And across the globe, the call came in scores of languages, ‘the world says no to war!’ The cry ‘Not in Our Name’ echoed from millions of voices. The Guiness Book of World Records said between 12 and 14 million people came out that day, the largest protest in the history of the world. It was, as the great British labour and peace activist and former MP Tony Benn described it to the million Londoners in the streets that day, ‘the first global demonstration, and its first cause is to prevent a war against Iraq’. What a concept – a global protest against a war that had not yet begun – the goal, to try to stop it.

It was an amazing moment – powerful enough that governments around the world, including the soon-famous ‘Uncommitted Six’ in the Security Council, did the unthinkable: they too resisted US-UK pressure and said no to endorsing Bush’s war. Under ordinary circumstances, alone, US-dependent and relatively weak countries like Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan could never stand up to Washington. But these were not ordinary circumstances. The combination of diplomatic support from ‘Old Europe’, Germany and France who for their own reasons opposed the war, and popular pressure from thousands, millions, filling the streets of their capitals, allowed the Six to stand firm. The pressure was fierce. Chile was threatened with a US refusal to ratify a [quite terrible – but the Chilean government was committed to it] US free trade agreement seven years in the making. Guinea and Cameroon were threatened with loss of US aid granted under the African Growth & Opportunity Act. Mexico faced the potential end of negotiations over immigration and the border. And yet they stood firm.

The day before the protests, February 14, the Security Council was called into session once again, this time at the foreign minister level, to hear the ostensibly final reports of the two UN weapons inspectors for Iraq. Many had anticipated that their reports would somehow wiggle around the truth, that they would say something Bush and Blair would grab to try to legitimize their spurious claims of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, that they would at least appear ambivalent enough for the U.S. to use their reports to justify war. But they refused to bend the truth, stating unequivocally that no such weapons had been found.

Following their reports, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin responded with an extraordinary call, reminding the world that ‘the United Nations must remain an instrument of peace, and not a tool for war’. In that usually staid, formal, rule-bound chamber, his call was answered with a roaring ovation beginning with Council staff and quickly engulfing the diplomats and foreign ministers themselves.

Security Council rejection was strong enough, enough governments said no, that the United Nations was able to do what its Charter requires, but what political pressure too often makes impossible: to stand against the scourge of war. On the morning of February 15, just hours before the massive rally began at the foot of the United Nations, Harry Belafonte and I accompanied South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to meet with then Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on behalf of the protesters. We were met by a police escort to cross what the NY Police Department had designated its “frozen zone” – not in reference to the bitter 18 degrees or the biting wind whipping in from the East River, but the forcibly deserted streets directly in front of UN headquarters. In the secretary-general’s office on the 38th floor of the United Nations, Bishop Tutu opened the meeting, looking at Kofi across the table and said, ‘We are here today on behalf of those people marching in 665 cities all around the world. And we are here to tell you, that those people marching in all those cities around the world, we claim the United Nations as our own. We claim it in the name of our global mobilization for peace.’

It was an incredible moment. And while we weren’t able to prevent that war, that global mobilisation, that pulled governments and the United Nations into a trajectory of resistance shaped and led by global movements, created what the New York Times the next day called ‘the second super-power’.

Mid-way through the marathon New York rally, a brief AP story came over the wires: ‘Rattled by an outpouring of international anti-war sentiment, the United States and Britain began reworking a draft resolution… Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the final product may be a softer text that does not explicitly call for war.’ Faced with a global challenge to their desperate struggle for UN and global legitimacy, Bush and Blair threw in the towel.

Our movement changed history. While we did not prevent the Iraq war, the protests proved its clear illegality, demonstrated the isolation of the Bush administration policies, helped prevent war in Iran, and inspired a generation of activists. February 15 set the terms for what ‘global mobilisations’ could accomplish. Eight years later some of the Cairo activists, embarrassed at the relatively small size of their protest on February 15, 2003, would go on to help lead Egypt’s Arab Spring. Occupy protesters would reference February 15 and its international context. Spain’s indignados and others protesting austerity and inequality could see February 15 as a model of moving from national to global protest.

In New York City on that singular afternoon, some of the speakers had particular resonance for those shivering in the monumental crowd. The great activist-actor Harry Belafonte, veteran of so many of the progressive struggles of the last three-quarters of a century, called out to the rising US movement against war and empire, reminding us that our movement could change the world, and that the world was counting on us to do so. ‘The world has sat with tremendous anxiety, in great fear that we did not exist,’ he said. ‘But America is a vast and diverse country, and we are part of the greater truth that makes our nation. We stand for peace, for the truth of what is at the heart of the American people. We WILL make a difference – that is the message that we send out to the world today.’

Belafonte was followed by his close friend and fellow activist-actor Danny Glover, who spoke of earlier heroes, of Soujourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and of the great Paul Robeson on whose shoulders we still stand. And then he shouted ‘We stand here today because our right to dissent, and our right to participate in a real democracy has been hijacked by those who call for war. We stand here at this threshold of history, and we say to the world, “Not in Our Name! Not in Our Name!”‘ The huge crowd, shivering in the icy wind, took up the cry, and ‘Not in our Name! Not in Our Name!’ echoed through the New York streets.

Our obligation as the second super-power remains in place. Now what we need is a strategy to engage with power, to challenge once again the reconfigured but remaining first super-power. That commitment remains.

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power, on the legacy of the February 15 protests. She was on the steering committee of the United for Peace & Justice coalition helping to build February 15.

Here we go again with the Iran hysteria. It is tempting to think this time will be just like previous periods of sabre rattling against Iran. But there are significant new dangers. The Arab Spring, Israel’s position, changes in the regional and global balance of forces, and national election campaigns, all point to this round of anti-Iranian hysteria posing potentially graver risks than five or six years ago.

We have seen all this before. The US ratchets up its rhetoric, Israel threatens a military attack, escalating sanctions bite harder on the Iranian people, Iran refuses to back down on uranium enrichment. But at the same time, top US military and intelligence officials actually admit Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon, and has not decided whether to even begin a building process.

In 2004 Israel’s prime minister denounced the international community for not doing enough to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In 2005 the Israeli military was reported to ‘be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran’. In 2006 the US House Armed Services Committee issued a report drafted by one congressional staffer (an aide to hard-line pro-war John Bolton, then US ambassador to the UN), claiming that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons-grade 90 per cent. That same year a different Israeli prime minister publicly threatened a military strike against Iran. In 2008, George W Bush visited Israel to reassure them that ‘all options’ remained on the table.

The earlier crisis saw a very similar gap between the demonisation, sanctions, threats of military strikes against Iran, and the seemingly contradictory recognition by US, Israeli, United Nations and other military and intelligence officials that Iran actually did not possess nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons programme, or even a decision to try to develop nuclear weapons.

