March 28, 2011
Libyan Rebel Gains Could Be Fleeting, U.S. Military Says
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/africa/29libya.html?hp

TRIPOLI, Libya — As rebel forces backed by allied warplanes pushed toward one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s most crucial bastions of support, the American military warned on Monday that the insurgents’ rapid advances could quickly be reversed without continued coalition air support.

“The regime still vastly overmatches opposition forces militarily,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, the ranking American in the coalition operation, warned in an email message on Monday. “The regime possesses the capability to roll them back very quickly. Coalition air power is the major reason that has not happened.”

The sober assessment came as President Obama prepared to address the nation on Monday night about the American role in Libya amid continuing questions about its objectives and duration.

General Ham said there had been some “localized wavering” of government forces, notably in Ajdabiya, to the east, but so far only isolated instances of military or government officials defecting to the opposition. His remarks came after American and European bombs battered the coastal city of Surt — the rebels’ next objective — in Colonel Qaddafi’s tribal homeland on Sunday night, permitting the insurgents to advance toward the city’s doorstep.

But news reports from Surt on Monday said there was no sign of a rebel takeover and the city seemed quiet. Nonetheless, some military vehicles and dozens of civilian cars loaded with personal belongings were seen heading west from Surt toward Tripoli, 225 miles away.

A battle for Surt could help decide the war. Earlier, the rebels had recaptured two important oil refineries and a strategic port within 20 hours.

General Ham’s warning, however, offered a somber counterpoint and underscored the essential role of Western airstrikes, now focused mainly on Colonel Qaddafi’s ground troops, in reversing the rebels’ fortunes. It also framed anew the question of how the poorly equipped and disorganized rebel forces might fare against Colonel Qaddafi’s garrison in Surt, where air cover may be less useful.

Left open, as well, was the question of how the allies could justify airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s forces around Surt if, as seems to be the case, they enjoy widespread support in the city and pose no threat to civilians. On Monday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, strongly criticized the allied attacks, saying “we consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council resolution,” news agencies reported.

The resolution authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya. It also called for an arms embargo that applies to the entire territory of Libya, which means that any outside supply of arms to the opposition would have to be covert.

Mr. Lavrov’s criticism was echoed by the Libyan government. “This is the objective of the coalition now, it is not to protect civilians because now they are directly fighting against the armed forces,” saod Khaled Kaim, the deputy foreign minister, at a news conference in the capital, Tripoli. “They are trying to push the country to the brink of a civil war.” At a news conference in Naples, Italy, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard of Canada, who has been named to lead the NATO air campaign, said that the goals of the air campaign remained the same, “to protect and help the civilians and population centers under the threat of attack,” The Associated Press reported.

As Western warplanes again bombed sites around Tripoli and other Qaddafi strongholds, NATO agreed at a meeting in Brussels to take over the mission. The decision effectively relieved the United States of leading the fight, and ended a week of squabbling.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the change, pushed by the United States, would allow the military to begin reducing its presence.

In interviews on Sunday, Mr. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton left open how long the American commitment would be.

An official with the Pentagon said Sunday that it was already beginning to reduce the number of American warships involved in the operation. The official said that at least one of the Navy submarines that had fired Tomahawk missiles into Libya had left the area, and that a further naval pullout was likely.

Mr. Obama will be able to cite some early success, as the airstrikes have lifted the rebels back from the brink of defeat in the eastern city of Benghazi and enabled them to rush west along the coast past their farthest gains of their previous peak weeks ago.

After clashes with government forces near the town of Al Uqaylah, rebel fighters met little resistance on Sunday as they pushed from Ajdabiya past the oil towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf, recapturing the two important refineries. By the evening, they had pushed the front line west of Bin Jawwad, according to fighters returning from the front.

“There wasn’t resistance,” said Faraj Sheydani, 42, a rebel fighter interviewed on his return from the front. “There was no one in front of us. There’s no fighting.” However, there were reports of gasoline shortages, as the rapid advance stretched rebel supply lines.

