Gaddafi was so demonized and so maligned for years that taking him out was easy. The propaganda machine that western countries have are really good. Libya was the number one topic in for a time in 2011. Then nobody cared, nobody cares right now, not anymore. Gaddafi was once a force to be reckoned with and helped bring the west to it’s knee’s once. Libyan terrorists we’re the baddest of the bad, when you heard “Libyan” you knew shit was going down.
The Libyans were the best terrorists for awhile, Back to the Future, GI Jane and I’m sure dozens of other movies and literature featured the Libyans as the prime for of the west.
But little did we know that Gaddafi was spending money on scholarships, feeding the hungry, infrastructure, uniting africa, putting a satelite in space, setting up an airline. So many things that were simply ignored because the west wanted to use him as their bad guy du jour.
Farewell Gaddafi, may God keep you in his memory.
Allah, Muamar, Libya wa bass…
Wither Libya.

Posted by: Fernando | Jan 6 2015 18:58 utc | 3

As a side note, what was it General Wesley Clark, said, four, five even seven countries that was to be under the five years pnac attack plan?
General Wesley Clark: The US will attack 7 countries in 5 years →
lebanese porn star…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 6 2015 19:54 utc | 5

Was that the plan all along? Of course not. Incompetence rules.
When “Arab Spring” first appeared 3 years ago the US saw an opportunity to depose Khadaffi. We sent J. Christopher Stevens, as “special representative”, to coordinate US actions with the Libyan peoples “uprising”. This involved him contacting those forces on the ground and providing them with Nato air power. It worked out well. Khadaffi was killed. For his great work Stevens was promoted to be ambassador to Libya. That silly fool somehow came to believe that the Islamist militias he supported during the “people’s uprising” were his allies. Things started to unravel in Benghazi in 2012. So he traveled there to work out a deal with his former allies. They killed him. The US government immediately dismantled the CIA facilities in Benghazi, quickly withdrew 25 CIA

Posted by: ToivoS | Jan 6 2015 20:13 utc | 7

oops, this posted in the middle of my comment. To continue.
The US government immediately dismantled the CIA facilities in Benghazi, quickly withdrew the 25 Benghazi CIA agents and decided that maybe we should not try to control events on the ground.
That has to be a fiasco however it is spun. But what surprises me is that this blunder is not recognized anywhere inside the US. Even Juan Cole, who often has sensible things to say about the ME, just this last week was defending his support for the Nato war against Libya.

Posted by: ToivoS | Jan 6 2015 20:20 utc | 9

USians (my preferred term; duly noted the PC issue vis using term “Americans”) are the dumbest of the dumb (I am one of those) and are blissful know-nothing dingbats ever willing to spew whatever propaganda comes their exceptional little ways (and even believe some of it is “conservative” v. “liberal” – go figure).
Libya was demonized for a long time. It helped the PTB that Ghaddafi had a somewhat strange appearance (more so than some of those other “rag heads over there”), and of course the propaganda Wurlitzer had field days and made much of his “strange doood” looks, etc. Needless to say the chumps bought it hook, line and sinker. And no, the vast majority of USians remain clueless about what Ghaddafi did for his nation and Africa because, per usual, we were sold the bill of goods that Ghaddafi was this “terrorist” and a brutal evil dictator totally oppressing his people blah de blah blah…
When the propaganda machine went into hyper drive over the “kinetic action” which was ever so “needed” to “liberate” the Libyan peasants from this horrid truculent dictator, even somewhat better educated people who should have known better duly lined up to gulp down the Kool Aid that this “kinetic action” was truly – THIS TIME for sure – for the “good” of the people to whom – via bombs and stuff – we, the White Hats, were “delivering” Democracy. Ohmigawd, blargh puke.
Didn’t Gaddafi threaten to move from dollar currency or something? Wasn’t that the trigger that drove these insane f*ckers even crazier. I swear Hillary couldn’t WAIT to gun that sucker DOWN like a dog and stat. disgusting. Plus doesn’t Libya have some really good underground water tables? And minerals. Plus Gaddafi was – perish the thought – actually looking out for his citizens & attempting to be a real leader for Africa. Can’t. Tolerate. That.
Yes, it’s a damn crying shame what happened there. But cue up the conservative festivus of shrieking about Benghazi!!!!!1111!!!!! Ask me if I give a sh*t about CIA Spook Stevens getting dusted. Please. Let’s just call Just Deserts.