The 2005 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) determined that even if Iran decided it wanted to make a nuclear weapon, it was unlikely before five to ten years, and that producing enough fissile material would be impossible even in five years unless Iran achieved ‘more rapid and successful progress’ than it had so far. By 2007, a new NIE had pulled back even further, asserting ‘with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme … Tehran had not started its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007’. The NIE even admitted ‘we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons’. That made the dire threats against Iran sound pretty lame. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that Newsweek magazine described how, ‘in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document’.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA - the UN’s nuclear watchdog) issued report after report indicating it could find no evidence that Iran had diverted enriched uranium to a weapons programme. The UN inspection agency harshly rejected the House committee report, calling some of its claims about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons activities incorrect, and others ‘outrageous and dishonest’. And outside of the Bush White House, which was spearheading much of the hysteria, members of Congress, the neo-con think tanks, hysterical talk show hosts, and much of the mainstream media went ballistic.

Then and now

All of that sounds very familiar right now. Military and intelligence leaders in Israel and the US once again admit that Iran does not have nukes. (Israel of course does, but no one talks about that.) Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asked and answered his own Iran question: ‘Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.’ Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. admitted the US does not even know ‘if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons’. The latest 2011 NIE makes clear there is no new evidence to challenge the 2007 conclusions; Iran still does not have a nuclear weapons programme in operation.

According to the Independent, ‘almost the entire senior hierarchy of Israel’s military and security establishment is worried about a premature attack on Iran and apprehensive about the possible repercussions.’ Former head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said ‘it is quite clear that much if not all of the IDF leadership do not support military action at this point.’

But despite all the military and intelligence experts, the threat of war still looms. Republican candidates pound the lecterns promising that ‘when I’m president…’ Iran will accept international inspectors - as if the IAEA had not maintained an inspection team inside Iran for many years now. We hear overheated rumours of Iranian clerics promising nuclear weapons to their people - as if Iran’s leaders had not actually issued fatwas against nuclear weapons, something that would be very difficult to reverse.

Some strategic issues are indeed at stake, but the current anti-Iran mobilisation is primarily political. It doesn’t reflect actual US or Israeli military or intelligence threat assessments, but rather political conditions pushing politicians, here and in Israel, to escalate the fear factor about Iranian weapons (however non-existent) and the urgency for attacking Iran (however illegal). And the danger, of course, is that this kind of rhetoric can box leaders in, making them believe they cannot back down from their belligerent words.

Israel at the centre

One of the main differences from the propaganda run-up to the Iraq war is the consistent centrality of Israel and its supporters, particularly AIPAC in the US, in this push for war against Iran. Israel certainly jumped aboard the attack-Iraq bandwagon when it was clear that war was indeed inevitable, but US strategic concerns regarding oil and the expansion of US military power were first and primary. Even back then, Israel recognised Iran as a far greater threat than Iraq. And now, Israelis using that alleged threat to pressure US policymakers and shape US policy - in dangerous ways. During this campaign cycle, Obama is under the greatest pressure he has ever faced, and likely ever will face, to defend the Israeli position unequivocally, and to pledge US military support for any Israeli action, however illegal, dangerous, and threatening to US interests.

Iran simply is not, as former CIA analyst and presidential adviser Bruce Reidel makes clear, ‘an existential threat’ to Israel. Even a theoretical future nuclear-armed Iran, if it ever chose that trajectory, would not be a threat to the existence of Israel, but would be a threat to Israel’s longstanding nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. That is the real threat motivating Israel’s attack-Iran-now campaign. Further, as long as top US political officials, from the White House to Congress, are competing to see who can be more supportive of Israel in its stand-off with Iran, no one in Washington will even consider pressure on Israel to end its violations of international law and human rights regarding its occupation and apartheid policies towards Palestinians. Israel gets a pass.

Israel is more isolated in the region than ever before. The US-backed neighbouring dictatorships Israel once counted on as allies are being challenged by the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Egypt’s Mubarak was overthrown, the king of Jordan faces growing pressure at home, and the threats to Syria’s regime mean that Israel could face massive instability on its northern border - something Bashar al-Assad and his father largely staved off since Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.

Syria’s two struggles in one

The calamity underway in Syria is also directly linked to the Iran crisis. There are two struggles going on in Syria, and unfortunately one may destroy the potential of the other. First was Syria’s home-grown popular uprising against a brutal government, inspired by and organically tied to the other risings of the Arab Spring, and like them calling first for massive reform and soon for the overthrow of the regime. Syria is a relatively wealthy and diverse country, in which a large middle class, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, had prospered under the regime, despite its political repression. As a result, unlike some other regional uprisings, Syria’s opposition was challenging a regime which still held some public support and legitimacy.

The regime’s drastic military assault on largely non-violent protests led some sectors of the opposition to take up arms, in tandem with growing numbers of military defectors, which of course meant waging their democratic struggle in the terrain in which the regime remains strongest: military force. The government’s security forces killed thousands, injuring and arresting thousands more, and in recent weeks even the longstanding support for Assad in Damascus and Aleppo began to waver. Simultaneously, attacks against government forces increased, and the internal struggle has taken on more and more the character of a civil war.

The further complication in Syria, and its link to Iran, is that it has simultaneously become a regional and global struggle. Syria is Iran’s most significant partner in the Middle East, so key countries that support Israel’s anti-Iran mobilisation have turned against Syria, looking to weaken Iran by undermining its closest ally. Perhaps because the Assad regimes have kept the occupied Golan Heights and the Israeli-Syrian border relatively quiet, Israel itself has not been the major public face in the regionalisation of the Syrian crisis. But clearly Saudi Arabia is fighting with Iran in Syria for influence in the region. The Arab League, whose Syria decision-making remains dominated by the Saudis and their allied Gulf petro-states (such as Qatar and the UAE), is using the Syria crisis to challenge Iran’s rising influence in Arab countries from Iraq to Lebanon. And of course the US, France and other Western powers have jumped on the very real human rights crisis in Syria to try to further weaken the regime there - in the interest again of undermining Iran’s key ally far more than out of concern for the Syrian people.

Diminishing US power

Facing economic crisis, military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the loss or weakening of key client states in the Arab world, the US is weaker and less influential in the Middle East. But maintaining control of oil markets and US strategic capacity are still key regional goals for the US, which means that military power remains central. The nature of that military engagement is changing - away from large-scale deployments of ground troops in favour of rapidly expanding fleets of armed drones, special forces, and growing reliance on naval forces, navy bases and sea-based weapons.

Thus the US backs Saudi intervention in Bahrain to insure the US Fifth Fleet maintains its Bahraini base; Washington’s escalating sanctions give the West greater leverage in control of oil markets; the Iranian rhetorical threat to close the Strait of Hormuz (only in desperation since it would prevent Iran from exporting its own oil) is used to justify expansion of the US naval presence in the region. Along with the possibility of losing Syria as a major military purchaser and regional ally, concerns about those US strategic moves played a large part of Russia’s veto of the UN resolution on Syria.

In Iran, the pressure is high and the sanctions are really starting to bite, with much greater impact felt by the Iranian population, rather than the regime in Tehran. The assassination of Iranian nuclear experts, particularly the most recent murder of a young scientist which was greeted by Israeli officials with undisguised glee and barely-disguised triumph, are more likely aimed at provoking an Iranian response than actually undermining Iran’s nuclear capacity. So far, Iran has resisted the bait. But if Israel makes good on its threat of a military strike - despite the virtually unanimous opposition of its own military and intelligence leadership - there is little reason to imagine that Iran would respond only with words. The US and Israel are not the only countries whose national leaders face looming contests; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its president face huge political challenges as well.

