{"id":49953,"date":"2014-11-18T11:41:40","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T11:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=49953"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:30","slug":"what-happened-to-the-humanitarians-who-wanted-to-save-libyans-with-bombs-and-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/11\/what-happened-to-the-humanitarians-who-wanted-to-save-libyans-with-bombs-and-drones\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to the Humanitarians Who Wanted to Save Libyans With Bombs and Drones?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cameron<\/a><\/p>\n

Just three years after NATO\u2019s military intervention in Libya ended and was widely heralded by its proponents as\u00a0a resounding success, that\u00a0country is\u00a0in complete collapse<\/a>. So widespread is violence and anarchy there that \u201chardly any Libyan can live a normal life,\u201d\u00a0Brown University\u2019s Stephen Kinzer wrote<\/a> in The Boston Globe<\/em> last week. Last month, the Libyan Parliament, with no functioning\u00a0army to protect it from well-armed militias, was forced to flee Tripoli<\/a> and take refuge in a Greek car ferry.\u00a0The New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> in September that \u201cthe government of Libya said\u00a0. . .\u00a0that it had lost control of its ministries to a coalition of militias that had taken over the capital, Tripoli, in another milestone in the disintegration of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sectarian strife and economic woes destroyed\u00a0efforts by the U.S. and U.K. to train Libyan soldiers, causing those two nations last week to all but abandon<\/a> further programs: \u201cnot a single soldier had been trained by the U.S. because the Libyan government failed to provide promised cash.\u201d AP reports<\/a> this morning that an entire city, Darna, has now pledged its allegiance to ISIS, \u201cbecoming the first city outside of Iraq and Syria to join the \u2018caliphate\u2019 announced by the extremist group.\u201d\u00a0A report<\/a> issued by Amnesty International two weeks ago documented that \u201clawless militias and armed groups on all sides of the conflict in western Libya are carrying out rampant human rights abuses, including war crimes.\u201d\u00a0In sum, it is almost impossible to overstate the horrors daily faced by Libyans\u00a0and the misery\u00a0that has engulfed the country.<\/p>\n

All of that prompts an obvious question: where did all of the humanitarians go who insisted they were driven by a deep and noble concern for the welfare of the Libyan people when they agitated for NATO intervention? Almost without exception, war advocates justified\u00a0NATO\u2019s\u00a0military action\u00a0in Libya\u00a0on the ground that it was driven not primarily by strategic or resource objectives but by altruism. The New York Times<\/em>\u2018 Nicholas Kristof wrote<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cLibya is a reminder that sometimes it is possible to use military tools to advance humanitarian causes.\u201d Former Obama official Anne-Marie Slaughter argued<\/a> that intervention was a matter of upholding \u201cuniversal values,\u201d which itself advanced\u00a0America\u2019s strategic goals.\u00a0In justifying the war to Americans (more than a week after it started), President Obama decreed<\/a>: \u201cSome nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cturning a blind eye\u201d to the ongoing \u2013 and now far worse \u2013 atrocities in Libya is exactly what the U.S., its war allies, and most of the humanitarian war advocates are now doing. Indeed, after the bombing stopped, war proponents maintained interest in the Libyan\u00a0people just long enough to boast of their great prescience and to insist on their\u00a0vindication. Slaughter\u00a0took her grand victory lap\u00a0in a\u00a0Financial Times <\/em>op-ed<\/a>\u00a0headlined \u201cWhy Libya sceptics were proved badly wrong,\u201d Dismissing those who were telling her that\u00a0\u201cit is too early to tell\u201d and that\u00a0\u201cin a year, or a decade, Libya could disintegrate into tribal conflict or Islamist insurgency, or split apart or lurch from one strongman to another,\u201d\u00a0she insisted that nothing could possibly be worse than letting Gaddafi remain in power. Thus:\u00a0\u201cLibya proves the west can make those choices wisely after all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kristof\u00a0similarly\u00a0took his moment in the sun to celebrate his own rightness, visiting Tripoli in August and then announcing<\/a> that Americans were regarded by grateful Libyans as heroes. While carefully larding up his column with all sorts of caveats about how things could still go terribly wrong, he nonetheless trumpeted that \u201cthis was a rare military intervention for humanitarian reasons, and it has succeeded\u201d and that \u201con rare occasions military force can advance human rights. Libya has so far been a model of such an intervention.\u201d When Gaddafi\u2019s defeat was imminent, the White-House-supporting\u00a0Think Progress blog exploited the resulting emotions (exactly\u00a0as the GOP did<\/a> when Saddam was captured) to taunt the Republicans<\/a>: \u201cDoes John Boehner still believe U.S. military operations in Libya are illegal?\u201d \u2013 as though killing Gaddafi somehow excused the waging of this war in the face of Congressional rejection of its authorization<\/a>, let alone guaranteed a better outcome for Libyans.<\/p>\n

