Hazeleyed Honey wrote:
Mo Matik - So the allied forces suddenly care about Libyan civilians and intervened for humanitarian reasons? This is the same man they were doing underground dealings with during the past decade and who was channeled millions of dollars through them. When decades earlier they were saying he was the most vicious dictators and responsible for all these terrorist acts against them.
This is all just a new war theater and an extension of the US/NATO military agenda entrenched in North Africa.
It definitely is. If you look into the history foreign intervention of wars in the Middle East, besides the protection of Israel, oil has been the driving force for intervention. This is no secret and historians, as well as famous high U.S. officials have always proclaimed this. As Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State said: "You control the oil and you control the nations".
Let me paraphrase an article, "Operation Libya and the Battle for Oil" from Michel Chossudovsky (my University prof).
The real objective of intervening in Libya is not for humanitarian reasons, but to take possession of Libya's oil reserves, go in and destabilize the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and eventually privatize the country's oil industry, and then after this to transfer the control and ownership of Libya's oil wealth into foreign hands. The NOC is ranked 25 among the world’s Top 100 Oil Companies.Libya is among the globe's largest oil economies with approximately 3.5% of global oil reserves, which is more than twice those of the U.S.
The strategic assumptions behind using military intervention in Libya are reminiscent of previous U.S.-NATO military operations which occured in Yugoslavia and Iraq. Oil is the trophy of U.S.-NATO led wars.
Libya is a prize economy and it is known that war is good for business. Wall Street, the Anglo-American oil giants, the U.S.-E.U. weapons producers would also be beneficiaries of a U.S.-NATO led military campaign directed against Libya. Libyan oil is a bonanza for the Anglo-American oil giants. While the market value of crude oil is currently over excess of $100/barrel, the cost of Libyan oil is extremely low, probably as low as $1.00 a barrel. Let's also remember that Libya possesses the largest oil reserves in Africa.
The financial stakes to have to get involved in this for foreign superpowers are extremely high. The military intervention's goal is dismantling Libya's financial institutions as well as overtaking billions of dollars of Libyan financial assets deposited in Western banks. It gets a lot more complicated in which this is also about getting to extend power for geo-political reasons.
In a post-Gaddhafi Libya, a U.S.-NATO led intervention leading to the installion of a U.S. puppet regime is also being done in order to exclude China from the region and edging out China's National Petroleum Corp.
So, who will gain from this intervention if it succeeds? The Anglo-American oil giants such as British Petroleum which signed a hefty deal with the Gaddafi government for oil in 2007 and is amongst other potential beneficiaries of this U.S.-NATO military intervention.
More generally, this is to continue the redrawing of the map of Africa, which is a a process of neo-colonial re-division and overtake oil. History always repeats itself and oil has been one of the sole reasons of the conquest of the rich oil countries in the regions of the Middle East and Africa and it is the same reason today. I don't know how anyone cannot see the obvious links and how this is not for oil.
If Libya was the Congo and was not rich in oil, you think the allied forces would give a damn? Really? Look at the genocide that has been going in the Congo, where is the outcry for intervention? Why is Libya being more valued in intervening and not the Congo to help stop the genocide?
Intervention is never strictly humanitarian and does have a lot to do with how Western countries feel about the person in power. If the dictator is not catering to Western demands enough, and is becoming a problem you can be sure that they won't be in power for long. Qaddafi may have had some wonderful, socialist ideas in his youth but it was quite clear in the past decade that the man had gone off the deep end, and the tribal tensions in the country between the East and the West were only getting worse. When things deteriorated to the point of him killing civilians in Benghazi the uprising began. Now the West had two choices; let things take their own course and not get involved at all or intervene because it was clear Qaddafi was going to show no remorse in his handling of the rebels. This was not like Egypt or Tunisia where the army refused to fire on civilians, this was going to turn into a full fledged massacre.
Your main point doesn't make sense, to be blunt. You say that this is all about oil in your opening paragraphs. You say that if we control Libya's oil there will be tremendous profits and that "war is good business." Then, later on, you bring up the point that:
British Petroleum which signed a hefty deal with the Gaddafi government for oil in 2007
So if the man was ALREADY selling large companies such as BP oil, why would we have to go in and take it? In fact,
Officials in the rebel leadership have previously played down the likelihood that they will tear up Libya's revenue sharing agreements with foreign oil majors, saying they will respect contracts signed by the National Oil Company (NOC).
'Of course, (it includes) oil (contracts),' Shammam told Reuters. 'If people steal your money are you going to let them get away with it?' He said if companies were found to have won their contracts illegally, they would be given the option to pay back 'funds to the Libyan people.'
Aside from that, war is good for a business that relies on fragile pipelines that could be destroyed...during a war? Instability is never good for business unless you work for Halliburton.
Libya does hold a great deal of the worlds oil reserves, however they are ninth on the list. If oil was the main concern, why are we not in Iran? Why did we tacitly support the uprising in Egypt as well, since they have such a small share?
Now of course I'm not saying this is 1000000% about humanitarian intervention and has nothing to do with oil or any economic gains. That would be foolish. But it is also foolish to look at things as if they are strictly black and white. There is a tremendous gray area that people overlook due to the different things that factor in to decisions to intervene in conflicts such as these.
