On 19 March the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) succumbed to the usual threats and coercions by the U.S. and voted to impose a “no-fly” zone and declare war on Libya on the pretext to “protect Libyan civilians” from violence. History shows that the UN does not have a record of protecting civilians, but a record of legitimising Western violence against civilians.

Just hours before the vote, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urged council members to “take immediate action” to protect civilians in Libya. “In these circumstances, the loss of time means more loss of lives”, he warned. According to Mr. Ki-Moon’s philosophy, the innocent women and children that are killed on a daily basis in Afghanistan, Palestine, Bahrain, and Yemen have no lives, and thus deserve no UN protection. Promoted by Western media and think-tanks as the face of the “International Community”, the UN is a façade used to justify and cover-up U.S. and Western-sponsored terrorism masquerading as “military humanism” or “humanitarian intervention”.

As usual, the lies to justify another Western aggression are spreading fast. “Legally, morally, politically, and militarily [the intervention in Libya] has only one justification: protecting the country's people from the kind of murderous harm that Gaddafi inflicted on unarmed protesters four weeks ago, has continued to apply to those who oppose him in the areas he controls, and has promised to inflict on anyone against him should his forces recapture Benghazi and other rebel ground”, wrote Gareth Evan, former Australian foreign minister and an old imperialist ranting mouthpiece. In his so-called “responsibility-to-protect (R2P)” concept, Evan excluded defenceless Palestinian, Afghani, and Iraqi civilians because he believes they are governed by pro-Western murderous thugs and therefore considered safe.

Resolution 1973 is a fraud designed to legitimise Western military intervention on the side of an armed resurrection by a U.S.-sponsored militia that is rightly described as a “mixed bag” of terrorists and extremists, including “al-Qaeda” mercenaries with strong ties to the CIA and the British intelligence.

The “rebels” are financed and armed with modern U.S. weapons through the regimes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. If the UN is really interested in protecting civilians, it should implement resolutions to protect the civilian populations in Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Ivory Coast, and elsewhere.

Within hours of the imposition of UN Resolution (1973), Libyan state TV claimed 6 people had been killed and 150 people wounded in the first wave of attacks by French, British, and U.S. forces  - what Libyan TV called ''victims of the crusader-colonialist aggression''. A Reuters correspondent saw a total of at least 14 dead on Sunday around bombed out vehicles on an east Libyan road, allegedly belonging to the Libyan army. The road between Benghazi and Ajdabiyah was a scene of devastation and dozens of burned out vehicles, according to Reuters. On 24 March, Reuters reported (quoting Libyan officials), that “the civilian death toll from five days of coalition air strikes had reached almost 100 and accused Western governments of fighting on the side of the rebels”. In addition, vital civilian facilities, including three hospitals have been attacked.

Like the aggression against Iraq, the first target was al-Qadhfi compound, hundreds of miles away from the areas supposed to be “protected” by the Resolution. For nearly a week, the U.S., France, and Britain have been attacking Libya with 162 Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-2 stealth bombers, F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, even when Libya announced a cease-fire. It is evident that the use of disproportionate violence and the targeting of Libyan civilian and military facilities has nothing to do with protecting civilians and is exceeding the boundaries of the fraudulent UN Resolution 1973. “Whatever else [al-Qadhafi] has done, he has undoubtedly forced [the UN], the CIA and U.S.-NATO to drop the pleasant mask of youthful idealism and human rights, revealing a hideous visage of Predator drones, terror bombing, widespread slaughter, and colonialist arrogance underneath”, writes Webster Tarpley.

Meanwhile, France which lost all influence it had in North Africa after the collapse of the Tunisian and Egyptian, dictatorships is flexing its muscles in Libya. French war planes have been involved in attacks on civilian infrastructure, including civilian aircrafts on the ground at Misrata Airport. France, of course, is the mother of all violent hypocrites. In North Africa, France is responsible for the death of millions of North Africans, including one million Algerian Muslims. Furthermore, French Zionist President, Nicolas Sarkozy, won the Presidency on a racist anti-Muslim immigration (mostly from North Africa) election platform. Hence, Sarkozy’s “humanitarian intervention” is a fraud. The Turkish daily Today’s Zaman (25 March 2011) reported that, “Turkish leaders have publicly criticized France for ‘turning the operation into a show of force’ and questioned French motives in the operation, voicing suspicion that some partners seeking to act outside NATO have their eyes on Libya's mineral wealth”.

