Libya is in the news again due to flash floods which have caused great devastation. Usually, I do not speak in the first person in my writings but in this specific case I will express my recollections of the Rape of Libya. These recollections are purely from memory and therefore a few details may be incorrect.
The 2011 Rape of Libya is an event that I remember very well. At that time, despite being extremely busy with my post-graduate studies I was a voracious reader of news with a special emphasis on geopolitical developments. My poison of choice was the BBC which I supplemented with articles from the LA Times and the Washington Post. I had been observing very closely the “War on Terror” and I had begun to notice that everything that was being done in the “War on Terror” was exacerbating and deepening instability and extremism in the Middle East.
Articles were being churned out on how drone striking villages in Afghanistan and the slaughtering of countless innocent civilians was creating a fertile breeding ground for extremist recruitment.
And the toppling of the secular nation-state of Iraq under false pretenses had caused mass casualties, the rise of extremist sectarian groups, and extreme instability within the country and for the entirety of the region.
I had not yet become “awakened” to geopolitical realities. For a long time, I genuinely believed the US was trying to combat terrorism and extremism. It was therefore very curious to me how every action the US was taking was directly fueling extremism and instability. It was like someone saying that they were trying to put out a raging fire and went about “combating” the fire by dousing it with gasoline.
There was a complete disconnect between the rhetoric of successive presidential administrations and the actions that were being taken in the region. If you completely disregarded the rhetoric coming out of the White House and focused only on the actions of US foreign policy, one could clearly see that every conceivable action was being taken in order to foment instability and force the rise of extremism.
In my undergraduate days, I had come across the ideology of Realpolitik and, while my understanding of the concept was extremely limited, I had grown to have an affinity for the paradigms of the ideology. It is important to express how I specifically understood Realpolitik. To me, Realpolitik concerned itself with the understanding of geopolitics and statecraft in a detached and logical manner which concerned itself with achieving desirable and beneficial ends in a logical and practical way. To remove from analysis emotion and ideological sensibilities and view geopolitical reality for what it is. To design practical and sensible foreign policy based on geopolitical reality. And that the prime “good” in Realpolitik was peace and stability. That the prime “evil” was war, chaos, and instability. In such a view, dealing with dictators was not innately a “bad” thing if one could achieve desirable and beneficial outcomes. While ideals such as liberty, democratic principles, and human rights were to be desired and to be sought after, firstly and before anything else, a state of peace and stability must be maintained. Only from a state of peace and stability could the desirable be achieved.
I should state that this view of Realpolitik is extremely superficial. My views have evolved significantly since that time. However, I still hold the opinion that peace and stability are foundational to human progress and that these must be preserved to the best of our collective ability.
Within this framework, I viewed the Rape of Iraq as a massive crime in that they had toppled a dictator who had established stability and order within his country and the region and had left in his stead a cauldron of chaos, death, destruction, anarchy, and suffering. All the demonization and character assassination of Saddam could not in my mind justify the utter horror of what happened to Iraq following the NATO-led invasion.
The general view towards Gaddafi prior to 2011 was a favorable one. There had been articles of how he had given up his WMDs and dismantled his nuclear program. Of how he had loaded up a plane filled with all of the “weapons of mass destruction” of Libya and sent them to Bush following the US Rape of Iraq. A “show of good faith”. How he had cooperated with the US following the invasion of Iraq and had become a dependable US ally in the “War on Terror”. There had been a great normalization of ties with Libya and Gaddafi was understood to be a good and reliable Western partner.
Then came the Arab Spring. To reiterate, I had not yet been truly politically awakened and at the time I saw the Arab Spring as a genuine grassroots movement.
I did not understand it for what it was: a CIA blitz to topple targeted governments in the region. When the “fires” of the Arab Spring found their way to Libya, everything changed very quickly.
My recollection of how the Rape of Libya was presented in the Western press is as follows: an “organic, independent, and wholly autonomous” protest movement turned into an insurrection, the insurrection grew, Gaddafi was accused of using his air force to bomb the rebels, Gaddafi was set to win the “civil war”, and the US decisively intervened toppling the Libyan government. Of course, this was mostly nonsense. Libya was a “dirty war” by the US and NATO using terrorist proxies in an operation that had the malice of forethought.