In Tripoli, the explosions of about 10 large bombs near the city were heard downtown on Sunday night, followed by barrages of antiaircraft fire and cascades of tracers. At a news conference, a short time later, Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, declined to comment on the exact location of the battle lines. But he argued that Western powers were now attacking the Libyan Army in retreat, a far cry from the United Nations mandate to establish a no-fly zone to protect civilians.

“Some were attacked as they were clearly moving westbound,” he said. “Clearly NATO is taking sides in this civil conflict. It is illegal. It is not allowed by the Security Council resolution. And it is immoral, of course.”

In western Libya, however, the rebel-held city of Misurata was still under siege by loyalist forces. By Sunday evening, rebels were again reporting street fighting in the center of the city as well as renewed shelling and mortar fire from Qaddafi tanks and artillery from west and northwest of the city.

On M onday, the government declarted the city “liberated” and organized a bus trip there for Western journalists, who have been barred from reporting from the Misurata for weeks. But the rebels reported fighting on at least two fronts, and said that continuing allied airstrikes outside Misurata had destroyed a major ammunition depot that exploded in a blaze of light. It was still burning 13 hours after the initial blast, said Muhammad, a rebel spokesman there whose full name was withheld for his family’s safety.

Speaking over a satellite hook-up and hospital generator, he contradicted statements from the Qaddafi government that it had restored power and water to the city. He said that rebels had used a local generator to restore electricity to about half the city. But he said that water remained cut off and that residents were using a small supply from a desalination facility there. The reports were impossible to confirm because of the news blackout.

In Tripoli on Sunday, most stores were closed. Usually busy streets were deserted. Officials said the port had been closed to ships carrying refined fuel as well as food and other goods. Gasoline was in increasingly short supply, and lines of cars at gas stations stretched for several blocks. Some motorists said they had turned out before dawn for a chance to fill up, or waited in line for more than two hours to reach the pump.

Residents also stood in long lines for bread at bakeries, mainly because the migrant workers Libyans rely on to bake and do other service jobs have fled the country.

The NATO agreement was announced Sunday evening by its secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He said that “NATO will implement all aspects of the U.N. resolution. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He said the decision would take “immediate effect,” but it may take up to two days for the transfer to be completed.

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Tripoli, Libya, and Kareem Fahim from Ajdabiya, Libya. Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti from Washington, Steven Erlanger from Brussels and Alan Cowell from Paris.

....................................................................

Analysis: Rebel leaders cautious as airstrikes reshape battle against Gaddafi
Libyan revolution's leaders privately acknowledge turnaround is no reason to believe they can pull off military victory
Chris McGreal in Ben Jawad
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 27 March 2011 18.44 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/27/libya-rebel-leaders-cautious-battle-gaddafi

The barrelling advance of Libya's rebel army over the weekend was even more rapid than its panicked retreat in the face of Muammar Gaddafi's guns a fortnight earlier.

But the revolution's leaders privately acknowledge that the turnaround in the fortunes of its ill-disciplined and poorly trained forces, which took back all the lost ground in a matter of hours without a fight, is no reason to believe they can pull off a military victory.

The conflict has been reshaped by the western air strikes against Gaddafi's tanks and guns.

But as the rebels move closer to the town of Sirte, the revolutionary council is attempting to bring on board disparate tribal and local leaders and encourage a popular uprising to pave the way for a rebel takeover.

Sirte is Gaddafi's birthplace, and he is likely to heavily defend the town. Part of the problem for the revolutionaries is that they say they lack the weapons to fight, although they have seized a number of tanks, armoured vehicles and guns abandoned during the hurried retreat of Gaddafi's army.

Even if the rebels have the men trained to use them – which is open to question – it will be hard to turn such weapons on Sirte when the UN resolution authorising air strikes specifically says those strikes are designed to protect civilians.

In those circumstances, it would be the rebels who threatened unarmed Libyans. Nato and the coalition would be hard put justifying air strikes to help the insurgents take a town which has not revolted against Gaddafi, particularly if the revolutionaries are endangering its population.

