U.S. and European forces have launched a military intervention to end Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal violence against the Libyan people; but why Libya? The US and the Europeans are looking out for there own national interest. President Obama told Americans that it was not in the U.S. national interest to let the Libyan people suffer a massacre at the hands of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi because the consequences would have reverberated across the Middle East and North Africa and “stained the conscience of the world.” Conscience of the world, when Gaza was being bombed in 2009 the Americans and Europeans watched as anger swept the world. This is not about conscience this is simple about Oil and national security.
The UN resolution authorized a no-fly zone to protect civilians. This is also what some Arab League members agreed to. The current operations are going past their main objective. “US and NATO warplanes turned their firepower Wednesday against ground forces loyal to the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The change in tactics is a further demonstration that the war in Libya is driven not by humanitarian concerns, but rather the imperialist aims of dominating the country and seizing its oil wealth.” On the mind of many Western leaders is when to arm the rebels. This amounts to picking sides in what is essentially a Libyan civil war. It is a mistake for the western world to pick sides in an internal conflict like this. If Libya collapses into tribal warfare, the West will be blamed.
The rebels are not a united group and, once Gaddafi has fallen: the rebels could likely turn on each other in a battle to fill the power vacuum that results. The current leadership council was not elected by anyone; they appointed themselves to the position. There is no guarantee that their authority will be accepted by anyone once Muammar Gaddafi’s regime falls. The West is making a big mistake interfere in this civil war and should let the people of Libya decide their own fate.
The unintended consequence of this foreign adventure might turn out bad for the West. For example when the U.S. armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, Who would have thought we would be fighting them ten years later In Afghanistan.
Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, one of the Libyan rebel leaders, has said those on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime are jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq. Mr al-Hasidi admitted this in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited “around 25″ men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are “today are on the front lines in Adjabiya”
Earlier this month, al-Qaeda issued a call for supporters to back the Libyan rebellion, which it said would lead to the imposition of “the stage of Islam” in the country.
With that said now it seems the US and Al-Qaeda have something in common.
