Nobel Peace Winner Obama’s Shameful Libyan Warmongering

Obama’s Libyan intervention could turn out to be the president’s most spectacular mistake. It explains some of the decline in his support among Black voters, although still very high. Black talk radio shows have been deluged with calls denouncing the U.S.’s military role in Libya and criticism of President Obama.

[Black Star News Editorial]

With respect to Libya President Barack Obama has lost his bearings and should return the Nobel Peace Prize to Oslo. The president should do it before the Nobel Selection committee issues a recall.

President Obama has now authorized the deployment of armed U.S. predator drones for NATO’s combat operations in Libya. This weaponry has been used to target and assassinate hostile combatants in Afghanistan–it has also killed hundreds of innocent civilians including people attending weddings. In Libya the obvious target for Western assassination would be Muammar al-Quathafi.

Obama has ignored the African Union’s peace proposal–snubbing the entire African continent in favor of former Imperial powers France’s and Britiain’s militarism.

The Obama Administration’s Libyan intervention could turn out to be the president’s most spectacular mistake. It explains some of the decline in his support among Black voters, although still very high. Black talk radio shows have been deluged with calls denouncing the U.S.’s military role in Libya and criticism of President Obama.

President Obama also lent his signature and voice to language which called for al-Quathafi’s assassination in the Op-Ed article on Libya recently published in newspapers around the world and co-authored with the war mongers French dictator Nicholas Sarkozy and British prime minister David Cameron.

The Op-Ed was cynically titled “Libya’s Pathway to Peace,” even as NATO bombs rained on the country. The article in part declared that al-Quathafi “must go and go for good.” The only way a person goes “for good” is when they are killed. It’s shameful for a United States president to call for the assassination of a foreign leader; any leader. These kind of Fatwas are unseemly for leaders of alleged democracies.

As Gen. Colin Powell famously said: If you break it you own it. President Obama now owns Libya.

Should warfare continue well into next year it will become a serious election issue and the so-called bi-partisan support for the intervention will quickly melt as Republicans will says it’s “Obama’s war.” Should the U.S. drones be used to assassinate al-Quathafi, or kill civilians as has happened in Afghanistan, and Libya descends into the earlier type of chaos witnessed in Iraq or the current mayhem and dysfunction in Afghanistan, it will also be on President Obama’s watch.

Not many sensible Americans buy the rationale that France, Britain and the U.S. are in Libya to “save the lives of innocent civilians.” Charity begins at home — let the U.S first create jobs for the more than 13 million innocent civilians here in the United States. Let the U.S. first find homes for people in New Orleans who are still homeless and in poverty years after Katrina.

The hypocrisy of U.S. policy in singling out Libya for U.S. armed intervention to “rescue” civilians, following the French and British leads, is insulting to the intelligence of all level headed Americans given the bloodshed and turmoil elswhere in the region.

If U.S. priority is to save lives in the region, why not shift to Syria, where Bashar Assad has unleashed his forces against a genuine popular uprising in the country killing several hundreds within the last few weeks? Syria’s rebellion seems spontaneous, without the obvious aid of the CIA, NATO and al-Qaeda, unlike the Libyan case.

In Yemen, the U.S.-backed dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh has similarly killed people who are demanding an end to his decades long regime. His top military commanders have broken and the country –which the U.S. says is fertile operational territory for al-Qaeda– is in a civil war. Where is the intervention by the coalition of the caring; France, Britain and the U.S.?

In Bahrain, the majority Shiite Muslims suffer under the dictatorship of a Sunni minority monarchy which crushed dissent with Saudi Arabia’s armed intervention. Where is the U.S. reaction or intervention there?

Saudi Arabia itself is a corrupt oil monarchy where women enjoy no rights and convicts are still beheaded. Qatar, which has emerged as the loudest voice in the military campaign in Libya, itself deserves to be liberated from its monarchy. Democracy is good–but it must be good for all.

What honestly then is the justification for the fixation and armed intervention in Libya alone as the rest of the region descends into further turmoil? Why ignore the African Union’s peace proposal delivered by South African president Jacob Zuma and three other African presidents and a foreign affairs minister? The proposal called for a ceasefire, creation of a humanitarian corridoor, and political negotiations for a new dispensation.

Why insist on escalating military support for the armed forces from Benghazi that even corporate newspapers such as The New York Times –unashamed apologists for warfare acting like Benghazi’s ministry of information– acknowledge: are not disciplined; fire indiscriminately into civilian areas; sell into the illegal arms market sophisticated missile weaponry they acquire; and, carry out atrocities including beheadings and mutiliations of Black captives?

These are the forces that are expected to usher in the new dawn in Libya?

China and Russia should demand for an immediate emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to review the abusive implementation of Resolution 1973 which authorized the so-called “no-fly zone” which was a cover for open warfare.

Libya needs an immediate ceasefire and negotiations for a constituion and national elections. It does not the continuation of bloodshed, encouraged and financed by the insatiable oil greed of France, Britain, and the United States.

“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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