Libya: The First Skirmish in
the Empire's Drive for WWIII
by Nancy Spannaus
Feb. 28—Last Summer's decision by the triumvirate of Great Britain, France, and Obama's United States to launch a war for regime change in Libya, contrary to the restrictions voted by the United Nations Security Council, could end up being a turning point in world history. It was that decision, punctuated by the agreement among the three to effectively order the bestial murder of the defeated defenseless captive Muammar Qaddafi in October, that signalled to the world, especially to Russia and China, that the British Imperial faction that runs NATO was determined to force capitulation to its world empire—or else.
As identified by Lyndon LaRouche in the wake of Qaddafi's murder, such a determination by the Empire—with its global depopulation, anti-national-sovereignty agenda—put the world on course for a global thermonuclear confrontation between the NATO nations, on the one side, and the two powerful Eurasian nuclear superpowers, on the other. Moving on from Libya to Syria and Iran, the Empire coalition—which depends upon its control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal through its control of Obama—has driven steadily toward war preparations. Only the most extraordinary efforts by leading U.S. military-intelligence patriots, as well as Russia, China, and the LaRouche forces, have succeeded in postponing the kinds of incidents which could indeed trigger World War III.
As of today, the world remains on a hair trigger toward war.
The key to avoiding it, and moving on to durable economic measures for world peace and cooperation, lies in exposing the source of the problem—the British international financial empire—and the methods which it uses to get nations to destroy each other, and themselves. This traditional imperial method is today spearheaded by its leading spokesman Tony Blair, who, on behalf of his Queen, declared back in 1999, the intent of the Empire to wipe out national sovereignty, and thus, the only means by which nations could advance the welfare of their populations, and protect themselves from the agenda of depopulation, deindustrialization, and permanent warfare which the current incarnation of the Roman Empire explicitly desires.[1]
The Obama White House's embrace of this Blair agenda is what puts the world on the course for a possible war of extermination of the human race. Fortunately, the leadership of major nations has not only recognized this, but begun to speak out. The question is, when will sufficient leaders in the United States get the guts to do the same, and remove the British puppet from the White House?
'Human Rights' Pretext
On Aug. 4, 2011, to circumvent his impeachable crime of going to war against Libya without Congressional approval, Barack Obama issued National Study Directive #10, ordering the creation of an Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board, to institutionalize mechanisms and procedures for unending, anti-Constitutional U.S. overseas wars in the name of "preventing genocide." With NSD #10, Obama set into motion the formal restructuring of U.S. foreign policy and intelligence institutions along lines required by the nation's would-be new status as an abject satrap of the British monarchy.
NSD #10 lies that "preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States." This is an assertion of the sophistically named doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect (R2P)," which is simply the imperial "humanitarian intervention" doctrine enunciated by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his infamous 1999 Chicago speech declaring an end to the principle of sovereignty which guided world affairs since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. It was upon precisely this lie which Obama carried out his illegal war in Libya, a war now being replicated against Syria, and being planned against many other nations.
(Putting aside the question of the truthfulness of reporting on atrocities, if the Administration really wanted to fight genocide, it would overthrow the imperial monetarist system which dictates sacrifice of human lives to saving the markets, and drop the green ideology that kills science and the life-saving technologies mankind needs to build a future. For example, look at its record in Haiti.)
NSD #10 directs the National Security Advisor "to lead a focused interagency study to develop and recommend the membership, mandate, structure, operational protocols, authorities, and support necessary for the Atrocities Prevention Board to coordinate and develop atrocity prevention and response policy." Said Board was to be operational 120 days from the date of the Presidential Study Directive, with a mandate "to coordinate a whole of government approach to preventing mass atrocities and genocide"; to provide "a comprehensive policy framework and a corresponding interagency mechanism for preventing and responding to mass atrocities and genocide," so as to permit us "to engage early, proactively and decisively to prevent threats from evolving." All options are on the table: "from economic to diplomatic interventions, and from non-combat military actions to outright intervention."
