This war is a trap 
Edwy Plenel / Mariátegui
Photo: Reuters 26/03/1911
As diplomacy gives way to war people are told to choose: for or against, without even having had time or opportunity to reflect or debate. This summary is testing alternative journalism in its critical function, not compatible with the tail-borreguiles and automatic thoughts. The Libyan case is an illustration of this new, fair international cause perverted by politicians of French power calculations. The weapon of criticism is worthless if it is forbidden to itself the criticism of arms. The office is unable to report march in uniform.
Can not they, in turn, want the quick fall of the dictator Qaddafi and misrepresenting the operation of forgetfulness and distraction orchestrated this time for Nicolas Sarkozy? Can not wait for an international mobilization next to the Arab revolution in progress and not blindly approve its translation in the form of direct military intervention by Western powers, yesterday, holding and armed these dictatorships today shaking their people?
"The first casualty of war is truth." Listening or reading the last few days, the flood of uniformly laudatory comments about the French commitment against the Libyan regime, we spontaneously agreed that this reflection was used as a starting point to Veilles d'armes, Marcel Ophuls's film about journalism in time of war torn Yugoslavia that was both theater and pretext.
But the truth is not good versus evil, day vs. night, the light away from darkness, as if it were a binary choice of an alternative or warrior. The truth, in its plurality, would rather the facts against the beliefs, the accuracy against confusion, memory against forgetting, in short, the information from propaganda, including that from the course or self-proclaimed field of Justice and the law.
From the first day of his presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy seeks the war. By atavism Bonapartist want this external event that causes the opposition to shut up inside. Anesthesia and paralyzing effect of encouragement, its mechanics and its overwhelming imperative to mobilize. The first sought in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, promoted his own words, a field of battle ancient civilization against "barbarism." Since then, the French commitment continues and there is eternal despite the obvious failure of that war in western central Asia, failure to clearly explain the relative silence of the French president.
then looked it up in Georgia, in 2008, compared to Russia, a personal gesture to domestic political purposes, when France held the presidency of the European Union. In the unfortunate results on the ground was added a jam lasting EU foreign policy and its solidarity whose price we paid.
So, in 2011, Nicolas Sarkozy appears to end as a war leader. In a war that has promoted, championed, obtained. Catching the ball flight from Benghazi media launched by writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, is indisputably in the lead in this war, which was a green light onusiana Franco-British resolution advocated in the Security Council by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs , Alain Juppe, and adopted by ten votes in favor and five abstentions. Moved, on Tuesday 22 March, at a military base in Corsica while MPs debated, at the wrong time, when everything is and talked and decided, "says a lot about the move: President plays the great war, as head of hosts, while others make policy daily. In the republics Caesar, one is often elevated as well, by dint of guns. And, always, reducing democracy.
enshrining the plurality rather than unity, the presidential culture that is permeated our public life, politics and media, does the rest, too laudatory editorials, staging hexagonal defying international curiosity, a French patriotic tears suddenly back into the center of the world war and patriotic agenda promoted in the vain hope to eclipse the cantonal electoral defeat, opposition caught in the challenges of state solidarity and ideological conformism, etc.. Hand, if the circumstances warrant it, to verify the vital need for a new independent press, press away from the journalism industry and government: Mediapart was almost alone, in the writings of François Bonnet, to formulate questions and queries the day after the vote on resolution 1973 the Security Council.
More than ever, these questions and these questions remain valid. Unless you lose all critical faculties and all recent memory, support the just cause of the Libyan people could not prevent stress this calculation politician of the instrument is now in France. But even beyond the borders, because, while Nicolas Sarkozy at the head of the maneuver war, their inconsistencies and blind spots can only pervert and corrupt the international relief effort late on the Libyan people.
A war for forgetting
We oppose, of course, the end justified the means relativizaría: to overthrow a dictator, go to the aid of popular uprisings, to protect civilian populations ... However, this is not here but clothing invented circumstances of war and persist to forget: to forget the commitment, adhere to the rule. Distraction from domestic political show of force abroad, which pretty much sums up the comparison by the British press to the operation Falklands (Malvinas) Margaret Thatcher, who did not fail to have the happy consequence precipitate the downfall of Argentina's military dictatorship , as can be expected to accelerate the current military intervention of the Gadhafi regime. Want
not prevent these beneficial effects remain lucid and awake, if the fate of the Libyan people were truly the first of the concerns of French power, no doubt we would have noticed it before. The truth is that the France of Nicolas Sarkozy is the worst placed to make claim their freedom to the Arab peoples, having been so committed yesterday with authoritarian or dictatorial regimes that overthrow or crack today. Since 2007, the rule was the commitment, well beyond the ordinary relations imposed by the realpolitik diplomacy.
