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Just around the time that the West began military operations against Libya, there were ex post facto attempts to describe the assault as the culmination of long-standing hostilities. The model for many, especially Diana Johnstone and Jean Bricmont, was Yugoslavia with Qaddafi serving as a Milosevic type figure. This approach struck me as incoherent in light of the evidence that Libya had been pursuing the same type of neoliberal economic policies as post-Milosevic Serbia for the better part of a decade.
There was also an attempt to equate the Benghazi-based rebellion as Libya’s version of the KLA. This involved attempts to uncover conspiracies by the West to stir up trouble in the eastern regions of Libya and get the “restless natives” to rise up against a benevolent leader who had showered them with wealth for the longest time.
The latest instance of this came to my attention in a post to the Marxism mailing list that linked to an article by Michel Collon that appeared—unfortunately—in Granma Internacional. Collon is a member of the Axis for Peace, a project initiated by the Voltaire Network based in France. Collon described a plot that was hatched by the West well before the February 2011 uprising:
What was the role of secret services? In fact, the Libyan case didn’t start in February in Benghazi, but in Paris October 21st, 2010. According to the revelations of Italian journalist Franco Bechis (Libero, 24th of March) it is that day that the French secret service had prepared the revolt of Benghazi. They then “returned” (or perhaps even before) Nuri Mesmari, Chief of Protocol of Gaddafi, who was almost his right hand against him. He was the only one who enters the residence of the Libyan leader without knocking. Coming to Paris with his family for a surgery, Mesmari didn’t meet any doctor there, but on the other side, he would talk to several officials of the French secret services and Sarkozy’s close aides, according to the latest web Maghreb Confidential. On November 16th, at the Hotel Concorde Lafayette, he prepared a large delegation that would go two days later to Benghazi.
Pretty good stuff, I must say. If I were to turn this into a movie, I’d cast John Turturro as Nuri Mesmari and Tony Shalhoub as Qaddafi.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/what-5-years-of-lexis-nexis-reveals-about-libya-and-the-west/
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