Tripoli, Libya
Libyan civilians have learned a thing or two from three decades of Lebanon’s experience with Israel’s five wars against that Levant country. Indeed NATO is using the same bombing, media, political and diplomatic strategy in Libya that Israel employed most recently in Lebanon during its 33 day July 2006 war.
This includes bombing of the Libyan civilian infrastructure in order to cripple normal life here and hopefully crush the growing national Resistance among Libyans to NATO’s 15,300 sorties to date, while teaching the people an overdue lesson for supporting the central government in the context of predictable "birth pangs" of the new Libya.
Even some of the by now familiar cast of characters is the same in Libya as in Lebanon including certain neocons at the State Department, National Security Agency, and Pentagon as well as Congressional war mongers like John McCain and one of John’s favorite drinking buddies, arch-Zionist John Bolton.
So it was no major surprise here in Tripoli when who appeared just next door across the Libyan border on 7/17/11 but the regions nemesis, US Undersecretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and former US Ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman. Jeffrey is the successor to David Welch, as leader of the Saudi Prince Bander Bin Sultan financed Welch Club, and is well known for his past decade of labor, largely unsuccessful, of promoting US-Israeli projects in that politically fractured country.
While insisting that the US never interferes in the internal affairs or undermines the independence of countries in the region, Feltman’s claimed mission, as his spokesperson advised the media,was to tell Qaddafi "that he has no legitimacy and there is no future for Libya with him in power. He must go and he must leave immediately."Sources familiar with the Tunis meeting have revealed that Feltman, who apparently has the habit of showing visitors to his 4th floor suite of offices at Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC, a large wall map of the Middle East while pointing at it and explaining, “This is my jurisdiction,” arrived for quite another reason.
Feltman opened the meeting by doing what Lebanese and Syrian officials, familiar with his style, could have told their Libyan sisters and brothers he would do. Jeff began by threatening the Libyan officials and presenting an apocalyptic scenario of what might happen to Libya if Qaddafi refused to give up power. In words similar to those regularly brandied by Israeli officials to Lebanon and threatening another “Dahiyeh Doctrine”, the US official recited what he called “the new realities”.
Feltman did not have to elaborate on what the “Dahiyeh Doctrine” involved, or what it would mean for Libya, because the whole region knows it well. It was a massive frenzy of indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas in the south of Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and South Beirut, areas populated with Hezbollah supporters and it included the July-August 2006 leveling of 1,252 residential buildings employing massive Israeli carpet bombing with American weapons.
Feltman’s “new realities” included the unanimous decision of the 7/15/11 Istanbul session of the Libya Contact Group that it was shifting diplomatic recognition to the so-called National Transition Council faction in this civil war and its freeing up of some of the $30 billion of Libyan money entrusted to US banks as a result of the 2003-4 US-Libya “welcome back to the international community”process. Also included is the fact that the European Union has just called for all countries to aggressively pursue the issuance of the dubious arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last month, as well as intensified NATO bombing and accelerated efforts to encourage defections from Tripoli to the increasingly NATO directed “eastern rebels.”
According to knowledgeable sources, Jeffrey was not interested in even discussing the growing reluctance of five security council members, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany, all of which abstained on UNSCR 1973 and represent an absolute majority of the world's population, as well as the African Union and Arab League which are also urging a ceasefire and negotiations.
Presumably Undersecretary Feltman has seen the recently released NATO bombing assessment complied by the Libyan General Communication Authority, which does not include the post publication date 7/17/11 bombing of the Civilian Air Traffic Control system at the Tripoli Airport which both IATA and US Senate Armed Services Committee specialists agree are not legitimate military targets because “they are of no practical military value.”
Photo by Franklin Lamb |
Among the planned benefit to NATO from bombing the civilian infrastructure, according to the LGCA report, is that NATO countries plan to secure lucrative contracts currently estimated at more than two billion Libyan Dinars, to rebuild Libya’s infrastructure. In addition, according to the LGCA report, “These (NATO) countries will eventually gain a lot of benefits such as getting rid of a major part of its old arsenal and will create better chances for weapons manufactures in the West to produce newer weapons” ( Page 2).
The Libyan government report admits that NATO bombing of its civilian communication services, “has led to freezing in delivering services in various areas: medical, education, security and other IT services. Moreover, maintenance operations is some defected places become hard to conduct and reach. It has also become difficult for employees to communicate and conduct their jobs effectively.” (Page 3).
Photo by Franklin Lamb |
Civilian telecommunication services that have been cut range from company to company with repairs being attempted by all. For example, Almadar Aljadid reports than 60% of its voice calls, SMS and international calling and Roaming has been corrupted. LITC is still trying to repair was one company official refers to as “its terrestrial cable with Egypt.”
Photo by Franklin Lamb |
NATO’s bombing of civilian targets across Libya also violates the 1961 US Foreign Assistance Act which prohibits US supplied weapons being used against civilians.
Photo by Franklin Lamb |
According to Amani and her student friends these are factors that partially explain the results of public opinion polls among the young that are showing public support ratings in Western Libya for the Libyan leader in the 85% to 90% range. The high ratings reflect less near unanimous support for Colonel Qaddafi, one suspects, and the students agree, than a quality of this country’s tribal people that once under attack from NATO, the population, in the West at least, is rallying around its government. Still the Libyan leaders positive support ratings appear more than twice the 42% Time-CNN polls this past weekend for President Obama or his allies in the UK, France and Italy.
Jeffrey Feltman might want to visit some of Libya’s universities, including Al Fatah which was bombed by NATO on 6/17/11, as students were inside classrooms sitting for their final exams. He will find a growing culture of resistance to NATO bombing their families but also support for a ceasefire and dialogue to end this ill-conceived criminal enterprise.
These may be factors that partially explain the results of public opinion polls that are showing ratings for the Libyan leader the 85% to 90% range in Western Libya according to Amani and her student friends. The high ratings reflect less near unanimous support for Colonel Qaddafi, one suspects, and the students agree, than a quality of this country’s tribal people that once under attack from NATO, the population in the West at least is rallying around its government.
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