Arabian Democracy?

[ben ttech]

we had boots on the ground in iraq straight through from the first go round with saddam till bushie boys




and we leap into another war with no clear object

if this doesnt put a stake through the heart of the goddamned "bipartisan support" ideal



you can BET that every corperations that got back into libya after he played nice to bush a few years ago...

has given the pentagon a list of names and addresses of WHOM of the libyan citizens were problematic for BUSINESS as usual for western powers in third world locals...

of course instead of the actual description of these folks intentions to prevent wage and property thiefs

they will be presented under the title "key elements of quadaffis communication infrastructure"


[ normally, they would be labeled "religious extremists harboring suicide bomber schools" but in this case we are allied with them against quadafi... so we use the b label ]

[bubbabush]

Here's the Arab League blurb where Amir Moussa "eats his cake 2" after requesting an NFZ from the West and pretends that he didn't know that a NFZ is bombardment/patrol. What he doesn't even have the balls to mention is that the difference he's really talking about is regime change v. protective line, reactive v proactive, letting Majnoon turn it into a slow motion bloodbath or getting all of (and therefore usually far less of) the bleeding done as quickly as possible. For or against, that's what's at stake now that we're "in."

~O~

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/africa/ ... march-20-0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

4:30 pm Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League says that Arabs did not want military strikes by Western powers that hit civilians when the League called for a no-fly zone over Libya, saying:

What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians.

[bubbabush]

Hard to hold onto your toys under someone else's air.

~O~


'We needed foreign help – but now Libyans must end all this in Tripoli'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 47751.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

By Kim Sengupta in Ajdabiya
Monday, 21 March 2011

The bodies lay strewn, dismembered and burnt. Some of the faces expressed the horrors of the last moments, others lay peaceful, in repose. Around them were the remains of the tanks and artillery of Muammar Gaddafi's army, destroyed in an hour of pulverising and relentless air strikes.

A terrible scene of desolation unfolded on a field edged with pretty wild flowers.

The regime's offensive against the rebels had not survived the first contact with the military might of the West. It remains to be seen whether these were the first shots of the "long war" vowed by the enraged dictator in Tripoli. But for now plans to reconquer land in the east lost to the revolution were in ashes.

In less than 24 hours the loyalist forces have been driven from forward positions in Benghazi to the outskirts of Ajdabiya, the town whose capture was viewed as making it a near certainty that the capital of "Free Libya" would fall. Instead, they were now in chaotic retreat, offering the rebels the unexpected chance to take the war to their enemy's heartland.

Colonel Gaddafi's troops appeared to have taken no action to protect themselves from what was about to befall. Perhaps they were unaware of the ultimatum given by the international community. They were caught; vulnerable; in the open; and what was left afterwards resembled a ghastly montage in miniature of the carnage on the road to Basra when American and British warplanes bombed Iraqi forces fleeing from Kuwait.

In their panic, many of the soldiers had left engines running in their tanks and trucks as they fled across fields. Some raided farmhouses on the way to swap their uniforms for civilian clothes. But others did not make it, their corpses burning with their vehicles or torn apart by spraying shrapnel as they ran to get away.

The rebels, the Shabaab, seemed initially yesterday to be too surprised by the enormity of what had taken place to take advantage of the enemy's rout. Their fighters lingered for long periods, having their photographs taken with the armour, now shredded metal, which had inspired so much trepidation in recent battles. Some fetched their families to join them.

Eventually there was a disorganised push by a handful, in just half a dozen cars, towards where the enemy had fallen back. At Ajdabiya Gate, leading into the town, The Independent witnessed loyalist troops regrouping to carry out an ambush, killing two of their pursuers and capturing three others. But by early evening a convoy of around 50 vehicles was heading towards the new front line with the rebel commanders confident that their demoralised opponents would not put up a fight.