The revolutionary council hopes to alter that equation by inducing the people of Sirte to rise up against Gaddafi, in part by persuading local leaders in a town still thought to be broadly loyal to its son to recognise the tide of history and switch sides.

If the revolutionaries can pull it off, Gaddafi would face the option of putting down the uprising by force – and so create a justification for air strikes – or ceding control.

But if he were to lose Sirte, it would be likely to have a profound and possibly fatal political impact across the areas of Libya he still controls.

...................................................................

A CIA commander for the Libyan rebels
28 March 2011
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/pers-m28.shtml

The Libyan National Council, the Benghazi-based group that speaks for the rebel forces fighting the Gaddafi regime, has appointed a long-time CIA collaborator to head its military operations. The selection of Khalifa Hifter, a former colonel in the Libyan army, was reported by McClatchy Newspapers Thursday and the new military chief was interviewed by a correspondent for ABC News on Sunday night.

Hifter’s arrival in Benghazi was first reported by Al Jazeera on March 14, followed by a flattering portrait in the virulently pro-war British tabloid the Daily Mail on March 19. The Daily Mail described Hifter as one of the “two military stars of the revolution” who “had recently returned from exile in America to lend the rebel ground forces some tactical coherence.” The newspaper did not refer to his CIA connections.

McClatchy Newspapers published a profile of Hifter on Sunday. Headlined “New Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 years in Suburban Virginia,” the article notes that he was once a top commander for the Gaddafi regime, until “a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s.”

Hifter then went over to the anti-Gaddafi opposition, eventually emigrating to the United States, where he lived until two weeks ago when he returned to Libya to take command in Benghazi.

The McClatchy profile concluded, “Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, DC.” It cited a friend who “said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family.”

To those who can read between the lines, this profile is a thinly disguised indication of Hifter’s role as a CIA operative. How else does a high-ranking former Libyan military commander enter the United States in the early 1990s, only a few years after the Lockerbie bombing, and then settle near the US capital, except with the permission and active assistance of US intelligence agencies? Hifter actually lived in Vienna, Virginia, about five miles from CIA headquarters in Langley, for two decades.

The agency was very familiar with Hifter’s military and political work. A Washington Post report of March 26, 1996 describes an armed rebellion against Gaddafi in Libya and uses a variant spelling of his name. The article cites witnesses to the rebellion who report that “its leader is Col. Khalifa Haftar, of a contra-style group based in the United States called the Libyan National Army.”

The comparison is to the “contra” terrorist forces financed and armed by the US government in the 1980s against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra scandal, which rocked the Reagan administration in 1986-87, involved the exposure of illegal US arms sales to Iran, with the proceeds used to finance the contras in defiance of a congressional ban. Congressional Democrats covered up the scandal and rejected calls to impeach Reagan for sponsoring the flagrantly illegal activities of a cabal of former intelligence operatives and White House aides.

A 2001 book, Manipulations africaines, published by Le Monde diplomatique, traces the CIA connection even further back, to 1987, reporting that Hifter, then a colonel in Gaddafi’s army, was captured fighting in Chad in a Libyan-backed rebellion against the US-backed government of Hissène Habré. He defected to the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), the principal anti-Gaddafi group, which had the backing of the American CIA. He organized his own militia, which operated in Chad until Habré was overthrown by a French-supported rival, Idriss Déby, in 1990.

According to this book, “the Haftar force, created and financed by the CIA in Chad, vanished into thin air with the help of the CIA shortly after the government was overthrown by Idriss Déby.” The book also cites a Congressional Research Service report of December 19, 1996 that the US government was providing financial and military aid to the LNSF and that a number of LNSF members were relocated to the United States.

This information is available to anyone who conducts even a cursory Internet search, but it has not been reported by the corporate-controlled media in the United States, except in the dispatch from McClatchy, which avoids any reference to the CIA. None of the television networks, busily lauding the “freedom fighters” of eastern Libya, has bothered to report that these forces are now commanded by a longtime collaborator of US intelligence services.