The violation of the UN Charter – which forbids any armed intervention in civil conflicts within a member nation – by unprovoked aggression against the sovereign nation of Libya and the indiscriminate killing of civilians by Western governments, forced some nations who voted for the war to have second thoughts. The shameful Chinese and Russian governments – who could have vetoed the UN Resolution – are now calling for an “immediate cease fire and resolve the issue through peaceful means”. They know very well that their false propaganda is worthless and outright cowardice ranting. “The resolution is defective and flawed," said Russia's Prime Minster Vladimir Putin. “It allows everything. It resembles mediaeval calls for crusades”, Putin added. It is too late for the Libyan civilians, Mr. Putin.

President Barack Obama and his imperialist vassals alleged that the vote to take military action against Libya was a unanimous vote and that the Arab League was overwhelmingly in favour of attacking Libya. In reality, only ten pro-U.S. countries, including Colombia, Gabon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, and South Africa, voted for the Resolution. The majority of the world’s nations, including 53 African Union (AU) nations, are against the aggression. The Arab League is a broken fig leaf. Ten of the Arab League’s 22 nations boycotted the meeting. Algeria and Syria voted against a “no-fly” zone and military action against Libya. Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi is hated by the despots of the artificial regimes of the Gulf who voted for the aggression. For the Arab despots, it is a golden opportunity to divert public attention away from the uprising against their own illegitimate dictatorships. Indeed, it was after the UNSC voted to impose a “no-fly” zone on Libya, and as the U.S.-Western attacks against Libya began, the pro-Western despotic Arab regimes escalated their crackdown on peaceful legitimate popular demonstrators.

A few days after the attacks on Libya, the Secretary General of the League of Despots is backpedalling as if he hasn’t been serving despots for forty years. “What we want is the protection of civilians and not the shelling of more civilians”, said Amr Moussa. Everyone knows what a “no-fly” zone means. It means an act of aggression that includes fighter jets flying at high altitudes and dropping bombs and missiles on everything that moves, including women children and domestic animals, even civilian aircraft are not allowed to fly. The UN’s ranting about protecting civilians is false and wicked propaganda. Those who supported Resolution 1973 need to go back and review the history of the UN’s imperialist role in Iraq.

On 02 August 1990, the UNSC passed a resolution (Resolution 660) calling on Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait. Despite Iraq’s and other nations’ efforts to end the crisis peacefully, the U.S. insisted and pushed for war. The war was sold to the public with a fabricated horror story in which Iraqi troops were accused of throwing Kuwaiti babies out of hospital incubators. The attacks on Iraq were indiscriminate and criminal. More than 200,000 Iraqis were killed and the country was left in ruins. After the war the US and Britain refused to lift the sanctions. As sanctions went on, the U.S. and its vassals, Britain in particular, continued to shift the goal posts and pass more UN resolutions “to protect” the Iraqi people. For more than two decades, Iraq and the Iraqi people were subjected to a criminal UN-sponsored reign of terror, even by the Nazis’ standards. Resolution 660 mutated into an infanticide tool by which more than 500,000 children under the age of 5 lost their lives because the Anglo-American fascists denied them drinking water and vital medical supplies. Asked whether this was worth the death of half a million children, Madeleine Albright – who is a Jew and claims to be a “Nazi holocaust” survivor – replied: “We think the price is worth it”.

According to John Mueller and Karl Mueller, the brutal and inhumane sanctions against the Iraqi people have caused far more deaths over time than the combined use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in the two world wars (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999). “It was the U.S. – and the U.S. alone – that ensured that this human damage would be, massive and indiscriminate”, writes Joy Gordon, a professor at Fairfield University. (Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, Harvard, 2010). The real aim was to destroy Iraq as a nation and prepare the ground for U.S. military invasion and occupation.

