representatives in Benghazi. They chose not to address the real issue
of the United States pattern of interference in the internal affairs of Libya.
And the Obama
Administration defends itself by denying its incompetence in the matter,
desperately trying to avoid disclosing the real facts in the Benghazi story
which might show that the CIA and the Ambassador’s staff were embedded in
Benghazi to interfere in the political struggles going on between factions
among the Libyan people.
As Alexander Cockburn put it well in reference to the war on Libya in The
Nation in June, 2011:
“America’s clients in Bahrain and Riyadh can watch the undignified pantomime
with a tranquil heart, welcoming this splendid demonstration that they have
nothing to fear from Obama’s fine speeches or Clinton’s references to
democratic aspirations, well aware that NATO’s warplanes and helicopters are
operating under the usual double standard--with the Western press furnishing
all appropriate services.”
If Cockburn were alive today he would have added that the
Libyan operation was about U.S. covert interventionism, anger on the part of
sectors of the Benghazi citizenship, and not about the United States
encouraging “democratic aspirations” of the Libyan people. Neither Republicans
nor Democrats want to have a conversation about U.S. interventionism but prefer
to debate about a “scandal.” The real “scandal” is the cover-up of what the
U.S. was doing in Libya.
Monday, February 29, 2016
HILLARY CLINTON
AND THE DECLINING AMERICAN EMPIRE
Harry
Targ
I think President Obama
made the right decision at the time. And the Libyan people had a free election
the first time since 1951.And you know what, they voted for moderates, they
voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot
of things, there was turmoil to follow.”(Hillary Clinton quoted in Conor
Freidersdorf, ‘Hillary Defends Her Failed War in Libya,” The
Atlantic, October 14, 2015, theatlantic.com).
Nearly three and a half
years after Libyan rebels and a NATO air campaign overthrew Muammar al-Qaddafi,
the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t exist.” ( Frederic Wehrey quoted
in Conor Friedersdorf)
Building an Empire
In a recent book by
distinguished diplomatic historian Lloyd Gardner (“Three Kings: The Rise of an
American Empire in the Middle East After World War II,” The New Press, 2009),
the author describes the last day of the historic Yalta Conference just before
the end of World War II in which the leaders of the allied powers met:
President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill.
The President informed
his colleagues that he had to leave the next day to fly to Egypt. Stalin,
according to Gardner, protested saying that there was still unfinished business
to discuss (The Yalta Conference in February, 1945 was the last conference the
three leaders held before the end of World War II in Europe. In it they were
deciding on the shape of the post-war international system).
Gardner reports that FDR
explained his surprising departure by saying that he had “three kings waiting
for him in the Near East, including Ibn Saud.” Churchill correctly believed
that the premature departure and visit to Egypt was part of a United States
plan to, in Churchill’s words, develop “some deep-laid plot to undermine the
British Empire in these areas” (16). And Gardner goes on: “It did not take a
suspicious mind to observe that World War II had provided the United States
with economic and political weapons—starting with the prewar Lend Lease Act—for
Uncle Sam to commence rearranging remnants of the old European empires into an
American-styled world order” (17).
What is called the
Middle East today for centuries had been the cross-roads of civilizations and
the center of worldwide religions. From the thirteenth to the twentieth century
much of the area was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey is the current
survivor. That empire, weakened and destroyed during World War I, was replaced
by the declining British and French empires. After the war Britain and France
secured “mandates” to divide up and rule the countries formerly under the yoke
of the Ottoman Empire. The Sykes-Picot agreement (a secret arrangement
between these countries) divided up the region such that France would dominate
Syria and Lebanon while Britain would control Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan.
The British already had influence over Egypt, Iran, and Aden (Yemen). Minor
power Italy occupied Libya in 1911. The British also promised European Zionists
that Palestine would become a homeland for Jewish people in the Balfour
Declaration and Arab leaders that Arab peoples would have sovereign control of
their own lands. The British influenced the rise of Gulf States and
military/political forces in the region led to the emergence of the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. Central to the competition for empire was the
discovery of massive reserves of oil in the region.
Roosevelt’s announcement
that he was leaving Yalta early to visit Middle East dictators presaged a major
thrust of United States foreign policy. The vision was not only to weaken the
influence of the Soviet Union but to replace the declining European empires as
the hegemonic world powers. To achieve that goal required control of oil and
the Middle East and the Persian Gulf states had the world’s largest reserves of
that natural resource.
Defending an Empire
To build the American
empire after World War II the United States reached out to construct alliances
with pliable Middle East elites, made deals with those who were modestly
independent, or undermined, invaded, and overthrew regimes which represented a
threat to US hegemony.
First, President
Roosevelt constructed an informal alliance in perpetuity with Saudi Arabia
whereby guarantees of military security, arms sales, and trade would be
exchanged for Saudi oil and support during periods of instability in the
region.
Second, the United
States overthrew the regime of the elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh
in Iran because he had nationalized his country’s oil resource. In his place, a
pliant autocrat, the Shah Mohammad Pahlavi was installed and seven United States
oil companies gained control of forty percent of Iran’s oil. When the Iranian
people overthrew the Shah in 1979, the United States tilted toward Iran’s
hostile neighbor, Iraq. During the 1980s, the United States provided arms,
including weapons of mass destruction, to Iraq, as an eight-year war ensued,
leading to a million Iranian/Iraqi deaths.
