Thought this was an interesting perspective. I put it here rather than the 'news' section as I thought it was more a general type of thread:

By Jody McIntyre

Arming both sides of a conflict must be a tactic David Cameron learnt from Gaddafi himself; we have been quite happily selling weapons to the Gaddafi regime until now, but now Cameron wants to “arm Libyan rebels”.



The issue here is not the morality or legitimacy of the Gaddafi regime; we have seen Libyan people demonstrating in their thousands, and being murdered for doing so, but the issue is the complete and utter hypocrisy of western intervention in the region. From country to country, the pattern is the same; support the dictators, as long as they support our interests, and arm them with any weapons they like, but if the people of that country rise up effectively, deny any contact or prior relationship and condemn the use of those weapons you sold them.

David Cameron recently travelled to Egypt to meet with leading members of the Egyptian army, accompanied by BAE Systems, a British arms manufacturer. So the message is clear:

“Hello, possible new leaders of Egypt, can we sell you some weapons?”

And the pattern continues.

In the case of Libya, the drums of war are being beaten at an alarming rate. They were the first state ever to be suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council, for committing “gross and systematic violations of human rights”. Of course, this doesn’t mean Libya is the first state to violate human rights, it just means they are a convenient villain at the current moment in time. The UK and US governments ponder over the establishment of a “no-fly zone” across the country, and US navy ships close in on Libyan shores, in case “military intervention” is necessary.

Can they not see the posters the demonstrators are hanging from building tops in Benghazi, saying “We do not want foreign intervention”? Or the Libyan air pilots flying to Malta, refusing to attack their own people?

If there is one thing the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have shown, it is that people in the Arab world are capable of dealing with their own affairs. They do not want regime-change “Iraq-style”, where it is accompanied by death, destruction and misery, and followed by a fake, US-imposed “democracy”. We do not need another war in the Arab world, another extension of neo-colonialism; we need to let the Libyan people determine their own future.

When the Venezuelan representative stood up at the UN and suggested that mediation would be a better solution than war, he was later described by the United States representative as “delusional”. As usual, the tables of reality are reversed; the voice of reason is portrayed as the crazed lunatic, and the call for war is presented as a move for peace.

The Libyan authorities have committed some reprehensible acts, but it is not Gaddafi who dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Gaddafi is responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own people, but the United States are responsible for the deaths of many more in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps they should keep their mouths quiet, instead of making frantic efforts to dip their blood-stained hands into Libyan oil barrels.

One thing must be made clear, David Cameron’s threats of interference are not being made in the interests of the Libyan people. If we had any interest in the welfare of the Libyan people, we would not have sold Gaddafi weapons, and trained his police force. The Libyan people would never opt for the invasion and occupation of their own country by foreign forces, and the untold misery and suffering that would inevitably result in, so this is purely for the sake of protecting our own interests. The interests of Shell and BP, lying in the black gold beneath Libya’s soil.

Western governments do not fear a Libya run by Gaddafi, they fear a Libya without him.

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