Nor have the liberal and “left” enthusiasts of the US-European intervention in Libya taken note. They are too busy hailing the Obama administration for its multilateral and “consultative” approach to war, supposedly so different from the unilateral and “cowboy” approach of the Bush administration in Iraq. That the result is the same—death and destruction raining down on the population, the trampling of the sovereignty and independence of a former colonial country—means nothing to these apologists for imperialism.

The role of Hifter, aptly described 15 years ago as the leader of a “contra-style group,” demonstrates the real class forces at work in the Libyan tragedy. Whatever genuine popular opposition was expressed in the initial revolt against the corrupt Gaddafi dictatorship, the rebellion has been hijacked by imperialism.

The US and European intervention in Libya is aimed not at bringing “democracy” and “freedom,” but at installing in power stooges of the CIA who will rule just as brutally as Gaddafi, while allowing the imperialist powers to loot the country’s oil resources and use Libya as a base of operations against the popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

Patrick Martin

..................................................................

Saturday, March 26, 2011
Libyan rebel leader spent much of past 20 years in suburban Virginia
By Chris Adams | McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/26/111109/new-rebel-leader-spent-much-of.html

WASHINGTON - The new leader of Libya's opposition military spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled — even in his late-60s — to return to the battlefield in his homeland, according to people who know him.

Khalifa Hifter was once a top military officer for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but after a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s, Hifter switched to the anti-Gadhafi opposition. In the early 1990s, he moved to suburban Virginia, where he established a life but maintained ties to anti-Gadhafi groups.

Late last week, Hifter was appointed to lead the rebel army, which has been in chaos for weeks. He is the third such leader in less than a month, and rebels interviewed in Libya openly voiced distrust for the most recent leader, Abdel Fatah Younes, who had been at Gadhafi's side until just a month ago.

At a news conference Thursday, the rebel's military spokesman said Younes will stay as Hifter's chief of staff, and added that the army — such as it is — would need "weeks" of training.

According to Abdel Salam Badr of Richmond, Va., who said he has known Hifter all his life — including back in Libya — Hifter -- whose name is sometimes spelled Haftar, Hefter or Huftur -- was motivated by his intense anti-Gadhafi feelings.

"Libyans — every single one of them — they hate that guy so much they will do whatever it takes," Badr said in an interview Saturday. "Khalifa has a personal grudge against Gadhafi... That was his purpose in life."

According to Badr and another friend in the U.S., a Georgia-based Libyan activist named Salem alHasi, Hifter left for Libya two weeks ago.

alHasi, who said Hifter was once his superior in the opposition's military wing, said he and Hifter talked in mid-February about the possibility that Gadhafi would use force on protesters.

"He made the decision he had to go inside Libya," alHasi said Saturday. "With his military experience, and with his strong relationship with officers on many levels of rank, he decided to go and see the possibility of participating in the military effort against Gadhafi."

He added that Hifter is very popular among members of the Libyan army, "and he is the most experienced person in the whole Libyan army." He acted out of a sense of "national responsibility," alHasi said.

"This responsibility no one can take care of but him," alHasi said. "I know very well that the Libyan army especially in the eastern part is in desperate need of his presence."

Omar Elkeddi, a Libyan expatriate journalist based in Holland, said in an interview that the opposition forces are getting more organized than they were at the beginning up the uprising. Hifter, he said, is "very professional, very distinguished," and commands great respect.

Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. Badr said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family.

.................................................................

Loving the Libyan Rebels
by Yoshie Furuhashi
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/furuhashi270311.html

The multinational empire has come up with a great deal for itself: using Libya's own money to finance the Libyan rebels to fight against Libya. Ali Tarhouni, a US-educated economist
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/africa/24minister.html
who just got appointed "finance minister" of the rebel "Interim Transitional National Council," explains the deal:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3a3gGpFyxPAadBByhJBoUdJ2igg

"Right now, there is no immediate crisis kind of need for cash. We have some liquidity that allows us to do the basic things," he said, such as paying salaries and immediate needs.

