It's getting rather tedious. Almost every day I stumble upon nonsense from people who try to frame the conflict in Libya as a war between the resources-greedy Western powers and that knight of liberation and freedom, Libyan mafia boss Mu'ammar Gaddafi and his thieving offspring.
Here's an example I received on 5 June from dayofrageindc@gmail.com. As an Arab who has lived and worked in Libya for many years, it seems to me that dayofrageindc@gmail.com probably has never been to Libya and does not have the faintest clue about Libya, Gaddafi or Africa. Here is what he or she says:
This war is about the West using pawns, stooges and proxies to control African banking and resources. The Libyan rebels are assisting colonialists while betraying their countrymen and leading to the slaughter of their people. The rebels have betrayed all of Africa. Africa needs to unite and mobilize 100,000 soldiers from across Africa and expel NATO. NATO is treating Africans like savages and disregarding their leaders.
Dayofrageindc@gmail.com is either supremely ignorant or has a remarkably short memory. Let us not forget how the Libyan uprising began. It did not start as a war over "control of African banking", whatever that means, given that Africa is largely bankrupt and many African states live on Western handouts. Nor was it ever an attempt to grab African resources – Libya's oil under Gaddafi was well and truly under Western control anyway, so why would the West want to control something they already controlled?
As I have reminded the myriad of Gaddafi praise singers on previous occasions, the Libyan uprising began in mid-February as a series of peaceful protests by ordinary people demanding their civil and political rights. They were met with lethal violence by the regime, which used heavy weapons, helicopters as well as hired hands, and from there on the civil rights protests escalated to armed conflict, with the protestors arming themselves with weapons seized from arms dumps and secret police compounds.
The West – in effect, France, Britain and the United States – intervened very reluctantly, after Gaddafi promised a bloodbath in Benghazi "within 48 hours", but also for domestic political reasons – Nicolas Sarkozy to prop up his flagging popularity and David Cameron to appear “moral”. In fact, the US did not want to intervene at all and was embarrassed into doing so only by Gaddafi’s impending massacre and by criticism that Washington was slow in condemning Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s and Hosni Mubarak’s suppression of peaceful protests in Tunisia and Egypt.
The fact that dayofrageindc@gmail.com believes Africa can "unite and mobilize 100,000 soldiers" to fight NATO indicates that even Mars is too close to Earth for him/her to be a Martian with any idea about Africa.
Also, given the central role played by African – especially Chadian, Nigerien and Malian – mercenaries in suppressing the Libyan uprising, and the atrocities they committed against innocent civilians, the fact that dayofrageindc@gmail.com has the audacity to say that the Libyan "rebels have betrayed all of Africa", is an indicator of the depth to which he/she has sunk, for only a morally depraved, ignorant moron can use such words to describe people who are fighting for basic freedoms and rights which he/she takes for granted.
Dayofrageindc@gmail.com says that "NATO is treating Africans like savages and disregarding their leaders".
Of course, no one country or people holds a monopoly over savagery – witness World Wars I and II, the violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and Pol Pot’s “Year Zero” in Cambodia, to mention but a few examples.
But when it comes to Africa, I will suffice to say this: take a look at the contemporary history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Rwanda and Sierra Leone and tell me how you would describe the mass rape and wanton murder and mutilations inflicted on innocent civilians in those countries?
And NATO disregarding African "leaders"? "Leaders"? Who elected Gaddafi as Libyan "leader"? Certainly not the Libyans.
I am no fan of NATO, Britain, France or the US. They are hypocrites of the first order – you only have to look at their policies towards Israel/Palestine, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and their ideologically-motivated destruction of Iraq, to see this. But their intervention in Libya, regardless of the ulterior motives they undoubtedly have, saved hundreds of thousands of innocent Libyan civilians from certain death.
So, dayofrageindc@gmail.com and your ilk, go and do your homework and think twice before you choose to share your ignorance with the world at large.
