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West Should 'Go Beyond' No-Fly Zone in Libya, US Says
The US has signalled that the international community should "go beyond" a no-fly zone in Libya, suggesting military intervention for the first time.
Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations spoke ahead of a Security Council vote due today on the no fly zone being implemented to halt Col Gaddafi's attacks on rebels.
"We need to be prepared to contemplate steps that include, but perhaps go beyond, a no-fly zone at this point, as the situation on the ground has evolved, and as a no-fly zone has inherent limitations in terms of protection of civilians at immediate risk," said Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN. (getty) While China, Russia, Germany and other members of the 15-member council have expressed opposition or doubts about military action in Libya, the United States said even stronger measures than a no-fly zone may be needed.
A draft resolution which includes a no-fly zone has been put forward for a vote on Thursday. Britain, France and the United States had acted "to put pressure on the council to act quickly and decisively," said one diplomat, announcing the move.
Final talks will be held before a vote and the draft could still be changed, diplomats from the three countries acknowledged.
Russia made a counter proposition for a ceasefire resolution as a stop-gap before a full sanctions measure, the country's envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters. But this did not get enough support for a vote.
Miss Rice however said the council was discussing "a range of actions".
"We need to be prepared to contemplate steps that include, but perhaps go beyond, a no-fly zone at this point, as the situation on the ground has evolved, and as a no-fly zone has inherent limitations in terms of protection of civilians at immediate risk," she said.
Gaddafi's forces have inflicted several defeats on rebels in recent days and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also hinted at a hardening Washington stance earlier when she said the United States wanted a vote by the end of Thursday.
France and Britain had led the demands for a no-fly zone and French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to the heads of state or government of all the other council members seeking urgent backing for the measure.
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30 Comments so far
Show AllThere are two problems with the notion of U.S. military action in Libya.
One: The U.S. has such a horrible human rights record in the entire region from Morocco to Kazakhstan that we have no credibility and our current motives in Libya would be viewed with great suspicion.
Two: While military action to defend Libyan civilians might honor professed American values, such action might offend American corporate interests.
Rule of thumb.
If the US Government suggests a course of action, the best course of action is its opposite.
I'm laughing, but what is say is completely true.
We should start a whole second government that has the final say on whatever the first government says and does, and as a rule all the second government does is the exact opposite of what the first one does.
Don't you mean a third government, because the first government is the Trilateralists, the Rand Corporation plus a few mad generals in the Pentagon with their retired buddies in the corporate supply chain, as well as the Banksters on Wall Street.....??? ;-)
Susan Rice is yet another diseased excrescence of the monstrosity that is the American political class. Where do these people come from? What can we do to rid ourselves of their ilk? Or at least prevent them from having political power? How is it that everyone who claims to represent the United States in international relations is of this same stamp? A couple of weeks ago I watched an interview with Rice on Al Jazeera over illegal Israeli settlements and was left speechless at her thuggish arrogance and unwillingness to engage in dialogue. It used to be that it was mostly the Republicans' and Neocons' diplomats who displayed these mannerisms of fascist autocracy. Now it's all of them. What is to be done?
De-nazify America.
Please don't get carried away by anything Susan Rice says because she is only the mouthpiece of the White House. If she makes any statement contrary to what has been cooked up for her by Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton she will be thrown under the proverbial bus. She is undoubtedly always present when the cooking is done so she will not need any written instructions.
The hubris if not chutzpah of the White House is colossal. Quite aside from the fact that Russia and China will veto any military action against Kadaffy's Libya, what authority let alone moral justification does this dysfunctional organization have to authorize the bombing and invasion of a member country absent a threat to another member country? Until recently I held that people who advocated to get rid of the UN were slightly gaga, but now I am not so sure any longer.
Anyone who believes that the so-called "War Powers Resolution" allows President Obama to act unilaterally needs to have his or her head checked. Getting involved militarily in Libya would be a choice not a necessity hence the WPR is irrelevant here. Congress could declare war but on what constitutional grounds? We are not threatened by Kaddafi's Libya.