There are coincidences, far from being anecdotal, summary habits: the way in which the power boasted of having launched a Union for the Mediterranean countries was transformed into comfortable backyard, resorts despite the oppression of their people and the corruption of their elites. Thus as seen at parties in late 2010, the French president spending some days in Morocco of a monarch by divine right, his Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tunisia holidays Ben Ali clan, his special adviser on Libya's Colonel Gaddafi and Prime Minister visiting Egypt with expenses paid by President Mubarak.
At the intersection of public policy and private commitments, the Tunisian episode was so overwhelming that it led to a ministerial crisis in France, with the resignation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had publicly proposed in dictator aid issues safety, a few days before his fall. But that was not the visible but the immense corruption accepted or promoted under the dual requirement commercial interest and ideological blindness, serving the Islamist scarecrow alibi for business conducted with opacity and greed at the oligarchic dictatorships that have transformed their national wealth on family property.
no evidence, moreover, that this behavior is gone with the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes: well, it was too little noted that the only official visit at the highest level, the Prime Minister, in the absence of President, the Arab world after the fall of Ben Ali and Mubarak was in Saudi Arabia, at the same place to which the Tunisian dictator took refuge.
12 and February 13 in full Arab Democratic storm, François Fillon was thus to reassure the obscurantist regime of the region, imposing Islamic law in everyday life and not only discriminates against non-Muslims, but also the Shia within Islam which they share with the Sunnis. Worse, was the occasion of joint military exercises of the Saudi and French armies, illustration of the military-industrial complex that dominates the French foreign policy in those regions.
With this measure, the Libyan case was, in recent years, more cartoony. The recent book by Jean Guisnel, as part of Libya has published Mediapart, is exhaustive on the subject and therefore devastating. As shown The Guardian, France has with Italy on record sales of weapons to the regime of Colonel Gaddafi since 2007. The staging, in Tripoli and Paris, the approach involved the Libyan dictator directly to the Presidency of the Republic, their networks and interests, far more than he had of professional diplomacy initiative.
This recantation was a concentrate of French corruption: privatized management of foreign policy (the unthinkable couples Claude Guéant / Cécilia Sarkozy) arms sales intermediaries located in the center of power (Ziad Takieddine, man Karachi key issue ) arms industry in the heart of our media system (Dassault and Lagardère via EADS), policies that have a career in professional intermediaries (Patrick Ollier, host of friendly relations Franco-Libyan and continues as minister for relations with parliament, etc.).
Seen from France, the Libyan case is a money laundering operation and amnesia to which we must oppose a stubborn memory. We do not see why the spirit of responsibility miracle could suddenly win a presidency that even a few months ago, continued his negotiations with the Libyan dictatorship to export our civil nuclear industry. Begun in 2007 and specified by a Franco-Libyan protocol signed by French by Bernard Kouchner, the then new Minister of Foreign Affairs, this discussion takes a curious Japanese relief when the event underlines the uncertainty about plant safety.
Can we imagine that the regime of dictator, whose alleged madness like underlined, in possession of a nuclear plant today, when even until 2003 did everything possible to acquire nuclear weapons Pakistan via their networks?
Guéant's crusade, the Suez
Minc
it be abandoned by his closest friends or most committed bodes ill for Colonel Qaddafi, and of course bodes well for his people. But that does not mean that those who forsake Him today will be tomorrow sincere friends of the Libyan people.
The obvious test of any ethics of conviction animates Nicolas Sarkozy in the case of Libya, is defending the exact opposite of what inspired him even a few weeks ago. After an awkward silence as contemptuous as his first reaction to the democratic uprisings that brought down his two friends Ben Ali and Mubarak, the official pillars Union for the Mediterranean, was one of fear and fright. Fear of an unpredictable story that turned into a discourse of fear directed at the French. Taking advantage of the government reshuffle on 27 February to speak at length about the Arab revolution, invasions brandished the threat of uncontrolled migration and worst regimes overthrown dictatorships.
In this wave, his party, the UMP, and their relatives, in particular the new interior minister, Claude Guéant, launched the appointment of the usual scapegoats: Islam, on which should be discussed urgently; Muslims who become a part of French class, and immigrants, whose flow one would not feel as at home in France. Not having been interrupted in any way by the intervention in Libya this sequence hexagonal, it is difficult to see how a country could claim to truly bring the war by freedom to peoples whose cultures, beliefs and despises tours, excluded and stigmatized. Far from witnessing
on openness to the world and others, the Libyan case is here held hostage by a regression and a French withdrawal. It is the oldest partner of Nicolas Sarkozy, Claude Guéant, to whom we owe the most explicit demonstration. The day after the first round of the cantonal has been a historic defeat of the right (UMP represents only 7.5% of enrollees), the Minister of Interior has continued its xenophobic campaign does not hesitate to copy ditties of the far right. "Too many immigrants in France concerns the French," repeated on Monday 21 March in Le Figaro, before congratulating his mentor for his commitment Libyan as little anodyne terms: "The president has been at the forefront of the crusade ...."
