Oct 20
Gaddafi’s killing – with all the hallmarks of a ‘coordinated assassination’ – marks ‘one more episode in this NATO war in Libya and North Africa’, writes Horace Campbell. The ‘remilitarisation of Africa and new deployment of Africom is a new stage of African politics,’ says Campbell…
All true Mr Campbell and many (including myself) feel uneasy about this quite blatant neo-colonial oil grab. However, its – as some famous person once said – a bit more complicated than that though, isn’t it? Ordinary Libyans have no idea what one man one vote is – the only man who mattered was the Big Man himself. This probably explains (for all of my fellow left-wing friends) the mass celebrations in Libya over the past few days Surely that was not choreographed by those crazy neo-cons in Washington and those in London and Paris? If it is,then I’ll eat my hat. The global ‘left’ has to deal with (and not ignore some of these uncomfortable facts, even as they haul out and quote extensively from the annals of international law, surely….
Just in case you think that I’m not a believer in international law even in cases like this, here’s Hitchens’ succinct summary of why even Gadaffi deserved his day in The Hague and why the leaders of this new Governing Council should have reined in their rebel fighters. In instances like this where the thirst for revenge was all around, it could not have been easy.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/muammar_qaddafi_should_not_have_been_killed_but_sent_to_stand_tr.h