The British not only have their hand directly on our nuclear trigger, but also here, too, in restructuring our military. As EIR documented in its May 6, 2011 issue, an entire international apparatus has been built up since Tony Blair's 1999 speech, dedicated to imposing his R2P end-of-sovereignty doctrine, largely financed and heavily staffed by Britain's dope-pusher moneybags, vulture speculator George Soros. This is the project that Obama advisor Samantha Power and UN Ambassador Susan Rice have been working on for a decade; Obama's National Security Staff Director for War Crimes and Atrocities, David Pressman, charged with overseeing the creation of the board, was an activist in the British-Power-Rice anti-Sudan campaign implemented under this doctrine.
Key in the R2P international apparatus is Oxford University's Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC), which sponsored a U.K.-U.S. working group last November, on "military ethics" for such circumstances, shortly after ELAC members participated in an Oct. 13-15, 2011 meeting of some 30 U.S. government officials and "mass atrocity specialists" [sic!] held near Washington, D.C., by the Stanley Foundation, to discuss "structuring the U.S. government to Prevent Atrocities: Considerations for an Atrocities Prevention Board."
Evil in Action
The Libya War, undertaken by Obama, in violation of U.S. Constitutional law, was, of course, justified by him on the basis of the "responsibility to protect" civilians. The same method, relying on "testimony" by anti-Assad partisans hosted in London, such as the Syrian National Council, was simultaneously set into motion against Syria, and that aspect of the program has currently gone into high gear.
There was, of course, an effort by some in the international community, specifically the Arab League, to try to verify what was actually happening on the ground in Syria. An Arab League Monitors' mission spent approximately one month in Syria, between December and mid-January, and produced a report which included extensive evidence backing up the Assad government's charges of sophisticated sabotage and military operations against the government—which report was subsequently all but buried in UN Security Council deliberations! Other anecdotal reports, including from a Melkite archbishop from Aleppo, have raised the alarm of hideous sectarian violence by the "rebels."
But the British, their Saudi-Sunni allies, and other leading Western powers, would hear nothing of it. Immediately after the return of the Monitors, they moved ahead, demanding that Assad accept a proposal to step down, and this proposal was forwarded to the UN Security Council—only to be vetoed by the two permanent UNSC members opposed to regime change—Russia and China. That veto launched a new wave of invective against the two real targets of the British scheme, as insensitive to "human rights."
But the British-led crowd were not going to take no for an answer. Within weeks, they had determined to convene a "Friends of Syria" conference as a pathway to the same end—this time, the attempt to revive the previous proposal of a "humanitarian corridor" as a stepping stone for further armed struggle against the Assad government. Once again, seeing through the strategy, Russia and China, who had put forward numerous proposals for negotiations between the parties in Syria and had them rejected, declined to give legitimacy to this meeting by attending.
Another round of bashing ensued, this time led not only by the British and their trainee, Obama's UN Ambassador Susan Rice, but bringing in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who outdid herself in venomous rhetoric. Responding to a question at a press conference Feb. 25, she said:
"The entire world, other than Russia and China, were willing to recognize that we must take international action against the Syrian regime.
"I would be willing to go back to the Security Council again and again and again, but we need to change the attitude of the Russian and Chinese governments. They must understand they are setting themselves against the aspirations not only of the Syrian people but of the entire Arab Spring, the Arab Awakening.... And it is not a position that is sustainable. So the sooner the Russians and the Chinese move toward supporting action in the Security Council, the sooner we can get a resolution that would permit us to take the kind of steps that we all know need to be taken.
"So thank you for asking that, because it's quite distressing to see two permanent members of the Security Council using their veto when people are being murdered—women, children, brave young men—houses are being destroyed. It is just despicable. And I ask, whose side are they on? They are clearly not on the side of the Syrian people, and they need to ask themselves some very hard questions about what that means for them as well as the rest of us."
Clinton, of course, is basically lying for the sake of her boss, British puppet Obama. Numerous sources make it clear that President Assad has the support of more than 50% of his people, and the opposition is refusing to negotiate. Even the 57% of the Syrian population which participated in the Feb. 26 constitutional referendum testifies to that.
The Russians and the Chinese did not sit back and take the attack silently. Both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attacked the group for trying to hide its real agenda—regime change. "Demands for regime change [will lead to] even more deaths ... [and] civil war," said Lavrov. Putin was even more expansive (see Documentation, below).
