Why is West really bombing Libya?

ON the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq the lessons of two disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been learned.

Despite the obvious relief for the people of Benghazi one has to question the real motives of the western powers in launching this new war and their selective intervention in the Arab peoples uprisings, which could kill many more civilians while possibly not dislodging Gaddafi at all.

While the UNSC was voting to impose a no-fly zone in Libya, at least 40 civilians were killed in a US drone attack in Waziristan in Pakistan, the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain (home of the US Fifth Fleet) were brutally suppressed by an invading US-backed Saudi army and forty protesters were gunned down in Sanaa, Yemen.

In Iraq, three weeks ago, 30 protesters were gunned down for seeking democratic change from the US-supported Maliki government.

No western political leader is proposing no-fly zones in these countries, just as they were silent two years ago when the Israeli state killed 1,400 Gazans including 400 children.

The military intervention in Libya could just be a cynical attempt by western powers to dampen the popular Arab revolutions of recent months in order to reassert their domination of this strategic oil rich region.

The telltale evidence that the intervention is not all it claims to be is the western leaders’ ambiguity, if not outright silence, about the suppression in Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq and Palestine and the continued drone murders in Pakistan.

Jim Roche

Irish Anti War Movement

Dublin 1