Power Monopoly

Global opinion makers aren’t asking who in the world empowered the U.S. to reject the proposal made by Gadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, to hold internationally supervised elections in Libya. That’s how much Washington’s monopoly of power goes unquestioned by the rest of the world. It is precisely in this spirit that the bombing of Libya developed. We are told it is being bombed in the name of democracy and human rights. So it happens that Tripoli is being transformed into a field of rubble, supposedly in order to protect its people from Gadhafi’s thugs. Otherwise, they’re in danger of being threatened with a humanitarian catastrophe.

In an attempt to stave off the catastrophe of Western anti-catastrophe aid, the Tripoli regime had come up with a peaceful solution to the civil war, but it was never considered by the rebel forces, who said that the only solution was a military solution — a viewpoint picked up and advanced by the Western powers as well. Gadhafi’s opponents were so convinced by “their” air superiority and the West so confident of “their” ground forces that neither would even consider any solution other than a military victory. That’s why the Chavez plan to end the bloodletting was rejected out-of-hand, despite the hypocritical protestations that they only sought an end to the violence they claimed was being committed exclusively by the Libyan government. The war against Libya was cloaked in the pretext of a Security Council resolution that had only the goal of regime change in view right from the beginning.

A democratic coup was apparently out of the question, as evidenced by the knee-jerk rejection of the latest offer advanced by the Gadhafi camp. A rebel spokesman stated that there would be no free elections held in Libya until the Gadhafi family had stepped down. In other words, no free elections until one of the two main political factions had been eliminated. It is the anti-imperialist faction that intends to eradicate homegrown imperialism. That Gadhafi, by way of cozying up to the imperialist wolves, put Libya in a position of being subjugated by Western powers, thereby losing the support of the masses, is a different matter entirely.

The democracy they’re talking about is a “divided democracy.” It remains to be seen whether the alliance of CIA agents, defectors and scattered al-Qaida cadres will fulfill the expectations of their mentors or end up cursing the genie they can’t put back into the bottle.