The consequences of a strike against Iran would be grave - from attacks on Israeli and/or US military targets, to going after US forces in Iran’s neighbours Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, to attacks on the Pentagon’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, to mining the Strait of Hormuz … and beyond. An attack by the US, a nuclear weapons state, on a non-nuclear weapons state such as Iran, would be a direct violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran might kick out the UN nuclear inspectors. The hardest of Iran’s hard-line leaders would almost certainly consolidate ever greater power – both at home and in the Arab countries, and the calls to move towards greater nuclearisation, perhaps even to build a nuclear weapon, would rise inside Iran. Indeed, the Arab Spring’s secular, citizenship-based mobilisations would likely lose further influence to Iran – threatening to turn that movement into something closer to an ‘Islamic Spring’.

Nuclear weapons-free zone

At the end of the day the crisis can only be solved through negotiations, not threats and force. Immediately, that means demanding that the White House engage in serious, not deliberately time-constrained negotiations to end the current crisis - perhaps based on the successful Turkish-Brazilian initiative that the US scuttled last year. That means that Congress must reverse its current position to allow the White House to use diplomacy - rather than continuing to pass laws that strip the executive branch of its ability to put the carrot of ending sanctions on the table in any negotiations. And it means an Iran policy based on the real conclusions of US intelligence and military officials, that Iran does not have and is not building a nuclear weapon, rather than relying on lies about non-existent nuclear weapons, like the WMD lies that drove the US to war in Iraq.

In the medium and longer term, we must put the urgent need for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East back on the table and on top of our agenda. Such a multi-country move would insure Iran would never build a nuclear weapon, that Israel would give up its existing 200 to 300 high-density nuclear bombs and the submarine-based nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and that the US would keep its nuclear weapons out of its Middle East bases and off its ships in the region’s seas. Otherwise, we face the possibility of the current predicament repeating itself in an endless loop of Groundhog Day-style nuclear crises, each one more threatening than the last.

The young men and women dressed in khaki uniforms, semi-automatic rifles slung over shoulders, turn not a single head as they stream out of Tel Aviv’s busy central bus station. In any of Israel’s large towns this is a prosaic sight; with military service compulsory for all citizens over the age of eighteen – three years for men and two for women – everybody knows someone in the army. Yet while the embedding of the military in everyday life is manifest on the surface, its reality is not one readily acknowledged.

“You don’t speak about the army when you come home to your family,” says Eran Efrati, a well-built man in his late twenties. “They [the army] tell you that they don’t need to hear about it, that it might upset them. So it is ignored and denied and you pretend to go back to ordinary life”.

For Eran this denial is one of the ways in which the true nature of the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories is masked within Israeli society.

His chance to speak out came through Breaking the Silence (BtS), an organisation of former soldiers that since 2004 has interviewed hundreds of ex-combatants anonymously about their experiences of active service in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Their aim is to shed light on what really goes on in the occupied territories with the aim of stimulating public debate about the role of young soldiers in controlling the lives of a civilian population.

Full of tales of abductions, humiliation within homes and the beating of children perpetrated by soldiers, the testimonies make for shocking and at times harrowing reading. In doing so they uncompromisingly reveal the day-to-day of life under occupation for Palestinians – subject to measures justified under the banner of ‘security’ – from the unusual perspective of those meting the treatment. The severity of these accounts ranges from the mundane – the long delays inflicted at the checkpoints which carve up the West Bank; to the truly horrific – as recounted in the shock and awe tactics of warfare deployed during the bombardment of Gaza in 2009.

An ordinary soldier

By his own account Eran was an ordinary Israeli serving in the army until a series of incidents led him to question not only what he was doing but the role of the army.

“I went to a Medicins Sans Frontieres demonstration and a doctor asked me to take a pass to a family in Hebron, so that they could cross checkpoints in order for a grandparent to gain treatment. It struck a human chord with me as my mother was ill at the time, so I took it to them.”

On returning to base he was punished for this breach of security with two weeks incarceration in military prison. This would mark the beginning of a journey of disillusionment that almost ended in official disgrace. From thereon throwaway comments by colleagues and behaviour to which before he paid little attention began to take on a new significance, revealing something darker about the nature of the army operation.

“In Hebron one of our jobs was to survey houses in order to make detailed plans of living arrangements and rooms in the case of a suspected terrorist,” he continues. “We sometimes woke people up in the middle of the night and marched them outdoors – men, women and children – to do this. One day I asked my Sergeant what happened to the drawings and he replied: ‘We have had Hebron since 1967. Do you think you are the first to do the surveys?’”.

“I couldn’t believe this, as we had always been made to think that what we were doing was important work”.

‘Searing of consciousness’

On another occasion Eran heard members of a neighbouring unit laughing about an incident in which a Palestinian standing on a porch with a broom was mistakenly perceived to be bearing an arm and was shot dead by soldiers.

“The press reported it inaccurately, saying that a terrorist had been neutralised and that fortunately no soldiers had been hurt. I thought to myself ‘this is wrong, the public needs to know the truth’. So I went to my commanding officer to say that we must speak to the media and set the record straight. He just laughed in my face.”

According to the authors of the introduction to the BtS publication Israeli Soldier Testimonies: 2000-2010, the real purpose of many such routine counter-terror operations is not the flushing out known terrorists or maintaining security. They are, it is argued, intended to ‘punish, deter or tighten control over the Palestinian population’ with the term ‘prevention of terror’ stretched beyond its normal meaning to cover all offensives – in the process disregarding any distinction between civil and paramilitary targets. Other frequent examples cited are detention without charge, the destruction of infrastructure and property extra-judicial assassinations.

While the accounts themselves are stark and without analysis, the BtS authors argue that the overall objective of these aggressive methods is the deliberate strategy of ‘searing of consciousness’, pursued by army commanders. In effect this means proving to the Palestinian population as a whole that opposition is futile. This interpretation is evidenced by accounts of everyday ‘demonstration of presence’ exercises – a term describing tactics of intimidation designed to stamp the army’s authority and instill fear. Under the military euphemism of ‘disruption of normalcy’, soldiers recount night patrols waking up villages at night by firing into the air, searching houses and throwing sound bombs – often without any intelligence linking sites with terrorist activity.

No questions, please

The recurring themes of arbitrary punishment and intimidation indicate that this strategy goes to the heart of the occupation itself; underscoring at the same time the contradiction between the rhetoric of security and reality of violent colonisation. Yet even within the ranks of the IDF this not admitted. Eran recounts how, during an officer training programme, one classmate questioned the logic of the deployment of troops throughout the entire West Bank.

“The [class] instructor told us that the army was here [in the West Bank] to ensure the security of Israel against terrorists. One guy asked whether it would be a better idea just to have a reinforced line of units along the border instead of loads of scattered inside [the territories] to prevent them from entering. It made sense; but instead he was removed from the class.”

It was at this point that belief in the morality of what he was doing started to unravel in Eran’s mind. Things came to a head when he was arrested at a weekly demonstration against the separation wall which divides many Palestinians from their land, for which he landed another two weeks in army prison and narrowly escaped a dishonorable discharge.

