Libya: The West’s intervention in Gaddafi’s Libya is justified
By Ozodi Thomas Osuji – Today, March 19, 2011 British, French and United States armed forces lunched war on Gaddafi’s Libya. The ostensible reason for the attack is to carry out the United Nations resolution authorizing member nations to implement a “No-fly over Libya” and also “to use every necessary measure to prevent Colonel Moammar Gaddafi from killing unarmed civilians”.
For ever a month now the people of Libya have been demonstrating saying that they want a change in government. Gaddafi has been in power since 1969 when he overthrew the government of Libya and used military power to usurp governance; he was not elected by Libyans and apparently forty two years in power is not enough for him; apparently, he plans to be in office until he dies and when he dies one of his numerous sons take over.
Apparently, Gaddafi construes the people of Libya as his personal property and he has the right to decide what to do with them and they do not have the right to question his decisions. He employs the rhetoric of Arab nationalism and or Pan African nationalism to justify his personal rule of Libya.
Gaddafi’s rule is brutal and authoritarian; anyone who opposes him is killed by his goon squad. The resources of Libya are redirected to Gaddafi’s personal use. Libya’s oil revenue is practically his to do as he likes, not accounting to Libyan people what he did with their money.
For the sake of truth in reporting it is necessary to say that what Gaddafi does is done in other Arab countries, such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Jordan. Apparently, it is the Arab pattern of political leadership for one person to use force to seize power and thereafter transform the country to his personal fiefdom and when he dies his children take over.
It may be historical for Arabs to be ruled by cut throats like Moammar Gaddafi but the fact is that in the present Libyans have indicated that they are tired of being ruled by a cut throat and the question is whether they have a right to decide who rules them or not.
All human beings have a right to decide who governs them. The only type of government that has legitimacy in our age is democracy. In a democracy the people periodically decide who rule them; they go to the polls and vote for those they want to lead them into office and vote out those they do not want to rule them.
The people of Libya have indicated by their actions that they want a different government but Gaddafi apparently believes that he has a divine right to rule the people and after him for his sons to rule them. Obviously, Gaddafi’s idea of government is not in sync with the age’s idea of legitimate governance. Therefore it is right that he be gotten rid of by every means necessary.
It is perfectly justified for Libyan’s and friends of Libya, such as the Western coalition of forces currently attacking Libya to hunt Gaddafi down and if necessary kill him.
That is correct; Gaddafi needs to be killed. He has killed many persons and there is no reason why we should not do to him as he has done to others.
There is such a thing as a just war. A just war includes going to war to protect the innocent as the West is currently embarked on protecting innocent Libyans that Gaddafi is massacring.
Gaddafi has oppressed his people for forty two years. His people say that they have had enough. A leader who has not accomplished whatever he plans to accomplish for his people in ten to twenty years probably is not going to do so. Gaddafi has had enough time to do whatever is in him to do for his people. His continued stay in power is superfluous.
In nature Libyans have a right to defend themselves from the oppression of their so-called ruler; they have a right to chop off his head.
Gaddafi deserves to be killed. If he is killed with a little help from the international community that is justified action.
Gaddafi has no right to inflict pain on his people and since he apparently enjoys doing so, then he is a sadist (he is obviously mentally ill; he is delusional and has a sense of grandeur). The Libyan people have decided that they do not want to continue being masochists available for Gaddafi to gratify his sadistic tendencies by inflicting pain on them and they tolerate it.
The people have decided to water their tree of liberty with Gaddafi’s tyrant’s blood.
We should not be squeamish and fear blood. Tyrants ought to be killed so that future tyrants know what could happen to them should they decide to take away the peoples liberty.
Some folk are afraid to employ the term killing someone. The fact is that some persons deserve to be killed. Murderers like Gaddafi deserve to be killed; they are a plague on humanity and humanity is best served if they are gotten rid of. What is Gaddafi living for, anyway? Is he living to kill his people so as to satisfy his sadistic cravings? He is a beast and deserves to be sent to whoever created him.
African dictators who did not even participate in the formation of the United Nations in 1945 are too quick to tell us that the United Nations Charter guaranteeing the sovereignty of nation states ought to be respected hence foreign countries should not interfere in their nations as they massacre their people or steal all their people’s monies. Already these Africans (African Union) are asking for the West to cease attacking Libya, so as to protect one of their fellow dictators.
The Arab league endorsed a no fly zone over Libya but worthless African leaders oppose it! Thank God nobody listens to their noise making!