He added that many countries have agreed to provide credit backed by the Libyan sovereign fund, and the British government has also agreed to give the rebels access to 1.4 billion dinars ($1.1 billion) that London did not send to Gadhafi.

This way, the empire's expenses will be limited to the costs of bombing, etc., which are shared among its members anyway. If all goes well, the Barack Obama administration, for instance, might even manage to avoid having to seek a supplemental in the short term
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/initial-costs-of-libyan-intervention-on-low-end-of-analysts-estimates/
(that is, if the highly suspect rebel leaders don't pocket much of the money themselves, failing to pay their retainers, as has happened many times in cases like this). A splendid little war perfect for the age of austerity.

But the member of the empire getting the most out of this war for now is probably not the power elite of the United States but the ruling class of the Gulf states. Libya is straight up gold for them: doing Libya in pleases the West; but more importantly it helps deflect attention away from their joint repression of intifadas at home, especially the big one in Bahrain. And on top of it all, some of them apparently stand to make some money: "Rebels Say Qatar Ready to Market East Libyan Oil," according to Reuters today.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/27/us-libya-rebels-oil-idUSTRE72Q1ON20110327
Sweet crude in return for Al Jazeera's war propaganda and Qatar's participation in the war itself. There is no business like war business.

That the Libyan rebels love the empire and vice versa is quite clear by now. This is how Nicholas D. Kristof describes just how much the Libyan rebels love the Americans for bombing their own country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/opinion/24kristof.html

This may be a first for the Arab world: An American airman who bailed out over Libya was rescued from his hiding place in a sheep pen by villagers who hugged him, served him juice and thanked him effusively for bombing their country.

Even though some villagers were hit by American shrapnel, one gamely told an Associated Press reporter that he bore no grudges. Then, on Wednesday in Benghazi, the major city in eastern Libya whose streets would almost certainly be running with blood now if it weren't for the American-led military intervention, residents held a "thank you rally."

What remains mysterious is why so many leftists, Arabs, and Iranians, secular or religious, reformist or revolutionary, in the West or in the axis of resistance fell deeply and blindly in love with the Libyan rebels. No matter how much they love the rebels (who remain "revolutionaries" in the eyes of the slaves of love), there is no evidence whatsoever that the rebels love them or what they stand for. There wasn't even a hint of flirtation in that direction, in fact. To be sure, the Libyan rebels' marriage to the empire may eventually end in a bitter divorce, but, if Afghanistan and other precedents like it are any indication, such a divorce is unlikely to lead to a rebound affair with anything remotely in the interest of the unrequited lovers of the Libyan rebels.

In recent days, though, I have noticed that the propaganda machine of the Islamic Republic of Iran began to change tack on Libya. Maybe the Iranian establishment finally realized that the Libyan rebels aren't pro-Iranian. In contrast, leftists and Hezbollah, perhaps more selflessly idealistic than Iranian officials, have yet to ask that crucial question of international solidarity, which unlike charity is always a two-way street: Are the rebels for us or against us?

* * *

Postscript

Khalifa Hifter, chosen by the rebel "National Council"
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/26/111109/new-rebel-leader-spent-much-of.html
to lead the rebel army, has now been revealed as a defector turned CIA operative, a man who was wrong when pro-Gaddafi, wronger still since then.

Yoshie Furuhashi is Editor of MRZine.

....................................................................

A war of Western imperialism?
Backing of Libyan rebels apparently aims to clean up West's image across the Arab world.
Ahmed Moor Last Modified: 28 Mar 2011 13:09
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/201132472924305721.html

There is a lot about the Western intervention in Libya that could go wrong – and it remains to be seen whether bombing Gaddafi and his mercenaries is a good decision.

However, large numbers of people around the world appear to support the objectives of the anti-regime forces. Also, the indigenous resistance movement – which requested help – would have been annihilated in the absence of those air strikes.

George Bush's legacy of destruction extends beyond the piles of brick, flesh and mortar that we have been tallying for a decade now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than any other figure in the post-war 20th century, the last American president did more to erode the gains in legitimacy made by supranational institutions and their proponents.

