This blog is dedicated to the struggles of people everywhere to advance human progress and save this planet from the decline of capitalism. Its focus, since 2011 has been supporting the emerging revolutions everywhere.
As we approach the first anniversary of the white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally that took place in Charlottesville, VA on 12 August 2017, Democracy Now spent the hour Tuesday looking at various aspects of that event. The firsttwo segments previewed selections from a new documentary by Frontline PBS and ProPublica titled Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, and an interview with A. C. Thompson, its producer. The final segment was an interview with the mother of Heather Heyer, the anti-fascist protester murdered by a racist.
US racist Matt Heimbach w Confederate & Russian flags
While this report was very informative and timely, there is one aspect of this event that Democracy Now failed to even touch upon, which nevertheless should be of great interest to its audience, and which is, in fact, essential to a throughgoing understanding of Charlottesville in context, and that is this: there are many connections between the organizers and participants of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally and Putin's Russia. "You will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us" weren't the only vile things the racist chanted in Charlottesville. They also chanted "Russia is Our Friend."
The reason that is a vile slogan coming from them is that they see Russia as the first white nationalist state of a new era. They also admire Vladimir Putin, and his chief white nationalist ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin has been called "Putin's brain," think of him as "Putin's Bannon." Dugin, for his part, hailed Trump as "the American Putin." The ultra-Right that united in Charlottesville see these Russians as leading the worldwide white supremacist movement that they belong to. This reverence for Russia was shared by the principal organizers of the fascist Charlottesville rally.
Richard Spencer on RT
This coming-out party for American neo-Nazis and latter-day Klansmen was Richard B. Spencer's baby. In case you just dropped in from Mars, he is a leading US white supremacist. Starting in May 2017, he led a series of racist rallies in Charlottesville, culminating in the big one in August where he was something like the keynote speaker. Richard Spencer sees himself as part of an international movement led by Vladimir Putin. He has called Russia the “sole white power in the world,” and the compliment is returned. He has gotten a lot of exposure on the Putin propaganda network RT. His Russian wife, a well known fascist on her own, Nina Byzantina, translates Dugin's works into English.
Google search for "Putin" on the DN site turns up 27,900 results. The same search for "Dugin" turns up zilch.
While Democracy Now has had quite a mouthful to say about Putin, they have never even mentioned Dugin, or his Tsargrad TV and Katehon think tank and website! What's wrong with this picture? Tsargrad TV has been called the Fox News of Russia for good reasons. Jack Harnick, Sean Hannity's former director and another Putin fanboy, help set it up. Not mentioning these things would be like writing volumes about Trump, but never speaking of Steve Bannon, Breitbart, or Fox News. Of course, if your mission was to somehow sell Trump to progressives in a foreign land, that is exactly what you would do. Since Democracy Now has had nothing to say about the well connected Dugin or his apparatus, its a safe bet they've had little to say about the ruling role white nationalism plays in Putin's Russia.
Matthew Heimbach on RT
Another one of the primary organizers of the Charlottesville rally was Matthew Heimbach, head of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party. Think Progress named him"most important white supremacist of 2016." Recently his TWP has been targeting college campuses, where ADL says white supremacist propaganda has nearly doubled in the 2017-18 academic year. At TWP rallies, Confederate and Russian flags have been seen flying side-by-side.
Before Charlottesville, he was arrested for attacking a protester at a Trump rally. He also looks to Russia for leadership. Salon reported on this in "Trump, the alt-right and the Kremlin: White supremacists’ Russia links are no secret," 17 August 2017, by Heather Digby Parton. That was almost a year ago, so Democracy Now really has no excuse for not knowing this stuff. For example, Parton reported:
Heimbach says, “Putin is the leader, really, of the anti-globalist forces around the world" and calls"Russia our most powerful ally" -- and by "our," he means the forces of white nationalism. The Southern Poverty Law Center dubbed him "The Little Führer." Heimbach is also a member of the World National Conservative Movement, a product of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM)
Jared Taylor, from American Renaissance, was another big supporter of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally. He holds an annual white supremacist conference that has been getting bigger in recent years. Richard Spencer credits Taylor with "red pilling" him. Taylor is another Putin fan who travels to Russia and was a speaker at the St. Petersburg conference of ultra-right forces. Sam Dickson, Council of Conservative Citizens member and lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan was also at the St. Petersburg conference. It is said that he had "become wealthy by taking the hard-earned money of poor African Americans," before he showed up in Charlottesville.
David Duke on RT
Probably the biggest name in American racist circles is David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and former Louisiana state representative. He was also one of the chief organizers and speakers at Charlottesvile. He is another Putin fanboy. Salon writes:
The PBS/ProPublica documentary didn't mention any Russian connection either. The closest it got was saying that one of the US fascists it profiled had also attended a white supremacist conference in Europe. That was Robert Rundo, who they described as "a leader of the violent white supremacist group known as the Rise Above Movement [RAM]." I identified RAM as one of the groups involved in the attack on the Santa Monica Committee for Racial Justice last August, one week before Charlottesville. I have done battle with these fools. They came to shut down the meeting. They failed then, but vowed to return with greater numbers after Charlottesville. They never showed. Our meeting this Sunday will be the anniversary of that struggle, and we are vigilant.
On the ProPublica website we find out that while in Europe, Rundo hung out with Denis Nikitin, who they describe as "a burly Russian soccer hooligan who has become one of the most successful fight promoters in ultra-nationalist circles." Nikitin also ran "a white nationalist clothing label, White Rex," which got away with advertising on facebook for three years according to the Huffington Post. Vice News called it"a sort of Nike for Nazis." Rundo promoted the WhiteRex line on his website. It is likely that much of the fascist garb on display at Charlottesville came from this Russian source.
After Charlottesville, the biggest white supremacist website, the Daily Stormer, lost its US Internet provider, when it finally found a new home, it was on a Russian domain.
Understanding that Putin's Russia is currently leading a worldwide white nationalist movement and has the allegiance of the collection of neo-Nazis and white supremacists that gathered in Charlottesville, is indispensable to understanding this movement in the context they see themselves in. It is also key to understanding Donald Trump's closet support for the rally, as well as his obsequiousness in the presence of Vladimir Putin. Just like the white supremacists at the rally, Trump sees Putin as the leader of their movement. That is the real reason he is so deferential to Putin. It's not blackmail. Blackmail may make you submissive. It doesn't make you respectful.
