Source : http://thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=38026&Cat=9
Mercifully, it was Vladimir Putin and not Osama bin Laden who characterised the UN resolution number 1973 as “defective and flawed”, even though he could have stopped it by using Russian veto power. “It allows everything,” he said, “it resembles medieval calls for crusades.”
Regardless of this characterisation and regardless of the reasons given by Britain and France, the two “great powers” responsible for massacres across the Muslim world as well as desecration of almost the entire Muslim world during the last three centuries, this UN resolution really takes us to a new level of western shrewdness and a new level of “international” coalition against Muslims. It has achieved what no previous resolution was able to. Also for the first time, we have “Muslim” support for West’s aggression against a Muslim country in this naked form. Imagine upstarts like Qatar and UAE sending “their” planes to bomb Libya! Imagine a whole array of potentates and dictators “helping” Libyans get rid of their dictator!
There can hardly be any situation more ironic than this. But nothing matters anymore. Neither logic nor ethics; all that matters now is brute force. Morals, ethics, even basic human decency has long gone. If anyone is in doubt, just have a look at the grinning face of Jeremy Morlock, the young US soldier, posing for a photo, with his hand holding up the head of the dead Afghan boy he and his colleagues have just killed. These pictures were released by the German magazine Der Spiegel and they are available on the internet. But the strange thing is that there has been no outcry against this inhumanity, no “international” cry for justice, decency, even humanity. Just a horrible silence. According to testimony collected by Der Spiegel the boy had, as a matter of routine, lifted up his shirt to reveal that he was not hiding a suicide bomb vest. That was the moment Morlock, according to a pre-arranged plan, threw a grenade at the boy that exploded while other members of the rogue group who called themselves the “kill team” opened fire. Then they took pictures, smoked cigarettes and made jokes.
It is hard to believe that we are living in the twenty-first century. Even crusaders would feel ashamed for these acts of inhumanity. But nothing matters anymore, only greed and lust for power and brute force matter and these are abundantly present in the cunning “diplomacy” of the western world as well as in their arsenal of deadly weapons.
But back to Libya – a country forsaken by the entire Muslim world because of its ruler. This is of course not without justification: the maverick colonel has been a thorn in every eye and his “craziness” has soured relationships with many rulers, but to hand over Libya to the West for an undisclosed and open-ended invasion is utter folly. The UN is of course not to be blamed; as the true mistress of its creators, it always does what it is asked to. But unlike Iraq, this time around there is no outrage against this intervention; no mention of the duplicity that characterises this western intervention while similar situations in Bahrain, Morocco and Yemen remain unattended.
“Libya is not another Iraq,” we are being repeatedly told, but it is. The US resolution is so vague that it really allows everything. Air strikes can cripple Libyan air force, they can even destroy its communication system, but eventually somebody has to arrive on the soil and that is where the slippery resolution has already started to lead. First it was said that it will only be the enforcement of a no-fly zone that will be required. Then, that new incarnation of Lord Blair, Mr David Cameron, started to talk about “international forces knocking over the government”; in other words, the objective is “regime change”, just as it was in Iraq. His government comfortably won the Commons vote by 557 to 13, even though a few backbenchers used the six-and-a-half-hour debate to raise concerns about how the intervention would end.
Of course the nightmarish scenario for most westerners is the deployment of ground troops, not because they think it is immoral and illegal, but because it contains the possibility of body bags returning home – something everyone dreads. Thus when pressed on whether British ground troops could be deployed in a defensive role, Britain’s cunning response was: “I don’t think we would at this stage rule anything in or rule anything out but I agree with the distinction that you draw between landing an occupying force and the use of anybody on the ground. This is called testing waters, preparing public for the inevitable. Both Britain and France already know that they will need to send in troops even though US support is lacking for this, Mr Obama also knows this to be in the plan.
So, if we have western forces in Libya, and the Middle East continues to explode at the rate at which it is exploding, then where are we going with this open ended intervention: Are we at the beginning of a grand reconfiguration of the entire region? Are we at the beginning of a new world order in which Europe will claim its share of Muslim world along with the United States of America? If yes, then who is next? Syria is the obvious choice, as Yemen is too poor and too remote and all the other countries are already client states.
Imagine a new Middle East under western control, with all its oil and riches serving the masters. Imagine the fate of some one billion Muslims whose lives will be reconfigured in a manner they cannot even imagine. And the irony of this situation is countries like Pakistan, which can really play a role in stopping these new crusaders, are mired in an endless drama of no consequence.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com
Mercifully, it was Vladimir Putin and not Osama bin Laden who characterised the UN resolution number 1973 as “defective and flawed”, even though he could have stopped it by using Russian veto power. “It allows everything,” he said, “it resembles medieval calls for crusades.”
