The 2011 war on Libya led to a failed state, civil war, al-Qaida militia control, 3 million refugees and massive persecution of black Libyans.
Yet, Libya under Moammar Gadhafi was Africa’s richest country, a middle-income nation with free health care and free education for both men and women.
In 2007, then-President George W. Bush hailed Gadhafi as an example of good leadership. Today in Libya, everything is destroyed, billions from the Libyan Investment Fund have been looted, and the country is ruled by ruthless war lords. The West did not exactly bring democracy nor human rights, but rather total destruction. (Feature photo: Scanpix)
We all know that President Obama later called the Libya war the worst mistake of his presidency. Even Hillary Clinton is silent now. The only man still claiming he would willingly do it again – even after the above revelations – is the current secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.
In a recent NRK (Norwegian State Broadcasting) interview, the NATO leader surprisingly repeated the 2011 statements that NATO was right in preventing the Gadhafi “genocide against his people” – as if the U.K. Commons Report, WikiLeaks, the Judicial Watch revelations etc. did not exist.
This confirms the miserable lack of honest leadership at the NATO headquarters. The comments display an unusual lack of empathy for the massive humanitarian suffering post-2011, writes historian of religions, author and founder of The Herland Report, Hanne Nabintu Herland in her weekly column at World Net Daily, one of the largest conservative news outlets in America.
The U.K. 2016 House of Commons report acknowledges the extensive misinformation and fake news reported by leading media outlets that led to the NATO assault.
It shows that the very premise for the intervention in Libya’s domestic affairs was a lie, based on accusations of “Gadhafi murdering his own people” and “genocide.” (Photo: The Nation)
The report also stated that the war was propelled by exiled Libyans with al-Qaida ties. Since 1995, al-Qaida had tried to murder Gadhafi from its stronghold in the Benghazi area, a well-known Sunni-extremist terrorist lair. According to the CIA, they had been training and then sending Islamists to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq for years.
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Gadhafi was the first Muslim leader to call for Osama bin Laden’s arrest. After the 2011 war, the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (al-Qaida affiliated extremists), Abdelhakim Belhadj, ended up as the Western-backed military governor of Tripoli – a man who was friends with bin Laden in Afghanistan only years before. Belhadj has since reportedly become Africa’s richest man, with a net worth of $19 billion.
So, Mr. Stoltenberg consequently refutes the findings of the 2016 U.K. report and, we may guess, also his Libyan allies whom NATO fought so hard to help to power.
The 2011 Western-backed interim government leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil is known for openly admitting – on tape to Arabic media – that the accusations against Gadhafi were lies.
In 2011, Jalil gave in a number of interviews, calling for an immediate no-fly zone because “Gadhafi is attacking the people.”
In one of them, Jalil says that “we want a no-fly zone and a naval blockade. Gadhafi has been using his air force and navy to destroy the country and all the cities.
All we want is to have the international community level the playing field.” Statements like this, as well as letters and documents with the same message, were instrumental in NATO’s decision to attack.
President Barack Obama asserted, at the time, that “military fighter jets bombed innocent people who had no chance to defend themselves against the airstrikes.” He said that “water supplies were cut off in Misurata, which affected hundreds of thousands of people.” Nevertheless, in early March, the Pentagon had already denied that such attacks had taken place.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated, “We’ve seen the media reports, but have found nothing to confirm them.” Russian intelligence also confirmed with satellite pictures that no planes were flying at the time.
The New York Times also confirms that the rebellion was “staged by rebels.” Professor Alan J. Kuperman is among the many who documented that “Gadhafi never threatened civilian massacre in Benghazi.” Details may be examined by reading Horace Campbell’s “NATO’s Failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa.”
Ironically, the same Jalil later gave an interview to Libya Channel One, in which he admitted that he knew the whole time that Gadhafi had not ordered the shooting on those fateful days in February 2011.
He knew this, Jalil says, because he was part of the group of five or six people who played a key role in Gadhafi’s government at the time, responsible for dealing with the demonstrations.
Jalil confirms – in Arabic – that everyone in the group agreed that it was crucial to deal with the demonstrations without the use of force.
Those in attendance were himself, Libya’s Director of Military Intelligence Abdallah Zenussi, Interior Minister Abdel-Fatah Younis, Libya’s Chief of Police Tohah Michaled and Director of Foreign Military Intelligence Abuzed Dorda.
Gadhafi had never ordered the shooting of civilian protesters – they were murdered by mercenaries who were not Libyans, but foreign fighters.
This admitted the man who spread accusations against Gadhafi all over the world. Some years later, he says the exact opposite on Libyan Arab TV. And after all these years, Secretary General Stoltenberg still continues to speak as if we are in 2010. Is this the kind of leadership in which NATO prides itself?