Posted by: RUKidding | Jan 6 2015 20:28 utc | 11

Toivos
Nice summary. US doesnt seems to understand that if you play tough you will get the same thing in return. Looking at US and EU actions around the world it is perfectly clear they know nothing, they dont even know what they are doing. People outside the west must think western leaders are absolutly crazy. I know I would.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 6 2015 20:33 utc | 13

RUKidding – Nice little nugget at the end there.
Reading between the lines one can potentially argue that the Benghazi scandal may have been the lid on the jar as far as the topic of Libya in the USA media circus is concerned.
Notice how the entire Libya narrative just vanished after the Benghazi episode. Repubs tried briefly milking it for some partisan mileage, but the media lost interest even more rapidly!
As far as western governments and their servile media are concerned, the less said about Libya, the better – nothing to see here folks, just move along!

Posted by: spinworthy | Jan 6 2015 20:52 utc | 15

Just like Saddam before him, with his idea of denominating Iraqi oil in Euros, Gaddafi did make the mistake of promoting his gold dinar… one facet that hasn’t been mentioned, but should be, was the rebels’ first official act after establishing themselves as the “legitimate” govenment of Libya, is that they established a Central Bank tied into the international bankers’ cartel. it was one of the few holdouts, and besides Iran there are few juicy targets left for the oligarchs to sink their fangs into…

Posted by: Hugo First | Jan 6 2015 21:31 utc | 17

@M. Tomazy #18:

The U.S. was NOT keen to interfere in the “European Backyard”

If the US starts a war in the middle of Europe, why would it hesitate to interfere in Europe’s “backyard”? As Uncle $cam noted, according to Wesley Clark,

As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.

Yes, France and Britain began the aggression against Libya, but that was a case of the US leading from behind:

Leading from behind — a phrase first used by a White House adviser in a New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza — was smart policy in Libya. The United States, short on cash, bruised by Iraq and Afghanistan, did not want to head the charge into a third Muslim country, even if the Arab League had backed intervention. Discreet U.S. military assistance with France and Britain doing the trumpeting was sensible.

Posted by: Demian | Jan 6 2015 22:17 utc | 19

Libya was simply another nation that was crushed because it could not defend itself effectively – and they were unfortunately sitting on value others coveted. Normally both these things have to be present at the right level. For it to work, the cost/benefit ratio has to be correct. The gamed scenarios the players have give them the information. I say players because there are many and they are not using the same scenarios, or the same timelines. Its the great game, maybe the greatest- pity they can’t just play it on Xbox without real death and disaster – like the good citizens

Posted by: bridger | Jan 6 2015 22:33 utc | 21

About a year ago ‘b’ said on this board that the real plan of the USA’s and the West’s policy on Syria is the destruction of the economy and social fabric of Syria. Today, above, ‘b’ asks: “Libya is now in shambles…. Was that the [West’s] plan all along?”
His question shows that ‘b’ has still not grasped the big secret to understanding US and EU foreign policy and policmakers. “The big secret is that there is no secret”, i.e., what they say is what they think — and the exceptions to which you can point are relatively rare and relatively unimportant. The propaganda from the West contains a great many falsehoods. But very few lies. They believe the bulk of their own shite. This is the first and most essential secret to comprehending Western foreign policy.
A second secret sauce for comphrehending the Western foreign policy and policymakers is that they require of themselves to act in ways that are well-intentioned in their own minds (according to their own logic and their own information set). They do indeed sincerely believe themselves well-intentioned and they do maintain this belief for themselves in their decision-making reasoning. And their decisions are constrained by it. And their public defense of their decisions is required to be defensible by the criterion of well-intentionedness.
A third secret sauce for comprehending Western foreign policy and policymakers is that they’re deeply incompentent and deeply ignorant when it comes to understanding non-Western political societies. That’s a big and important fact, which has been demonstrated again and again on this board over the years. I’d like to give you two more examples of it that stick in my mind from fairly recently:

(1) A cease-fire was agreed in east Ukraine on 5 Sep 2014. President Obama said on 5 sep 2014: “The only reason that we’re seeing this cease-fire at this moment is because of both the sanctions that have already been applied and the threat of further sanctions, which are having a real impact on the Russian economy and have isolated Russia in a way that we have not seen in a very long time.” (ref).
(2) James Jeffrey (born 1946 in USA) is a former USA Deputy National Security Advisor for Middle East Affairs, former USA ambassador in Iraq, former top-level special advisor on Iraq in the US department of foreign policy, currently a scholar at the The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, currently a member of the USA Council on Foreign Relations. He can’t speak Arabic. On about 19 Dec 2014 he said: “Assad and particularly Iran and ISIS are manifestations of the same problem: alternative universes…. There are people in the Middle East, including the Iranians (and the Iranians are the driving force behind Assad), and ISIS, that have an alternative universe view of the world, and they can never be our allies.” (ref). In case you didn’t notice it, it is deeply incompetent to say that the Iranians are the driving force behind Assad. Assad was elected president in May 2014 in an election in which 11,634,412 Syrians voted. Tens of thousands of Syrian men have sacrificed their lives in combat for the defense of the Assad government. Assad himself is the most popular politician in Syria, and the Assadists are by far the most politically powerful party. James Jeffrey is part of the cream that rises to the top in the USA foreign policy cesspit.

