Lumumba Tribunal Weighs Obama Legacy

To understand the problem of the Libyan Indigenous Democracy, or however the detailed participation system the military subordinate who never promoted himself had schemed is being labelled, it is instructive to replay the scenes of the head of state walking the streets with his entourage and talking to random people in search of an answer whether they are satisfied with the social system brought upon the country. Not that the answers would matter much more than in any corporate employee summoning because they are served like jobs. What matters is that all these people happening to get involved behave as formally as if they had been picked by stint cops asking for their social security paperwork. The feedback is expected to be coloured by the arrangement, yet paradoxically for Gaddafi it was a rebellious gesture against neoliberalism.

The irony is, the spokesperson of the Lumumba Tribunal pointed out, that this is an aspect in which Gaddafi and Obama, or any possible successor, did not differ the slightest. A totalitarian government representative always is in alienation of the masses, that is a basic configuration of this kind of system, if it was not so it would not be longing for total information access. Any human being ought to perceive it as alarming when a situation develops to the point that even the mere asking of a question would amount to an assault. The Unitedstates assault upon Libya, into which the military establishment was dragged only by the national surveillance apparatus, is the high water mark of the Obama legacy, and established the constellation of branches which the government facade of the military-industrial complex has displayed ever since.

When it became clear in Iraq that regime change would not work because it was not valued higher than nation state configuration, there rose the temptation for Unitedstates government to repeat the mistake made here, namely its industrial era coined idea that the government in Baghdad could be replaced like a spare part whose replacement another branch might be shipping later. In the sanest cases the assumption was it would come as a by-product of another, indigenous regime change in Riyadh like a spring breeze after the storm. But these days it is precisely those forces whom Unitedstates has made its most determined enemies with its inappropriate behaviour and abuse of trust. The occupation controlled government there displays more mimicry of shadow forces in the war speculation than of representation of the Iraqi population against foreign control.

While the Iraq war failed creeping and incrementally, without any spectacular threshold making up for a near time difference or disruption, in review it can already be said now that the red line which determines the point in in time at which it had become an undeniable fact silently recognised by all sides in it to the extent that they would base their decisions upon the result was crossed with the assault on Libya. The very moment it did not matter any more whether Saddam Hussein had the so-called weapons of mass destruction or not, because they can only be used for deterrence or war crimes and nothing in between, two conditions of the same substance, fraud broke its way against these who had taken a deal including a handover of dual use capacities so serious that they remained waiting for positive response after they did. This bulky Gaddafi legacy also became proof that the word of Bush had become worthless with Obama.
Despite Bush being a toxic asset of the national surveillance apparatus, he only enabled the coup of this illegitimate branch against the constitutional structure in the name of his successor. Like Iraq, and before it the Balkans and Afghanistan, Libya has become an open wound left from a a bad choice grabbed without due consideration, and once again it had not been its own one. Since its assault on Libya, Washington is overdrawn at the balance of powers. In fact there is no such condition of reliable equilibrium any more, and instead the unchecked apparatuses are being herded by fringe clerics happening to hold sway over those toxic assets of government bureaucracy. The unhealthy competition in this sector has opened the door for war crimes motivated by ideological speculation feeding from accumulated bigotry and lavish mismanagement. Obama and his cabinet members and successor candidates committed this.

And yet they are hostages of their own bureaucracy. The difference between the wars on Iraq and on Libya is in the latter case it already had become an evident vanity to claim not to have known any better. This was plausible then, but from there on no more. With regard to regime changes, instead of speculation on possible positive follow-up effects now there is clarity on their destructive effects. Ultimately it is to be billed that Obama has spectacularly failed his own declared goals from environmental calm over material justice to nuclear disarmament, and instead left a toxic chain of wars primarily fuelled by the haughtiness of unqualified leadership and the particularism of rivalling bureaucrats. With Libya only being its most stressed link, this series of wars of aggression wrapped in a duplicitous doctrine claiming anti-war ambitions is to be weighed in its entirety as well in order to decide upon it.

When a link is being suggested between the assassination of Gaddafi, which bundled the evil let loose by the Obama doctrine in one high profile case, and the elements of scandal around the Benghazi embassy overshadowing the election race, this toxic legacy comes to the focus of attention. It is not merely the loss of the status quo ante, the restoration of the larger-than-life memory, but that any catch-up development was lost to occupation efforts. When it comes to the search for an explanation why so, it is remarkable that the motive for the assault on Libya was much wider than merely the bureaucratic phrase of regime change, and in fact the term was a cover for that unspoken ambition, namely the penetration of African sovereignty with an attempt to supplement it with such an absurdity as a continental occupation command centre in post-colonial Europe and a so-called support group cast for the mere purpose of mirroring and outnumbering its inner fragmentation structure.