Regardless of this characterisation and regardless of the reasons given by Britain and France, the two “great powers” responsible for massacres across the Muslim world as well as desecration of almost the entire Muslim world during the last three centuries, this UN resolution really takes us to a new level of western shrewdness and a new level of “international” coalition against Muslims. It has achieved what no previous resolution was able to. Also for the first time, we have “Muslim” support for West’s aggression against a Muslim country in this naked form. Imagine upstarts like Qatar and UAE sending “their” planes to bomb Libya! Imagine a whole array of potentates and dictators “helping” Libyans get rid of their dictator!
There can hardly be any situation more ironic than this. But nothing matters anymore. Neither logic nor ethics; all that matters now is brute force. Morals, ethics, even basic human decency has long gone. If anyone is in doubt, just have a look at the grinning face of Jeremy Morlock, the young US soldier, posing for a photo, with his hand holding up the head of the dead Afghan boy he and his colleagues have just killed. These pictures were released by the German magazine Der Spiegel and they are available on the internet. But the strange thing is that there has been no outcry against this inhumanity, no “international” cry for justice, decency, even humanity. Just a horrible silence. According to testimony collected by Der Spiegel the boy had, as a matter of routine, lifted up his shirt to reveal that he was not hiding a suicide bomb vest. That was the moment Morlock, according to a pre-arranged plan, threw a grenade at the boy that exploded while other members of the rogue group who called themselves the “kill team” opened fire. Then they took pictures, smoked cigarettes and made jokes.
It is hard to believe that we are living in the twenty-first century. Even crusaders would feel ashamed for these acts of inhumanity. But nothing matters anymore, only greed and lust for power and brute force matter and these are abundantly present in the cunning “diplomacy” of the western world as well as in their arsenal of deadly weapons.
But back to Libya – a country forsaken by the entire Muslim world because of its ruler. This is of course not without justification: the maverick colonel has been a thorn in every eye and his “craziness” has soured relationships with many rulers, but to hand over Libya to the West for an undisclosed and open-ended invasion is utter folly. The UN is of course not to be blamed; as the true mistress of its creators, it always does what it is asked to. But unlike Iraq, this time around there is no outrage against this intervention; no mention of the duplicity that characterises this western intervention while similar situations in Bahrain, Morocco and Yemen remain unattended.
“Libya is not another Iraq,” we are being repeatedly told, but it is. The US resolution is so vague that it really allows everything. Air strikes can cripple Libyan air force, they can even destroy its communication system, but eventually somebody has to arrive on the soil and that is where the slippery resolution has already started to lead. First it was said that it will only be the enforcement of a no-fly zone that will be required. Then, that new incarnation of Lord Blair, Mr David Cameron, started to talk about “international forces knocking over the government”; in other words, the objective is “regime change”, just as it was in Iraq. His government comfortably won the Commons vote by 557 to 13, even though a few backbenchers used the six-and-a-half-hour debate to raise concerns about how the intervention would end.
Of course the nightmarish scenario for most westerners is the deployment of ground troops, not because they think it is immoral and illegal, but because it contains the possibility of body bags returning home – something everyone dreads. Thus when pressed on whether British ground troops could be deployed in a defensive role, Britain’s cunning response was: “I don’t think we would at this stage rule anything in or rule anything out but I agree with the distinction that you draw between landing an occupying force and the use of anybody on the ground. This is called testing waters, preparing public for the inevitable. Both Britain and France already know that they will need to send in troops even though US support is lacking for this, Mr Obama also knows this to be in the plan.
So, if we have western forces in Libya, and the Middle East continues to explode at the rate at which it is exploding, then where are we going with this open ended intervention: Are we at the beginning of a grand reconfiguration of the entire region? Are we at the beginning of a new world order in which Europe will claim its share of Muslim world along with the United States of America? If yes, then who is next? Syria is the obvious choice, as Yemen is too poor and too remote and all the other countries are already client states.
Imagine a new Middle East under western control, with all its oil and riches serving the masters. Imagine the fate of some one billion Muslims whose lives will be reconfigured in a manner they cannot even imagine. And the irony of this situation is countries like Pakistan, which can really play a role in stopping these new crusaders, are mired in an endless drama of no consequence.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com
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