Peace, order and good government, eh?: Our moral imperative

Seumas Milne in the Guardian: Amnesty International has now produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed for the last eight months – supposedly to stop exactly those kind of crimes being committed by the Gaddafi regime. Throughout that time African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town’s predominantly black population – accused of backing Gaddafi – will be unable to return. All the while, Nato leaders and cheerleading media have turned a blind eye to such horrors as they boast of a triumph of freedom and murmur about the need for restraint. But it is now absolutely clear that, if the purpose of western intervention in Libya’s civil war was to "protect civilians" and save lives, it has been a catastrophic failure. … What is now known, however, is that while the death toll in Libya when Nato intervened…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Today in WTF? moments

With Libyan liberation, a political victory for Harper Stephen Harper’s first war victory was clinched in a few sudden hours when Moammar Gadhafi was captured and killed and his last bastion of Sirte fell. Excuse me? The countries in the most powerful military alliance on the planet combined forces to defeat a single, relatively minor power and this is a war victory for Stephen Harper? Wow. Just…wow. Next on the list is to figure out how to give Harper credit for winning the War of 1812. But at least we’ve dropped any pretense that it was strictly about enforcing a no-fly zone. It was a war declared by Stephen Harper. I wonder how he managed to get the Americans involved. Or to get the French to be the first to attack so it wouldn’t look like we were trying to hog all the glory….

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Warning shots

In case you haven’t heard yet Libya’s former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, was killed earlier today. It turns out that he had been hiding in his home town of Sirte. With the rebel assault on that city assured of victory, he tried to make a break for it. This is from a BBC report: French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said French jets had fired warning shots to halt a convoy carrying Col Gaddafi as it tried to flee Sirte. He said Libyan fighters had then descended and taken the colonel. Now let’s go to the Guardian:…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: Our moral imperative revisited

Libya: exodus from Sirte as thousands flee rebel offensive Plumes of smoke rose over the city from the barrages of heavy Grad rocket fire. As the tanks rolled forward, civilian cars streamed in the opposite direction. "They are bombing us and women and children are dying," said an elderly woman, wrapping her shroud to hide her face. Over three thousand men, women and children have fled the besieged city in the last three days. Risking their lives to cross the front lines in search of refuge, they described grim and bloody conditions inside the town. One more time: if the priority was the protection of civilians then NATO allies would long ago have insisted on a ceasefire on both sides and attempted to facilitate a political solution. Instead, NATO countries determined which group of Libyans we wanted to control Libya and provided them with air support, artillery support, weapons, training and intelligence. We encouraged them to continue hostilities and an operation that was only going to last for a few days or a few weeks is still going six months later. We have blood on our hands here. The UN itself is completely compromised on this and NATO is just…

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