Motives and the Politics of Pretexts

16 June 2011

opinion

Western elites are quite committed in presenting their own motives as compassionate by definition, and the stinking Western executed brutality descending from the Libyan skies is being pushed down our throats as the salvation for Libyans – not the savage destruction of livelihoods the intervention is.

The ferocious NATO bombings descending on Tripoli today may be coming in the name of the doubtlessly discredited UN Resolution 1973, and as such may seem to be adequately camouflaged under the doctrine of the so-called “responsibility to protect”.

But, one cannot fail to see the racial composition of those attacking Libyan cities; one cannot fail to see their historical definition enshrined in slavery, conquest, global wars, colonialism and imperialism; one cannot miss their geographical origins; and, one cannot miss the notorious game of pretexts.

The propaganda model in the West has created a false debate over the motives of the West in Libya, as well as the general motive behind Western foreign policy in general and US foreign policy in particular. While the proximate aims of Western aggression in Libya are quite apparent, there is a tendency from the intellectual community to mystify reality and to create what would appear to be a complex situation requiring high level analysis falsely regarded as purely a preserve for the academic world.

It is important that we establish what Western motives are not in Libya. Professional literature relied upon by the intellectual community usually gives an account of policy, which basically is what policy is not about.

It may be policy on anti-terrorism, democracy, human rights, or any other truism that may be peddled at anytime – the underlying principle is that the policy in question is not about what it is announced to address.

So, we must never for once bother ourselves about thinking of believing the rhetoric that the NATO bombings in Libya are having something to do with protecting endangered lives of civilians. NATO was never designed to save civilian lives from its origins. It is a conquest coalition by design and definition, and its makers have no history of saving lives whatsoever, especially lives of lesser peoples.

The mission in Libya is to conquer Gaddafi and to take over Libya for the puppets from Benghazi.

One way of establishing the motives behind political statements is to listen to political leaders and commentators.

Often, it is claimed that the motive behind military action is humanitarian. Such a claim hardly informs us of anything. Every resort to force is always rested on similar pretexts, and the premising of military aggression on good intentions is the tool of every warmonger, every brute in history, and all known monsters in history have proclaimed such noble motives. Sometimes, politicians making such claims irrelevantly convince themselves of the truth of what they say.

Hitler may have genuinely believed that he was taking over parts of Czechoslovakia to end ethnic conflict and bring to its people the benefits of a superior civilisation.

He probably believed he was the saviour about to end “wild terror” when he invaded Poland.

Perhaps, some Western politicians genuinely believe that NATO war planes freely bombing Libyan cities to ashes today are “protecting innocent civilians” from the brutal claws of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The Japanese fascists that rampaged China were most likely in total belief that they were selflessly labouring to create an “earthly paradise” and to protect the suffering population from the bandits that led them.

No doubt some Western politicians may genuinely believe that the sanctions illegally imposed on Zimbabwe are there to liberate the suffering population – setting them free from their own leadership. This is despite the fact that much of the suffering of the same people was actually brought about by the introduction of the same economic sanctions meant to be the tool for their liberation.

Barack Obama probably believed what he said in his presidential address on March 28 about the humanitarian motives for the Libyan intervention – honestly believing that Gaddafi was about to carry out a blatant genocide in Benghazi.

Most intellectuals and commentators are in no doubt that what they say and write is the truth and correct position, confidently elevating their work to the level of pure logic.

This is why we have to quote intellectuals to support any of the arguments we may want to make.

What needs to be interrogated when authors call for humanitarian intervention and “responsibility to protect” is whether or not the authors are ready to defend the victims of their own crimes; or those of their allies and clients, and Israel is a glaring example.

Let us take Barack Obama as the author of the call for humanitarian intervention in Libya for example.

Did Obama call for a no-fly zone during the murderous earth-shuttering US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006?

The invasion was so blatant that it did not even come with any credible pretexts like others often do.

Rather, we had to endure Obama boasting proudly during his presidential campaign that he had co-sponsored a Senate resolution supporting the invasion and calling for punishment on Iran and Syria for daring to impede it. The simple test of establishing worthy and unworthy victims in the advancing of the humanitarian cause renders virtually the entire doctrine of humanitarian intervention absolutely illogical and faulty, at least in its Western sense today.

What is rarely ever discussed is what motives are in reality, and that is the case with almost any state, whether imperialistic, communist or anything else. As for the United States, the orations of Obama must be understood in the context of foundations laid during the World War II era.

Wartime planners took it for granted that the US would emerge from the war in a position of overwhelming dominance. They were planning for a future US with “unquestionable power” and “military and economic superiority,” limiting “any exercise of sovereignty” by states that might interfere with US global designs.

These are countries like post-Shah Iran trying to run its affairs without the direction and approval from Washington, Zimbabwe daring to redistribute its colonially stolen land without the approval of the British colonial masters and their world-leading cousins from America, or Cuba refusing to do the imperial bidding of the US right in the wings of the Empire itself.

As Geoffrey Warne asserted once, Roosevelt was “aiming at United States hegemony in the post-war world”.

It was this vision that guided wartime planners and the same doctrine today forms the basis of US foreign policy, of course adopting changing tactics, as time and circumstances change. However, the principle itself never changes.

The generally accepted position is that the West’s major interest in the Middle East is oil.

The pretexts are always many and some of them are quite ill thought and absolutely laughable. The world fell into raucous laughter after Tony Blair declared that Saddam Hussein was within 45 minutes of destroying this planet before the heroic Western coalition invaded him and failed to disarm him because he was in fact not armed at all.

When the dimensions of US post-invasion defeat in Iraq could no longer be concealed, the glorious rhetoric about “democratising Iraq” was displaced by honest announcements of policy goals – the real motives behind the occupation. In December 2007 the White House issued a Declaration of Principles insisting that Iraq was to grant US military forces indefinite access to its territory and that it also had to privilege American investors.

A couple of months later President George W Bush informed Congress that he would overrule legislation that could limit the permanent stationing of US armed forces in Iraq, or in his own words, “United States control of oil resources of Iraq”.

The demands could not be carried out because Iraq insurgents put an emphatic resistance to the machinations.

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