Saying of the wise: “Never ascribe to bad faith what can be explained by incompetence.”

Posted by: Ghubar Shabih | Jan 6 2015 22:55 utc | 23

Anybody remember Bush mentioned a Korean model for Iraq?
That is, in the long run, Iraq will be like South Korea, with prosperous economy, democracy, hosting the US military base without complaints, and without significant anti-Americanism.
When I heard that, I shuddered with fear. When Bush said that, most commentators bombarded Bush for his historical ignorance.
For example, this article
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2007/05/iraq_is_korea.2.html

To sum up, we intervened in South Korea as a response to an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to contain Communist aggression. We intervened in Iraq as the instigator of an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to expand unilateral American power. We remained in South Korea to protect a solid (if, for many years, authoritarian) government from another border incursion. We are remaining in Iraq to bolster a flimsy government and stave off a violent social implosion.

However they might have missed the point. The first time the US army went to Korea was not in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea but in 1945 after the Japanese surrender, and the US presided over a bloody civil war which killed one hundred thousand people even before the outbreak of the Korean War.
The reasons for the civil war were many. Volatile situation created by sudden collapse of Japanese colonial government, the ineptitude of the US military government to handle the situation, cold war ideological divide running through Korea, the US machination of backing one faction against another. Do they sound familiar? Maybe if you substitute ideological divide with religious one.
Then the war came and millions more died. If enough people die, people will accept anything for peace and order, a truly a Hobbesian case of Leviathan. That was the ground for the four decades of authoritarian rule in South Korea and, more importantly to the US, lack of any anti-Americanism therein.
I don’t know what Bush was referring to when he said the Korean Model. But surely the US has an experience of presiding over a bloody civil war that tells them if you let them kill enough of each other they will accept your rule.
And, of course, there was Wurmser, a neocon staff to Cheney, who might have taken the lesson of Korea into heart.
http://prospect.org/article/vice-squad-0

Wurmser argued that toppling Saddam was likely to lead directly to civil war and the breakup of Iraq, but he supported the policy anyway: “The residual unity of [Iraq] is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state.” After Saddam, Iraq will “be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families,” he wrote. “Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq’s] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition.” Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to “expedite” such a collapse. “The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance.”

Posted by: Puppet Master | Jan 6 2015 23:12 utc | 25

@Ghubar Shabih #23:

“Never ascribe to bad faith what can be explained by incompetence.”

Yuri Orlov wrote an interesting post about organizational incompetence. To quote the paper he bases his post on:

Functional stupidity is organizationally-supported lack of reflexivity, substantive reasoning, and justification. It entails a refusal to use intellectual resources outside a narrow and “safe” terrain. It can provide a sense of certainty that allows organizations to function smoothly. This can save the organization and its members from the frictions provoked by doubt and reflection. Functional stupidity contributes to maintaining and strengthening organizational order. It can also motivate people, help them to cultivate their careers, and subordinate them to socially acceptable forms of management and leadership. Such positive outcomes can further reinforce functional stupidity.

But clearly the destructive effects of US foreign policy are often deliberately malevolent. Orlov also has a post about that:

By Anglo-imperialists I mean the combination of Britain and the United States. The latter took over for the former as it failed, turning it into a protectorate. Now the latter is failing too, and there are no new up-and-coming Anglo-imperialists to take over for it. But throughout this process their common playbook had remained the same: pseudoliberal pseudocapitalism for the insiders and military domination and economic exploitation for everyone else. Much more specifically, their playbook always called for a certain strategem to be executed whenever their plans to dominate and exploit any given country finally fail. On their way out, they do what they can to compromise and weaken the entity they leave behind, by inflicting a permanently oozing and festering political wound. “Poison all the wells” is the last thing on their pre-departure checklist.

Posted by: Demian | Jan 6 2015 23:33 utc | 27

@Demian #19
Dear Demian,
I totally agree with you. I mean the U.S. admin was not keen for direct military intervention, let’s remember that the U.S. is an active member in N.A.T.O. which led the campaign side by side with Qatar and UAE.