The next stops for the revolutionary forces, maintained Captain Fayyad Bakri, would be Brega, Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad, towns recently lost to the regime, and then Sirte, the birthplace of Gaddafi and a loyalist stronghold.

"After that we shall be going to Tripoli," he declared. "Although there may already be a revolt there by then. People will rise up against this evil man now they see he cannot get away with terrorising people. We accept we could not have done this without foreign help, especially from the French, and we are very grateful. But... there must be a Libyan end to this."

However, while rebel forces had the upper hand in Benghazi, the regime mounted a new assault on Misrata, 150km east of Tripoli, despite being on the receiving end of coalition air strikes. Tanks and soldiers entered the town centre and snipers on rooftops opened fire. Mohammed Abdelbaset, a rebel official said: "There are so many casualties we simply cannot count them." Boats blockaded the port preventing medicine and food getting through.

US and British warships had launched 110 Tomahawk missiles against air defences around Tripoli and Misrata. The regime claimed 48 people died and 115 were injured, casualties condemned by the Arab League whose support for a no-fly zone has been crucial in underpinning Western military action. In Tripoli, Colonel Gaddafi promised a "long, drawn-out war with no limits" warning his Western enemies: "We shall live and you shall die."

But the fate of his soldiers did not bear out that confident prediction. Around 20 of the men he sent on the Benghazi expedition who did not live had fallen on the scrubby grass at Theeka. Just after dawn the place had been attacked by missiles from the air, tearing turrets off tanks. For the soldiers there was no escape. Three of them were huddled together, as if afraid to be alone when the end came.

Some of the Shabaab were shocked by the human cost of what had taken place. "This is a different kind of war. I am sorry that so many people had died in this way. I was fighting against them only yesterday, but I am still sorry," said 27-year-old Khalil Tahini, an engineer from Tobruk who had joined the revolution.

"It is the fault of Gaddafi and his sons for sending these young men to fight us while they stay, well-guarded, in Tripoli. But look at him: he is somebody's son, a poor mother, a wife, children would be crying," he added, gently covering the face of the man on the ground with a torn blanket. His companion, Jawad Abdullah Hussein murmured: "May Allah give them peace. We all want an end to all this."

But there were others who stripped money and watches from corpses. A teenager exultantly cried "Allah hu Akhbar" repeatedly as he stood over the body of a fallen soldier, scarcely older than him, legs blown away. Groups of Shabaab, who had repeatedly fled before the regime's forces in the last few weeks, fired volleys of anti-aircraft rounds into the air to celebrate "their victory". Many of the tanks, some of the fighters explained, had really been taken out by the rebel air force. In fact both its planes had been shot down in consecutive weeks by the rebel's own fire from the ground.

Four soldiers had burst into Ali Abdulwahab's home near Sultan. He had run out of the back as they opened fire. "They stole some things, but they also left their uniforms and put on our clothes. I caught a glimpse of one of their faces, he looked frightened," he said. "I was cursing them not just for stealing things but because they had caused deliberate damage by shooting at the walls and smashing windows. But I am alive. My neighbour was shot. He is in hospital. I do not curse these dead men now. I curse Gaddafi."

Walla, in Benghazi, renamed the "Martyr's Clinic", had been one of the front line hospitals dealing with casualties since the uprising began on 17 February. The latest emergency had come on Saturday when regime forces launched their attack on Benghazi.

The 32nd death from that took place yesterday: 27-year-old Amer Qassim, who had suffered chest wounds when a rocket smashed into a house in the Gar Yunis area. "He was from Brega. If the Gaddafi men keep falling back he could have been back home in a few days," said Dr Selim al-Ghani. "He came to Benghazi to be safe and he died here. Most of the fatalities we had this time were civilians. A lot of the shooting and firing of shells were at random. It was vicious."

Dr al-Ghani received an urgent call: a patient had been brought in with gunshot wounds. "It is a man who they say was infiltrated into the city by the government to carry out attacks," he said. "He was shot when he was being arrested. I do not know if this is accurate," the doctor shrugged. "There is a lot of bitterness in Benghazi which results in cases like this. And soon we shall start receiving casualties when the rebels go forward. This war is not over."