In other words, the coup of the surveillance component of the military-industrial complex against its mechanic component, of the national spying apparatus against the chief command of the war ministry, as materialised to the outside world in the drive for war against Libya, was in fact an assault on Africa and all representing it regardless of their respective appropriateness, which some doubted to be rightly rooted with Gaddafi for some of the aforementioned reasons. Likewise, the restoration of African sovereignty as a continental issue taboo to any outside intervention is a cause which requires the overcoming of the diplomatic treason committed against Libya with which the Unitednations organisation and its member states took the path of its predecessor which had as well sacrificed African integrity to colonialist illusions, with the only result of its own demise. There is not going to be a self-reliant and self-asserting Africa until the organisation body is overhauled.

In legal terms, the war on Libya is a precedent for Security Council reform. It was the first instance of a country being attacked which had an open claim for a permanent veto seat. Up to the current day, it is difficult to argue why Africa should not be represented in the inner circle of the Security Council. The only argument that can be kept up consistently is that this body is not made for regional representation but for the storage of toxic nuclear assets. But then one could just as plausibly argue that Unitednations as whole was not made for human rights implementation but for the storage of toxic totalitarian assets. With Gaddafi gone, no other nation or transnational social movement in African has taken up the unity issue and its representation to outside forces as its own, quite the contrary, it has become somehow orphaned and hostage to outside forces. And the worst of these outside forces in terms of death toll causality is American interests working through Europe, in comparison to which Chinese trade and Russian diplomacy deliver a weird image of ignorance and laxness.

It is not a small coincidence that these global players came to regret the stances they have taken in the Libyan war. Had Moscow worked with Gaddafi like it now does with Assad half a decade ago already, Africa might be much better off at this point both geopolitically and economically. The latter because Unitedstates war upon Libya was demanded by the military-industrial complex as a psychological substitute for a lack of Unitedstates disentanglement from the Saudi monarchy meltdown, compared to which the mentioned rightly see themselves as the “lesser evil” their opponents are talking about. A look at Russia’s handling of Unitednations reveals diplomatic neglect – like when a truck driver needs a special training for hazardous substances, but a last mile deliverer thereof does not, with the result of unchecked side-effects. Apparently deceived by its own bureaucratic helplessness, Russia did not understand that it betrayed Europe as well.

With Obama going down, a regime is being re-calibrated which in the meantime has changed its order of branches. Was Washington, when Bush gave it to Obama, a military with a spying apparatus, so it is now, when Obama gives it to a successor, a spying apparatus with a military. The toxic asset has become even more toxic, the tribunal said. It pointed to Britain for a precedent, in which the same has happened under the Cameron government, but in a tighter space, so it turned a referendum into a loyalty issue with the result that the outcome was contrary to all commercial bets and forecasts. Nobody envies Unitedstates population for a superficial choice between different forms of hysteria. But below that surface, which bears the marks of the Libya fallout for all the world to see, it also is a matter of branch hierarchy. The toxic assets are preferring an oligarchy loaner in their influence even over a cartel loner. The path via breaking up the oligarchy may not be the one with the fewest malignant headwinds.

While it is a running joke among Americanists that every Unitedstates election is historical unlike the last one, the only true significance thereof is whether it brings the world any closer to the dismantling of the military-industrial complex. With the events of the recent years, and the place of Gaddafi as a representative of African sovereignty vacant, it has become an immediate interest of that rich and exploited continent, which by now already is clear of nuclear weapons, a condition the rest of the world is lagging behind. Nevertheless Gaddafi who was based on fossil water and oil is no precedent for the future, like the grid-dependent person that would start up a diesel generator for a water cooker and a few decoration lights. But the all-female palace guard was an useless performance, the American war has replaced these items with car bombs, rocket propelled grenades and killer drones. Unlike in the Bin Laden assassination however in this case there was no video footage revealing the reaction of evil.

If there are any sane persons left inside Unitedstates, the Lumumba tribunal stated, who have not fallen victim to character assassination or other forms of abuse, the crucial detail for them to understand in this is that their choice is not between hysteria and reason, because hysteria is the only thing a failed state has to offer, it is a choice between hysteria for themselves only and transgressive hysteria at the expense of populations suffering occupation. Plus, the constellation represents an invitation to any additional hysteria, just like the Cameron vote in Britain turned out to have. In the best case the election result is going to be interpreted to be a panic buy – as if someone in front of the food can shelf suddenly decided to store away one for every warhead on the books – and finally discarded as such. But it is also relevant to make clear what is not at stake there, because trade balances are as they are until decided otherwise. The fundamental change necessary in order to heal the world from the military-industrial complex does not depend upon whether the Americans are more audacious snubbing their oligarchies than the Arabs, but on these in between of them staying on top of the twin oligarchies.