Source: Al JazeeraJoseph Massad
As the uprising proceeded in Tunisia last December and January and as
it picked up in Egypt in January and February, developments seemed
clear. Despite attempts to suppress the press, much of the news of what
was unfolding reached national and international audiences immediately.
The situation changed dramatically when the uprisings began in Bahrain,
Yemen, Libya, Syria, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. While a quasi news blackout
suppressed coverage of the ongoing popular revolt and its violent
suppression in Bahrain by Bahraini and Saudi forces (and only
intermittent coverage of Oman was allowed), we continued to get
important updates from Yemen. It was in Libya where the lies and
propaganda started from the first week of the revolt. It was there that
international forces, extending from the Gulf to Europe to the US, took
charge of propagandising against Gaddafi (that he used his forces to
strafe demonstrators, that his forces received Viagra and raped hundreds
of women, that he used “African” mercenaries against his own people,
that he was preparing to use chemical weapons against his people, that
he had already killed 50,000 Libyans, etc. – all proved to be lies that
international observers and agencies finally exposed as baseless
fabrications) and ultimately of overthrowing Gaddafi’s dictatorship
under the guise of the popular uprising led by NATO forces who actually
bombed and killed hundreds of Libyan civilians.
We have seen
similar developments on the Syrian scene with much propaganda by the
regime and its international enemies who also began to speak for the
popular revolt, whether in the Gulf-controlled press and satellite
television stations, or by the Western media, and the Western
“representatives” of the Syrian demonstrators.
In the cases of
Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen (not to mention Morocco, Jordan,
Oman, and Saudi Arabia where less massive but substantial demonstrations
have continued for months), the Arab League, under US instructions,
made no move to intervene at all, while in the cases of Syria and Libya,
following US instructions, the League moved swiftly. This is not the
first time that the League moves against a member state to facilitate
foreign invasions. The dress rehearsal for this was the Iraq situation
in 1990/1991, when the Arab League (like the United Nations following
the fall of the Soviet Union) became another arm of US imperial power.
It was then that the League joined forces with US and European powers to
invade the Gulf, which was the first step in legitimising the second
American invasion in 2003 to unseat Saddam Hussein. Saddam was a brutal
dictator that the US and France helped sponsor in the 1980s and who did
their bidding when he invaded Iran, an invasion that led to the death of
one million Iranians and four hundred thousand Iraqis. But Saddam was
not fully obedient to imperial will and retained a measure of
independence from US imperialism despite his valuable services to it. At
the time, many cautioned the so-called Iraqi opposition in exile, which
called for the invasion, that the US invasion would result in an
imposition of a regime that is at least as bad as Saddam if not worse.
The loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and the total
destruction of the country, the massive current repression and
corruption of the American-installed regime, one would think, should be a
cautionary tale to any Arab who seeks US help in overthrowing Arab
dictators.
But if the story of Iraq is ignored, could anyone
ignore the calamity that is hitting Libya as we speak under the guise of
the new NATO-led government, and the first dose of violence and
repression this government has unleashed on the Libyan people in the
name of NATO democracy (more doses are in store of course)? Did the
Libyan people revolt against the brutal dictatorship of Gaddafi to
replace it with NATO-sponsored pillage and repression?