[ben ttech]

not when you drive them into the city center and park em next to the preschool...


Published on Monday, March 21, 2011 by Consortium News
Protecting Libyan Civilians, Not Others
by Robert Parry
Even if you think that the incipient Libyan civil war was an unfolding humanitarian tragedy that justified some international intervention, it is hard not to take note of the endless double standards and selective outrage that pervade U.S. foreign policy.

For instance, there’s the parallel hypocrisy in Washington’s tepid reaction to the invasion of Bahrain by military forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, supporting a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators by Bahrain’s king. Where are the warnings of a muscular Western response in the home port of the U.S. Fifth Fleet?

Indeed, many Washington policymakers and pundits quietly justify the Saudi/UAE military action by noting that the protesters are part of Bahrain’s Shiite majority who might favor closer ties to Shiite-ruled Iran if some form of democracy came to the island kingdom.

Since Iran is considered a U.S. adversary – and because the Sunni-run Persian Gulf sheikdoms provide lots of oil to the West – Realpolitik suddenly takes over. The principles of majority rule and human rights are shoved into the back seat.

Similarly, when Yemen, a key U.S. ally in the “war on terror,” opens fire on pro-democracy protesters, there’s only a little finger-waving, no international clamor for a military intervention.

Of course, this double standard is even more striking when it is Israel killing civilians – such as when it escalated minor border clashes into full-scale assaults against nearby enemies, inflicting heavy civilian losses in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2008-09, not to mention Israel’s repeated assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank.

In such cases, U.S. politicians, including then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, endorsed Israel’s acts of “self-defense.” Prominent columnists like the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer cheered on the mayhem against the Lebanese and the Palestinians as a justifiable collective punishment for them tolerating Hezbollah and Hamas.

During the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 2006, Sen. Clinton happily shared the stage of a pro-Israel rally with Israeli United Nations Ambassador Dan Gillerman, a notorious anti-Muslim bigot. He responded to complaints that Israel was using “disproportionate” violence against targets in Lebanon by declaring: “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006]

After the slaughter in Gaza in 2008-09, the biggest villain to emerge was South African jurist Richard Goldstone for writing a report that cited war crimes by both Israel and Hamas. Goldstone placed the heavier blame on Israel in the killing of some 1,400 Palestinians. (Thirteen Israelis also died.)

Instead of showing sympathy for the dead Palestinian civilians, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 344-36 to condemn Goldstone’s report as “irredeemably biased” for its criticism of Israel. That overwhelming consensus was reflected across the U.S. political/media landscape.

And, there are the direct U.S. invasions of other countries – whether the ongoing ones in Afghanistan and Iraq or prior ones such as Vietnam in the 1960s, Panama in 1989 and Iraq in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. All have been accompanied by massive loss of civilian life.

In the case of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush initiated a war of aggression against a country that was then at peace. With very few exceptions, the U.S. political/media Establishment rallied behind Bush’s invasion, which has since led to the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including large numbers of civilians.

Though Bush launched the Iraq invasion without U.N. sanction – and his actions were criticized by some world leaders – not a single country took any direct action to interfere with the U.S. assault or to protect Iraqi civilians from Bush’s “shock and awe” campaign of overwhelming violence. As the war wore on, cities like Fallujah were flattened by U.S. firepower.

Fighting Al-Qaeda

To this day, U.S. drones and other air assets routinely kill civilians while hunting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan. The American justification is that the Taliban has taken up arms against the U.S.-installed government in Kabul and that the Taliban is believed to be harboring elements of al-Qaeda.

That rationale mirrors what Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi says he is doing in his country, fighting back against armed militants who, he claims, have connections to an al-Qaeda affiliate.

