NATO leaders escalate attacks in Libya, vow to ‘finish’ Gadhafi
2011Andrew Pollack 2011-05Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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During recent weeks the imperialist forces attacking Muammar Gadhafi’s regime have dropped what little pretense existed about their goal of regime change in Libya. The defining moment of this shift came when an oped cosigned by the heads of state of the U.S., Britain, and France declared: “Gadhafi must go.” In an article published in the International Herald Tribune, Le Figaro, and The Times of London on April 15, Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron announced they would take whatever military action they needed to remove Gadhafi from power.
Their strategy was made bitterly clear on April 29, when a NATO airstrike targeted a house in which Gadhafi and his family were present, killing his youngest son and three of his grandchildren.
The imperialists’ openness about their real goals, and their ever-expanding military measures, have been greatly facilitated by the hijacking of the leadership of the anti-Gadhafi uprising by the Transitional National Council, a mélange of ex-Gadhafi officials and pro-imperialist capitalists and professionals.
This hijacking comes at the expense of a movement that in the first weeks of the uprising had a strong base among the working-class masses and was often led by neighborhood committees. The early phases of armed battles were likewise often characterized by partisanstyle fighting. This was only possible because hundreds of thousands in every town and city—even Tripoli—had poured into the streets and organized themselves for freedom.
But while the combined forces of the imperialist countries and their local clients have succeeded—for now— in immobilizing the popular movement against Gadhafi, they have found only stalemate on the military front— which military officials worry could drag on for months.
The U.S. had supplied much of the initial firepower to impose a no-fire zone, and then left the heavy lifting to its European allies. But as the battles moved increasingly into urban areas, NATO powers began to complain that only Washington had weapons allowing for more precise attacks against forces on the ground. In response, Obama on April 21 authorized the use of unmanned Predator drones (which have been responsible for numerous civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan).
On April 20 France, Italy, and the UK announced they would send ground troops. While the troops, termed military “advisors,” would number at first only in the dozens, their numbers are almost sure to swell—given that every imperialist military official quoted has predicted that the war will drag on for months. Other measures (Above) April 10 protest in Lahore, Pakistan, against NATO military action in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
to try to break the stalemate include the announcement by Obama of the provision of as much as $25 million in military surplus supplies and communications equipment for their Libyan allies in the Transitional National Council—but not (yet) weapons.
Meanwhile, politicians and media commentators in the United States and Europe have been calling for even more military intervention in order to “finish the job now.” One of the most widely quoted military analysts, Anthony Cordesman, wrote a bloodcurdling piece for the Center for Strategic and International Studies calling (continued on page 5, in “May Day 2011”)