Stephen Miller knew Richard Spencer at Duke University, a fellow WH staffer told Vanity Fair"He's Waffen-SS." Stephen Miller was also in regular contact with George Papadopoulos in March 2016 when Papadopoulos was meeting people who claimed high-level contacts in the Russian government for the purpose of setting up a Putin-Trump meeting, according to the New York Times. When Trump campaign aide, Carter Page spoke to the New Economic School in Moscow, Dugin's Tsargrad TV covered it. Mike Flynn obviously had this own backchannel to Putin, and as a result of the Mueller investigation, we now know of more connections between the Trump cabal and Putin's Russia than would be economic to list in a brief article.
We are presently in a very dangerous period. The fascist forces are gathering on many levels, and we may be sitting on the edge of a big disaster. Since Democracy Now generally promotes the white-Left version of "Russia is Our Friend," they may have been too embarrassed to report about the Russian influences on the Charlottesville racists, and their use of that slogan. But they did a great disservice to their audience by keeping quiet about it.
We have to come to terms with the fact that Russia isn't just trying influence the United States because it is a geo-political and economic competitor. Russia has changed from a socialist state under Lenin to a white supremacist state under Putin, and it is actively attempting to build white supremacist power in the United States at all levels. We must also come to terms with the harsh reality that those on the white-Left that cover up these connections, while at the same time promoting greater unity between Trump and Putin, are not our friends.
GOP lawmaker: Russian meddling fanned the flames in Charlottesville
By Clare Foran, CNN
11 August 2018
Washington (CNN)Republican Rep. Tom Garrett said Saturday that he was told during a briefing with the FBI director that Russian meddling played in a role in "fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville," Virginia, one year ago, when a white nationalist rally turned violent and resulted in the death of a counterprotester.
"I sat in a closed session briefing probably two months ago about Charlottesville with the director of the FBI, amongst others, and asked if Russian inter-meddling had to do with fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville. I was told yes, it did," Garrett told CNN's Ryan Nobles on "Newsroom." The congressman from Virginia said he asked during the briefing if the information was classified and was told it is not.
Garrett, a member of the House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs committees, said that Russian interference is "seeking to pit Americans against Americans to undermine confidence in Western-style democracies."
Referring to Russia, the congressman said, "They use events like this divisive racial fight ... and this is the sort of thing they do. As a member of Homeland Security, that's what scares me most, that Americans will be pitted against Americans over real differences, but that are minimal in the grand scheme of things. We are an American family of brothers and sisters regardless of religion and race, and we need to focus on that."
The FBI did not immediately return CNN's request for comment on the congressman's remarks.
FBI Director Christopher Wray referenced Charlottesville last month while discussing foreign interference at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado and said "foreign influence" is playing a role in efforts to "spin up domestic extremist movements."
"Along the lines of the question about Charlottesville, for example, to the extent that we have domestic terrorism in this country that is spun up by various ideologies, foreign influence is being used, in many ways, to capitalize on that and spin up domestic extremist movements to create terrorist attacks here inside," he said. More...
Let's see if Amy Goodman will be forced to cover this aspect of Charlottesville now.
On Tuesday, 26 June 2018 Amy Goodman ran this headline on Democracy Now:
AP: Algeria Has Expelled 13,000 Migrants into Sahara Desert
[This is the picture DN ran with the story. It looks like 3 well-dress Africans strolling in the desert. It's not from the AP story. Its not credited or captioned. It looks like it was Photoshopped. - Clay]
In more news on migration and deportation, the Associated Press reports Algeria has expelled more than 13,000 migrants into the Sahara Desert over the last 14 months. Survivors interviewed by the Associated Press say they were rounded up, crammed into trucks, driven into the desert and then dropped off and forced at gunpoint to walk into neighboring Niger. They say an unknown number of their fellow migrants died during the journey.
Democracy Now has had nothing else to say about these ongoing mass murders filed under the heading "migration and deportation," before or since. Since many on the US Left are still mourning the lost of Gaddafi, this story would have gotten a lot better coverage if they had died in Libya. DN coughed up this paragraph of three sentences only because of the AP story made silence untenable. Fortunately, the Associated Press story tells us a little more, beginning with its lead photo:
From this isolated frontier post deep in the sands of the Sahara, the expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds. They look like specks in the distance, trudging miserably across some of the world's most unforgiving terrain in the blistering sun.
They are the ones who made it out alive.
Here in the desert, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).
... “Women were lying dead, men..... Other people got missing in the desert because they didn’t know the way,” said Janet Kamara, who was pregnant at the time. "Everybody was just on their own."
Her body still aches from the dead baby she gave birth to during the trek and left behind in the Sahara, buried in a shallow grave in the molten sand. Blood streaked her legs for days afterward, and weeks later, her ankles are still swollen.
...
Algeria’s mass expulsions have picked up since October 2017, as the European Union renewed pressure on North African countries to head off migrants going north to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea or the barrier fences with Spain.
...
A European Union spokesperson said the EU was aware of what Algeria was doing, but that “sovereign countries” can expel migrants as long as they comply with international law.
...
The migrants the AP talked to described being rounded up hundreds at a time, crammed into open trucks headed southward for six to eight hours to what is known as Point Zero, then dropped in the desert and pointed in the direction of Niger. They are told to walk, sometimes at gunpoint. In early June, 217 men, women and children were dropped well before reaching Point Zero, fully 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the nearest source of water, according to the IOM.
...
Kande said the Algerian police stole everything he had earned when he was first detained _ 40,000 dinars ($340) and a Samsung cell phone.
“They tossed us into the desert, without our telephones, without money. I couldn’t even describe it to you,” he said, still livid at the memory.
...
Two migrants told the AP gendarmes fired on the groups to force them to walk, and multiple videos seen by the AP showed armed, uniformed men standing guard near the trucks.
...
Algeria has denied criticism from the IOM and other organizations that it is committing human rights abuses by abandoning migrants in the desert, calling the allegations a “malicious campaign” intended to inflame neighboring countries.
...
The number of migrants going to Algeria is increasing as an unintended side effect of Europe’s successful blocking of the Libyan crossing, said Camille Le Coz, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Brussels.
...
But people die going both ways; the Sahara is a swift killer that leaves little evidence behind. The arid heat shrivels bodies, and blowing sand envelops the remains. The IOM has estimated that for every migrant known to have died crossing the Mediterranean, as many as two are lost in the desert _ potentially upwards of 30,000 people since 2014. More ...
Obviously, taking people out to the desert, and leaving them without food, water, shelter, or transport is nothing short of murder, and these are ongoing mass murders. They haven't stopped. The government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria since 1999, and now potentially for life, denies the mistreatment of migrants in Algeria, just as Muammar Gaddafi did in Libya until he was overthrown in 2011, so it has not promised to stop what it denies doing in the first place.