After the Iraq war, the United Nations began to be perceived as a US rubberstamp body – or worse – as a meaningless exercise in bureaucracy.

The UN can only function legitimately through consensus (or consensus-lite) decision-making and it was clear that the US was strong-arming weaker states in 2003.

George Bush and the neoconservatives hijacked the legitimate language of consensus-based intervention for their own ill use.

So activists are not wrong to react cynically when they hear that language today; I don't believe that bombing Gaddafi is a humanitarian gesture.

But George Bush should not be allowed to delegitimise the mechanisms – which are distinct from the language – of global intervention in situations that offend human rights and dignity.

Today, many people agree that the situation in Libya is horrifying. Furthermore, the Libyan rebels requested aid from the outside world.

Those two conditions alone do not justify intervention but they are crucial components of a legitimate international decision to employ force.

What is a successful intervention?

The question of what a successful intervention means is a very important one. At the very least, it means taking a back seat and supporting the rebels in the capacity that they desire.

It also means not attempting to install a new government that's pliant and subordinate to the West. Compromise on these two principles will quickly diminish the legitimacy of the campaign against Gaddafi.

Many people have argued that the intervention is a Western imperialist project. Here, it is worth remembering that Western powers were already in control of Libya's oil when the revolution began.

Muammar Gaddafi was as much "our guy" as Hosni Mubarak. Condoleezza Rice personally visited Libya and met with Gaddafi in 2008.

The following year Tony Blair pushed for the release of the Lockerbie bomber to secure a sweetheart deal with the Libyan regime (although it was Gordon Brown who did the releasing).

Western powers would have been much better served by backing Gaddafi if oil was their object.

There is an alternative imperialism argument: that the intervention is really a push to consolidate Western control over Libyan resources. But, without intervention the rebels would have most certainly been annihilated by Gaddafi's superior forces.

So why back the losing horse? How can Western powers be sure they can succeed in creating a more agreeable government? Would not they go with the devil they know, especially when he is already their devil?

Finally, any government that takes shape in Libya in the future will have to address the basic issues that fueled the popular uprising there in the first place.

Gaddafi is an imperial stooge and a new imperial government will ensure that the underlying conditions will not go away.

Spreading goodwill, avoiding oil price spikes

So what's motivating the Western powers into projecting their power into Libya? And why is the West not intervening in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen?

The potential benefit of successfully backing the rebels will be an increase in goodwill across the Arab world directed at the West. It is not clear if that is a realistic expectation, but it is one appears to motivate Western leaders.

Meanwhile, the cost of attacking Gaddafi and his mercenaries in a limited way, and supplying the rebels with arms is relatively low. It is not clear if the cost is actually low, but it's likely that it is perceived that way since the intervention is already underway.

In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the opposite is true. The American president Barack Obama will seek reelection, so it is in his interest to prevent the global economy from stagnating then shrinking.

A successful revolution in Bahrain may destabilise Saudi Arabia which would drive the price of oil up which could cause the US economy to stall. It is just not a risk worth taking for him.

Probably, fears of an insurgent Iran – legitimate or not – play into his calculations as well. That's because most Bahrainis are Shias.

Likewise, Yemen permits the Americans to pursue Al Qaeda affiliates in that country. That goes directly to Obama's security credentials.

If Yemen lapses, Obama will be accused, rightly or wrongly, of permitting terrorist sympathizers to take control in yet another Middle Eastern country. And the 2012 election campaign is already underway.

Intervention in Libya could turn out badly in a many different and unforeseen ways. And imperialism and neoliberal "reforms" – which are a problem in that country – did not arrive with the revolution; they preceded it.

We can aspire towards helping young Libyans reform their society to make it more democratic, just and anti-imperialist. But before they can do that they must survive Gaddafi's pulverizing onslaught. And that's something that the Western offensive gives them a chance of doing.

Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American freelance journalist living in Beirut. He was born in the Gaza strip, Palestine. He is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and The Guardian.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

__._,_.___

Messages in this topic (1)

Recent Activity: