By Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis
When all you have is bombs, everything starts to look like a target. And so after years of providing Libya's dictator with the weapons he's been using against the people, all the international community -- France, Britain and the United States -- has to offer the people of Libya is more bombs, this time dropped from the sky rather than delivered in a box to Muammar Gaddafi's palace.
If the bitter lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us anything, though, it's that wars of liberation exact a deadly toll on those they purportedly liberate -- and that democracy doesn't come on the back of a Tomahawk missile.
President Barack Obama announced his latest peace-through-bombs initiative last week -- joining ongoing U.S. conflicts and proxy wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia -- by declaring he could not "stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy, and... where innocent men and women face brutality and death at the hands of their own government."
Within 24 hours of the announcement, more than 110 U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired into Libya, including the capital Tripoli, reportedly killing dozens of innocent civilians -- as missiles, even the "smart" kind, are wont to do. According to the New York Times, allied warplanes with "brutal efficiency" bombed "tanks, missile launches and civilian cars, leaving a smoldering trail of wreckage that stretched for miles."
"[M]any of the tanks seemed to have been retreating," the paper reported. That's the reality of the no-fly zone and the mission creep that started the moment it was enacted: bombing civilians and massacring retreating troops. And like any other war, it's not pretty.
While much of the media presents an unquestioning, sanitized version of the war -- cable news hosts more focused on interviewing retired generals about America's fancy killing machines than the actual, bloody facts on the ground -- the truth is that wars, even liberal-minded "humanitarian" ones, entail destroying people and places. Though cloaked in altruism that would be more believable were we dealing with monasteries, not nation-states, the war in Libya is no different. And innocents pay the price.
If protecting civilians from evil dictators were the goal, though -- as opposed to, say, safeguarding natural resources and the investments of major oil companies -- there's an easier, safer way than aerial bombardment for the U.S. and its allies to consider: Simply stop arming and propping up evil dictators. After all, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi reaped the benefits from Western nations all too eager to cozy up to and rehabilitate the image of a dictator with oil, with those denouncing him today as a murderous tyrant just a matter of weeks ago selling him the very arms his regime has been using to suppress the rebellion against it.
In 2009 alone, European governments -- including Britain and France -- sold Libya more than $470 million worth of weapons, including fighter jets, guns and bombs. And before it started calling for regime change, the Obama administration was working to provide the Libyan dictator another $77 million in weapons, on top of the $17 million it provided in 2009 and the $46 million the Bush administration provided in 2008.
Meanwhile, for dictatorial regimes in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, U.S. support continues to this day. On Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even gave the U.S. stamp of approval to the brutal crackdown on protesters in Bahrain, saying the country's authoritarian rulers "obviously" had the "sovereign right" to invite troops from Saudi Arabia to occupy their country and carry out human rights abuses, which included attacks on injured protesters as they lay in their hospital beds.
In Yemen, which has received more than $300 million in military aid from the U.S. over the last five years, the Obama administration continues to support corrupt thug and president-for-life Ali Abdullah Saleh, who recently ordered a massacre of more than 50 of his own citizens who dared protest his rule. And this support has allowed the U.S. can carry out its own massacres under the auspices of the war on terror, with one American bombing raid last year taking out 41 Yemeni civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, according to Amnesty International.
Rather than engage in cruise missile liberalism, Obama could save lives by immediately ending support for these brutal regimes. But for U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, arms sales appear to trump liberation. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute documented that Washington accounted for 54 percent of arms sales to Persian Gulf states between 2005 and 2009.
Last September, the Financial Times reported that the U.S. had struck deals to provide Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman with $123 billion worth of arms. The repressive monarchy of Saudi Arabia accounts for over half that figure, with it set to receive $67 billion worth of weapons, including 84 F-15 jets, 70 Apache gunships, 72 Black Hawk helicopters, 36 light helicopters and thousands of laser-guided smart bombs - the largest weapons deal in U.S. history.