Western powers were histrionically handwringing at the UN Security Council, clutching their proverbial pearls over the “atrocities” committed by Gaddafi and insisting on the “necessity” of a “no fly zone” to “save civilians”. The “no fly zone” was approved by the UN Security Council and then the US and NATO immediately took this resolution as a mandate for NATO to bomb the Libyan government forces, support the rebels to the maximum extent possible, and to ensure a victory for the “rebels” (terrorists) over the Libyan forces. China, Russia, and the international community were shocked and horrified at the giddy and enthusiastic criminality of NATO. In the US, this criminality was “justified” by outrageous propaganda and malicious slander directed at Gaddafi, his family, his associates, and the Libyan government in general.
At the time, NATO stressed and emphasized again and again that there would be “no boots on the ground” in NATO and that the support was purely moral, diplomatic, and through the criminal use of air power. After the Rape of Libya was a fait accompli, cheeky articles started coming out exposing how there had been NATO special forces on the ground from the very beginning aiding the “rebels”.
During that entire Rape of Libya there was nonstop media coverage on the corruption of Gaddafi and his family and of the “atrocities” committed by the government forces. It was a hostile and aggressive deluge of articles and news pieces alleging corruption. If such corruption had indeed existed, it had been considered perfectly acceptable to the US and NATO previously but apparently now this alleged corruption was to be accepted as an unquestionable matter of fact. And more importantly, this alleged corruption was all the justification necessary for the murder of Gaddafi, the murder of his family, the murder of his associates, the murder of government officials, and the bombing of his entire country back into the stone ages.
The more the country bled and screamed in agony, the more the country descended into a terrible chaos, the more the media would agitate and inundate international audiences with allegations of corruption. I did not make the connection at that time, but it had been identical to the Western media blitz (aggressive propaganda campaign) demonizing Saddam and his family which had preceded and continued throughout the Rape of Iraq.
When the US and its hegemon want to rape a civilization and bomb a sovereign nation back into the stone ages, one of the ways it engineers the consent of the masses is by a highly aggressive campaign of demonization and character assassination of the targeted country’s leader. Leader X is “bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.” Why? “Because he’s crazy, he’s insane, he’s unstable, he’s a madman, he’s a lunatic, he’s a criminal, he’s bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad”.
Western audiences are taught to have a visceral and subconscious hatred of targeted leaders. When pressed with questions as to why they hate said leader, most propagandized westerners can only reply that “Leader X is a ‘bad’ guy”. Why? They have no idea, they can’t tell, but they are definitely certain that he is “bad”. The way the Western press will have you understand the situation it would seem that Targeted Country X had emptied out its insane asylums and prisons and elected them all to office. And that the only way that country can be brought to “salvation” is through the liberating and cleansing power of American bombs and violent rape through military intervention. Some sort of “sacred” and “cathartic” bloodbath.
This idiotic trick works because of the totalitarian control the Western sphere has over their media and information space. To live this effect is uncanny. The Western sphere will excoriate a world leader and make them out to be emotionally and mentally unstable. And if one bothers to actually listen to press conferences and speeches made at the UN by said world leader, one will generally find that the leader is extremely intelligent, highly logical, well-grounded, and that they make extremely valid points regarding their nation’s interests and geopolitical positions. But that leader will usually never be allowed to speak directly to Western audiences. If anything, it is “problematic” when Western audiences independently listen to foreign leaders because they may come to have an affinity for a foreign leader and they might empathize with the plight of a targeted country. This is highly problematic when that country is targeted for vicious brutalization.
I witnessed over months the illegal intervention by NATO in Libya. I was shocked, I was horrified, I was disturbed at what I was witnessing. They had betrayed an ally in the purported “War on Terror”. They took sides in a purportedly wholly domestic conflict in which they obviously should have remained neutral. They lied to the world about their intention in petitioning for a “no fly zone” and they used the UN resolution to justify attacks which savaged civilian populations and functioned as a de facto declaration of war. They ran roughshod over international law using this limited resolution as mandate for a full-scale intervention and invasion.
