Multinationals and their products have been involved in suppressing the Arab Spring and have made hefty profits from providing surveillance capacity, security contracting and arms sales to repressive regimes.
After 42 years of Muammar el-Qaddafi, it is now long overdue for the Libyan people to determine their own destiny.
Events in Libya and Syria have again brought to the forefront the question of armed humanitarian intervention or the “responsibility to protect.” Is it ever legitimate to supersede the principle of national sovereignty with a military intervention aimed at protecting citizens from their government? And if the answer is yes, what circumstances would justify this course of action and how should it be carried out?
After the killing of Libyan rebel military commander Abdul Fattah Younes, the future of Libya is more in doubt than ever.
If the United States decides to send troops into Libay, will President Obama seek authorization required under the War Powers Act – or another “out” from Congressional scrutiny?
Invading Libya is about the oil, Syria — eliminating the only Russian naval base in the Mediterranean and weakening Hizbollah.
Are we being dragged into a war whose means violate the Geneva Conventions and whose end violates the UN resolution that protects civilians?
The messaging used to sell the invasion of Libya to the American people — that NATO was taking up the ‘responsibility to protect’ — painted a thin veneer over lurking geopolitical motives.
Muammar Gaddafi is the undead chicken. Bashar al-Assad of Syria and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain are the unscared monkeys. The United States has shaped its policy toward the evolving situation in the Middle East according to the Chinese proverb of “killing the chicken to scare the monkey.” The Obama administration has intervened in the conflict in Libya with the apparent goal of punishing Gaddafi for cracking down on the emerging protest movement back in February. This intervention was designed to send a message to other autocrats in the region: don’t fire on your unarmed opposition — or else. But the United States and its allies are having problems with the “or else” part of the equation.
The deaths of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Libya hold a mirror up to how much value we put on the lives of Middle-Easterners.