The same scene of smug self-congratulations repeated itself in other countries participating in the war. \u201cEven as Canada staged a lavish November 2011 victory parade and flypast over Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Libya was fast descending into absolute anarchy,\u201d reported The Chronicle Herald<\/a>. <\/em>In September, Christian Science Monitor<\/em> described how<\/a> \u201cWestern leaders are swooping into Tripoli\u00a0to celebrate the rebels\u2019 victory and offer support for the new Libya, whose success they see\u00a0[as a]\u00a0model for other Arab revolutions.\u201d French President Nicolas Sarkozy\u00a0and\u00a0British Prime Minister David Cameron\u00a0(pictured above)\u00a0basked in the thanks from NATO\u2019s favorite Libyan transition leaders for having fought a war on a \u201cpurely humanitarian basis.\u201d A der Spiegel<\/em> headline<\/a> pronounced: \u201cSarkozy and Cameron in Libya: Heroes for a Day.\u201d Finally, the west had found its Good War about which it could feel pure and proud.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most notable here isn\u2019t how everything in Libya has gone so terribly and tragically wrong. That was painfully predictable: anyone paying even casual attention now knows that killing\u00a0the\u00a0Bad Dictator of the Moment (usually one the U.S. spent years supporting) achieves nothing good for the people of that country unless it\u2019s backed by years of sustained support for rebuilding its civil institutions. And even then, better results are very difficult to achieve. That was, of course, one of the prime arguments made by those who opposed the intervention in Libya: that it would achieve nothing good\u00a0for the Libyan people while creating untold chaos and killing many of its citizens.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most notable is how brazen these war advocates were about completely ignoring Libya once the exciting bombs fell and their glorious war victory dances were over. With a couple of notable exceptions, such as Juan Cole who visited the country<\/a>, the most prominent war advocates in both government and the commentariat seemed to completely forget that the country and its people \u2013 whose welfare so profoundly moved them on a deep\u00a0humanitarian level\u00a0– even existed. As the country spun into chaos, violence, militia rule and anarchy as a direct result of the NATO intervention, they exhibited no interest whatsoever in doing anything to arrest or reverse that collapse. What happened to their deeply felt humanitarianism? Where did it go?<\/p>\n

There are all sorts of reasons to oppose so-called \u201chumanitarian interventions.\u201d To begin with, virtually all wars, even the most blatantly aggressive ones of conquest (such as the Iraq War) are wrapped in humanitarian packaging<\/a>.\u00a0Moreover, there should be enormous doubt about the ability of the west\u00a0to use bombs and military force \u2013 in distant lands with radically different and complex cultures \u2013 to manipulate political and social outcomes to its liking (except where total disorder is what it craves, in which case it likely can achieve its goals). Beyond that, the devastation and human costs\u00a0from having the powerful U.S. military bomb countries are enormous, and will virtually never be outweighed by supposed \u201cbenefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the most compelling reason to oppose such wars is that \u2013 even if it all could work perfectly in an ideal world and as tempting as it is to believe \u2013 humanitarianism is not what motivates the U.S. or most other governments to deploy its military in other nations. If you have doubts about that, just look at how the supposed humanitarian concern for Libyans instantly vanished the moment all the fun, glory-producing and self-satisfying bomb-dropping<\/a> was done. If there were any authenticity to the claimed humanitarianism, wouldn\u2019t there be movements to spend large\u00a0amounts of money not just to bomb Libya but also to stabilize and rebuild it? Wouldn\u2019t there be just as much horror over the plight of Libyans now: when the\u00a0needed\u00a0solution is\u00a0large-scale economic aid and assistance programs rather than drone deployments,\u00a0blowing up buildings, and playful, sociopathic chuckling<\/a>\u00a0over how we came, conquered, and made The Villain die?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d be much more inclined to believe in the professed humanitarianism of these war advocates if it lasted longer than the fun imperial ritual<\/a> of\u00a0starting\u00a0distant and risk-free wars in other countries and then reveling in the Glory of Victory. The way most war advocates instantly forgot Libya existed once that fun part was over is the strongest argument imaginable about what really motivates these actions. In the victory parade he threw for himself, Kristof said the question of \u201chumanitarian intervention\u201d will \u201carise again\u201d and \u201cthe next time it does, let\u2019s remember a lesson of Libya.\u201d About that, at least, he\u2019s absolutely right.<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0Stefan Rousseau\/PA Wire<\/em><\/p>\n

Email the authors: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a>, murtaza.hussain@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just three years after NATO\u2019s military intervention in Libya ended and was widely heralded by its proponents as a resounding success, that country is in complete collapse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}