And all the time while this rape was happening, there was the constant vicious character assassination of Gaddafi, his family, and copious and seemingly never-ending quantities of “atrocity porn” (malicious false accusations of human rights abuses) slandering the Libyan government and its military.
Because I ascribed to Realpolitik, no amount of emotional manipulation or illogical character assassination could dissuade me from the position I staunchly held at that time (and which I still ascribe to): the US had no business intervening in Libya, should have remained neutral in any potential domestic dispute, should have assisted in every manner possible in maintaining stability in the country and in the region, and they should have sought diplomatic and nonviolent solutions to any disputes.
Despite the horror and chaos of Iraq still fresh in everyone’s mind, the US had proceeded to overtly engage in the overthrow and collapse of yet another stable government and was again the catalyst of yet another nation's hellish descent into horrific chaos. An undeniable and deeply disturbing pattern was readily evident.
As Gaddafi was defeated, order left Libya. In an ironic twist, the Rape of Libya culminated in the literal rape of Gaddafi by NATO “rebels” (proxy terrorist forces) who sodomized him with a knife. The country descended into chaos, strife, and civil war. The order of Gaddafi was replaced by terrorism, extremism, sectarian violence, and ultimately a fragmented failed state.
Poverty, suffering, and human rights atrocities were now the norm. Now, for the first time in hundreds of years there were open slave markets in Libya where Sub-Saharan Africans were being sold like hapless animals. This was the “light” of the US, the “salvation” proffered by NATO: Hell on Earth.
In Libya, NATO and the US had committed a crime that was difficult to hide even with their aggressive propaganda. The US had left Libya a failed state and had brought the country back into the stone ages. And of course, the proverbial “cherry on the top” was the cackling of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her infamous interview: “We came, we saw, he died”. A giddy childlike cackling of a war criminal who was unable to contain her glee at accomplishing this horrific crime.
There were no attempts at “nation building” afterwards. Libya was abandoned by the world. Left to consume itself in a whirlwind of instability and chaos. Left to regress technologically and socially. A “job well done” by the US and NATO. And the fires of Libya had not yet subsided when the US wanted to “celebrate” their crime by repeating the “Libyan model” in Syria.
In Syria, the American empire truly allowed their mask to fall off.
At least this time the international community had learned their lesson, and when the US and its client states pushed for another “no fly zone” there was an unwavering veto from Russia and China. No more “humanitarian bloodbaths”. No more bombing a country back into the stone ages. And because the US and NATO could not use overt military force they were forced to depend almost entirely on their proxy forces; the mercenary Islamic terrorists they had just used to destabilize and destroy Libya.
There was little need for pretense at this point, there was not as much pressure to hide a reprehensible reality. And torrents of stories started coming out in the Western media sphere about how in the Syrian conflict the government wasn’t just fighting “rebels” but literal Islamic extremists and violent terrorist groups and battalions. While in Libya a great effort had been made to portray the “rebels” as “freedom fighters” (rather than correctly as proxy terrorist groups), in Syria this façade was no longer necessary.
And it was very clear to anyone who was paying attention that the US was directly funding and aiding terrorists; although this reality was directly denied but tacitly admitted.
At the time, great pains were taken to launder US influence in aiding and abetting their terrorist proxies. Out came the incessant slogan of “moderate rebels” which seemed to be inescapable.
It was only THESE “moderate rebels” the US was aiding. The US was not aiding the “bad rebels” (violent extremist child-beheading terrorists), they were arming only the “good rebels”. Providing arms and training the so-called “moderate rebels”.
And it was just such a darn frustration to the US military and US political establishment that these “moderate rebels” they were pumping millions of dollars of US military equipment into and were providing military training to kept “defecting” to terrorist groups and battalions. It was all just one big “oopsie” that US weapons consistently found their way into the hands of the most vile and evil terrorist groups the world had seen in the 21st century. It was all so unfortunate. But such unfortunate circumstances could not preclude the US from flooding Syria with weapons and military aid.