Psychology of the oppressor

While statistics on detentions and the kilometers of road blocks can draw a systematic overview of the occupation, the BtS testimonies are unique in offering deeply human impressions. As anecdotes they go some way to explaining the psychological edifice upon which the occupation is built; and it is their subjective quality which is most striking – especially since they come from the mouth of those whose structural role is that of oppressor.

Soldiers are told how the IDF is the “most moral army in the world”, respectful of human rights and there is no indication that overt racism is promoted within the ranks of the army. Yet Eran says that there is a slow and subtle process of indoctrination in Israeli society – starting in the family and education system – that at once perpetuates the occupation and commands unswerving loyalty from citizens. The corollary fear and suspicion of Arabs pervasive in Israeli society comes to an inevitable ugly head in the army, he recalls.

“You are trained for 8 months to expect a war and then as an 18 or 19 year old they drop you at a checkpoint in the middle of nowhere and you are face to face with Arabs for the first time in your life. Many of those guys [IDF soldiers] are young and scared. Army life makes you miserable and without knowing it you want to inflict this upon somebody else”.

While some witnesses express disgust at the excesses of their colleagues, overall there is a general sense of  detatchment from the barbarism of what takes place. This corrosive effect of the day-to-day drudgery on a soldier’s moral compass is laid bare in one unsettling account: “The standards of good and evil deteriorate there…I can’t tell you what’s good and what isn’t, because I don’t have all of the tools.”

The reader quickly infers that a normalisation of violence never lurks far away – degrading not only the victims but, in a different way, the soldiers themselves.

Hostile reception

In a country that has always responded militarily to a (perceived or real) existential threat since its establishment, the reception to BtS is, predictably, not a warm one.

Critics have lambasted BtS as ‘terror supporters’ and for seeking to aid the ‘delegitimisation’ of Israel. The Israeli government sees them as such a threat that in 2009 it sought to persuade the Dutch foreign ministry to withdraw funding issued by its embassy.

Those critical of the occupation are on the fringe of Israeli society and treated with contempt in many quarters, and for people like Eran speaking out can mean accusations of betrayal, estrangement from family and social stigma.

Yet in spite of the the bulk of public opinion a recent article in the liberal newspaper Haaretz shows that there are cracks starting to appear in mainstream discourse.

In an impassioned review of BtS publications Ilana Hammerman decried the ‘logic of the absurd’ that sustains the occupation. This, she wrote, consists of a breakdown of “the mental and moral borders between what is permissible and what is forbidden, between good and evil, between stupidity and wickedness, between the humiliated and those who humiliate”.

You can read the testimonies and download PDF versions of Breaking the Silence’s publications in English at: http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/ 

Eran Efrati now lives in New York where he gives lectures on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the ‘Israeli Apartheid’

Discussions are almost universally tactical. Regarding Afghanistan, many are now brave enough to call the war a ‘mistake’, a ‘lethal misjudgment’. The general consensus acknowledges the ‘war on terror’ was a failure, that the stated aims haven’t been met and therefore ‘the decade since 9/11 must rank among the most inept and counterproductive eras in the story of modern statesmanship.’

The one victory is the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, everywhere the ‘mastermind’ of the attacks; an entirely unproven accusation, as the US government admits, repeated without question by media and commentary.

The primary lesson is ‘the enduring legacy of the past decade is lost influence for the US, lost confidence in its leadership, lost respect for its effort to champion ideals such as democracy and human rights’; the latter apparently evident to all in the decades previous.

Gary Younge writes: ‘Ten years later the US response to the terror attacks have clarified three things: the limits to what its enormous military power can achieve, its relative geopolitical decline and the intensity of its polarised political culture.’

There are maybe a few other factors that have been clarified.

US Marine Corp General Smedley Butler was correct when he wrote in 1935 that ‘war is a racket’. The last decade has been an exciting time for defence contractors, accruing billions in profits, often through no-bid contracts. Investigating the matter, the US Center for Public Integrity reports ‘publicly available data shows that Defense Department dollars flowing into non-competitive contracts have almost tripled since the terrorist attacks of 9/11’. The Center concludes: ‘The taxpayer is the loser.’

At the end of August, the Commission on Wartime Contracting reported to the US Congress that around $60 billion may have been lost to waste and fraud in Afghanistan and Iraq. Waste and fraud may not be strong enough terms for what is essentially an enormous taxpayer kick-back to unaccountable corporations with no serious attempt at oversight. Rendition flights have brought similar benefits to private companies, who leased their aircraft to the CIA to fly ‘government personnel and their invitees’.

The cowardice and subservience of commentators and analysts has maybe reached its historical zenith in the period following the 9/11 attacks. The attack on Afghanistan was almost unanimously supported amongst articulate opinion. Opposition on principled, rather than tactical, grounds was practically non-existent in the mainstream. The illegality of the initial attacks, the clearly fraudulent pretexts and the brazen hypocrisy could be quietly ignored in the ‘good war’.

Legacy in Afghanistan

Ten years on, we could maybe return to some of the reports at the time of the initial attacks on Afghanistan to determine our level of benevolence. During the initial bombing, Arundhati Roy wrote:

‘Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.’

This month, we can read how, ‘more than 150,000 Afghans were displaced during the past 12 months, a 68 per cent increase compared with the same period a year earlier,’ according to the United Nations refugee agency.

US ambassador to Kabul Ryan Crocker predictably used the anniversary to try and bolster support for the war, claiming that increasing the military capability of the Afghan state was ‘the ultimate guarantee that there will not be another 9/11’, and that the fight against the Taliban must continue because they have not severed their links with Al-Qaeda. Neither argument is taken seriously by anyone who studies the matter, but facts should not be allowed to discredit the public line.

Crocker was quoted as saying of the invasion and occupation, ‘as expensive as this has been in blood and treasure, it has cost a lot less than 9/11 did.’ Afghans might take a slightly different view.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies recently released their annual strategic survey. They write, ‘The appetite in the west ten years after the 9/11 attacks to engage in active forward and anticipatory self-defence is lower than it has been for generations,’ and now ‘The case of liberal interventionism can still be made, but the cry has to be loud and the cause irrefutably perfect for it to be answered positively.’

We do not need to worry about the fact that ‘active forward and anticipatory self-defence’ has no precedent in international law, or that the ‘liberal intervention’ in Afghanistan began with an act of international terrorism against the Afghan people, designed to punish Afghans ‘until they get their leadership changed’, in the words of British Admiral Sir Michael Boyce.

It is an educational experience to see commentators explain the gap between the rhetoric of leadership and the realities of state policy.

Jonathan Freedland cites director of Chatham House Robin Niblett who ‘recalls how, during the cold war, regimes in Africa, Asia or Latin America won western backing as they fought off local, domestically motivated rebels simply by casting their opponents as part of “the global Communist foe”.’ Somehow, another generation of ingenious leaders have managed to exploit what Niblett calls the ‘9/11 mindset’ to ensure ‘the west fell for the same trick all over again.’

Freedland adds that Gaddafi was ‘playing the same game’ by ‘persuading British intelligence to become complicit in his torture of dissidents’. The truth is slightly different, as we can read elsewhere in the Guardian that ‘the British went much further than being merely complicit, and were directly involved in rendition to a country where the victim could expect to be tortured.’