The practices this AP report exposed are nothing new, even if the recent EU pressure has caused an acceleration. They have been going on in Algeria, and Libya, at least under Gaddafi, for decades, with western encouragement and silence.
In Algeria, unlike Libya, the "Arab Spring" uprising was quickly put down by government efforts, and its murderous migrant practices continue to this day. Similarly, the dumping of migrants in the desert was a regular practice of the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi. While he remained in power, the EU was happy to pay him billions of Euros, and look the other way, so long as he stranded migrants in the desert rather than allow them to reach Mediterranean shores.
There are many in Europe that have no problem with using the desert's sun to kill off African migrants and refugees headed for their shores, just as the US Border Patrol quite consciously uses the desert as a 'weapon' to kill thousands of migrants, according to this Guardian report. So, while the practice is noted in the occasional news article, little is done to stop the dying. The month that ended with the big AP story began with a report by BBC News of over 40 people who died of thirst in the Sahara of northern Niger. They were trying to get to Libya which is still a murderous route for migrants, but at least the government is no longer complicit in it. It's wonderful that we could save children stuck 3 miles back in a partially submerged cave shaft. One day we may even learn how to save them from dying of thirst in the deserts.
Since the AP report spoke of thousands, manymedia outlets gave it coverage, even Democracy Now had to pay it lip service, but the story soon faded. This story was a particularly tricky one for US Left outlets like Democracy Now to handle because the Algerian dictatorship of Bouteflika is seen as something of a bulwark against western imperialism and Israel, much as the Libyan dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi was.
The mythology promoted by the white-Left on Libya is now so pervasive that James Thindwa, an In These Times board member born in Zimbabwe, felt he could proclaim in a Portside, 4th of July piece that "During Qaddafi’s rule, there was no migrant crisis." What a shameful, European centric position to take! As long as fewer reached Europe because they were dying in the desert, it was not seen as a crisis by most Europeans, and others who identify with "white" values. The Gaddafi regime didn't recognize any refugee status, and regularly disposed of African migrants in the desert, sometimes hundreds of thousands in one operation. For those comfortably positioned in the West, Gaddafi's methods of controlling the migrant flow may not have constituted a crisis, but as I reported in Extreme racism & slave auctions 3 times a week in Gaddafi's Libya it definitely was for the migrants themselves, and anyone else who cares about humanity.
Since dying in Algeria didn't serve any Western political agenda, it was a one-shot story. They should have died in Libya, where the people overthrew the dictator, and are struggling to remake their country free of such tyranny. Then these migrant deaths could have served the forces of counter-revolution as another cautionary tale of how badly things can go when a dictator is overthrown. If they had died in Libya, the media would have really played up the news, and Democracy Now would have done a whole series of stories about their plight.
Much of the Left has a great deal of unity with alt-right warmongers in their understanding of recent Libyan history. As you know, Donald Trump and other prominent members of his administration have been threatening North Korea with something they call the “Libyan model.” This is a view of Libyan history that leaves the Libyans out of it. It ignores their suffering under the 42 years of Gaddafi's dictatorship, including the hundred of thousands of Libyans, and other Africans, he murdered. It ignores their equally long fight against his brutal regime, and it especially ignores the heroic struggle by the Libyan thuwar [freedom fighters] that began in January 2011, and after the cost of thousands of Libyan lives by October 2011, finally put that regime out of their misery.
After a bit of hesitation, and a UN authorization that even Russia voted for, not to mention the need of certain French refineries for Libya's irreplaceable light-sweet crude on the heels of a European economic crisis, NATO intervened in the civil war. This “Libyan model” uses the fact that NATO protected the civilian population with a no-fly zone, and gave the revolution air support, to take the Libyan people out of the picture. This “Libyan model” is based on the idea that it was the omnipotent US imperialists that took out Muammar Gaddafi. The story is that they treacherously did this even though he had yielded to their demands, and he gave up his nuclear weapons eight years earlier.
While Trump and company use this “Libyan model” as a threat of what might happen to Kim Jong-un, 3rd Supreme Leader of North Korea, if he doesn't play ball (or even if he does!), the white-Left condemns this use of the “Libyan model,”but they don't dispute its core assumption, which is that the US imperialist made a decision to conduct a “regime change” operation in Libya, and then they just made it happen. The whole history of the uprising; its connection to the Arab Spring; the unarmed protesters that braved Gaddafi regime bullets; the patriotic soldiers that defected to the revolution rather than fire on their own people; Gaddafi's merciless siege Misrata; are all washed away in this unified American version of what went down in Libya in 2011.
“Anti-imperialist” support for this vision of US imperialist omnipotence, as embodied in Trump's definition of the “Libyan model,” was on full display on Democracy Now, Friday, 25 May 2018. Amy Goodman first touched upon it in the headlines:
AMY GOODMAN: Trump’s withdrawal came after North Korea blasted recent comments by Vice President Mike Pence, who suggested Kim Jong-un will end up like slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi if he doesn’t denuclearize North Korea.
She went into greater detail later in the show with investigative journalist Tim Shorrock:
AMY GOODMAN: NBC reports Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has privately blamed National Security Adviser John Bolton for torpedoing the talks. North Korea first threatened to pull out of the talks after Bolton said the U.S. should use the Libyan model for denuclearization. In 2003, Libya negotiated sanctions relief from the United States in exchange for renouncing its nuclear program and welcoming international inspectors to verify the dismantlement. Eight years later, the U.S. and other nations attacked Libya, toppling and killing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump have also talked about the Libyan model in recent weeks.
That's the white supremacist short story on the revolutionary struggle to end a 42-year fascist dictatorship, and the 30,000 Libyan lives that were lost in that struggle. U.S. and other nations attacked Libya and killed Gaddafi. End of story. Finis. She continues:
AMY GOODMAN: Last week—last week, President Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could suffer the same fate as former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, if he refuses to give up his nuclear weapons:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The model, if you look at that model with Gaddafi, that was a total decimation. We went in there to beat him. Now, that model would take place if we don’t make a deal, most likely. But if we make a deal, I think Kim Jong-un is going to be very, very happy.
It should be noted that Amy Goodman cut short the Trump quote before he made it clear that he was offering US imperial protection to yet another dictator [i.e. “leader” in DN parlance.] as long as he plays ball. The Guardian continued its coverage to include this clarification from Trump:
“This with Kim Jong-un would be something where he would be there. He would be running his country. His country would be very rich.”