It was all “worth it” because “Assad bad man”, “Assad so bad”, “Assad must go”. The unimaginative propaganda drivel forced into acceptance by the sheer force of repetition. During those years, the “moderate rebels” trope was like a nervous tic in the Western media, repeated ad nauseum until it was forcibly drilled into the minds of Western audiences and numbly accepted. Even as this time it was evident that the Syrian government was literally fighting Al Qaeda. The same Al Qaeda of 9/11 fame, the same “prime evil” that had been the justification for the “War on Terror”.
The “Libyan model” was being repeated in Syria while the memory of the charnel house and failed state that Libya had become still painfully fresh in the world’s consciousness. The only thing that prevented Syria from falling into complete chaos and destruction at that time was the assistance of the Russian Federation.
At that time, I could not understand why the US and Russia were not banding together to fight terrorist groups. To me this seemed like a golden opportunity for a reproachment between the US and Russia, a time to set aside differences and come together to fight that “prime evil” that had purportedly “single handedly” pulled off 9/11. I was perplexed that all that could be seen in the Western press were condemnations of Russia’s support of the Syrian government and Russia preventing Syria from descending into a fiery abyss. But all the hyperbolic and histrionic propaganda in the world could not hide the fact that Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin were on the right side of history and the US was unambiguously on the wrong side of history. The US was doing everything in its power to foment a bloodbath and humanitarian catastrophe in Syria and leave behind yet another failed state. It was clear that the finality of the US’s actions in Syria was the repetition of the Libyan tragedy.
Perhaps the US and its servile hegemon had just accepted that they had already made cretins out of Americans and international audiences. That they were trying to topple yet ANOTHER secular Arab state which was fighting for its life fighting against literal dangerous and violent terrorists groups was numbly accepted by Westerner audiences. At this point, anything could be accepted, anything would be believed. That the US was now on the same side as that “scary Al Qaeda” which the American media had terrorized American audiences for years into having a pathological fear of in the post-9/11 decade was silently accepted.
I was in disbelief. To the few in my social sphere who followed politics, I saw an idiotic “bobble head” mentality. People just “bobbing” their head up and down in agreement to whatever the media was saying. Any idiotic excuse was acceptable if there was enough emotional hysteria and handwringing, any horror could be committed with giddy enthusiasm. There was no logic and no sanity in what was being done. There was only egregious and vicious criminality that was barely even covered up by the press. Why pretend anymore? Americans didn’t care. And that time and ever since they would believe anything in their corrupted information sphere. The average Joe Blow America couldn’t think critically if his life depended on it. Zbigniew Brezinski’s prediction of how the American system would shape the mind of the citizenry had already been achieved.
Would you expect the average American to think critically and discern the truth? And if they were able to read between the lines and unravel the obvious mendacity in the press, would they be inspired to protest the Rape of Syria?
This was the epitome of propaganda excellence described in Orwell’s fictional 1984 where, mid-speech during a rally against the hated enemy of Eurasia, the speaker is casually informed that there had been geopolitical developments and that the enemy was now Eastasia and that Oceania was now allied to their former enemy Eurasia. Mid-speech the enemy had gone from Eurasia to Eastasia and the mindless crowd simply changed the target of their vitriol and within seconds mindlessly accepted that they hate Eastasia and that that they have ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia.
“The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them.”
In a few months, the hated Al Qaeda was “not so bad”, at least not so bad that the US could be fighting on the same side as these barbaric terrorists. To topple “bad bad man Assad” this was now acceptable.
It was perfectly acceptable to let Syria, a beautiful sovereign country with an important historical legacy and possessing of a rich culture, be toppled and overrun by Al Qaeda, ISIS, and a motley gang of hellish evil.
The Western people were so bludgeoned by propaganda that they could do a “switcheroo” and have the people support the toppling of a secular government at the hands of the same Islamic terrorists they had been made to hysterically fear for over a decade.
This is not including the worst of it. The rise of the “new and improved” Al Qaeda in the form of ISIS and the “completely unforeseen” blitz by ISIS which at one point had taken the northern third of Iraq and had conquered parts of Syria. A time in which Iraq and Syria were both fighting for their very existence as civilizations and even as they did so the US kept flooding Syria with weapons that were vital to the efforts of ISIS and Al Qaeda to continue their fight in Syria and Iraq.