The evidence that the UK actively participated in the rendition of individuals as an aspect of policy, as well as supported the US program, is now too serious to be easily discarded, or so one would think.

Exporting the democratic deficit

The conventional understanding of the US role in the world was well articulated by John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer notes how Charles Krauthammer and Francis Fukuyama’s vision of the future was a United States that ‘should take the lead in bringing democracy to less developed countries the world over.’

‘US grand strategy has followed this basic prescription for the past twenty years,” he writes, although curiously, the results have been ‘disastrous’. In the UK, Conservative politician Rory Stewart, whose support for the Iraq war did not prevent him attaining a position at Harvard University’s apparently sincerely-titled Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, writes that it is ‘our sense of moral obligation, those fears about rogue states, failed states, regions and our own credibility, which threaten to make this decade again a decade of over-intervention.’

Or there could be other factors that determine whether the United States and its allies decide to attack and destroy a given political system.

In the UK, examining these factors might begin with a recent publication by the independent research organisation Democratic Audit, which found ‘corporate and financial dominance of Britain’s democracy’ has created a gaping democratic deficit. The authors note:

‘Instead of the public sphere constituting a separate life domain, with its distinctive values, relationships and ways of operating, it has become an extension of the private market, permeated by the market’s logic and interests. Instead of popular control we have subordination to an oligarchy of the wealthy and economically powerful. Instead of everyone counting for one, we have the easy purchase of political influence and the well-oiled revolving door between government and the corporate sector.’

However, it is unreasonable to suggest that concentrations of socio-economic power have a larger bearing on foreign policy decisions than ‘our sense of moral obligation’ or a public pronouncement to bring ‘democracy to less developed countries the world over.’

In either case, US and UK governments have acted in ways that have sought to increase their influence in key strategic regions of the world, benefit groups of domestic elites and subsequently impoverish, endanger and repress sectors of their own societies.

Honouring the victims of 9/11, and closing the democratic deficit, will require the bringing to justice of those who engage in acts of international terrorism, a task that begins at home.

In Yemen and Bahrain western-backed regimes are violently repressing the democracy movement the west claims to back in Libya. In Iraq a US-sponsored regime protected by 47,000 US troops is trying to do the same – shooting demonstrators, detaining thousands and subjecting many to torture. The ‘urgency’ of the response to Gaddafi is in marked contrast to the infinite patience extended to Israel. No one proposed a No Fly Zone when Israeli aircraft were pummelling Gaza. Nor did they when the Sri Lankan government killed some 20,000 civilians in its final assault on the LTTE.

In Burma condemnation has never been matched by the merest hint of military action, while millions have perished in a war in the Congo financed and armed by western corporations. Had the Egyptian army jumped the other way and repressed the uprising, would western powers have treated them as they’re treating the Gaddafi regime? Not a chance. And then there’s the flip-flop over Gaddafi himself, from pariah to partner and back again in record time.

‘So what?’ some will respond. If the western powers are hypocritical and selective, that doesn’t mean that in this instance they’re wrong. Our guilt elsewhere is not an excuse for failing to protect the innocent in Libya. We cannot cure our governments’ double standards with double standards of our own.

But what are these ‘double-standards of our own’? We don’t demand the invasion of Burma or the bombing of Tel Aviv and no one called for NFZs over the townships during the apartheid years. We want an end to western support for repressive regimes everywhere, we stand in solidarity with democratic struggles, but our solidarity is not expressed at the tip of a Cruise missile.

The critical point about the hypocrisy, double-standards and selectivity is that they unveil the real motive forces driving the intervention. And motives here are anything but incidental factors; they guide and shape the intervention and therefore tell us a great deal about its likely impact. What the double standards reveal, ironically, is a very clear and consistent policy standard, i.e. western elite interests (or lack of them). Where oil is at stake, behaviour is strikingly uniform – whatever is necessary to control and/ or keep others from controlling its supply.

This helps explain why the western powers are throwing caution to the wind, jumping into a conflict for which they are even less well-prepared than they were for Iraq. The Libyan crisis is too good, too rare an opportunity to pass up. It offers them the chance to insert a pro-western regime in an oil producing nation, to reassert their role in the region after a series of setbacks and to renew their prerogatives as world policemen in the wake of the catastrophic performance in Iraq. There is also a pressing need to realign and channel the Arab popular movements, which have defied so many western assumptions. Crucially these movements have combined demands for political rights with demands for economic and social justice – the part of the movement that is a revolt against neoliberal rule has to be diverted.

In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes that liberal interventionism is ‘fine in theory’ but goes wrong ‘in practice’. I’d suggest that it goes wrong in practice because it’s deeply flawed in theory.

If liberal interventionists were consistent, they would advocate similar Western military action in relation to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Congo, Kashmir, Iran, Israel, Burma, etc. etc. etc. This would not only be wildly impracticable but deeply undesirable. It would lead to chaos and escalating violence on a global scale, overwhelmingly detrimental to the poor and vulnerable and fatal to the cause of democratic advance. A policy that if applied consistently and universally would result in disaster is best not applied at all.

Liberal interventionists treat great powers as neutral agents, disinterested entities that can be inserted into a situation for a limited purpose and time, like a surgeon’s knife. In reality, however, these powers have clear and compelling interests – in Libya as elsewhere – and their deployment of military force will be guided by those interests. In action, western troops are accountable not to the people they’re supposed to be protecting but to a chain of command that ends in Washington, London and Paris.

The unleashing of the great military powers undermines the universalism the liberal interventionists claim to honour: outcomes are determined by concentrations of wealth and power remote from the scene of suffering. If we’re to build any kind of just, sustainable world order, then we must (at the least) restrain and restrict great powers, not license them to act where and when it’s convenient for them.

The incompatibility between democratic development and great power intervention may seem obvious but it seems to escape the liberal interventionists. Their approach is ahistorical, as if somehow the entire record of western imperialism could be suddenly overturned, self-interest magically transformed into humanitarian interest. In the name of pluralism they endorse a uni-polar world, governed perpetually by a few great powers. In the name of universalism, they support an exercise of power that has always been and must continue to be selective in the extreme when it comes to human rights.

Characteristically, the liberal interventionists omit from their equations the realities of unequal power. Their approach to crisis is managerialist. Problems will be solved by the implementation from above of sound policies. They see the masses as passive recipients of democracy, not the creators of it. Those who believe democracy can be imposed by military assault have surely missed some of the basic stuff of democracy itself, not to mention the powerful lessons of Tahrir Square. For them military intervention is an act of noblesse oblige – but like all such acts, it re-enforces the subordinate status of the alleged beneficiary; it reminds them who’s boss.

It’s argued that badly motivated actions can still have unintended positive consequences and that Libya may be a case in point. But it’s much more likely that such actions will have unintended negative consequences. This argument from serendipity – that good will accidentally flow from bad – was advanced in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. It seems a flimsy basis for a geo-political philosophy. Most importantly, it ignores that intentions, however contradictory or confused, shape outcomes.

Liberal interventionism is underpinned by a lack of sensitivity to the inevitable costs of warfare and in particular warfare waged by one country on the soil (or airspace) of another. It ignores the vast range of unpredictable ramifications. It treats military intervention as if it were the same as raising or lowering taxes, a mechanical incentive to a desired form of behaviour.