When the UN was founded folks did not know that a breed of criminals would take over the governance of African countries and transform their countries into their personal prisons and do with their people as they wished. Therefore, the world should ignore the howling of the thieves that call themselves African leaders and interfere in Libya’s internal politics.
The protection of human dignity (a concept that the criminals ruling Africa do not understand) requires men of good will everywhere to do whatever is necessary to stop brutal dictators from killing their people. The world stood silent as crazed Hutus killed a million Tutsis; more importantly, criminal African countries did nothing as some of their tribes killed other tribes. In the 1960s those same idiot Africans did nothing as some Nigerian tribes killed Igbos. This should not be allowed to happen, again, under the misguided notion of protecting nations’ sovereignty.
African dictators, from Mugabe to the rulers of Sudan etc. ought to be killed. That is correct; most African leaders ought to be summarily shot to death; they ought to be lined up against a wall and shot to death. They are common criminals and ought to be killed as we kill criminals. There should be no mercy shown these criminals who live well while their people live in squalor.
The law of nature is for those attacked to defend themselves and good defense includes offense. If other persons point a gun at you and intend to kill you, you have every right to kill them. If they wanted to live they would not have gone about killing people or threatening people’s lives.
There is the Christian notion of forgiving ones enemies. What exactly does that mean? If you saw a person killing someone, or saw a man raping a child would you look away and forgive him and not do something to prevent him from doing what he is doing? If you did not do something to prevent evil you are complicit in that evil.
It is our social duty to prevent people from oppressing other persons. To say that we should ignore those doing what harms other persons is capital cowardice.
Courage requires us to fight oppressors and if necessary get killed in the process. Life is not worth living if it is lived in fear, tolerating the abuses of other persons.
If life is a dream and every activity in it is as in a dream that too justifies killing oppressors. If part of your dream is to kill people then part of other persons dream is to kill you. Since killing you is dream activity it follows that nothing was done; it was a wash if a murderer us murdered by society. No one has really done anything wrong, and no one is really guilty hence no one is to be blamed or punished.
Kill killers like Gaddafi. The world is best served with the death of these monsters.
Finally, I should note that I wrote this paper after reading an outrageous paper by a pseudo Africanist asking us to oppose the West’s intervention in Libya; his infantile rationale is that the West has ulterior motives and wants to recolonize Arab nations and ultimately African nations hence the need to oppose it. One is not politically naïve. Obviously, the West has a hidden agenda in attacking Libya.
One of the cruise missiles lobbed at Libya costs a million or more dollars and the West would not be spending that kind of money if they did not get anything in return. The West is composed of rational, self-interested persons hence calculate what is in their best national interests before they do something in International politics.
In International politics it is an axiom that all actors, usually nation states, do what serves their interests. Thus, the West is serving its interests.
What Arabs and Africans ought to be doing is seeing how their own interests are also served in the process. It serves my African interest if the West gets the oil it apparently wants from Libya and gets even with Gaddafi for all the headaches he had caused them in the past several years, remember the shooting down of Pan-Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, and I get the rid of African and Arab dictators that I want; It is a quid pro quo, a wash.
Only a fool would believe that the real reason for the West’s intervention in Libya is to extend liberty to Libyans. If liberty is the motivation how come they are not fighting in Congo or Sudan to give Africans liberty? No, the West has rational national interest calculations which disposed them to intervene in Libya.
Having acknowledged that reality the fact remains that Gaddafi is a monster and needed to be killed. Many African leaders are like Gaddafi and are monsters and need to be killed.
If the West helps us to kill tyrannical African leaders that is fine with me. I could care less what the other motives of the West is. Just help us get rid of the gangsters ruling Nigeria and other African countries.
Draconian measures are needed to wash Africa clean of the criminals pretending to be ruling her. Therefore, methinks that the West’s intervention in Libya is justified. I wish that they would intervene in all those African countries where dictators are abusing their people.
I have heard enough of the bugaboo of sovereignty and its alleged inviolability. Sovereignty is a manmade concept (at the treaty of Westphalia in 1648) and whatever men made they can unmake. So let us get rid of criminals from African governments. Killing criminal African leaders is justified. You are authorized to rise up against the criminals ruling Africa and killing them. You do not need permission from God or any higher authority to do what is right. Just do what your conscience tells you are right and take the consequences of your principled action; that is what it means to live an authentic existence.
