Another “Humanitarian Bombing” – First Yugoslavia, Now Libya

President Barack Obama has now made the exact same speech Bill Clinton made on network news back in 1999 – promising “no ground forces” in the next American-led war of aggression. U.N. and U.S. actions against Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya are signs of imperialist designs for Libya, including its enormous oil wealth. Gaddafi has rightfully called these attacks “colonial” and “crusader.”

The United States and its allies have committed an act of aggression by bombing Libya in the so-called “Operation Odyssey Dawn.” A coalition of European countries and the United States bombed Libyan targets by air and sea on Saturday, March 19th, 2011. These acts constitute an open act of war against the Libyan people. Chillingly, this is widely being referred to as “the largest international effort since the Iraq War,” as though that were a desirable model!

Comparisons are already being made to the previous “military intervention” and “humanitarian bombing” of this type – the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Back during the 1990’s, NATO began bombing the Balkan country, causing much destruction – the NATO air forces “[bombed] fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation” (1).

Why did the Western powers do this? Why did they bomb a sovereign country? Dr. Michael Parenti’s work “The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia” recalls the events of the Kosovo War, the predecessor of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars as well as the current Libya bombing:

In 1999, the U.S. national security state — which has been involved throughout the world in subversion, sabotage, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, and death squads — launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia for 78 days, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing thousands of women, children, and men. All this was done out of humanitarian concern for Albanians in Kosovo. Or so we were asked to believe. In the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries: Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the same time, the U.S. was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico (Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And U.S. forces are deployed on every continent and ocean, with some 300 major overseas support bases — all in the name of peace, democracy, national security, and humanitarianism. (1)

The United States, European and United Nations cries for military intervention in Libya are not being done out of concern for the Libyan people or any sort of “humanitarian” desires – they are being done with imperialism’s global economic interests in mind. Like Yugoslavia, an imperialist attack in Libya will reduce it to a destroyed, defenseless right-wing “Third World-ized” state.

French warplanes, followed closely by U.S. airplanes, have launched a murderous assault on Libyan targets. President Obama’s use of “left unchecked” paralleled Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s speeches, notably Bush justifying Iraq.

As of now, U.S. and British forces have launched 110 Tomahawk missiles at targets along the coast, including around the capital of Tripoli and other major cities. The attacks are part of a U.N. policy of establishing a “no-fly-zone” over Libya in violation of its national sovereignty. The Pentagon has loudly proclaimed that the U.S. is “leading” the air strikes and the widespread jamming of communications in the country. France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Canada and other Arab powers are responsible for a war of aggression against Libya.

It is also fitting that today, March 19th, marks the 8th anniversary of the Iraq War, the day on which thousands of American workers will be protesting throughout the country against the continuation of U.S. imperialist wars.

Remember that U.N. sanctions and a “no-fly zone” killed over a million Iraqis. Remember that another war of aggression, the Iraq War, has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Remember that “humanitarian bombing” killed thousands of civilians in Yugoslavia.

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NO to Imperialist Attack on Libya!

Sources:

1) http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html

Categories: Anti-War, Economic Exploitation, France, History, Imperialism, Imperialist War, International, Kosova, Libya, Statements, U.S. News, United States History, Yugoslavia