Liberal interventionism is entirely dependent on the great powers. There’s no other way the policy can be implemented. It relies on a coincidence of western and humanitarian interests, one that has been a historical rarity at best. In the end, the liberal interventionists have no agenda or standard of their own.

The current intervention ensures that if Gaddafi falls, his replacement will be chosen by the west. The new regime will be born dependent on the western powers, which will direct its economic and foreign policies accordingly. The liberal interventionists will say that’s not what they want, but their policy makes it inevitable.

The problem is not the ambiguities of the UN mandate. ‘Mission creep’ is inherent in the process. The mission will become what the major powers want it to be, according to their own agendas, not least their interest in Libyan oil.

‘What about Bosnia? What about Rwanda?’ One significant difference is that in Libya we’re faced with an attempt by an authoritarian state to crush a popular uprising and the ensuing civil war – not an ethnic assault. The lessons of Bosnia and Rwanda are indeed powerful but they do not include the one that the question usually supposes, i.e. that western military intervention should have taken place.

In Bosnia a western-imposed NFZ and Dutch troops on the ground failed to stop the Srebrenica massacre. When the full scale intervention that the liberals had been calling for finally took place in 1999, it precipitated a massive escalation of the ethnic cleansing it was supposed to stop and stymied the anti-Milosevic movement in Serbia (which succeeded without western help a year later). Eleven years on none of the underlying issues have been resolved, the victors have engaged in their own ethnic cleansing and the Kosovo statelet is a corruption-riddled western dependency.

In Rwanda, there were French troops on the ground, defending their national interests and nothing else. In the end, the genocide was stopped by an African intervention. Western powers are unlikely to have been any more effective and their presence on the ground as a military force would have profoundly skewed subsequent developments, in all likelihood hampering the progress that Rwanda has been able to make in their absence.

‘So do we do nothing?’ The question is undermined by the selectivity of those who ask it. Their indignation may be sincere but it is intellectually contrived. Not wanting to do the one particular thing (using military force) that they fix on is not the same as ‘doing nothing’. We do what we can do, what contributes most and destroys least. There is ready to hand an alternative model of global intervention in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign aimed at Israel, which is opposed by most liberal interventionists.

Western presence in the region is not the solution but a major part of the problem. This is not a presence that can be restricted to policing the rights of civilians (and I can’t think of a single instance in modern times where it has actually performed that task). It’s a presence that shapes the region’s economy, society and political institutions according to its own priorities. Getting rid of that interfering hand is a necessary step towards democracy and development.

Finally, this debate has reminded me of the gulf that separates my politics (and most of us on the left) from this type of liberalism. For me this gulf first opened when as a youngster I watched liberals launch the Vietnam War on a sea of ‘good intentions’. The gulf widened when, despite the ensuing nightmare, liberals continued to believe in the benign nature of US (or British or French) world intentions.

In Libya, once again, they have been seduced by a vicarious potency. And they have always failed to recognise that vast disparities in wealth and concomitant concentrations of power are themselves the greatest threats to democracy and human rights. Liberal interventionists may not like the disparities, the inequalities, but they regard them as inevitable and tolerable. Mass economic immiseration, it seems, is never grounds for ‘urgent intervention’.

This flag is not used as a symbol of the monarchy, but as the flag that the Libyan state adopted after it won independence from Italy. It is used by the uprising in order to reject the Green Flag imposed by Gaddafi along with his Green Book, when he was aping Mao Zedong and his Little Red Book. In no way does the tricolor flag indicate nostalgia for the monarchy. In the most common interpretation, it symbolizes the three historic regions of Libya, and the crescent and star are the same symbols you see on the flags of the Algerian, Tunisian and Turkish republics, not symbols of monarchism.

So who is the opposition? The composition of the opposition is — as in all the other revolts shaking the region — very heterogeneous. What unites all the disparate forces is a rejection of the dictatorship and a longing for democracy and human rights. Beyond that, there are many different perspectives. In Libya, more particularly, there is a mixture of human rights activists, democracy advocates, intellectuals, tribal elements, and Islamic forces — a very broad collection. The most prominent political force in the Libyan uprising is the “Youth of the 17th of February Revolution,” which has a democratic platform, calling for the rule of law, political freedoms, and free elections. The Libyan movement also includes sections of the government and the armed forces that have broken away and joined the opposition — which you didn’t have in Tunisia or Egypt.

So the Libyan opposition represents a mixture of forces, and the bottom line is that there is no reason for any different attitude toward them than to any other of the mass uprisings in the region.

Is Gaddafi — or was Gaddafi — a progressive figure?

When Gaddafi came to power in 1969 he was a late manifestation of the wave of Arab nationalism that followed World War II and the 1948 Nakba. He tried to imitate Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, who he regarded as his model and inspiration. So he replaced the monarchy with a republic, championed Arab unity, forced the withdrawal of the U.S.’s Wheelus Airbase from Libyan territory, and initiated a program of social change.

Then the regime moved in its own way, along the path of radicalization, inspired by an Islamized Maoism. There were sweeping nationalizations in the late 1970s — almost everything was nationalized. Gaddafi claimed to have instituted direct democracy — and formally changed the name of the country from Republic to State of the Masses (Jamahiriya). He pretended that he had turned the country into the fulfillment of socialist utopia with direct democracy, but few were fooled. The “revolutionary committees” were actually acting as a ruling apparatus along with the security services in controlling the country. At the same time, Gaddafi also played an especially reactionary role in reinvigorating tribalism as a tool for his own power. His foreign policy became increasingly foolhardy, and most Arabs came to consider him crazy.

With the Soviet Union in crisis, Gaddafi shifted away from his socialist pretensions and re-opened his economy to Western business. He asserted that his economic liberalization would be accompanied by a political one, aping Gorbachev’s perestroika after having aped Mao Zedong’s “cultural revolution,” but the political claim was an empty one. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 under the pretext of searching for “weapons of mass destruction,” Gaddafi, worried that he might be next, implemented a sudden and surprising turnabout in foreign policy, earning himself a spectacular upgrade from the status of “rogue state” to that of close collaborator of Western states. A collaborator in particular of the United States, which he helped in its so-called war on terror, and Italy, for which he did the dirty job of turning back would-be immigrants trying to get from Africa to Europe.

Throughout these metamorphoses, Gaddafi’s regime was always a dictatorship. Whatever early progressive measures Gaddafi may have enacted, there was nothing left of progressivism or anti-imperialism in his regime in the last phase. Its dictatorial character showed itself in the way he reacted to the protests: immediately deciding to quell them by force. There was no attempt to offer any kind of democratic outlet for the population. He warned the protesters in a now famous tragic-comic speech: “We will come inch by inch, home by home, alley by alley … We will find you in your closets. We will have no mercy and no pity.” Not a surprise, knowing that Gaddafi was the only Arab ruler who publicly blamed the Tunisian people for having toppled their own dictator Ben Ali, whom he described as the best ruler the Tunisians would find.

