Gamal Nkrumah and Rasha Saad grapple with Egypt's post-revolution and Western intervention in Libya The Western military intervention in Libya was the focus of pundits this week. Abdel-Bari Atwan wrote in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi that seeing US missiles "raining down on Libyan cities and military sites," and listening to the "accompanying intensive propaganda campaign", one cannot but recall Iraq "and the carpet bombing that targeted that country twice." In 'The trap of the no-fly zone' Atwan admits that it is true that the international community cannot stand idly by as it sees the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, "and his sons' bloody battalions mercilessly slaughtering the Libyan people." But he argues that one cannot avoid noticing the Western nations' selectivity, "intervening militarily to protect particular Arab revolutions while completely ignoring others." To dispel any misunderstanding, Atwan asserted that he supported the Libyan revolution right from the beginning and regarded Gaddafi's regime "the worst in all epochs of Libya's history." However, Atwan insists, he is not at all convinced that this Western military intervention is out of concern for the Libyan people, but is more about their oil and wealth. "Otherwise, why the suspicious silence about the massacres of the Yemeni people in front of the world? Is it because there is no oil in Yemen, or because the Yemeni people are like the Palestinians -- people who do not deserve protection, or both?" Atwan labels what is happening in Libya as "a plain invasion aimed at changing the ruling regime by military force the way the neoconservatives and their boss, President George Bush, did." "The US intervention in Libya will be bloody, and the end game and outcome is not known. We lost a million martyrs in Iraq in a similar intervention, and God only knows how many we will lose in this new war, as history repeats itself, and as the same claims and lies are repeated," Atwan warns. In the London-based daily Al-Hayat Hassan Haidar plays the same tune. In "The Libyan test" Haidar wrote that despite the Western countries' assertion that they have learned some lessons from the Iraq war, it is not known for certain which of these lessons apply in Libya today. Haidar's doubts come in light of what he describes as a clear contradiction between the declared goals of the military campaign against Gaddafi's forces and what is being revealed by slips of the tongue and some "internal" statements by officials in NATO countries about the possibility of air and missile strikes developing into a ground intervention. "The Arab League had, in what represents a precedent, committed a fatal mistake by providing political cover to Western intervention in an Arab country that is not a rare case in terms of its people's demands being ignored and its protesters being killed," Haidar writes. This, according to Haidar, opens the door for any international power to use any internal conflict, in any country, as a pretext in order to interfere in its affairs politically and militarily. Osman Mirghani, however, believes that it is in fact only Gaddafi to be blamed for bringing the intervention to his country. "From day one, Gaddafi answered all demonstrations against him with bullets, waged a fierce war against all the cities that joined the uprising against him, and killed thousands of people using planes, tanks, rocket launchers and naval warships," Mirghani wrote in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat. Having committed all these atrocities, Mirghani wrote, we now see Gaddafi screaming that the raids launched against his forces, following the UN Security Council resolution, are "barbaric" and "leading to civilian deaths." "How can people believe that Gaddafi cares for civilian lives after the world saw and heard him ordering his battalions to 'attack the rats' and kill them 'without mercy or pity?'" Mirghani asked. Gaddafi's remarks, Mirghani points out, are not out of fear for his peoples' lives, but for his own. In 'Why the colonel has got to go', Mirghani wrote that Gaddafi bears the responsibility for what is happening today because his oppressive acts against his people led to this international intervention. He explained that Gaddafi first internationalised the crisis "when he recruited mercenaries from all over the world to repress his people, abuse them, and kill them without mercy. "No sane person wants to see foreign intervention in an Arab country -- even though in this case it was sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution -- but it is Colonel Gaddafi who has brought this intervention upon his country. "Thus the colonel and his regime must leave. The good people of Libya deserve -- without doubt -- better leadership and better lives," Mirghani concluded. Tariq Al-Homayed focussed on the resemblance of mistakes of Arab regimes when facing their people's demonstrations According to Al-Homayed, the extent with which mistakes are being repeated by some Arab regimes in their confrontation with the political earthquake that is striking the entire region from all directions is "astonishing", regardless of the manner that this political earthquake is affecting different regimes and peoples. The biggest mistake, Al-Homayed explains, that is being repeated by Arab regimes in dealing with this earthquake is: killing protesters and not being aware of the importance of timing. This happened in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. The ideal solution, according to Al-Homayed, is first and foremost, an end to the killings, and regimes putting forward a package of genuine solutions that go beyond the demands of the protesters or the opposition. "This would ensure that the situation does not become further complicated, with countries slipping into chaos and violence or civil war, and ending with the ouster of the regime, which was something that was not initially one of the protesters demands. This is what happened in a number of Arab states, including Tunisia which is where the first spark was lit," Al-Homayed wrote. Al-Homayed clarifies that "this is not advice to help regimes facing genuine trouble to survive, but rather a reminder of the reality of the situation in order to avoid further killing and destruction.
