[image: George Washington's Blog] <
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/>
The U.S. is constantly fighting enemies which it helped to create.
Posted on January 15,
2013<
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/why-theres-a-war-in-mali-because-we-bumped-off-libyas-gaddaffi.html>
by WashingtonsBlog <
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/author/washingtonsblog>
For example, U.S. backing of Al Qaeda led to 9/11.
The fighters who overthrew Libya's Gaddafi (as part of our 'humanitarian'
war there) were largely Al Qaeda terrorists. And after Gaddafi was killed,
they flooded into Syria ' where we are now fighting them.
As we reported in November:
The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya's Gaddafi was largely
comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.
According to a 2007 report by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center's
center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda's main headquarters
' and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq ' prior to the
overthrow of Gaddafi:
WestPoint 1 LibyaAQvsAS Why Theres a War In Mali: Because We Bumped Off
Libyas Gaddafi
The Hindustan Times reported last year:
'There is no question that al Qaeda's Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,' Bruce Riedel, former CIA
officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times.
It has always been Qaddafi's biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.
Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya. Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were
flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled.
(Incidentally, Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4
years after the West Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda
terrorists. Gaddafi claimed ' rightly it turns out ' that Benghazi was an
Al Qaeda stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion. But NATO
planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi.)
CNN, the Telegraph, the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources
confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria
to fight the Assad regime.
Similarly, the current war in Mali is a result of our intervention in Libya.
BBC noted in 2011:
Ethnic Tuareg fighters returning to Mali from Libya are said to have helped
to launch a new rebel group.
***
The Tuareg are a nomadic community who mostly live in the Sahara desert and
nearby regions of countries across north and west Africa.
Mali has been saying since the start of the conflict in Libya that the fall
of Col Gaddafi would have a destabilising effect in the region.
***
Before he was ousted, Col Gaddafi had helped broker a deal to end a Tuareg
rebellion in neighbouring Niger.
Many former fighters then went to Libya to join the army.
But in recent months, convoys of former Gaddafi loyalists have been
crossing the desert to escape reprisals by the forces who ousted Libya's
long-time leader.
BBC provided an update a year ago:
Tuareg rebels ' once part of Col Gaddafi's Libyan security forces ' have
attacked two more towns in the north of Mali, in a second day of fighting.
***
The NMLA say they are in control of the north-eastern town of Aguel'hoc and
are fighting for Tessalit.
The New York Times reported the next month:
After fighting for Colonel Qaddafi as he struggled to stay in power, the
Tuaregs helped themselves to a considerable quantity of sophisticated
weaponry before returning to Mali. When they got here, they reinvigorated a
longstanding rebellion and blossomed into a major challenge for this
impoverished desert nation, an important American ally '
The Tuaregs hoisted their rebel flag in the sandy northern towns '. Their
sudden strength has deeply surprised a Malian Army accustomed to fighting
wispy turbaned fighters wielding only Kalashnikov rifles.
***
Bajan Ag Hamatou, a lawmaker from M'naka ' angrily blamed the West for
having created a mess in his backyard.
'The Westerners didn't want Qaddafi, and they got rid of him, and they
created problems for all of us,' he said. 'When you chased Qaddafi out in
that barbaric fashion, you created 10 more Qaddafis. The whole
Saharo-Sahelian region has become unlivable.'
The Daily Star argues that the Tuaregs' weapons came from the West's arming
of Libyan rebels in the attempt to topple Gaddafi:
French forces in Mali have been taken by surprise by the fighting strength
of the Islamist radicals they are attempting to drive out of the centre of
the country, it emerged on Sunday.
***
'But they've shown themselves to be well-equipped, well-armed and
well-trained.'
The French officials believe the Islamists obtained many of their weapons
during last year's unrest, when arms were delivered to rebels fighting to
overthrow Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
'In Libya they picked up modern, sophisticated kit that is a lot more
robust and effective than could have been imagined,' the source added.
Similarly, ABC reported:
A leading member of an al Qaeda-affiliated terror group indicated the
organization may have acquired some of the thousands of powerful weapons
that went missing in the chaos of the Libyan uprising, stoking long-held
fears of Western officials.'We have been one of the main beneficiaries of
the revolutions in the Arab world,' Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a leader of the
north Africa-based al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [affiliated with the
Mali rebels], told the Mauritanian news agency ANI Wednesday. 'As for our
benefiting from the [Libyan] weapons, this is a natural thing in these
kinds of circumstances.'
Glenn Greenwald notes that the West's idiotic campaign against Libya is the
cause of the mess in Mali:
Within this new massive bombing campaign [by France - with the U.S. playing
wing man - against Mali], one finds most of the vital lessons about western
intervention that, typically, are steadfastly ignored.
First, as the New York Times' background account from this morning makes
clear, much of the instability in Mali is the direct result of Nato's
intervention in Libya. Specifically, 'heavily armed, battle-hardened
Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya' and 'the big weaponry
coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic fighters who came back'
played the precipitating role in the collapse of the US-supported central
government. As Owen Jones wrote in an excellent column this morning in the
Independent:
'This intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is
frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the
toppling of Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorship had consequences that Western
intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs '
who traditionally hailed from northern Mali ' made up a large portion of
his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their
homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in
post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western
media. . . . [T]he Libyan war was seen as a success . . . and here we are
now engaging with its catastrophic blowback.'
Over and over, western intervention ends up ' whether by ineptitude or
design ' sowing the seeds of further intervention. Given the massive
instability still plaguing Libya as well as enduring anger over the
Benghazi attack, how long will it be before we hear that bombing and
invasions in that country are ' once again ' necessary to combat the
empowered 'Islamist' forces there: forces empowered as a result of the Nato
overthrow of that country's government?
Second, the overthrow of the Malian government was enabled by
US-trained-and-armed soldiers who defected. From the NYT: 'commanders of
this nation's elite army units, the fruit of years of careful American
training, defected when they were needed most ' taking troops, guns, trucks
and their newfound skills to the enemy in the heat of battle, according to
senior Malian military officials.' And then: 'an American-trained officer
overthrew Mali's elected government, setting the stage for more than half
of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.'
In other words, the west is once again at war with the very forces that it
trained, funded and armed. Nobody is better at creating its own enemies,
and thus ensuring a posture of endless war, than the US and its allies.
Where the US cannot find enemies to fight against it, it simply empowers
them.
As Greenwald documents, the American government pretends that it is simply
fighting terrorists, but it just happens to find terrorists in countries we
want to invade (like Mali).
Source:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/why-theres-a-war-in-mali-because-we-bumped-off-libyas-gaddaffi.html
http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-u-s-is-constantly-fighting-enemies-which-it-helped-to-create/
Received on Sun Jan 20 2013 - 22:30:47 EST