... “We’re willing to do a lot, and he’s willing … to do a lot also, and I think we’ll actually have a good relationship, assuming we have the meeting and assuming something comes of it. And he’ll get protections that will be very strong.”
Democracy Now would just as soon as not have to question this side of the deal. Trump is interested in control, not democracy, so he is willing to offer the Kim dynasty “protections” provided they “have a good relationship.” Gone is even the suggestion that the dictator step down and allow for free elections. No threat of “regime change” here, so long as he plays ball. DN should be pleased; they like some dictators — like Kim and Gaddafi. One thing they have in common with Trump, Putin, and Kim, is that they can't afford to actually admit that it was the Libyan people that took Gaddafi out, and it is the Korean people that pose the greatest threat to the Kim dynasty, the Russian people to Putin, and so on. Instead, she side-steps that issue and continues her objections to the use of the Libyan model as a threat. Then she introduces Tim Shorrock. Amy Goodman likes to bring subject matter experts onto the show:
AMY GOODMAN: So, Tim Shorrock, the issue of Mike Pence, the vice president, reiterating what John Bolton said about the Libyan model—again, if people remember, after the denuclearization deal, U.S. allies attacked Libya, and Muammar Gaddafi was not only overthrown, he was murdered in the streets of Libya by U.S.-backed rebels.
She wouldn't say “JFK was murdered in the streets of America.” What's up with this language?
On the screen she shows images of the slain Brother Leader. Of all the 30,000 Libyans, on both sides, that died in the civil war, the one most mourned by the white-Left, one might say, the only one mourned by them, is Muammar Gaddafi. Tim Shorrock joins in:
TIM SHORROCK: And, you know, clearly, Bolton understands, when he talks about the Libya solution, there’s two parts to it. You know, Libya gave up its nuclear weapons without making—you know, gave up its nuclear weapons before receiving any kind of economic aid or support. So that was one part of it. And then, of course, after he did give them up, his regime was overthrown by the U.S. and NATO.
Now their Libya myth has been stretched to the point where they are claiming Muammar Gaddafi even gave up nuclear weapons into the bargain. They've been spreading his propaganda for years. To hear them tell it, under Gaddafi, Libya had the best of everything! The best schools, a tremendous healthcare system, free housing and income for all, a great man-made river, even marvelous nuclear weapons! It was all a lie. As I reported just days ago, Gaddafi's “nuclear program” consisted of some unprocessed and unenriched uranium, a handful of centrifuges that they couldn't get to work, and purchased bomb plans they couldn't understand. The only enriching it ever did was accomplished by putting more Libyan oil money into the pockets of Gaddafi-connected contractors. It probably also added to the mercenary violence in Africa, as he sought to illegally import thousands of tons of uranium ore concentrate from neighboring Niger. Now, through the magic of time and corruption, this nothing has miraculously morphed into nuclear weapons! Who knew it could be so easy?
Given the terminal confusion this concept of the “Libyan model” embodies about who is responsible for the death of Libyan “Brother Leader” Muammar Gaddafi, I thought it might be useful to review some known facts surrounding his death. I like having those stubborn things on my side. Facts are a real problem for proponents of the “Libyan model” like John Bolton and Amy Goodman. But before we get to that, since the thesis of Bolton and Goodman is that it was just a US led regime change operation, it would be useful to review some lesser known facts about the Libyan revolt before NATO came in.
The Libyan Revolution before NATO
Neither the US imperialists or “Anti-imperialist” want to remember that there was a time when NATO supported Gaddafi, before it opposed him. That gets in the way of everybody's narrative that what happened to Gaddafi was the result of a US driven “regime change” plot. Allow me to refresh their memories. From my piece “NATO's Game Plan in Libya,” 3 July 2011:
NATO countries had little more than words to show for their “humanitarian concerns” after Qaddafi killed 700 protesters in Tripoli on February 21, some of them bombed with jet aircraft, and maybe 2000 in Benghazi days before. When President Obama spoke of this on February 23, he condemned the Libyan government, saying “suffering and bloodshed is outrageous, and it is unacceptable,” but he did not call for Qaddafi to step down nor did he announce any new sanctions the US would support to punish the leader that he said “violate international norms and every standard of common decency.”
...
Qaddafi started using military violence against protest rallies as early as Feb. 20, yet UN/NATO did not act militarily until March 19. They were willing to give Qaddafi almost a month to put down the rebellion with tanks, artillery and aircraft.
As Qaddafi's violent repression was taking thousands of lives in Libya, NATO was taking a wait and see attitude. On February 25, the NATO Secretary General made an official statement, “I do not consider the situation in Libya a direct threat to NATO or NATO Allies ...I would like to stress that NATO as such has no plans to intervene.” The next day he elaborated NATO's plan to deal with the Libyan crisis, “priority must be given to evacuation and possibly, also, humanitarian assistance.”
Here is a little more detail on how those 700 protesters died. It has a new relevance today, now that we are all more aware of the nefarious side of social media: while both Putin and Trump have put it to evil intent, Gaddafi topped them both years ago. On 21 February 2011, a date that will forever be remembered as Tripoli's “Long Night,” Gaddafi first used tweets to convince people that he had fled to Venezuela; then he used fake-activist accounts to call for a “celebration rally” in Green Square. The real activists in Tripoli, like the Free Generation Movement, tried to get the word out that it was a trap. Still, hundreds showed up. Then Gaddafi brought out the machine guns and worst, and slaughtered them. He killed 700 that night, mostly young people.
In this 29 June 2011, Al Jazeera video we hear from an eyewitness to this massacre. He also tells us of some measures NATO took to minimize civilian casualties. After the first few air strikes, the people of Tripoli saw how precise they were, and learned to stop worrying and love the bombing. They knew only Gaddafi's compounds were being targeted, so all over Tripoli, people could be heard cheering from the rooftops as NATO hit those targets.
An orderly in the hospital that night was interviewed by the BBC’s Pascale Harter in Tunisia, 17 June 2011, about what happened:
Many young people went to protest in Green Square that day, and I believe almost no-one came back alive that night.
Between 600 and 700 people were killed. I know this because I carried the bodies into my hospital.
Each ambulance brought three or four dead people. And the ambulances just kept coming and going, like delivery vans dropping off goods.
...
I think Col Gaddafi’s forces were using anti-aircraft guns on people.
The people had gunshot wounds to their heads or chests. The bullets had exploded and some of the people had their heads blown open. I tried to pick up the pieces.
This history is conveniently forgotten by believers in the “Libyan model” on both sides because that white chauvinist position holds that it was the autonomous decision of the US imperialists to take Gaddafi out even though he gave up his imaginary nuclear weapons eight years earlier.