Gaddafi resorted to threats and violent repression, claiming that the protesters had been turned into drug addicts by Al Qaeda, who poured hallucinogens in their coffees. Blaming Al Qaeda for the uprising was his way of trying to get the support of the West. Had there been any offer of help from Washington or Rome, you can be sure that Gaddafi would have gladly welcomed it. He actually expressed his bitter disappointment at the attitude of his buddy Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, with whom he enjoyed partying, and complained that his other European “friends” also betrayed him. In the last few years, Gaddafi had indeed become a friend of several Western rulers and other establishment figures who, for a fistful of dollars, have been willing to ridicule themselves exchanging hugs with him. Anthony Giddens himself, the distinguished theoretician of Tony Blair’s Third Way, followed in his disciple’s steps by paying a visit to Gaddafi in 2007 and writing in the Guardian how Libya was on the path of reform and on its way to becoming the Norway of the Middle East.

What is your assessment of UN Security Council resolution 1973 adopted on March 17?

The resolution itself is phrased in a way that takes into consideration — and appears to respond to — the request by the uprising for a no-fly zone. The opposition has indeed explicitly called for a no-fly zone, on the condition that no foreign troops be deployed on Libyan territory. Gaddafi has the bulk of the elite armed forces, with aircraft and tanks, and the no-fly zone would indeed neutralize his main military advantage. This request of the uprising is reflected in the text of the resolution, which authorizes UN member states “to take all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” The resolution establishes “a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians.”

Now there are not enough safeguards in the wording of the resolution to bar its use for imperialist purposes. Although the purpose of any action is supposed to be the protection of civilians, and not “regime change,” the determination of whether an action meets this purpose or not is left up to the intervening powers and not to the uprising, or even the Security Council. The resolution is amazingly confused. But given the urgency of preventing the massacre that would have inevitably resulted from an assault on Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces, and the absence of any alternative means of achieving the protection goal, no one can reasonably oppose it. One can understand the abstentions; some of the five states who abstained in the UNSC vote wanted to express their defiance and/or unhappiness with the lack of adequate oversight, but without taking the responsibility for an impending massacre.

The Western response, of course, smacks of oil. The West fears a long drawn out conflict. If there is a major massacre, they would have to impose an embargo on Libyan oil, thus keeping oil prices at a high level at a time when, given the current state of the global economy, this would have major adverse consequences. Some countries, including the United States, acted reluctantly. Only France emerged as very much in favor of strong action, which might well be connected to the fact that France — unlike Germany (which abstained in the UNSC vote), Britain, and, above all, Italy — does not have a major stake in Libyan oil, and certainly hopes to get a greater share post-Gaddafi.

We all know about the Western powers’ pretexts and double standards. For example, their alleged concern about harm to civilians bombarded from the air did not seem to apply in Gaza in 2008-09, when hundreds of noncombatants were being killed by Israeli warplanes in furtherance of an illegal occupation. Or the fact that the US allows its client regime in Bahrain, where it has a major naval base, to violently repress the local uprising, with the help of other regional vassals of Washington.

The fact remains, nevertheless, that if Gaddafi were permitted to continue his military offensive and take Benghazi, there would be a major massacre. Here is a case where a population is truly in danger, and where there is no plausible alternative that could protect it. The attack by Gaddafi’s forces was hours or at most days away. You can’t in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians. In the same way, even though we know well the nature and double standards of cops in the bourgeois state, you can’t in the name of anti-capitalist principles blame anybody for calling them when someone is on the point of being raped and there is no alternative way of stopping the rapists.

This said, without coming out against the no-fly zone, we must express defiance and advocate full vigilance in monitoring the actions of those states carrying it out, to make sure that they don’t go beyond protecting civilians as mandated by the UNSC resolution. In watching on TV the crowds in Benghazi cheering the passage of the resolution, I saw a big billboard in their middle that said in Arabic “No to foreign intervention.” People there make a distinction between “foreign intervention” by which they mean troops on the ground, and a protective no-fly zone. They oppose foreign troops. They are aware of the dangers and wisely don’t trust Western powers.

So, to sum up, I believe that from an anti-imperialist perspective one cannot and should not oppose the no-fly zone, given that there is no plausible alternative for protecting the endangered population. The Egyptians are reported to be providing weapons to the Libyan opposition — and that’s fine — but on its own it couldn’t have made a difference that would have saved Benghazi in time. But again, one must maintain a very critical attitude toward what the Western powers might do.

What’s going to happen now?

It’s difficult to tell what will happen now. The UN Security Council resolution did not call for regime change; it’s about protecting civilians. The future of the Gaddafi regime is uncertain. The key question is whether we will see the resumption of the uprising in western Libya, including Tripoli, leading to a disintegration of the regime’s armed forces. If that occurs, then Gaddafi may be ousted soon. But if the regime manages to remain firmly in control in the west, then there will be a de facto division of the country — even though the resolution affirms the territorial integrity and national unity of Libya. This may be what the regime has chosen, as it has just announced its compliance with the UN resolution and proclaimed a ceasefire. What we might then have is a prolonged stalemate, with Gaddafi controlling the west and the opposition the east. It will obviously take time before the opposition can incorporate the weapons it is receiving from and through Egypt to the point of becoming able to inflict military defeat on Gaddafi’s forces. Given the nature of the Libyan territory, this can only be a regular war rather than a popular one, a war of movement over vast stretches of territory. That’s why the outcome is hard to predict. The bottom line here again is that we should support the victory of the Libyan democratic uprising. Its defeat at the hands of Gaddafi would be a severe backlash negatively affecting the revolutionary wave that is currently shaking the Middle East and North Africa.

Gilbert Achcar grew up in Lebanon, and is currently Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. His books include The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder, published in 13 languages, Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, co-authored with Noam Chomsky, and most recently The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. He was interviewed by Stephen R. Shalom.

This interview originally appeared on Znet

Or did it? The legitimacy of the Libyan protesters’ demand does not mean that the decision by the United Nations and the powerful countries behind it was legitimate as well. The Libyan opposition, or at least those speaking for it, asked for a no-fly zone, for protection from the Qaddafi regime’s air force, to allow them to take on and defeat their dictatorship on their own terms. Many of us opposed that idea, for a host of reasons including the dangers of escalation and the threat of a new U.S. war in the Middle East. But whatever one thinks about that demand, the Security Council resolution went far beyond a no-fly zone. Instead, the United Nations has essentially declared war on Libya.

Protecting Civilians or Ousting Qaddafi?

While the UN resolution was taken in the name of protecting civilians, it authorizes a level of direct U.S., British, French, NATO and other international military intervention far beyond the “no-fly zone but no foreign intervention” that the rebels wanted. Its real goal, evident in the speeches that followed the Security Council’s March 17th evening vote, is to ensure that “Qaddafi must go,” — as so many ambassadors described it. Resolution 1973 is about regime change, to be carried by the Pentagon and NATO with Arab League approval, instead of by home-grown Libyan opposition.