In a personal letter to President Barack Obama on Saturday, Gaddafi wrote that “we are confronting al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, nothing more. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? Tell me how would you behave so that I could follow your example?”

Though Gaddafi’s claim that his Libyan opponents include al-Qaeda terrorists is surely self-serving, it could not be any more self-serving – or false – than President Bush’s assertions tying Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, a primary justification for invading Iraq in 2003.

It’s also a fact that American political/media insiders often mock claims by U.S.-designated enemies during the early propaganda phases of a conflict but then later, grudgingly, acknowledged that there was some truth to those assertions after all.

For instance, when Iraq turned over 12,000 pages of documents to the U.N. in fall 2002 explaining how the country had destroyed its old WMD stockpiles, the submission was pooh-poohed by U.S. officials and leading American media commentators, but it later turned out to be true.

Today’s Libyan conflict has been generally viewed as an incipient civil war pitting anti-Gaddafi tribes from the east against pro-Gaddafi tribes in the west, but it is certainly possible that al-Qaeda operatives will take advantage of the disorder, much as they did in moving into post-invasion Iraq.

That point was acknowledged by the New York Times on Sunday in reporting that “one widely held concern is the possibility of a divided Libya with no clear authority, opening the door for Islamic extremists to begin operating in a country that had formerly been closed to them.”

Despite similarities between past conflicts and the new one, there has been one notable difference separating Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq from Obama’s support for the intervention in Libya: the rhetoric.

While Bush oversaw vibrant pro-war propaganda campaigns topped off by his grim-faced speeches from the Oval Office, Obama has behaved as the reluctant warrior he claims to be.

Obama insisted that no U.S. ground troops be sent to Libya, that the United Nations Security Council sanction the intervention and that U.S. involvement last only days, not be open-ended. He didn’t even disrupt a previously arranged visit to South America.

At a Saturday press briefing, standing next to Brazil's president, Obama only briefly mentioned the start of the conflict. In marked contrast to Bush’s bluster about a “crusade” to eliminate “evil” in the world, Obama struck a nuanced note of regret.

“I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice,” he said. “But we can’t stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.”

Obama also skipped the emergency summit in Paris called by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Obama dispatched Secretary of State Clinton instead. She, too, expressed uncharacteristic American humility and ambivalence regarding the war.

“We did not lead this,” Clinton said, as she pointedly repudiated “unilateral” action, a slap at Bush’s macho go-it-alone approach to war.

Absent the enforced jingoism that usually accompanies a U.S. war buildup, the American press corps also seemed a bit less gung-ho, even daring to take note of the inconsistency of Saudi Arabia and the UAE backing an intervention to protect Libyan civilians while joining in the violent suppression of Bahrain’s Shiite majority.

So, perhaps one should offer thanks for small favors. At least in this third ongoing U.S. war in the Muslim world, there hasn’t been quite the propaganda bullying that surrounded the other two.

[bubbabush]

If it weren't this trump of a twerp as the president, I'd say that their cultural and religious heterogeneity preclude effective public mobilization. This is another super-minority ruling clique; Awali are a minority sliver of Shiite Islam. They're what's called "Fiver-Twelvers" for the Caliphs they venerate as saints, and they're no more than 7% of Syria (but 95% of army/airforce officers, and police commanders). Opposition there has always come from the Sunni Arabs, often through the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood* that became widespread there during the United Arab Republic (the merger with Egypt in the '50s).

~O~

More Protesters Are Killed in Syrian Crackdown



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/world ... syria.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

More Protesters Are Killed in Syrian Crackdown
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: March 24, 2011

DAMASCUS, Syria — Thousands of demonstrators marched in the southern city of Dara’a on Thursday, after Syrian security forces staged a major crackdown suggesting that leaders here would not tolerate pro-democracy protests like those that have upended other Arab nations.

No violence was reported in the huge marches following the funerals on Thursday. But an assault on the central mosque there early Wednesday, and subsequent attacks by security forces, left an unknown number deaths, some of which appeared to be documented in bloody videos posted on YouTube. An American official who would speak only on background about intelligence reporting said that “about 15 people” were killed by forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Reuters quoted an unnamed hospital official in the city as putting the death toll at 37. Various Web sites were collecting names of those believed to be killed.

Information has trickled out slowly and incompletely from Syria, one of the most closed and repressive nations in the Middle East. But as the death toll from Dara’a crackdown rose, Mr. Assad faced growing international criticism, with Britain, France, Germany and the United Nations condemning the violence.

Mr. Assad has worked to tamp down the rising anger as protests spread from Dara’a to other towns in the south. On Thursday, a day after the regional governor was fired, Bouthaina Shaaban, an aide to Mr. Assad called the demands of the protesters “justified” and said that “the coming period will witness important decisions on all levels.” Ms. Shaaban, speaking to reporters in Damascus, gave to further details.

The crackdown began early on Wednesday after the Syrian Army reinforced the police presence in the city, near the Jordanian border, and confronted a group of protesters who had gathered in and around the Omari mosque in the city center. Activists and news reports said five or six people were killed after the forces tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas and then live ammunition.

Among the dead was Ali al-Mahameed, a doctor, who witnesses said was shot while tending to the injured. At least one person was killed after Dr. Mahameed’s funeral on Wednesday afternoon, attended by thousands of people, some of whom tried to return to the city center.

Syrian state television said Wednesday that it was not security forces who that had killed people at the mosque but rather an “armed gang.” The broadcast showed guns, grenades, ammunition and money that was said to have been taken from the mosque after a police raid. The report acknowledged four dead.

The official SANA news agency reported that the “gang” had killed a doctor, a medical worker and a driver in an ambulance and “security forces faced down those aggressors and managed to shoot and wound a few of them.”

Despite emergency laws that have banned public gatherings for nearly 50 years, protests have grown in the last week in several cities around Syria, one of the most oppressive Arab states. The largest have been in Dara’a, with thousands taking to the streets on Friday and again on Sunday, when protesters burned government buildings and clashed with the police. Several people were reported to have died.

The mosque’s imam, Ahmed al-Sayasna, told the news channel Al Arabiya that there were no weapons in the mosque, which he said was under police control.

A video posted on YouTube showed the mosque with a voice coming from the loudspeakers addressing the police: “Who would kill his own people? You are our sons, you are our brother.” Armed security forces could be seen running at a distance, amid gun shots and cries for help.

“Streets are full of scores of wounded and many dead, and no one can go to their rescue,” a witness said.

* to the extent that the SMB survived the Hama massacres in the early '80s

[ben ttech]

ive been told that syria has the distinction of being the only food exporter in the muslim world

[bubbabush]

Yeah, it's the Western curve of the Fertile Crescent. The North is especially abundant; it's close to the same climates and soils as California there. I've been near there, in Turkey in '84 when we took the kids on a week long Special Services bus tour of the country and spent another with my Dad who was living in up in Sinope then where it was like the Oregon/Washington coast.

~O~

[ben ttech]

so the stresses on their population are different that those on the other arab nations...

that said,
people i trust keep telling me that the family which claims to own syria is far worse to its people than quadaffi ever way...

is that true?

[bubbabush]

Old Man Assad, dead near 11 years would have had his tanks in downtown Dara'a shooting out a week ago and the bulldozers would have already finished up what was left of it. In '82 in Hama, he killed at least 50k, possibly 100k*, and bulldozed the city into the landscape. Then he rebuilt the whole place. That's exactly what Majnoon intends: first to physically erase the opposition for a generation, then erase all evidence of the massacre so that only the memory remains.

Yeah, too bad old Assad isn't secretly a vegetable somewhere like Sharon and "lived" to "see" this.