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declared the accusations "unacceptable," and in a China Daily column, let go with some unusually sharp sarcasm: "The United States' motive in parading as a 'protector' of the Arab peoples is not difficult to imagine. The problem is, what moral basis does it have for this patronizing and egotistical super-arrogance and self-confidence?," the paper said, according to a Reuters report.
"Even now, violence continues unabated in Iraq, and ordinary people enjoy no security. This alone is enough for us to draw a huge question mark over the sincerity and efficacy of U.S. policy," it said.
India and South Africa Speak Up
But it is not just Russia and China who can see through the British-Obama game. While they may not yet realize that the Empire is going for an end-game where it will threaten thermonuclear confrontation, leading developing sector nations recognize the smell of Empire when they get a whiff of it. And over the recent weeks, they too have begun to speak out.
One major spokesman against the "humanitarian" game was former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who addressed a conference on Feb. 16 on the question of sovereignty, in which he thoroughly exposed the fraud perpetrated by the NATO "coalition" which overthrew and killed Qaddafi in the name of "human rights." Mbeki warned that Western powers now have an enhanced appetite to intervene in Africa: "These powers will act as they did in Libya especially if, in situations of internal conflict, which they would also foment, they can argue that they are implementing the UN-approved 'right to protect,' the so-called R2P" (see summary under Documentation).
Then, during an informal meeting at the UN on Feb. 22, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Hardeep Singh Puri, spoke up. Citing the use of the R2P in the case of Libya and Syria, by "over-enthusiastic members" of the international community, Puri said the UN principle of responsibility to protect, or R2P, has been invoked selectively. He said, as developments in Libya and Syria have shown, the principle of R2P is being used for regime change.
In Libya's case, UN Resolution 1973 was aimed at a ceasefire with the mediation of the African Union (AU); use of all necessary means to protect civilians; a no-fly zone; arms embargo, and targeted sanctions, Puri noted. However, he said, as soon as the resolution was adopted, the "over-enthusiastic members" of the international community stopped talking of the AU's efforts to bring about a ceasefire, and completely ignored them.
"The only aspect of the resolution of interest to them [the international community] was the use of all necessary means to bomb the hell out of Libya," he said.
Then, in Syria's case, Puri said, instead of a simple step to hold the Syrian government to a timetable for political reforms, a resolution was proposed to impose sanctions. "President Bashar Assad was declared to have lost legitimacy. The opposition was discouraged from engaging with the government, and the armed groups started receiving support, ostensibly to defend themselves," he said.
India's long-standing position, however, was expressed in debate by the same ambassador back in 2009, when R2P was pushed through. "These measures [R2P], Mr. President, not only have to be used as a last resort, but have to be in conformity with the provisions of the UN Charter. Responsibility to protect should in no way provide a pretext for humanitarian intervention or unilateral action...."
The Next Step
There is no indication, of course, that the Empire's spokesmen, including Obama, intend to back off in face of criticism. Not only are they looking for a way to push ahead in Syria, but they are preparing, with the British puppet Netanyahu government in Israel, to move ahead for an even bigger provocation and assertion of imperial will—bombing Iran. A barrage of lying reports, and a concerted push by the American Zionist lobby around AIPAC (the American-Israeli Political Action Committee) for a Senate resolution which demands that an Iranian "capability" to achieve nuclear weapons be treated as a casus belli, characterizes the offensive.
What should not be overlooked in these developments is the overarching, crucial role of the British monarchy and its agents (including British Middle East hand Bernard Lewis, recently revealed to be a consultant to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu), which is moving aggressively for confrontation with Iran; while the Prime Minister David Cameron is planning a high-profile visit to Washington on March 13, immediately after the AIPAC war rally.
It's time to remove the British hand from U.S. policy by removing its primary tool—President Barack Obama.
Gretchen Small, Ramtanu Maitra, and Douglas DeGroot contributed research for this article.
[1] The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which established in concept the system of sovereign nation-states which Tony Blair seeks to overthrow, was initiated at the end of one of those periods of depopulation, destruction of production, and permanent warfare—the Thirty Years War.
