• by Johan Galtung
• Wednesday, April 13, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The attack on Libya was long in the works. Since Colonel Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a military coup in 1969, overthrowing King Idris and forcing the American military out of Libya, the US has been planning to overthrow him, writes Johan Galtung, Founder of TRANSCEND, a Peace Development Environment Network, and author of "The Fall of the US Empire - And Then What?"

In this analysis Galtung writes that In 1981 the CIA created the National Front for the Salvation of Libya and its own Libyan National Army, which launched a series of armed attacks in the 1980s. The CIA armed the NFSL, and its spokesman, Ibrahim Sahad, launched the demonstrations in February 2011 that led to the humanitarian crisis. Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, the demonstrations were quickly militarised. The US and Saudi Arabia had a deal: "You invade Bahrain and we take out Gaddafi."

After the great 2011 Arab revolt came the US-Saudi counter-revolution, and NATO's first African war, presumably with the goal of getting US-NATO-AFRICOM bases in Libya, access to oil in East Libya, a neo-liberal economy, and so on. There is nothing new here. US-Western foreign policy is based on interests, plus pretexts for the naive. The twin lies that 9/11 was prepared in Afghanistan and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were disseminated to justify those two wars. The current humanitarian crisis in Libya is of their own making; they knew they could count on a madman like Gaddafi to do at least the rhetorical job of voicing threats. What will be next?

(*) Johan Galtung, Founder of TRANSCEND, a Peace Development Environment Network, is author of "The Fall of the US Empire - And Then What?" (www.transcend.org/tup).

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES//

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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