Anybody who was paying attention knew that Iran and Russia were on the right side of history in their support for the Syrian government, in preventing the Syrian nation from becoming another failed state, and in preventing a bloodbath of Syrian civilians. But saying so was taboo. Because “Iran bad, so bad” and “Putin evil, so evil”. An Orwellian perfection in brainwashing.
I never forgot the Rape of Libya. I never forgot my shock and horror and what unfolded. I never forgot the Libyan people. And I have always wondered, “When will there be justice for Libya”? I’m still waiting for justice for what was done to them. A part of me has never let go due to the lack of a resolution, has never gotten closure at what had happened there.
As the years went by and the US Empire eased its grip on the information space following the Rape of Libya, little by little out came little trickles of vital information that would have been very useful for American audiences to form a balanced opinion on Gaddafi and Libya.
Libya under Gaddafi had the highest standard of living in Africa. Libya under Gaddafi had the highest tier of standard of living in the Middle East second only to Saudi Arabia and a few other countries. Libya under Gaddafi had enviable social programs which are considered progressive and desirable by most Western audiences. Libya under Gaddafi was safe, stable, and developing. Libya under Gaddafi was an excellent partner to African countries and had been critical in fomenting collective progress and development.
There’s a funny thing about American propaganda, the US commits the most heinous crimes imaginable. During the active phase of these crimes, it enforces a strict socially engineered paradigm in which American audiences don’t dare call out American foreign policy as criminal or the rape of a civilization as being a crime against humanity. It’s taboo to say the truth, it’s taboo to make valid arguments, it’s taboo to point out American criminality. You wouldn’t want to be “un-American” now, would you? You don’t want to be a “Putin apologist”, a “Saddam apologist”, a “Gaddafi apologist”, an “Assad apologist”, or “[INSERT target of current defamation campaign] apologist”.
And after the rape is nicely concluded, after millions are dead and many millions more displaced, after historical architecture has been destroyed, artifacts pillaged, civilians butchered, infrastructure destroyed, the national treasury pillaged, and natural resources stolen, the American media cheekily admits that “mistakes were made” but that should in no way be held against the American Empire.
The American Empire acted only with the best of intentions. Their violent sadistic intentions were pure, but their “execution” was flawed. “Mistakes were made”, “Oppsie, so terribly sorry”. But don’t you dare try to interrupt the execution of those “mistakes” while they are occurring, don’t you dare interrupt crimes in progress.
Because American and Western audiences have historical amnesia and are trained to excuse the crimes of their governments, hypocrisy like this can occur. Again, and again, and again, and again.
It is this historical amnesia which allows the Butcher of Libya himself to grandstand about the recent floods in Libya and the consequent humanitarian disaster. This is a special kind of evil, a criminal hypocrisy of cosmic proportions.
Of course, there are those that remember. That will always remember.
But the American information sphere is extremely effective at suppressing the voice of millions of victims of American imperial slaughter. Effective at marginalizing and suppressing the voices of the few American citizens fully cognizant of the horrors committed by their government. This narrative will be like most others, lost to time. As has the sorrows and cries of millions of victims left voiceless.
A part of me will always want justice for the Libyan people. Every time the US press does their hypocritical handwringing over some propaganda lies concerning “human rights abuses” of new Targeted Country Y, in the back of my mind I always think “What about Libya?”. What about justice for Libya? A part of me has not moved on from that point in time.
Libya will not get justice. The best they can hope for is that in a century they may be able to regain the civilizational point they had under Gaddafi. Perhaps in a multipolar world. And not Libya, nor Syria, nor Yemen, nor Iraq, nor any of the many countries violated in such heinous ways will get justice. There will be no justice forthcoming for any of the many many countries who were raped by the imperial gang of Western countries headed by the US Empire. The least we can do is become savvy to the propaganda tricks that have allowed so many unthinkable horrors to have occurred and do our best to speak up in the future. That we may avert the repetition of such a profound tragedy.