Third, Iraq invaded
Kuwait in 1990, mistakenly believing the United States would support its
action. Changing sides, President George Herbert Walker Bush, built a coalition
to launch Gulf War I. The Iraqi military was forced from Kuwait, and
subsequently a long economic embargo was imposed on Iraq followed by repeatedly
bombing targets in that country.
Fourth, the United
States supported the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and by the late
1960s made the latter its number one military and economic aid recipient on a
per capita basis. President Eisenhower in a 1957 speech labeled the Eisenhower
Doctrine declared that the Middle East was vital to US national security.
American policymakers opposed secular nationalism in Egypt and Syria,
particularly Egyptian President Nasser’s attempt to form a United Arab Republic
with Syria in 1958. The Carter Doctrine enunciated in 1980 just one year after
the Iranian Revolution, proclaimed the Persian Gulf region another area of
prime concern to US security. The United States continued to stand on the side
of Israel in military conflicts with Palestinians, encouraging the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon in 1982. During the Reagan years, the United
States tilted toward Iraq and in 1986 bombed targets in Libya with the clear
intention of killing that country’s leader.
In sum, since President
Roosevelt’s symbolic meeting with Middle Eastern leaders, the United States has
engaged in a consistent foreign policy designed to replace the historic
empires—Ottoman, British, and French—with its own, using diplomacy, economic ties,
subversion, and force.
Confronting an Empire in
Decline
The construction of an
empire in the Middle East has been confounded by multiple challenges over the
years. The overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 was one. Another was the
periodic emergence of leaders in countries who based their popularity on appeals
to nationalism; that is the rejection of control from old or new empires.
Nasser in Egypt was an example as were Qaddafi in Libya and
Saddam Hussein in Iraq. When leaders emerged who claimed to be supportive of
building secular states, American policymakers sought to network with
theocratic opponents, such as Osama bin Laden in the case of Afghanistan in the
1980s. To justify support from the American people, policies were explained by
referring to the communist threat, the perils of national security, the threats
against Israel, facilitating economic development, and building democracies in
the region. The most dramatic grassroots opposition to dictatorship at home and
empire abroad was the 2011 Arab Spring; encompassing popular protest from
Tunisia, to Bahrain, to Egypt. Arab Spring would be used one year
later not to support the grassroots in the region but as a rationale for the US
war on Libya.
In response to the mass
murders committed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11,
2001, the George Walker Bush Administration launched a “war on terrorism.” This
trope which would guide popular defense of US foreign policy ever since would
justify aggression as a necessary response to claimed threats of foreign and
domestic enemies. The Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan, and, based on
lies, initiated the war on Iraq. With these two wars, stability in the region
began to deconstruct. Although most United States troops were withdrawn after
President Obama assumed office, interventions continued all around the
region using private armies, military aid, and increasing drone
warfare. US military operations were carried out in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen,
Somalia, Syria and a military command structure called AFRICOM was established
to send US troops into African countries. In each of these locations
terrorists groups emerged and grew in response.
Then came the war on
Libya, a war against the Qaddafi regime that was enthusiastically endorsed by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The United States secured a United Nations
Security Council resolution authorizing using air power to protect dissenters
opposed to the regime. The United States and its NATO allies used the authority
of the United Nations resolution to launch a massive bombing campaign that
destabilized Libya. The brutal bombing campaign facilitated the destruction of
the regime. Qaddafi was captured and killed. In the aftermath of the US/NATO
war on Libya competing political forces emerged destroying the social fabric of
the country. As Frederic Wehrey suggests “the cohesive political entity known
as Libya doesn’t exist.”
And Now the 2016
Election
While Hillary Clinton
offers her active support for the Libyan War as proof of her experience and
wisdom in guiding foreign policy, the years since 2011 have shown just the
opposite. A Libyan government no longer exists. Hundreds of thousands of
Libyans and migrants from elsewhere have been forced to flee. Terrorist
organizations, not there before 2011, have operations in that country,
launching assaults across North Africa and the Persian Gulf, and the relative
stability and wealth of the country have been destroyed.
In addition, it has
become clear that US policy toward Libya was not about “democracy,” what some
call “humanitarian interventionism,” but forestalling Qaddafi’s efforts to
build a new, vibrant, independent African Union that would oppose US troops on
the continent (AFRICOM), limit US corporate investments in natural
resource extraction in the Sahel, and encourage growing Chinese commerce in
Africa.
The Sanders campaign for
the Democratic presidential nomination has been correctly based on opposition
to the excessive consolidation of wealth and power in the United States. The
issues comprising this agenda are vital to the health, well-being, and future
of the American people. The future also is dependent upon the abandonment of
the United States empire. The rise of the military/industrial complex and the
tragic loss of life and treasure are inextricably tied to a foreign policy
motivated by the vision of US global hegemony.
There is a direct
lineage between President Roosevelt’s early departure from the peace conference
at Yalta to visit Middle East dictators and candidate Hillary Clinton’s
prideful defense of the overthrow
of the regime in Libya. The results of this historic drive for empire have been
and continue to be growing anger in the region, terrorism, mass migrations,
enormous human suffering, and a bloated commitment to military/spending and
pro-war sentiment in the United States.
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