There has not been a single day of peace in Libya since Cameron and co proclaimed the overthrow of tyranny, says Kevin Ovenden.

"Our message to them is this: there are better days ahead for Libya … A new beginning for Libya is within their grasp and we will help them seize it."

Those were the words of David Cameron at the “London Conference on Libya” he convened just over eight years ago in March 2011 ...

Just a dozen MPs, organised by one Jeremy Corbyn, had voted against the war. Every daily paper with the exception of this one enthusiastically supported it.

This was to be a genuine humanitarian intervention, supposedly preventing a “massacre in Benghazi,” the major city in the east of Libya, which was just “hours away,” according to French foreign minister Alain Juppe ...

Muammar Gadaffi was overthrown and later lynched. Cameron got his picture with a handpicked adoring crowd in Benghazi (as Tony Blair had done in Kosovo 12 years earlier), the consummate actor looking like he was understudying for Anthony Quinn in Lion of the Desert ...

Scroll forward eight years. On Sunday US forces were dramatically evacuated by transport boats from Tripoli. At the time of writing Libya stands on the brink of what the UN’s envoy calls a “full-scale conflagration” as the forces loyal to the eastern warlord Khalifa Hifter advance westwards into Tripoli, battling the agglomeration of militias that make up the laughably titled government of national accord, whose writ runs barely beyond the city centre.

Continue Reading @ The Morning Star.

The Anti-War Movement Has Been Utterly Vindicated Over Libya

There has not been a single day of peace in Libya since Cameron and co proclaimed the overthrow of tyranny, says Kevin Ovenden.

"Our message to them is this: there are better days ahead for Libya … A new beginning for Libya is within their grasp and we will help them seize it."

Those were the words of David Cameron at the “London Conference on Libya” he convened just over eight years ago in March 2011 ...

Just a dozen MPs, organised by one Jeremy Corbyn, had voted against the war. Every daily paper with the exception of this one enthusiastically supported it.

This was to be a genuine humanitarian intervention, supposedly preventing a “massacre in Benghazi,” the major city in the east of Libya, which was just “hours away,” according to French foreign minister Alain Juppe ...

Muammar Gadaffi was overthrown and later lynched. Cameron got his picture with a handpicked adoring crowd in Benghazi (as Tony Blair had done in Kosovo 12 years earlier), the consummate actor looking like he was understudying for Anthony Quinn in Lion of the Desert ...

Scroll forward eight years. On Sunday US forces were dramatically evacuated by transport boats from Tripoli. At the time of writing Libya stands on the brink of what the UN’s envoy calls a “full-scale conflagration” as the forces loyal to the eastern warlord Khalifa Hifter advance westwards into Tripoli, battling the agglomeration of militias that make up the laughably titled government of national accord, whose writ runs barely beyond the city centre.

Continue Reading @ The Morning Star.

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