One of our regular columnists, David Lott, a retired Royal Air Force pilot, paints a bleak picture of the European and U.S. intervention in Libya during the recent 'Arab Spring'. His interpretation of causes for the downfall of Ghaddaffi is unsettling, and one this reader has not seen before. As always comments and additional observations welcome. - Glenn N. Holliman
Sirte: Full Circle
by David Lott
This past week there was an air strike by the US upon the Libyan city of Sirte which completed a tragedy of errors. Errors that are so stupendously stupid that one questions whether they were stupid at all and were perhaps deliberately intended.
Back in the days when the West was courting Colonel Ghaddafi things were very different. So what happened to bring down his regime and his death? He was a cruel dictator and an absolute ruler but his country was secular, women wore colouful clothes and its health system was first class. He protected Europe’s soft underbelly from mass migration and he locked up people traffickers. He warned European leaders that he needed financial help to maintain this position and specifically asked Italy for $5 bn to defray his costs. He then made a fatal decision.
Ghaddaffi traveled Africa with a determined plan to sell his oil along with other producers not with dollars but in a new currency backed by gold. In other words he challenged the supremacy of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This was to be done on a regional basis within an African Union. He amassed a massive stock of gold to underpin the enterprise.
It so happened that this coincided with the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings all across the Middle East. This ‘spring’ collapsed, as perhaps some intended, to be replaced by political Islam.
Right, David's flowers at his Normandy home.
The US was outraged at Ghaddifi’s plan for a non US dollar based commerce in oil as repercussions, if others followed suit, would be huge in terms of US power and influence. The dollar itself would have come under massive fire as countries around the world unloaded trillions of dollars they no longer needed.
The scene was set for regime change in Libya using Ghaddafi’s suppression of revolution as the excuse. The Western press was flooded with reports of Ghaddafi’s cruel repression of the dissidents who had no chance of success so long as Ghaddafi’s Air Force commanded the skies.
The scene of action moved to the UN Security Council where Russia blocked an Iraq style invasion. So a No Fly Zone was proposed in order to give the dissidents a chance to defeat Ghaddafi’s forces themselves. At first Russia once again refused to support this plan as President Putin stated he feared that it would be used as a cover for Western backed regime change. The US Nobel Laureate President of the US stated this would not be the case as did Britain and France’s representatives. Russia allowed the No Fly Zone to go ahead on this basis and abstained.
From day one of the air campaign, largely conducted by UK and French aircraft against an enemy that threatened their countries in no way whatsoever, it was clear that regime change most definitely was the intention all along.
Putin was fooled and he has never trusted the West subsequently.
Ghaddafi was defeated and murdered when he was captured and then shot. Ghaddafi came from Sirte, and for many of his soldiers and officers it was their home town. What did they find on their return? Death and destruction as a result of UK and French bombing.
Meanwhile Libya disintegrated into the familiar chaos mirroring that in Iraq. Civil society collapsed and the army’s weapons found their way to terrorist factions across Africa with repercussions being particularly venomous in Nigeria and the Sudan.
Back in Sirte there was ferocious anger and fury at the West. It became fertile territory for ISIS who orchestrated the invasion of Europe through mass migration. The people traffickers had been freed to operate by Western intervention. They continue to make fortunes from economic migrants whilst seeding these people, very largely young men, with Jihadis. They stated they would send 5000 and the EU Intelligence authorities have now agreed that there are 5000 sleeper Jihadis in Western Europe.
And yesterday the US completed the circle by bombing Sirte once again. Presumably to try to undo the damage they had begun in order to protect the dollar.
The losers have been the thousands of migrants drowned, the whole of the Libyan society, US diplomats murdered in Benghazi, the millions of people who through no real fault of their own, as they are mostly trying to better themselves then make the journey across the Mediteranean only to find that Europe cannot cope with the vast scale of immigration that is wholly impossible to integrate into Western culture.
In addition there are the victims of Boko Haram, the murdered tourists on a Tunisian beach, the young women molested and raped across Europe and the sense of fear engendered by terrorism that now pervades many countries in the EU.
Quite a list is it not? Has anyone been held to account? No. Cameron, Sarkozy, have left the stage without honour, Obama remains in office and Hilary Clinton aspires to that office.
One last question - where is the Libyan gold? - David Lott
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