~O~

*no one knows for sure because most bodies were buried in mass graves in the desert, and there's never been a reliable Syrian census, or post-action survey

The accounts of Syria's "Friday of Dignity" are startling — with episodes full of surprising dissent and immediate repression. In Damascus' famed Umayyad mosque, a confrontation reportedly broke out during the imam's sermon just as the cleric blamed Facebook and foreign meddling for the country's week of unrest. As he cautioned that reforms would take time, the imam was interrupted by a worshipper who started chanting "Freedom! Freedom!" and was soon joined by others. "People began flooding outside, running from thugs," a man who was near the mosque told TIME on condition of anonymity. "People [were] running for their life out of the mosque." Video purportedly shot inside the mosque shows a large crowd of men chanting "Freedom!" and punching their right fists into the air before switching to "With our souls and with our blood, we will sacrifice for you, Dara'a!"
Dara'a is the southern city that has been the focal point of the unrest for a week now. On March 25, according to various reports, thousands of Syrians took part in nationwide protests after Friday prayers in at least a dozen cities, extending from Dara'a to the capital Damascus to the restive northern Kurdish area of Qamishli, scene of a short-lived 2004 revolt. Although the day started off peacefully, by late afternoon there were double-digit death tolls in several regions. Citing a local activist, CNN reported that 24 people were killed in Dara'a. Earlier, human-rights activists provided TIME with the names of four allegedly killed the same day in Dara'a, after troops opened fire on protesters trying to destroy a statue of the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. The current President, Bashar al-Assad, succeeded to the leadership upon his father's death in 2000.
(See photos of the protests in Syria.)
In Sanamein, some 50 km south of Damascus, security forces reportedly fired "haphazardly" into the crowds, local resident Mohammad Ibrahim tearfully told the al-Jazeera Arabic satellite channel. "There are more than 20 martyrs ... A real massacre happened here," he said. "We were chanting, 'Peacefully, peacefully' and 'Freedom.' I swear no one was saying anything against the regime." There were also several reported deaths in Lattakia, on the coast, and Homs, which lies not far from Lebanon's northern border. "The protesters in Homs were calling for the removal of the governor, and the response was to kill them with live ammunition?" said Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, who fled to Egypt on March 24 after several other human-rights activists were detained by authorities.
The violence comes just a day after presidential adviser Buthaina Shaaban said Assad would form committees to study several reform initiatives that, if implemented, would be nothing short of groundbreaking. The possible reforms include lifting the country's emergency law, which has been in place for 48 years, and turning the one-party Baathist state into a democracy with real elections and political parties. But Syrians have heard talk of reform for years. Many said they were hoping for Assad himself, not his adviser, to address the nation, given the gravity of events.
(See "As Protests Mount, Is There a Soft Landing for Syria?")
The question is what happens next. The International Crisis Group said on March 25 that there are only two options. "One involves an immediate and inevitably risky political initiative that might convince the Syrian people that the regime is willing to undertake dramatic change. The other entails escalating repression, which has every chance of leading to a bloody and ignominious end."
To date, there do not appear to be widespread calls for the fall of the regime or the removal of the relatively popular President. Indeed, there were counterdemonstrations in the capital in support of the President, who can claim the backing of Syria's substantial minority groups as well as its small but growing middle class. Most of the many chants echoing across the country are for freedom, nationalism and peaceful protests. "The government needs to restore the people's confidence in it, and to do that it must undertake real reforms," says Qurabi. But, as Yasser al-Ayte, a Damascus-based political analyst, told al-Jazeera, the government has a long way to go. "Last night, we heard promises, promises of change, and today there are injured and martyrs, so how do you expect people to believe these promises? Syrians today are saying, 'We want to live in dignity,' nothing more, nothing less."


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... z1HeM2zBrb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ben ttech]

ya, i know about hama...


crazy how washington can ignore such incided like that and quadaffi murdering thousands of political prisoners in detention...

cuz their our security partners...

america has it so fucking upside down

believing these nations are a result of muslim governance