Instead of forking over $150 million a day to the weapons industry to attack Libya or selling $67 billion in weapons to the Saudis so they can repress not just their own people, but those of Bahrain, we -- the ones being asked to forgo Social Security to help pay for empire -- should demand those who purport to represent us in Washington stop arming dictators in our name. That might drain some bucks from the merchants of death, but it would give nonviolent protesters throughout the Middle East a fighting chance to liberate themselves.
The U.S. government need not drop a single bomb in the Middle East to help liberate oppressed people. All it need do is stop selling bombs to their oppressors.
Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org) and Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org). Charles Davis (davis.charles84@gmail.com) has covered Congress for NPR and Pacifica stations, and freelanced for the international news wire Inter Press Service.
Follow Medea Benjamin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/medeabenjamin
Jim Wallis: The Hypocrisy of War
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As you know, our hardworking advisers are currently assisting Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, King of Bahrain and kind host to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, liquidate his unruly Shiite protesters. As soon as they have completed their appointed task, we assure you, they will immediately be redeployed to assist the fearless rebels wage jihad on the government and people of Libya.
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Enjoy.
BUT, I think there are two points to made made about Libya.
1) Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan where the US "invited" itself to intervene (in the case of Afghanistan the original intervention wasn't the problem nearly as much as the following nation building), we find the situation in Libya to be one where we are being asked to intervene (in a limited way). A popular uprising is asking for air support to give them a chance. If it wasn't for French intervention aiding the US the American Revolutionary War would not have concluded the way it had. The intervention is just IMHO as long as it remains limited in scope that both parties seem to recognize (the Libyan rebels don't want "boots on the ground and neither do we)
2) Even if the US did not arm these regimes (which I agree we should not), the fact is that Gaddafi would simply be dropping Russian or Chinese ordinance on his own people.
This is about weapons sales and oil.
So nice try, but Medea's idea is a non starter.
Another thing we COULD do, but won't, is remove all non-combatants, paying for it with the same money we'd be using in those missile drones that are killing said non-combatants! Need to use that ord'nance, don't you know! You know, the ord'nance that exists already, need to use it up so we can have a very good reason to . . . wait for it! . . . MANUFACTURE SOME MORE ! Gotta keep all those people working, you know.
American arms only endears the regimes to the US, the masses of people around the world don't appreciate those arms, but rather American culture, American markets, American "democracy". Blue jeans, American TV and music do more for America's imagine than gunships and fighter jets do.
Excellent point.
The idea that Saudi Arabia can easily make up deficits in the oil market is out of date. That's why we have $4 gas. The US cares about how Libya affects the global price of oil even if it doesn't physically receive much oil from Libya.
Who are you leaving out of the explanation of missiles and guns being sold to this country?
That's all it produces.
The US deals with government dictators who happen to be very resource rich. Unless they are forced out by their own people or by coalitions, they will always find a willing supplier.
The reputation of United States arms makes our military industrial complex number ONE in the world; the go to place when you want to buy any sort of military armament.
We must be so proud. At last we're tops in the world at something.
People can be oppressed by means other than the gun. People can be oppressed by being born in a certain geographical location, to a certain family, with a certain physical or mental condition. It's so much easier to pick on someone than to talk it out. Even for the oppressed.
So, thank you, arms industry. Your very existence provides a false sense of security to millions, a possibly misguided sense of hope to the oppressed, a means of redress for those who can't concede, and gainful employment to metalworkers, engineers, explosive technicians, generals, colonels, majors, lieutenants and cannon fodder.
Don't pray for peace. Just pray nobody's coming after you with an Armalite.
So if Gaia decides to shake us off, and we've seen Her great efforts lately -- another 8 pointer earthquake, this time in Myanmar! -- there's many other species waiting to lift themselves to greater sentiency, and THEY don't seem at all war-like . . . though who knows, maybe war is inherent in the sentient mind-set.
Or maybe Gaia doesn't need sentient beings occupying and irritating her skin.