It is not about oil. It is about decline of the Empire.
Phyllis Bennis: U.K. Sends Troops into Libya as International Coalition Expands Mission to Include Regime Change
PHYLLIS BENNIS: You know, this is exactly the kind of escalation that many of us warned against on the evening that the U.N. first passed its no-fly zone resolution that had the language "all necessary measures," that it would lead to boots on the ground. There have already been boots on the ground in the form of intelligence agencies, the CIA and others, who are already operating on the ground. Now we’ll see it on a larger scale. What we’re seeing is a clear commitment on the part of NATO and the U.S. for regime change—exactly what the U.N. resolution was not designed to do. And what we’re hearing now is a sort of playing with words among NATO countries—the U.K. and France, in particular, that had been the most aggressive in wanting to escalate and take an official position in support of regime change in Libya—and instead of saying, "Well, that is not within the NATO mandate or the U.N. mandate," because countries like Turkey, and as well as Germany, have played a very key role in trying to limit the mandate of the international intervention, instead they’re simply saying, "We’re going to go in unilaterally alongside the NATO contingent, the NATO military strike," very much what the U.S. has done historically in places like Bosnia, places like Afghanistan, places like Haiti, where it has sent intervention—military intervention forces, air strikes, etc., alongside international engagement.
And it not only confuses the issue of who’s in charge—that’s not my concern. My concern is that it leads to an inevitable escalation in the interest of those outside powerful Western countries in their effort for regime change and gaining control. In the situation in Libya, this is not like Iraq. This is not a, quote, "war for oil." Gaddafi’s regime was already in bed with the U.S., with Italy, with the U.K., with France, with Western oil companies, Western governments, since his regime’s rehabilitation of 2002, 2003. So the problem was not "We can’t get access to Libyan oil." It’s far more complex. It’s part of a response to the growing—the rise of the Arab Spring and the end of the U.S.-backed dictatorships that have controlled the Arab world for the last 50 years. With the demise of that system, because of this extraordinary popular uprising of people throughout the Arab world that are saying "No more," that are overthrowing the years of fear in their countries, overthrowing dictatorships, the U.S. is now looking, along with its allies, for new ways of making sure that they will still control how that region, as a whole, will be governed. Will it be governed by pro-Western, neoliberal, pro-oil-company kinds of governments? Or will it be governed by something else that represents a very different interpretation of what democracy looks like, of what an economy should look like? These are questions that Libyans should be deciding for themselves. The problem is, when you have British ground troops and American jets and NATO forces controlling, NATO forces acting as the air strike component of the opposition in Libya, then, inevitably, when the fighting is over, you will have those forces in control.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/19/phyllis_bennis_uk_sends_troops_intohttp://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2011/april/video/dnB20110419a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:44:31