| After the unfortunate decision taken yesterday by the warmongering North Atlantic Organization Treaty, with Washington, London and Paris at the lead, to continue bombing Libya until leader Muammar Al Gaddafi leaves power, the world is witnessing the final collapse of diplomacy as the proper way to solve conflicts among peoples and nations. Foreign ministers from 36 countries, meeting in London, decided on their own that the Libyan government has lost all legitimacy and must leave, sending a clear message that as happened at the end of the two world wars of the last century, the world can be divided according to the taste and whim of the most powerful. Perhaps the most serious problem is that if humanity had been given an opportunity at the end of World War II when the UN was established as a universal body to find peaceful solutions to international problems while preventing any conflict, it can be clearly seen that today they are but a bunch of beautiful words on a maze of paper. Here are some arguments to prove that assertion: firstly, here we are not dealing with an international conflict but an internal problem where two armed groups, one loyal to the government and its opponents, are fighting for power. This is important to be reiterated because the speeches so far delivered have deceived the world by saying that the NATO intervention was intended to protect civilians, when in fact it is protecting very well armed gangs, which took entire cities and towns by force using their high firepower and were later thrown out by the nation’s official army. It is true that in the middle of the battle, there were unarmed civilians, but they are not the ones whom the NATO missiles and bombs are defending, because bombs are falling in urban areas where people live. What the aggressive coalition is really doing is to build up a barrage to protect and allow the rebels advance on Tripoli, which clearly means that the coalition has sided by one of the two parties involved in the conflict, giving it full support, and removing the label of humanitarian mission that was intended to cover up the attack. In any case, why didn’t they act with the same power in Rwanda in 1994? Then there were UN troops but U.S., France and Britain, what a coincidence, hampered its movement and allowed between 500 thousand and a million civilians to be killed. Why was not an air and naval exclusion zone imposed on Israel after the Cast Lead operation against the Gaza Strip, where in 25 days alone between December 2008 and January 2009, Israel killed more than a thousand Palestinian civilians, including children and women? Or, why do they not intervene in Bahrain, where there had been more dead than in the initial conflicts in Libya and they were actually unarmed? The answer to these questions was given by US President Barack Obama who said that, regarding to the attack on Libya " this is how the international community should work, i.e., more nations joined the United States there, but not only in the core of the conflict but also redoubling efforts together and assuming their responsibilities." Such is the world that awaits us. Should we seek diplomacy in museums or obsolete libraries, though? Sources: RHC. |