While NATO air support stopped Gaddafi from using his air force and heavy armor against both the people and their freedom fighters, mostly; it didn't stop him from using his artillery or superior firepower on the ground. The National Transitional Council [NTC] very wisely forbid NATO ground troops, something NATO always strove for, but never achieved; the fighting on the ground was done by Libyans. Some thuwar had come over from the army and had some military training, most were citizen-soldiers, activists that formed themselves into brigades and found weapons, after Gaddafi made it clear a peaceful transition was off the table. Unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, there were never US boots on the ground in Libya. So while the NATO air cover prevented Gaddafi from doing to Libya what Assad has been allowed to do to Syria, it was still a hard slogging eight months of fighting by the revolutionary brigades before Gaddafi was finally run to ground in his last stronghold of Sirte.
The Death of Muammar Gaddafi
A National Transitional Council (NTC) fighter points a gun at Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte in this still image taken from video shot on October 20, 2011 and released on October 22, 2011. REUTERS/Reuters TV/Files
Muammar Gaddafi, was captured and killed on 20 October 2011. He was found hiding in a culvert west of Sirte and captured by NTC forces. He was dead shortly afterwards. This is how it happened.
Gaddafi and his mob had been hunkered down in a makeshift bunker for ten days as the seige of Sirte closed in on them. On that day, they made a desperate break for it in a 100 vehicle convoy that included Gaddafi and his closest cohorts in five cars at its heart. As the convoy left Sirte, it split up, but a large contingent stayed with Gaddafi.
In a Trump-like move, Gaddafi ignored the advice of his security people, and used his satellite phone. He did this knowing that when they had earlier fled from Tripoli to Sirte, his son, Mo’tassim, had traveled separately because he was still using his satellite phone to command what was left of their collapsing military effort. He suspected it could be tracked, and didn't want to endanger his father.
Once Gaddafi's voice was recognized by a NATO electronic warfare aircraft, most likely a French C160 Gabriel, it was “Game On!” The focus shifted to that contingent, and a pair of RAF Tornado GR4s aerial surveillance jets started tracking him. NATO command notified the NTC, which already had forces on the ground looking for Gaddafi, and hit the convoy with either $800,000 AASM smart munitions or 500lb Paveway smart bombs from a French Rafales jet, and Hellfire missiles from a US drone piloted from Las Vegas.
NATO used smart ordinances overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, in Libya. This keptcivilianloses, and infrastructure damage lower than your average war. This limitation was used by the “anti-imperialists” for a propaganda advantage. There were times went NATO would announce a pause in airstrikes, citing a shortage of smart munitions as the reason. Without ever mentioning the smart bomb limitation, the “anti-imperialists” would say that showed NATO was dropping so many bombs on Libya that they were running out of bombs!
It's very likely that even with that limitation, this excuse for these pauses was a lie. Close observers noticed how they always seemed to coincide with NATO attempts to wrangle concessions from the NTC on one question or another. The “anti-imperialist” protests actually supported NATO's public relations efforts to look like they were trying as hard as they could, when they were actually holding back.
Anyway, remember those airstrikes on Gaddafi's column? Those airstrikes left 15 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns burnt out, smashed and smouldering next to an electricity substation 20 yards from the main road, about two miles west of Sirte. See below:
The picture above is from the Daily Mail on the day after Gaddafi was killed. It clearly shows how Gaddafi's escape convoy was devastated by NATO air strikes. It is easy to see the violence of NATO's assault on Libya in this picture, but it also shows something else, it shows the extremely unusual delicacy and precision with which NATO carried out its war against Gaddafi, not Libya. While that is also clearly shown in this picture, it is easy to miss, if it's not pointed out. Notice the high voltage towers and electrical transmission facility in the background? What's unusual about that picture? This is near the very end of the war, in fact one of NATO's last strike missions. This is also an electrical substation outside of Sirte, which the NTC, with NATO air support, has had under siege for months. Clearly that power substation would be an easy target, easier than a moving convoy, and yet there it stands, apparently unscathed. That is because in its air campaign over Libya, unlike the way the US made war in Iraq, Afghanistan and just about everywhere else, NATO took serious pains to avoid damaging the infrastructure. The NTC had other ways to turn the lights out in Sirte during the siege. As a result, while Libya had many problems after the war ended, replacing a bomb-damaged electrical grid wasn't one of them. Bashar al-Assad didn't even take such care in bombing his own cities. That is why where some see in this picture the results of a vicious NATO air attack on “Brother Leader,” I see airwar done right.
This may be because it was the European allies that carried out the overwhelming majority of the strike missions, and they used a care and precision that is foreign to the US Air Force. The US carried out less than 17% of the NATO strike sorties over Libya, less than half as many as France, and the US actual “dropped ordinances” in less than 17% of those “strike sorties.” ; no doubt Libya is better off for that. I guess they didn't like only using expensive bombs, but that doesn't stop the joint US imperialist/anti-imperialist project from complaining that the US is responsible for these bad things that happened to Libya.
After the airstrike, which destroyed the vehicle in front of Muammar Gaddafi's car, he and his son Mo’tassim, and defense minister Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, took shelter in a nearby house, which was then shelled by NTC forces.
Mo’tassim then took 20 fighters and went to look for undamaged cars, having persuaded his father to come too. “The group belly-crawled to a sand berm,” a UN report, released in March 2012 said, and then through two drainage pipes and set up a defensive position. One of Gaddafi's guards threw a grenade at advancing thuwar on the road above, but it bounced off the concrete wall above the pipes and fell in front of Gaddafi. The guard tried to pick it up, but it exploded, killing both the guard and Yunis Jabr.
Did this bounced grenade cause most of the bloody injuries we see in the pictures of the dead Gaddafi, or was it just beatings by a mob, as we are led to believe? The 2012 UN report says he was wounded by grenade fragmentation, which shredded his flak jacket, and left him on the floor, dazed and in shock, bleeding from a wound in the left temple. Gaddafi next took refuge in a large drainage pipe with several bodyguards. A nearby group of NTC fighters opened fire, wounding Gaddafi with gunshots to his leg and back. According to one unnamed NTC fighter, one of Gaddafi's bodyguards also shot him, apparently to spare him from being captured.
A senior NTC official said that no order was given to execute Gaddafi. According to another NTC source, “they captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and, then they killed him.” Mahmoud Jibril, leader of the NTC, gave an alternative account, stating that “when the car was moving it was caught in crossfire between the revolutionaries and Gaddafi forces in which he was hit by a bullet in the head.” The UN commission was unable to determine exactly how Gaddafi died, or whether it was an unlawful killing.
