Ansar al-Sharia In Libya
Barbarians
At the Gates
A
terrorist network linked to Al Qaeda has warned the U.S. not to
involve itself in Libyan political affairs. Ansar al-Sharia, the
murderous network which no doubt had full advance knowledge about the butchery of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his Staff, is just one of the many
fanatical armed groups let loose in the ensuing chaos following the
overthrow of Colonel Gadhafi.
Just
to put the record straight, the United States was not 'defeated' in
Iraq nor in Afghanistan.
It
failed to achieve the objectives set – to bring democracy and
stability, for reasons I have outlined in other blogs. Libya,
however, is a very different case, and if there is a country where
urgent action is now required by the United States to protect vital
interests in the Mediterranean and in North Africa, it is in Libya.
Infinite
Justice
I
have no doubt that as I write this article Ansar al-Sharia is,
already, history.
To
now look beyond all of these terror networks there is new hope for
the future of Libya.
Pandora's
Box
I
said at the time that overthrowing Gadhafi was a huge mistake.
Like
the Soviet Union, he 'kept the lid' on a boiling cauldron of ethnic
and tribal tensions which, when let loose, savaged and tore apart and
consumed everything in their path.
There
are many countries in the world which have a 'balanced fragility'.
Libya was just one where, when you let loose the dogs of war, it's
like opening Pandora's box.
Corporate
Hubris
As
I have said in other blogs, American (corporate) hubris, has little
patience nor time to take stock of 'roadblocks' and 'obstacles' to
corporate objectives – hence the encouragement and reliance on the
military, as a first option, to pave the way for immediate
commercial, technological and industrial full spectrum dominance.
Most analysts either deliberately misrepresent this as U.S.
government and
military initiatives rather than for what they really are – that is
to say, corporate-driven, or indeed they fail to understand the
relationship between corporate America and the political and military
establishments.
When
a greater degree of stability is brought to Libya – which may be near at hand
– the hope is that corporate America will not, as it usually does,
dive in head first and attempt to parachute McDonalds, Pizza Hut and
democracy onto intellectual and political pygmies with contrived pseudo-political statements like 'no two countries with
McDonalds or Starbucks or Pizza Hut have ever gone to war against
each other.' The sole objective in Libya should be extractive –
minus the Jesus preachers, the NGOs, enforced Western consumerism and
the fast food takeaways.
But,
of course, this will not happen and Libyans, like the tribal Afghans,
will be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st
century by corporate America, with further disastrous consequences and
results.
Topsy-turvy:
The Land
of The Lilliputians
(Where
Politicians Do Not Answer to Corporations but Vice-Versa)
America
could learn quite a lot about how to get business done without
getting entangled in local tribal, ethnic and religious politics from
studying how China has advanced economically across Africa and the
rest of the world. Unfortunately this will not happen. While
China's government centrally plans for up to thirty and beyond to one hundred years of
economic stability for China itself (and enjoys the luxury of
dictating compliance to corporate China of what it's vision of the
world is for the next century), shareholders in the United States are
constrained by the system to see no further than the short-term
balance sheet, with all the negative consequences this has on their unique, limited, and very narrow perception of global governance.
Patrick
Emek
http://magharebia.com/en_GB/articles/awi/features/2014/05/28/feature-01