A crusade, then. Colonial unthought, unthought of hierarchy among civilizations and cultures, religions and peoples, is clearly at the heart of the thinking of the presidency. One of their unofficial adviser so hasty as active, as confirmed in the beginning of the Libyan issue: Alain Minc no doubt, on Friday, March 18, of comparing the Franco-British alliance that leads the subject to the issuance of Suez in 1956, symbolizing the face of neocolonial adventures emergence of Arab nationalism. A new Suez, then, with this nuance provided by Minc: "In 1956, (was) to defend the interests, now, is to defend the principles." Except in 1956 and, as today, the principles were invoked as an alibi for the interest.
obviously be objected as a fundamental difference that this time, a UN resolution frames the action, without having found the veto in the Security Council. The exception that Libyan-imposed dictatorship Ubuesque for forty-two years a country rich in oil but sparsely populated (six million) - this probably explains most circumstances. Well it was not necessary to wait long silences, contradictions and ambiguities of the solution that voted do not tilt the coalition that has left it. The caution and precautions Americans refer to questions input by the Brazilian diplomacy, India and Germany, the three abstainers but not love for the Libyan regime, the coherence and effectiveness of the proposed intervention. What
unified command, which aim to end war, how to topple the dictator without troops on the ground, avoiding collateral damage claims whose first victims are civilians to be protected, how to prevent a possible direction for NATO not sign the Western character of this new war, why not build directly to the uprising of the East of Libya? So many questions that weigh on a statement made today both too late and too soon: too late as it is behind the counter on the verge of victory of Colonel Gaddafi and too quickly because it is designed without detailed analysis of the situation, as if a media coup.
War of the French neo
The origin of this war led by Nicolas Sarkozy for pure domestic political reasons, there is indeed a media coup: the Bernard-Henri Levy, as usual, and from this point view, not without coherence has met its luster after the French version of American neoconservatives. A left and right or right to left according to their itineraries, recycle, in our uncertain times, the old logic of the West dominating confident of its power and its values, especially values \u200b\u200bits power. Running after a lost glory as the world trembles beneath your feet, making up new relationships, new freedoms, new equalities.
Released March 16 in Le Monde, whose supervisory board has joined Bernard-Henri Levy, the appeal of personalities on behalf of Libyan involvement was signed by various figures of the indignation of variable geometry. Three examples. Bernard Kouchner
it symbolizes the supporters of American intervention in Iraq, based on a lie and to violate international law. André Glucksmann has recently awarded a forum for opinion relegates the shoulder of the history of Palestinian rights, denied that continue despite many resolutions onusianas. And embodies the old Antoine Sfeir little selfless support of the Tunisian dictatorship, trying to forget his wanderings through the warrior zeal.
Hell, you know, is paved with good intentions. This emergency was proclaimed in Paris warrior is a new episode of a crucial battle in which future relations are played international. Sometimes there are wars or wars inevitable necessary, you have to do alliances of interests and coalitions of ideas between nations, it is clear, even if it's always a shame. But why is there "the right war," just wars, "wars of principles" as we have again?
Whatever alleged "absolute justice or religion, faith or law," war is always erect absolute. This operator whose legitimacy would be the right is a sleight of hand, as largely ignores the fundamental question: Who stands the law, who dictates the law, who is the judge?
Everyone knows that in the current international relations, the Security Council is part of the power of conviction rather than majorities. The promoters of Libyan operation take a partial and incomplete agenda. If the stated objective is to protect civilian populations from the suppression of the victims by their own government, what do you do then, without departing from the Arab world, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, countries in which such scenarios are in progress? "The UN should trigger external interventions many insurrections, repression and civil war have? And why did not intervene when he sent in late 2008 and early 2009, the State Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, in whose arms disproportionate brunt pay the Palestinian civilian population?
is quite clear: faced with the complexity of the world, the ideological reasoning that encourages our neocons can not stand the test of reality. Choosing between allies and enemies, powers authorized to violate international law and declared rogue states because of its weakness, its internal coherence is ultimately of interest rather than of principle. "At the precise moment that the air strikes on Libya began to fall, not to increase the repression in the Arabian peninsula, attacking in particular the Shia minority as discrimination testifies to a rejection of pluralism by oil monarchies uneasy about its durability and threatened by their people? Whatever
leaving, happy if the dictator falls as quickly as possible, if it becomes miserable failure, this war that pass spontaneously all Libyan opposition continues to be a trap. Trap for thought for politicians, for the world. You are permitted to hope that the Arab peoples, as liberating dynamic, you know this trick again for their benefit, in a strategy of the weak to strong. But nothing to jump around with your feet together in this trap, losing all sense critical. You can play and gamble. But provided no cheating. Particularly with the true facts and memory situations.
http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/230311/cause-libyenne-calculs-francais-cette-guerre-est-un-piege
Translation: Faustino Eguberri for SOUTH WIND
http:/ / www.vientosur.info