AmeriKKKa, led by the military industrial komplex, has never met a war it didn't like. The Demokrats and Repuplikans are shouting from the rooftops that the nation is "broke" and there is no choice but to end collective bargaining for teachers, nurses, fire fighters and anyone else who makes less than $50,000 a year.
Meanwhile, there are bailouts to the too-big-to-jail crowd, tax cuts for the greedy-rich and two endless, unpaid for wars in the Middle East. Now, the chicken hawks, who, like Dickhead Cheney, "had other priorities" when it came to joining the military, want to start a third war in Libya.
The AmeriKKKan government is non-functioning. We need to abolish the existing government and build one that works for We the People.
Abolish government period.
Unilateral. Going against the best advice of all the other Nations we are willing to go beyond the mildest and yet still questionable act of establishing a no fly zone. Unilateral is what we did in Iraq. These people are wicked. All the fascists of history would bow to the Amerika of today.
Why anyone will fall for the whole "protect civilians" argument is beyond me. Guaranteed, many more civilians will be killed (liberated from their bodies) by any action the US takes on the ground or from the air, then the Libyan military is ever likely to. Then of course, it will switch to making life better for women there, just like in Iraq and Afghanistan! Followed by having to stay and kill because of all the Al Qaeda that are hating our freedoms and taking advantage of the situation, and finally we will stay and kill even more civilians for national security reasons that can't be related for national security reasons.
"...finally we will stay and kill even more civilians for national security reasons that can't be related for national security reasons."
Horrible. True. Priceless.
Check out this article by Michel Chossudovsky outlining how Libya is an oil rich country:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23605
Military intervention in another country that has a large supply of oil.... what a surprise. Im guessing that if once again the US military attacks, alot of care will be taken in not targeting civilian infrastructure and outright civilians like all their wars since they attacked Serbia in 1999.... (yes that was sarcasm)
When Rommel's tank armies controlled Libya he needed water for the water-cooled engines of his Mark IV tanks. Because sweet water was in short supply there the Germans sent water-specialists to Libya to supervise the drilling into suspected underground water reservoirs. Their reports to Berlin were one lament after another: "this damn water contains too much NaCl"! No one in Berlin put two-and-two together exclaiming "Eureka, we don't have to get the Soviet oil because there may be plenty of it in Libya". The Germans at the time did have the technology to develop the land-based Libyan fields. Imagine what the effect on the war might have been had the Germans discovered the Libyan oil!
This women typifies all that is wrong with the Obama administration.
She and Jarrett are walking disasters-- embarrassing mediocrity at best--and this one, Rice, is brimming with machismo bravado--she can barely contain.
Obama and his staff don't connect on any level, and are in a word--irrelevant.
assuming most Libyans wear robes instead of trousers, isn't it practically already a no fly zone?
Boom tish!
Please correct me if I am wrong but a remarkable evolution seems to have happened in our nation. Until now there have always been majorities and often large majorities of USAns who supported the US interventions in China (1945-1948!), Palestine (on behalf of Israel), Indochina, Cuba, Chile, Lebanon, Serbia, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan (original and recent "surge") prior to the beginning of each intervention. If I am not mistaken there is now a majority of our nation opposed to US military intervention of any kind in Libya either alone or "with the willing" who have shown a habit in the past of becoming "the quitting" soon after the first of their citizens got gored or killed. This fact makes this quixotic pronunciamento by the White House more than ridiculous namely unconscionable.
The French have a saying: "enfant brulee craint le feu" or a child that has burned itself fears the fire. Successive US administrations have burned themselves in the countries mentioned above yet President Obama seems to insist that he sees no fire in Libya. Scary!