The resolution calls for a no-fly zone, as well as taking “all necessary measures… to protect civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” The phrase “all necessary measures” is understood to include air strikes, ground, and naval strikes to supplement the call for a no-fly zone designed to keep Qaddafi’s air force out of the skies. The U.S. took credit for the escalation in military authority, with Ambassador Susan Rice as well as other Obama administration officials claiming their earlier hesitation on supporting the UN resolution was based on an understanding of the limitations of a no-fly zone in providing real protection to [in this case Libyan] civilians. It’s widely understood that a no-fly zone is most often the first step towards broader military engagement, so adding the UN license for unlimited military escalation was crucial to getting the U.S. on board. The “all necessary measures” language also appears to be the primary reason five Security Council members abstained on the resolution. For Russia, China, Germany, India and Brazil, that phrase meant giving the Pentagon and NATO a blank check backed by UN legitimacy. Unfortunately, their unease was not strong enough to result in opposition to the resolution; the collective abstention of the five still allowed the resolution to pass with a ten-zero vote in favor.

Some supporters of the resolution (which sadly included South Africa) insisted on explicitly excluding a “foreign occupation force.” But in the real world, that prohibition means little. Any U.S., British, or French troops arriving in Libya could easily be disguised as an “assistance team” or “training mission” or any of a host of well-honed diplomatic pseudonyms for what would otherwise be easily identified as foreign occupation forces. The language was designed to assuage regional and international concerns that the UN resolution threatened to turn the Libyan opposition’s struggle into a third US-NATO war in the Middle East.

But in fact the UN resolution threatens exactly that. The resolution’s focus on immediate military engagement on behalf of the rebels (exactly what led to a deafening celebration in opposition-held Benghazi when the vote was announced) threatens to sideline the referral of the Qaddafi regime’s crimes to the International Criminal Court and other potential pressure points, in favor of escalating the militarization of the entire region and internationalizing the military battle. Imposition of a no-fly zone will not have any impact on the regime’s tank and artillery assaults currently underway, but it is likely to be the first international engagement. That means the first U.S. (or French or British, both of which are rumored to be trying to out-run the Pentagon as first to engage in Libya) military action will likely be bombing Libyan air defenses. If one of those U.S. or British or French planes is shot down, leading to a NATO pilot or bomber team ending up in Qaddafi’s custody, it’s a pretty good bet that special forces or other ground troops would quickly be deployed to rescue the captured airmen. Under those circumstances, the claim so often heard that this resolution “allows everything except boots on the ground,” will be quickly proven untrue. U.S. or other NATO boots on the ground may yet be in store for Libya.

Dangers: dividing Libya, military stalemate, or…?

There is a significant danger that the engagement of international military forces in what is shaping up as a civil war in Libya could result in a longer-term stalemate, perhaps based on the division of the country between the regime-controlled western sector, and the rebel-held east. In fact, the text of the UN resolution seems to anticipate the likelihood that international military involvement will go on for a long time. It calls on governments participating in the military attacks in Libya to keep the UN secretary-general informed of their actions, and asks the SG to “report to the Council within 7 days and every month thereafter” on implementation of the resolution. That is not how you describe a short-term effort to help end an urgent crisis.

There continues to be breathtaking hypocrisy from the U.S. and its allies in responding to the disparate Arab movements. The U.S. demanded not only that the Arab League endorse any authorization to use force in Libya, but also that Arab countries agree to actually participate in any UN-authorized or NATO-led military action. Apparently at least two governments from Arab Gulf states have agreed. Qatar is one of them. The other likely one is United Arab Emirates, who along with Saudi Arabia, just sent hundreds of troops into democracy-shaken Bahrain, to help the king there keep his monarchy’s hold on absolute power. The U.S., fearful of losing Bahrain’s strategic port as home for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has yet to condemn the foreign troops imported to Bahrain to suppress the democracy protesters. So far, the Obama administration’s only response to the soldiers pouring into Bahrain has been to urge the heavily armed foreign troops to support dialogue between the Bahraini people and their discredited king.

Learning from history

Thirty years ago the U.S. decision to arm and strengthen Saddam Hussein’s weaker Iraqi side against the stronger Iranian side kept the Iran-Iraq War going, U.S. war profiteers wealthy, and young Iranians and Iraqis dying, far longer than might otherwise have been the case. Soon after, the U.S. bribed and threatened Security Council members to get most of them to endorse a U.S. war against Iraq. Then in 1991 George Bush used a false humanitarian claim to justify imposing a “U.S.-UK only” no-fly zone in already war-ravaged Iraq, without even bothering going to the UN..

Today is not quite 1991, and Libya is not quite Iraq. The decision made in the Security Council yesterday may not lead to a third U.S. war in the Middle East. It may not even lead to a long military stalemate or a permanent division of Libyan territory. But the new resolution brings all those dangers closer.

The Libyan opposition, or at least much of it, has made a legitimate demand for international support; for all the right humanitarian reasons, many people in many parts of the world have supported their right to some kind of support. Governments, however, are not people, and do not make strategic decisions for humanitarian reasons. Governments do not use scarce resources and most especially do not deploy military force, to achieve humanitarian goals. So the cold strategic calculations of powerful governments cannot be viewed as a legitimate response to the humanitarian needs of Libya’s people or the humanitarian impulses of international civil society.

The Libyan opposition faced – and faces – a brutal regime willing to risk international opprobrium to escalate military force against its population. One wishes that there was a global, civil society-based protection force, perhaps modeled on the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, capable of responding and providing serious protection to civilians facing such an assault. But such a force does not yet exist. One might wish that regional neighbors such as Tunisia and especially Egypt, where new governments struggle to gain and keep the support of their newly empowered populations, were willing and able to provide sufficient military assistance to Libya’s democratic forces, putting their military power, now at least partly under popular control, at the disposal of the regional democratic movement rising across the Arab world.

There may be new, not yet thought of ways of providing real solidarity to desperate movements, that do not threaten the authenticity and independence of the Libyan – and other – branches of these expanding Arab democratic revolutions. But yesterday’s UN resolution is not the way. The UN Charter calls for ending the scourge of war, not globalizing it.

This article originally appeared on the website of the Transnational Institute and is republished under a Creative Commons License

I freely admit to having a jaundiced view of the army. I grew up in the Aldershot area and there was a time in the early 1970s when we were thinking of calling in the IRA as a peace-keeping force. Of course, as a young boy, I was an avid militarist, partly because I thought we were still at war with Germany for most of the 1960s.

Today, we’re allowed to oppose the war in Afghanistan, and especially to have opposed the war in Iraq. But it seems to be compulsory to support the people who are actually prosecuting war. There are even some who think ‘Support the troops, not the war’ is some sort of coherent left position.

I know there are serving soldiers who say that they shouldn’t be in Afghanistan, to which my reply is: ‘No, you shouldn’t. And you shouldn’t be in the army. And if you hadn’t joined, you wouldn’t be there. And Britain wouldn’t be there because, if people like you didn’t keep joining up, there’d be no one to send. Governments aren’t going to go themselves, so they’d have to send our Olympic relay team or the scouts.’

But with the classic tendency to infantilise the working class, some on the left say: ‘A lot of these lads join up because of a lack of opportunities, but they don’t necessarily expect to get sent to war.’ I’m sorry, but they joined the wrong thing, then, didn’t they? If you join the Royal Horticultural Society or the Tooting Bec Lido Swimming Club and get sent to war, you can justifiably say that it was the last thing you expected. But the army’s got a pretty poor track record on these things.