In 2003, with the helping hand of the UN (providing legitimacy), the U.S. and its most criminal vassals (the ‘Coalition of the Willing’) embarked on a campaign of lies and false propaganda to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is estimated (the most accurate estimate to date) that more than 1.3 million Iraqis, mostly women and children, were killed as a consequence of the U.S. invasion and ongoing murderous occupation. It was a premeditated and unprovoked supreme international crime, “differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. Iraq as a modern nation was destroyed and turned into a divided poor nation.

The war propaganda campaign today to justify the UN-sponsored aggression against Libya is a carbon copy of the vicious war campaign against Iraq in 1990. Colonel al-Qadhafi has suddenly become Saddam. The UN and the U.S. have a “moral responsibility” to intervene to stop al-Qadhafi “killing his own people”. Al-Qadhafi, who has recently cooperated with the U.S. and most Western governments, is portrayed as a “brutal dictator” and a “threat” to U.S.-Israel Zionist interests. Some U.S. Congressmen have accused al-Qadhafi of possessing “weapons of mass destruction”. It is important to remember that neither Iraq nor Libya has attacked or threatened the U.S. Like the war on Iraq, the war on Libya is an illegal act of aggression. The only difference is the U.S. President is an African American and his victims are Africans. In 2 years as U.S. President, Obama has killed and caused the death of far more civilians than al-Qadhafi has in 42 years.

The idea that the U.S. and its Western allies have a “moral responsibility” to protect civilians with brown skin is a naive and distorted idea. In reality, civilians have always been a deliberate target of the U.S. terror. The U.S. and its western allies have killed more civilians than any nation in the history of mankind. In recent time, the U.S. has killed more civilians than the Nazis. Violence and racism form the foundations of the Anglo-American and French societies. With wars and mayhem perpetuated by the U.S. government around the world, one expects a serious and massive anti-war movement in the U.S. To the contrary, most Americans do not care and would be happy if the rest of the world did not exist.

By using the UN, the U.S. and its allies are able to manipulate the public in their favour and support the aggression. Their aim is imperialist and devoid of any “humanitarian” justification. “Partition and dismemberment of countries with independent governments has been a strategy that the U.S., British, and French governments employed in the Kurdish region of Iraq after the 1991 war, in Yugoslavia in the mid-1990’s, and recently in Sudan, which until January was Africa’s largest country”, writes Brian Becker, the National Coordinator of A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition.

Under al-Qadhafi, Libya is one of the most advanced developing countries, ranked 53 (the highest of any country in Africa) on the UN Human Development Index (HDI) – which measures life expectancy, education, and living conditions. Libya ranks ahead of Russia (65), Ukraine (69), Brazil (73), Venezuela (73) and Tunisia (81). Libya has a medium-high per capita income of 12,000, six times greater than that of Egypt.

The real and illegal objectives of Western imperialists is not only to destroy decades-long development, prosperity and stability (i.e., regime change), but also to control and plunder Libya’s national resources, including oil and gas. “Even as the Libyan war just gets underway, the economic war over Libya’s treasures has already begun”, writes Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail, 23 March 2011).

The UN was established to promote and maintain worldwide peace. The UN is in no position to legalise war. Judged by its past actions, “the UN rarely represented the true and peaceful interests of people everywhere but stood largely under the sway of the U.S. and its allies”, writes Victor Grossman (Berlin Bulletin, No. 22, 21 March 2011).

On 23 September 2008, an accord signed between the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop-Scheffer was described by former UN Assistant Secretary General, Hans von Sponeck, as “incompatible with UN Charter” and poses “serious threat to world peace” and stability. Hence, the UN is an instrument of U.S.-NATO providing legitimacy to justify Western aggression.

The UN-sponsored Western aggression against Libya is an illegal act of aggression and must stop to abort the creation of another humanitarian catastrophe. Peoples around the world expect the UN to abide by its neutral Charter and stop being complicit in Western violence against civilians in member nations.

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.

READ HIS BIO AND MORE ARTICLES BY
AXIS OF LOGIC COLUMNIST GHALI HASSAN