Posted by: M. Tomazy | Jan 6 2015 23:48 utc | 29

@okie farmer #16
I posted a list as well as a video (documentary), that showed what Gaddafi had done for the people of Libya as well as the wider the M.E. in general, it was amazing (if to be believed), I’ll try to look it up, however the archives seem to be not as accessible as it use to be….

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 7 2015 0:12 utc | 31

@Rogan Josh: Don’t forget that the Arab League endorsed the West’s military intervention in Libya. If I remember correctly, that was every Arabic-speaking country except Syria. And don’t forget that some well-meaning and relatively well-educated Libyans endorsed it at the time. And the Russians didn’t veto it at the UNSC, because the Russians were fooled into believing the falsehood that Ghaddifi was deliberately killing civilians at the time. @Rogan Josh: I don’t understand how you can imagine that the ongoing shambles or tragedy in Libya could have been both foreseen and adjudged beneficial, by anybody anywhere, outside or inside of Libya.

Posted by: Ghubar Shabih | Jan 7 2015 1:19 utc | 33

@Ghubar Shabih #33:
There is the empire of chaos idea, propounded by Pepe Escobar and people at the Center for Syncretic Studies, according to which the US empire deliberately destroys countries which resist becoming its vassals.

Posted by: Demian | Jan 7 2015 1:32 utc | 35

33
Dude, you, with your “the western military and politicians fully believe their own rhetoric” are, frankly, utterly delusional
You’re completly beyond all hope of redemption imo if you actually believe what you are claiming @23, regarding western rhetoric about “peace prosperity and democracy”

Posted by: Rogan Josh | Jan 7 2015 2:01 utc | 37

@okie farmer #36:
Tom Engelhardt is a Russophobe. (1) He writes “The first American war in Afghanistan, on the other hand, was a CIA Cold War operation that began in 1979 just after the Soviets invaded the country”. (a) The CIA operation in Afghanistan predated the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. (b) The Soviets did not “invade” Afghanistan: they reluctantly went in when asked to do so by the Afghan government to prop it up. (2) He calls Russia, still the largest country in the world and still one of the world’s two nuclear superpowers, a “rump energy state”. (3) He does not mention that another thing that the person from 1963 would be bewildered by is that the US orchestrated a Nazi coup in the middle of Europe.
All of that is really unconscionable. If Pepe Escobar didn’t contribute to TomDispatch, it would have lost almost all its credibility by now. And for someone who writes about nothing but war and the national security state, it is strange that Engelhardt appears to be completely oblivious of geopolitics.

Posted by: Demian | Jan 7 2015 2:52 utc | 39

its also the plan for syria and Ukraine and anywhere else the liberal US sinks its fangs

Posted by: brian | Jan 7 2015 3:38 utc | 41

@okie farmer #42:
Right, I agree that that article has the merits you describe.
@brian #40:
Haha, the usual Ukrainian nationalist nonsense. But you’re right, the HuffPost has a pattern of publishing that: I was surprised when they published an ultranationalist rant by Yulia Tymoshenko.
The claim made by the article you linked to that “Most residents [of Donbass] viewed Ukrainian as a ‘foreign’ tongue” is a typical expression of Ukrainian delusions of grandeur. Russians, whether they are citizens of Russia or the Ukraine, do not view Ukrainian as a foreign tongue: they (correctly) view it as a dialect of Russian. And a Ukrainian who is a Ukrainian patriot but lives in the southern US and is open minded told me recently that Ukrainian is to Russian as black English is to standard English. I think that analogy is perfectly correct. It makes no more sense to call Ukrainian a language than it does to call black English a language.
Speaking of Ukraine, Robert Parry has another good piece on how the NY Times covers it: NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine
Just thought I’d post that to show that not all “liberal” US blogs are as reactionary as the HuffPost.