The Obama administration insists that it will only act together with "our allies" most of whom happen to have been colonialists in Africa and three of which, Germany, Britain, and Italy, actually fought their destructive war on the territory of the Libyan people who had not invited them to do so. France and Spain are hated ex-colonialist nations in North Africa. Belgium, The Netherlands? You could not come up with a more despicable bunch of ex-colonial gang-rapers of Africa and the Muslim world!
You're mistaken, there wasn't a majority of Americans supporting the US intervention in Iraq in 2003. There were vast protests against the illegal invasion before it happened, but the US invaded anyway.
So public opposition isn't a deterrent. Had this been the case, after Vietnam the US government would've stopped invasions.
I don't see a "remarkable" evolution, much to the contrary. Public apathy has increased. Americans today mostly hit the streets only when their pockets are threatened (Wisconsin), 95% couldn't care less about whatever crimes against humanity the US government commits overseas.
What's with all these black women named Rice? Do all of them aspire as children to become war criminals?
Rice, Hillary, Albright, Pelosi, Katherine Harris, Dianne Feinstein, Merkel should put an end to the feminist claim that the world would be a better place if run by women.
As if we needed more corroborating evidence after Thatcher or queens Victoria and Elizabeth.
Maybe its white rice
Gaddafi broke their "color revolution" toy, and now they wanna throw a tantrum?
Sure, why not another war with a yet more capable enemy? The others are all going so well now that our soldiers never fight in person -or leave our bases- and the enemy acts with impunity across the land!
Another war is BOUND to solve our problems: trade imbalance, destructive finance capitalism, dwindling and overworked resources, and a deeply impotent and unhappy citizenry. Right?
Prediction:
When/if the Red Party regains the Executive, they will drop all the "spread democracy and protect the civilians" crap and openly appeal to the Imperialist urge to conquest. "Let's get that oil" will serve as today's "Do you KNOW how much gold is in Gaul?". Not that the Blue Party is any better. Their similar crud-ly nastiness is something that Mr. Obama seems dedicated to demonstrate six-times-before-breakfast as often as he can. But their B.S. is different.
Don't Panic,
-matti.
I've had a little more time to consider the effect that the UN has had on the quixotic idea that our nation should be the policeman of the world. Suddenly I was struck with the thought that the existence of the UN is substantially co-responsible for the enormous growth of our armed forces after WW2, especially air force and navy (a war with the Soviet Union would have been a nuke war, not a war with armies), the gigantic and dangerous hubris, and the MIC cancer that has grown with it. Our Presidents hardly risk impeachment for violating the constitution.
Imagine a world without the UN. Our presidents would have to ask our elected Congress and not a non-elected body of foreign nations for the authority of constitutionally legal military action against any other state of the world that has neither threatened nor attacked us. Now our weasel-minded politicians can always excuse themselves by stating that the "UN Security Council has approved the action".
I have now come to the conclusion that our country must leave the UN and send the organization packing to any country that wants to have its headquarters. Wow! What a change of heart!
Interesting point, Crow.
Today's vote contradicts Wallerstein's article.
I think we need some military intervention in Washington, D.C.
Po-leeze. The UN is nothing but Wall Street outreach.
Rice and Clinton both prove women have arrived: They're just as bloodthirsty and capable of atrocities as us warmongering cavemen.
"I think we need some military intervention in Washington, D.C."
Yes! I've said it before in conversation, and I'll say it now in writing:
If there were a military coup in the US by those elements the armed forces opposed to all these wars (and I suspect they may be a majority, as in the general populace), to throw out the War Party on both sides of the aisle, I would support it!
Why is Susan Rice grabbing her tits like that?
It was obvious all along that US imperialism was simply out to steal Libya's oil, just like Iraq's. SHAME ON "Common Dreams" for posting propaganda articles sympathetic to the CIA's "rebels"! Of course, we should not be surprised, given that this website is funded by CIA-creature and multi-billionaire George Soros and links to Washington's overseas propaganda organ, "Radio Free Europe."