Before we jump into war with Libya . . .

BY ED FELIEN

Diana Johnstone, in her latest piece for CounterPunch, “Libya, is this Kosovo all over again?” argues two very important points: First, there will have to be some fig leaf of international approval for our intervention: “As with Kosovo, an internal conflict between a government and armed rebels is being cast as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ in which one side only, the government, is assumed to be ‘criminal.’ This a priori criminalization is expressed by calling on an international judicial body to examine crimes which are assumed to have been committed, or to be about to be committed.”

The matter has been referred to the International Criminal Court—a body that only has jurisdiction over its members, and neither the U. S. or Libya are signatories—and the bill of indictment of an ICC prosecutor might be enough of a pretext to get around the probable Security Council veto that should authorize international intervention.

Second, if the U. S. enters this conflict it will join hands for the third time with an old ally in Middle East conflicts—Osama Bin Laden: “Another resemblance between former Yugoslavia and Libya is that the United States (and its NATO allies) once again end up on the same side as their old friend from Afghan Mujahidin days, Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was a discreet ally of the Islamist party of Alija Izetbegovic during the Bosnia civil war, a fact that has been studiously overlooked by the NATO powers. Of course, Western media have largely dismissed Qaddafi’s current claim that he is fighting against bin Laden as the ravings of a madman. However, the combat between Qaddafi and bin Laden is very real and predates the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Indeed, Qaddafi was the first to try to alert Interpol to bin Laden, but got no cooperation from the United States. In November 2007, the French news agency AFP reported that the leaders of the ‘Fighting Islamic Group’ in Libya announced they were joining Al Qaeda. Like the Mujahidin who fought in Bosnia, that Libyan Islamist Group was formed in 1995 by veterans of the U.S.-sponsored fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Their declared aim was to overthrow Qaddafi in order to establish a radical Islamist state. The base of radical Islam has always been in the Eastern part of Libya where the current revolt broke out. Since that revolt does not at all resemble the peaceful mass demonstrations that overthrew dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, but has a visible component of armed militants, it can reasonably be assumed that the Islamists are taking part in the rebellion.”

The U. S. is already at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. We have huge military complexes in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It is the height of insanity for this government to talk about another war in the Middle East when we are shutting off fuel assistance to poor families, cutting food stamps and trying to limit access to health care here at home.

The problems in Libya must be solved by the people of Libya. The problems of poverty in America should be the priority of the government in America.