Posted by: Demian | Jan 7 2015 4:19 utc | 43

@16
achievements under #Gaddafi pic.twitter.com/j4l0p1PKr8

Posted by: brian | Jan 7 2015 4:28 utc | 45

The standard of living of the people of Libya

Before NATO bombing of Libya, the United Nations was preparing to bestow an award on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and the Libyan Jamahiriya, for its achievements in the area of human rights. (see document). http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/…
The Green Book by Muammar Al Gadhafi (1975)
Part 1: The solution to the problem of Democracy;
Part 2: The solution to the Economic Problem;
Part 3: The Social Basis of the third Universal Theory.
Gaddafi asserts, “True democracy exists only through the direct participation of the people.” (download .PDF) http://coto2.files.wordpress.com/2011…
Demoralized with wars in Iraq in Afghanistan, oil hungry West decided to discredit and depose Gadhafi at a time when he was fighting Al Qaeda terrorism. In fact, Gadhafi was the first world leader to condemn Al Qaeda as a terrorist group in the early part of the 2000s. Not only that, the Libyan leader has even adopted progressive or humanitarian policies in the domestic and international arenas such that he was even scheduled to receive a humanitarian award from no less than the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in March of this year. He was to be cited for his human rights record, including his stand on women’s rights, his opposition to the more oppressive features of Islamic Sharia law, and his record on religious and ethnic tolerance and social inclusion.
The UN Human Rights Council working group report released on January 4, 2011 virtually serves as a glowing praise of Qaddafi’s leadership in Human Rights. Additionally, it is worth noting that based on human development indicators, Libya Arab Jamarihiya has been many notches higher than the rest of the world, much more the Arab states.
///
The Libyan war: Unconstitutional and illegitimate
The Anglo-French-American war on most prosperous country in Africa is opposed by countries representing majority of the human race regardless of massive propaganda by NATO puppets Al Jazeera, The New York Times, CNN, BBC and the rest of the western media.
There is no doubt that U.S. participation in the Anglo-French-American attack on Libya is completely unconstitutional.
Before becoming president Barack Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former law professor, accurately described the limits of a president’s authority to initiate a war in cases where the U.S. has neither been attacked nor is in imminent danger of attack:
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
The current aggression against once independent Libya is a perfect case of “a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” While the president is limited by the Constitution to repelling or forestalling attack, Congress can declare war for a variety of purposes beyond simple defense
In the case of the Libyan war, the presidential power grab is even more blatant, because weak, poor countries on the Security Council have acted as ventriloquists’ puppets for the U.S., Britain and France.
Including the United States, the Security Council nations that voted for the no-fly zone resolution have a combined population of a little more than 700 million people and a combined GDP, in terms of purchasing power parity, of roughly $20 trillion. The Security Council countries that showed their disapproval of the Libyan war by abstaining from the vote have a combined population of about 3 billion people and a GDP of around $21 trillion.
If the U.S. is factored out, the disproportion between the pro-war and anti-war camps on the Security Council is even more striking.. The countries that joined the U.S. in voting to authorize attacks on Libya, including Britain and France, have a combined population that adds up to a little more than 5 percent of the human race.
The truth is that the U.S. is joined in its war on Libya by only two second-rank great powers, Britain and France, which between them carved up North Africa and the Middle East a century ago, slaughtering and torturing many Arabs and Blacks Libyans in the process. Every other major power on earth opposed the Anglo-French-American attack in North Africa, registering that opposition by abstentions rather than “no” votes in the Security Council (in a fear of been trashed and demonized by obedient to NATO western media that basically controls 80% of worlds information space).

I can’t find my original (still looking) but this is close approximation, with something missing… b real are you around? Any comments on this?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 7 2015 5:09 utc | 47

I would guess Algeria or Egypt would be the wealthiest African countries

Posted by: scottindallas | Jan 7 2015 13:29 utc | 49

Posted by: Demian | Jan 6, 2015 9:52:02 PM | 39
That’s the second swipe you’ve taken at Tom, recently. Don’t you understand where he’s pitching his blog? He’s a 100% All American (of the admirable, not the dumbass, variety) and he wants an America “of the people, by the people, for the people.” He’s much subtler than you or I and he’s making a much bigger impact than you + I. It doesn’t matter what he says about Russia. It’s what he says, AND DOES about the US of A that wins him respect (from people like … Pepe).

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 7 2015 16:44 utc | 51

Rogan @37 Couldn’t agree more. Every ‘innocent criminal’ to qualify their actions (or lack of action) will argue that they were doing (or not doing) what they thought was the right thing at the time. Pleading ignorance or lack of bad intent is no excuse when addressing criminal culpability. Claiming to be consciously doing good when actuality doing bad is just pre-emptive lying.
Creating the illusion of plausible deniability (preparing a back door) is the politician’s basic insurance policy for saving face in the event of future failure.

Posted by: spinworthy | Jan 7 2015 20:27 utc | 53

The destabilization of the middle east was no mistake. Cui bono ? “Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon[-Netanyahu], Likud.” theamericanconservative.com/articles/whose-war/

Posted by: metsa | Jan 13 2015 21:49 utc | 55