If the NATO air strikes had taken out Gaddafi directly, this joint imperialist/anti-imperialist claim that NATO killed Gaddafi would be much easier to make, but they didn't. By all accounts, he was taken out by the thuwar, if he wasn't killed by his own people. This is a real problem for this most basic claim of the “Libyan model.”Nowadays this is being dealt with by not even mentioning the role of the thuwar, or when forced to recognize their role they are the “US-backed rebels.” In their thesaurus “backed” is a synonym for “controlled,” meaning the thuwar were agents of US imperialism, so their role can be zeroed out anyway.
Could the NTC have taken out Gaddafi without NATO support? There is no doubt that NATO played an indispensable role in locating and stopping Gaddafi so soon after he abandoned his human shield in Sirte and got out in the open, just as it was indispensable in bringing the whole conflict to this point so quickly. However, it's not clear how long Gaddafi could have evaded capture in any case. It's not even clear where they thought they were going. They were fleeing their last stronghold. They were like the Jefferson Davis train fleeing South at the end of the US Civil War, hoping some foreign country might take them in.
The claim that the US overthrew and killed Gaddafi is really twice chauvinist vanity. It is the Libyan revolutionaries, under the leadership of the NTC, not NATO, that deserves the main credit, or blame, if you are a Gaddafi fan, for these accomplishments. It started and ended with them. NATO just reduced the cost in lives, and accelerated the same outcome that would probably have been reached anyway; unless Gaddafi was able to obtain the type of massive foreign support, including armies, that allowed Assad to turn the tide, kill hundreds of thousands, and hang on for another round.
NATO's role was a secondary one, but no matter how you view NATO's role, it is a big mistake to give the US all the credit (or blame) for it. The US flew a lot of missions because it provided the bulk of the air reconnaissance and refueling, but when it came to strike missions, not so much. The US had “dropped ordinances” only132 times in the first 92 days of flight operations! The US was a laggard in Libya. As compared to most NATO operations, this was a European led show. That is why I say that this united white-Left/alt-Right shorthand for the Libyan revolution, “the U.S. and other nations attacked Libya, toppling and killing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi” is doubly chauvinistic.
I mean, honestly, since it was French warplanes that hit Gaddafi first, as his tanks approached Benghazi on 19 March 2011; a French plane that hit him last, as he was fleeing Sirte on 20 October 2011; French aircraft that air-dropped arms to thuwar stuck in a tight spot, and French planes that flew 33% of the strike sorties, twice as many as US planes, shouldn't Amy Goodman be saying “France and other nations attacked Libya, toppling and killing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi,” even if she insists on leaving the Libyans out of it? No! That won't do either. The Libyan Model requires the mythology of US dominance.
There were also a few other features from the Friday Headlines on Democracy Now that relate to these matters, such as this report on Syria:
Government Seizes ISIS-Held Refugee Camp Outside Damascus
In Syria, government forces have recaptured the Yarmouk Camp for Palestinian refugees outside Damascus, after a brutal month-long campaign drove ISIS from the area. The assault reportedly killed scores of civilians and left most of the camp in ruins. With its capture, Syria’s military now controls all the areas around Damascus for the first time in seven years.
ISIS hasn't held the camp for seven years; it hasn't been around that long, so what history are we missing? The Free Syrian Army, and its Palestinian ally Liwa al-Asifa, freed much of it from Assad regime control in 2012. ISIS didn't overrun the camp until April 2015. Here are some screenshots from the DN video report:
As you can see, they recaptured it with indiscriminate artillery and barrel-bomb attacks. Yarmouk was once of the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. The silence of the white-Left, as the Assad regime treated it worse than Israel treats Gaza, did much to reveal the capricious nature of their support for the Palestinian people.
That was the last anti-Assad stronghold in Damascus. After seven years of unrestricted air assault by the Assad regime and its allies, bomb ravaged cityscapes like this are all too common in Syria. These pictures could have just as easily come from Aleppo, East Ghouta, Homs, Idlib, or Hama. This damage represents the triumph of the policy positions championed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. There was no UN sanctioned no-fly zone in Syria, and no countries, not even France, stepped forward to offer a shield to the civilians under the bombs. Code Pink would protest the thought!
Car Bomb Explodes in Benghazi, Killing Seven and Injuring 20
In Benghazi, Libya, a car bomb exploded outside a hotel on a busy road in the city’s center late Thursday, killing at least seven people and injuring 20 others. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the latest in a series of bombings in Libya that followed the 2011 NATO bombing campaign that helped U.S.-backed rebels overthrow and kill Muammar Gaddafi.
Notice how they have adopted the Trump policy of repeating lies so often they start being taken as the truth? Its like they can't even mention Libya without reminding us of “the 2011 NATO bombing campaign that helped U.S.-backed rebels overthrow and kill Muammar Gaddafi.” Below are a series of screenshots from that report. We can see from the damaged cars and destruction in the street that it was a terrible blast. In addition to seven people killed, 20 were injured. Sadly, it is a sign of these times. This could have happened in any major city in Africa, or in London or Paris, for that matter, and if it had happened in any other city in Africa, its chances of being covered by Democracy Now would have been a lot slimmer, but Democracy Now has a point to make about Libya, about how Libya was destroyed by NATO intervention, and even today is still dealing with the consequence.
Again, if you look at the background, rather than what is given to you in the foreground, these pictures tell a different story. If you look beyond the carnage in the street, you will see that the city of Benghazi is still standing proudly. While it's a little hard to be make out, because it is a night scene, none of the visible buildings appear to be bombed-out or war-damaged. Fortunately these night pictures do show us quite a bit because Benghazi appears to be a city of lights. This indicates that the NATO assault didn't take out the electrical infrastructure, and Gaddafi's air force wasn't allowed to do that either. It also indicates that the electrical grid has somehow “miraculously” been maintained these past seven years amidst all the Libyan chaos we keep hearing about.
There are a lot of people on the street. Does that mean things aren't so bad in Benghazi that people can't get on with their lives, meaning its not still the war zone many would have us believe? It also looks like they have a functioning emergency response system amidst all the anarchy and chaos.
People are not afraid to come out at night, in large numbers, even after there has been a terrorist attack. There is another thing about these terror attacks in Libya that gets little notice. Remnants of the Gaddafi regime are behind many of them. This isn't just random violence that has sprung up as a result of a poorly-conceived “regime-change” operation, as the Right/Left fusion would have you believe. That is another part of the myth. Although Gaddafi was killed, other leading members of his cabal went into hiding. They have been funding counter-revolutionary chaos as part of what they fancy is the “Green Resistance,” and they still have a lot of stolen Libyan money to do it with. It's no coincidence that Sirte, Gaddafi's home and last stronghold, became the center of ISIS in Libya before it was thrown out.
Even when they are reporting on the terrorist murder of seven Libyans just the day before, they can't help but mourn Gaddafi, and call him out by name. That's all Libya is to them; it's a place US/NATO bombed and killed Gaddafi. This report is not because they are in the habit of giving much coverage to recent happenings in Libya. This report is meant as an object lesson.
Back to Yarmouk:
Does anybody at Democracy Now really think these bombed out Syrian cities will look as good as Benghazi in a few years? This is what Benghazi would have looked like if Democracy Now had prevailed against the French jets that stopped Gaddafi from doing to Benghazi what he had just done to the much smaller Ajdabiya.
My current favorite “what if fantasy” begins with: What if the Left had given both material and ideological support to the Libyan thuwar from the very beginning? I know that there were significant elements within their revolutionary struggle that were open to that. Could that have helped in any way to move their struggle in a more cohesive and progressive direction? In my opinion, the main problem with the Libyan revolution has been the lack of a strong internal Left leadership, not the lack of revolutionary energy from the masses. That leadership can be simulated externally [Consider the French influence on Ho Chi Minh.], but that is most unlikely in an environment in which what is passing itself off as the international “Left” is so hostile to their revolution.
If things had went a little better in Libya, might the outcome in Syria have been different? There are many cascading effects to consider. Revolutionary Libya was already one of the strongest material and moral supports the Syrian people had. The new Libyan General National Congress voted hundreds of millions of dollars to support the uprising. Many Libyan thuwar, in the spirit of Che Guevara, joined the struggle in Syria as the one in Libya wound down. Many of Gaddafi weapons joined the fight on the other side. If Obama's CIA hadn't stopped them from getting his best anti-aircraft weapons [SA-7 MANPADS], much of Syria could have been spared being barrel-bombed into rumble.
A Left in the US and Europe that came to understand and support the Libyan revolution, probably would have supported the one in Syria too. What difference could that had made? If organizations like Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, and Democracy Now had come into this struggle on the side of the Syrian people, rather than seeing in their struggle an opportunity to score points against “neoliberalism,” could that had helped move things in the right direction? If they had spent the years protesting Assad's daily barrel-bombing of civilians, rather than hitting the streets only to defend his occasional use of chemical weapons, would that have changed things? Would ISIS still have been able to take Mosul if Obama had not reneged on his “red-line” promise? Would ISIS, and other reactionary Islamists, even have the mass appeal they now enjoy, if the “Left” alternative hadn't been shown to be so bankrupt? And finally, if these things had been handled differently by the Left, would Trump even be president now?
That is all water under the bridge. The question of the day is: Shall we have a Left that has humanity's best interest at heart and can learn from its mistakes, or one that is an appendage to white fascism? There is another Libyan model that is being quite purposely obscured by this revised definition; it is the example of a people who took their destiny into their own hands and threw off a fascist dictatorship that had ruled most of them all their lives. In that, I see hope for all of us.
Libyan government fighters celebrated after routing the last remaining forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from the coastal town of Surt on Thursday. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times. [Please allow me one last observation on background. We are told that the rebels who fought Gaddafi were all Islamic extremists, yet few of the men in this picture are sporting the type of beard that many consider mandatory for a devout Muslim man.]
These are the people who killed Gaddafi, and no amount of white-Left/alt-Right unity, around a so-called “Libyan model” that leaves them out of the picture, will change this truth.
Originally titled "Trump, Bolton and Amy Goodman on North Korea and the Libya Myth" Updated 24 May 2018
Two days ago I published this under the title above. Since then the promotion of this American fantasy about who really overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and why, has moved the world closer to thermonuclear war as the fracas around these comments leads to the cancellation of the scheduled 12 June denuclearization talks. Yesterday The New York Times reported:
The North Korean official who issued the warning singled out Vice President Mike Pence for remarks that she called “ignorant and stupid.” In an interview broadcast on Monday on Fox News, Mr. Pence warned that North Korea’s government could end up like that of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan leader.
...
In a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Thursday, the North Korean official, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, referred to “unlawful and outrageous acts” by top American officials and said that Mr. Pence had made “unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya.”
...
“As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice president,” Ms. Choe said. “In case the U.S. offends against our good will and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the D.P.R.K.-U.S. summit.”
Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.
So now this Libya Myth, popularized by pundits on both the Right and the Left, has brought the world closer to nuclear war. Fantasies have consequences!
As Arabs started rising up all over the Middle East and North Africa in the early months of 2011, a Libyan majority joined together in a successful effort to overthrow the brutal 42 year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. When he started using his air force to attack unarmed civilians, the UN sanctioned a no-fly zone, and NATO, for reasons that weren't entirely humanitarian, stepped up to enforce it. While NATO itself never put forces on the ground, it's clear Gaddafi never would have been defeated in less than a year without its air support. In the end, Muammar Gaddafi, the "Brother Leader" that had murdered hundreds of thousands in the Libya desert, was killed by his own people after he was caught fleeing from Sirte.
In the years since then, a kind of mythology has developed around what exactly happen in Libya and the role of US imperialism in causing it. In the US, this mythology has both Right and Left variants, although they share a great deal of unity. Both variants give little or no credit to the Libyan people for the toppling of Gaddafi. If they are mentioned at all, it is as agents of others. All the credit, or blame for this "regime change" operation is given to the US imperialists. Both see it as an example of US military might in the service of regime change. While the Right takes credit for ousting Gaddafi in all his badness; the Left blames the US for the sorry state of affairs in Libya today.
In the past few weeks this Libya Myth has been mashalled by both the Right and the Left in the North Korean discussions. So it has been on full display. This began on Sunday, 29 April 2018, when Trump's new hawk, John Bolton, told Chris Wallace on Fox News what North Korean denuclearization means to him:
"We have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004."
And just to be clear, he repeated himself on "Face the Nation," CBS News:
"I think that's right. I think we're looking at the Libya model of 2003, 2004."
North Korea responded to Bolton's bluster by putting disarmament talks in doubt. Addressing Bolton's comments, Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s first deputy minister of foreign affairs, said:
“This is not an expression of intention to address the issue through dialogue. It is essentially a manifestation of awfully sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq which had been collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.”
The North Korean government has a natural unity with Americans of both the imperialist and "anti-imperialist"ilk persuasion. None can entertain the idea that the Libyan government was toppled by the Libyan people, so the next day, Trump used this Libya Myth to give the United States dubious credit for having "decimated" Libya and then threatened North Korea with the same if they don't yield, all while appearing to "correct" Bolton:
"The Libya model isn't the model that we have at all when we're thinking of North Korea," Trump said. "In Libya, we decimated that country. That country was decimated."
... “The best thing he could do is to make a deal,” Trump said of Kim. The Libya model “is what will take place if we don’t make a deal.”
Then Poodle Pence backed Trump with his own version. CNN reported:
US Vice President Mike Pence warned North Korea that it could end up like Libya if it fails to make a nuclear deal with Washington.
"There was some talk about the Libyan model last week, and you know, as the President made clear, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong Un doesn't make a deal," Pence said Monday.
Trump is willing to forgo any pretense of supporting the struggle for human rights in North Korea, so on Tuesday he used the Libya Myth, not only to imply that Kim Jong Un could only be overthrown with US support, but that the US was willing to guarantee the future of his dictatorship. He said:
"We will guarantee his safety, and we've talked about that from the beginning. He will be safe. He will be happy. His country will be rich."
He's inviting Kim to join the US sponsored corrupt dictators club. Trump has no problem with corrupt dictators.
Yesterday, Democracy Now chimed in with the Left version of this racist Libya Myth as part of its Headline news when Amy Goodman reported:
North Korea is threatening to cancel the meeting, after President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said the U.S. should use the so-called Libyan model for denuclearization in North Korea. In 2011, the U.S. and other nations attacked Libya, toppling and killing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, eight years after Libya negotiated sanctions relief from the United States in exchange for renouncing its nuclear program.
Even in this popular US Left variant of the Libya Myth, the Libyan people are invisible. They have no role. They aren't worth a mention, except there are significant problems with this Libya Myth as it applies to North Korea:
Gaddafi never had a significant nuclear weapons program to give up in the first place. Bolton, and everyone else who draws these parallels, between what North Korea has created and what Libya claimed, is still drinking the kool-aid that Gaddafi constantly served up about how great everything was in his Libya. He was very much like his buddyDonald Trump in that regard, but comparing the North Korean nuclear weapons program to what Gaddafi had is like comparing me to Francis Ford Coppola because I once directed Martin Sheen. The Libyan effort was largely limited to buying materials and plans. Although they had acquired enough raw uranium for a bomb, they never had more than a dozen working centrifuges, and they were all imported. They never managed to build a single working centrifuge in Libya, never enriched anything, and didn't even have engineers that could understand the plans they bought. It was easy for Gaddafi to give up this "program" in return for all the much more useful conventional arms the NATO countries were then willing to sell him. In 2015 the Nuclear Threat Initiative [NTI] said this about the nuclear weapons program Gaddafi gave up:
Following the December 2003 announcement, a Libyan delegation informed the IAEA Director General that "Libya had been engaged for more than a decade in the development of a uranium enrichment capability." Libya admitted to importing natural uranium, centrifuge and conversion equipment, and nuclear weapons design documents. However, Libyan officials said that the enrichment program was at an early stage of development, that no industrial scale facilities had been built, and that Libya lacked the technical know-how to interpret the weapons design documents.
On the other hand, the North Koreans have not only a proven atomic bomb capability; they have a proven thermonuclear capability, and the heavy lift missiles that can carry a nuclear warhead to the continental United States. Many knowledgeable observers think they have already crossed the threshold of the nuclear power club, and Trump and company are in denial thinking they can roll it back. One thing is certain, any comparison between the North Korean nuclear program and what Gaddafi gave up in 2003 is based on a mythology being promoted because of its usefulness.
The other part of this excursion into FantasyLand involves seeing a direct connection between Gaddafi's decision to give up the embryonic nuclear program he had in 2003, and his loss of power and life eight years later. Believing this magic means leaving the Libyan people and their heroic struggle completely out of the picture, and giving the US military credit or blame it doesn't deserve. President Trump said, "In Libya, we decimated that country. That country was decimated." By "we," he means the armed forces he now commands, and by "decimated," he means largely destroyed. This is how Trump sums up the Libya Myth and this view is widely echoed on both the Right and the Left.
Beyond the fundamentally racist notion that whatever role the Libyans may have played in the destruction of the regime that ruled over them for 42 years is not worth mentioning, crediting or blaming the US for "regime change" in Libya, and implying that this was connected to what he did or didn't do with his so-called nuclear program eight years earlier, is ridiculous. There are at least two other major problems with this Libya Myth:
The first is the idea that the 2011 NATO air strikes "decimated" Libya. The more than 9,000 NATO strike sorties used smart weapons exclusively for very carefully planned missions than didn't include random secondary targets. The result was a massive air campaign that did little damage to infrastructure and killed less than a hundred un-intended civilians; 60 by the UN's count, 72 according to HRW, 55 according to Amnesty International, and 40-70 according the the New York Times. It was not the type of air campaign carried out by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, and again in Iraq and Syria, that caused tremendous infrastructure damage with massive civilian casualties as exampled by the re-taking of Raqqa last October in which more than 1,800 civilians were killed. In contradiction to the popular image of it in the West as no different from these others, the NATO air campaign over Libya should be seen as the standard by which all others are judged. It should be held up as an example, and we should demand that if air power is to be used at all, that it be used with no less care and precision than NATO has already shown possible over Libya.
The second part of the myth is that what NATO did over Libya was largely an American show. It was not! The US was a straggler that had to be dragged into the fight against Gaddafi by its NATO partners. Between 31 March 2011 and an AFRICOM report on 29 June 2011, the US had only flown 801, or 16.1% of the 4,963 strike sorties to that point, but it gets even more pathetic than that; the US had "dropped ordinances" in only 132 of those strike sorties, most were "dry" runs! To give you a sense of scale, know that France was carrying out strike sorties at more than twice the rate of the US. Britain, Canada, Belgium and Italy were also players, and even little Denmark had "dropped ordinances" 705 times by 11 August 2011.
Do you see now why I say the Libya Myth is doubly chauvinist?
First, it is chauvinist in crediting NATO with the overthrow of Gaddafi, when it was the Libyan people that did the heavy lifting, and the dying.
Second, it fully credits the US for NATO's impact when that was hardly the case. I have no doubt that the low number of civilian casualties is directly related to the low number of bombs dropped by the American forces, but that factual reality if far from fantasies on both the US Left and Right that thinks we were the only monkey in that show. 132 bombs dropped in 3 months buys the US all the credit!
