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On 07/26/2014 05:36 PM, Michael Karadjis wrote: > > The problem with this discussion when it comes to Sirte is that, even > if you convinced yourself that not many civilians were killed there I didn't say and I don't think that few civilians were killed in the battle of Sirte. Many were, but not by NATO. The battle of Sirte was brutal and it was under siege for a long time and heavily damaged by opposition artillery. Later the pro-Qaddafi forces circulated these pictures of artillery damage in Sirte but labeled it NATO bomb damage and began the myth of massive civilian casualties caused by NATO in Sirte. During the Battle of Sirte, 15 Sept - 20 Oct, NATO carried out 45 strikes on buildings in Sirte, all designated as military ammunition/storage facilities, command and control nodes, military vehicle storage facilities, military barracks facility, etc and 117 strikes on vehicles, tanks, missile launchers and radar facilities. > bombing the hell out of this city. That is certainly a Qaddafi friendly way to describe the above air activity. > > then surely such "support" or toleration should only be for the most > minimum time necessary. Would that be for as long as Qaddafi persisted in killing civilians or only until he brought his targeting of civilians below a certain threshold? Did NATO's responsibility encompass the siege of Misrata too or only Benghazi? At what point was NATO relieved of its responsibility to protect civilians? At what point did Qaddafi stop attacking civilians? > In fact even Gilbert Achcar, who was essentially misquoted as > "supporting" (rather than not opposing) the initial intervention to > protect Benghazi, said within a couple of weeks of that event, that > once that was done, if NATO settles in for a more prolonged > involvement, we should vigorously demand NATO out. That answers my question. Misrata was SOL as far as the "socialists" were concerned. > Whatever Gaddafi was, meaning even if he was a fascist, racist, mad dog killer. > I don' think socialists should have supported a 6-month NATO > intervention fighting on the side of the NTC to help bring it to power > in Libya. > "socialists" shouldn't support his overthrow once NATO offered to help. > Gaddafi fell in August, yet the bloody sieges of Sirte and Bani Walid > continued for another two full months. Micheal may have known he fell in August but that fact wasn't clear to either the Qaddafi forces or the rest of the world until Sirte and Bani Walid fell. > surely the roles by now were completely reversed: In both Sirte and Bani Walid, the Qaddafi regime refused to let civilians leave the areas under siege. Truly they were using them as human shields. That is why those sieges were so drawn out. The NTC was trying to win them with a minimum further lost of life. The true banality of the Qaddafi regime showed nowhere as in these last two battles because after the fall of Tripoli it had to be clear to all involved just how things were doing to turn out. Still the Qaddafi forces barricaded themselves in these two strongholds, refused to let the people leave [ and most did want to flee the scene of a battle ] , used summary executions to keep them there and forced a series of very bloody, if hopeless battles at the end. This was not a reversal of roles, this was a continuation of Qaddafi's same policies even when they had become irrational. Under these circumstances I don't think NATO's responsibility to protect would have been served by washing their hands of these final battles, as Michael wishes, so much as using their air power and smart weaponry to much more quickly reduce Qaddafi's military power with considerably less danger to civilians than the NTC's artillery. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
