AfPak comes to Africa by Pepe Escobar

[Jefferson23]

Apr 27, 2011

Be it liberal hawk or neo-conservative interventionism, one's got to love the proficient American way of techno war. Just as quite a few insider circles in Washington - and London - had been making a lot of noise for ramping up Western interventionism in Libya, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) this Monday hit Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizya compound in Tripoli for the second time in five weeks.

NATO insists it was not targeting the colonel - but a "communications center" inside the compound. Right; as if United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 authorized bombing Gaddafi's compound as a means of "protecting civilians".


This "kinetic activity" took place after former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger had been hammering his endgame for Libya on at least three different occasions; at George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs; at an Aspen Institute session on "Values and Diplomacy", also in Washington; and at the Bretton Woods II conference in New Hampshire.

Kissinger's plan: invade Libya and keep this thing going until at least the spring of 2012. The (wacky) agenda; keep MENA (Middle East/Northern Africa) in total disarray as a diversionist tactic/pretext for Washington to attack Iran on behalf of Israel - to the benefit of the military-industrial complex. Maybe prospective US presidential candidate Field Marshall von Trump - aka the Donald - should command the invasion.

Gaddafi is the perfect villain for this Anglo-French-American farce unworthy of French playwright Georges Feydeau. For all his dictatorial megalomania, Gaddafi is a committed pan-African - a fierce defender of African unity. Libya was not in debt to international bankers. It did not borrow cash from the International Monetary Fund for any "structural adjustment". It used oil money for social services - including the Great Man Made River project, and investment/aid to sub-Saharan countries. Its independent central bank was not manipulated by the Western financial system. All in all a very bad example for the developing world.

remainder in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD27Ak01.html

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1. recommend

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2. Recommended. Highly.

Why haven't they thought about this before; an army of drones (only five for the moment, based in southern Italy) instead of boots on the ground. Pentagon chief Robert Gates actually claimed the drones will strike Libya for "humanitarian reasons" (any hint of irony was as invisible as a drone camera). Gates had already misled the US Congress a few weeks ago, saying that the US role in Libya would end once NATO was in command.

So now it's time to crank-up that X-Box; time for the "cubicle warriors" to raise hell by dragging a mouse. Here's American techno war at its best; bring on the kids who grew up playing video games to fight - virtually - in the desert; the system's controls after all are modeled after video games.

Here are some things the Hellfire missiles will be up against in Libya. A gross domestic product per capita of US$14,192; unemployment benefits of around $730 a month; nurses being paid $1,000 a month; no major taxes; free education and medicine; interest-free loans for buying a car and an apartment. Quite a few unemployed Americans wouldn't mind a one-way ticket to Tripoli.


--snip--

Meanwhile, a clean video game war will run with a few "morally acceptable" accidents (as in "collateral damage"). And here operation Odyssey Dawn comes back full circle. The US is back where it feels most comfortable - not playing Ulysses in the Mediterranean, but playing Zeus from above, with Predators instead of thunderbolts.

But so worth reading the whole thing- another great article from Pepe Escobar!

PB