Remembering
Libya when
dealing with Iran
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
May 15, 2006
LONDON - Iran, Iraq, North Korea,
Libya. All (until the fall of Saddam Hussein) under
pretty evil leadership. All the same, and yet very
different. All have or had the urge to develop nuclear
weapons. The three first were labelled early on in his
presidency the "Axis of evil" by George W. Bush.
Yet Libya was probably the worst
and is now the best. Indeed, because the "axis of evil"
speech appeared to demand "regime change" it is probable
that omitting Libya from that speech was an important
factor in the long effort to persuade Libya to drop its
guard, to open up its nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons factories for American and British inspectors to
roam over and dismantle at will, and to give up its
sponsorship of international terrorism, at which it far
outshone all the others.
For those who worry about Iran's
propensity for evil deeds today they should look again at
the record of Muammar Qaddafi.
The CIA linked Qaddafi with the
killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics,
the 1975 raid on a meeting of OPEC ministers in Vienna,
the 1985 seizure of a cruise ship and the pushing of a
wheel chair-bound American overboard, deadly attacks on
Rome and Vienna airports in the same year, the killing of
a British police woman by a sniper in Libya's London
embassy, and financial and military support for the IRA,
the PLO and the Japanese Red Army at the time of their
most murderous activities. He also led the rejectionist
camp against the 1979 Camp David accords. Finally, there
was the bombing of a discothèque in Berlin in 1986
killing two American soldiers, which sparked President
Ronald Reagan's decision to bomb Qaddafi's family
compound, killing his adopted daughter.
That brutal but understandable use
of force by Reagan led to the revenge blowing up in mid
air of a Pan Am airliner full of American students over
Lockerbie, Scotland and the downing of a French passenger
jet over Niger.
By any standard this was as bad as
terrorism has ever been - at least until September
11th.
Nevertheless, the three post Reagan
presidents all followed more or less the same strategy.
They played down the call of Reagan for "regime change".
Instead they pursued only Libyan "policy change". They
worked through the UN. They made use very effectively of
economic sanctions. They grabbed at every olive branch
that Qaddafi offered - including his immediate
condemnation of Al Qaeda, following September
11th.
This worked. What there is precious
little evidence for is the claim of vice president Dick
Cheney that "five days after we captured Saddam Hussein,
Qaddafi came forward and announced that he was going to
surrender all his nuclear materials to the United
States". Although no one can doubt that all along Qaddafi
was aware if it came to a show down his country was no
match for American might this appears to have featured
rather little in his calculations. The compromise that
led to his announcement about forsaking development of
weapons of mass destructions was well in the works long
before the U.S. invaded Iraq.
Indeed it is probably true that the
big deal might have come earlier if the Lockerbie
families hadn't pushed so hard that there be no political
negotiations on wider matters until their issue - a trial
of the Libyan agents and compensation - had been settled.
As it happened, their delaying tactics worked in the
final big deal's favour, as by then oil prices had fallen
and the Libyan economy was in disarray, partly too
because of bad management and partly because of the
wearing effect of tough sanctions.
There was also mounting opposition
to Qaddafi inside Libya, including elements in the army
and Islamic fundamentalists. Qaddafi became more and more
convinced - partly by his son studying at the London
School of Economics - that if his oil industry was ever
to recover it needed the special American expertise that
had got it of the ground in the first place.
Bush appears incapable of learning
the lesson of Libya. With the threats of force, including
the use of nuclear weapons, he has backed even liberal
Iranian opinion into a nationalist corner. And he is
articulating a "regime change" position at a time when
Iran is reaping the benefits of high oil prices and is
less dependent than ever before on U.S. oil
expertise.
Admittedly, it was his father that
initiated the "non regime change" policy towards Libya.
Is that a good enough reason for refusing to countenance
a similar workable policy towards Iran?
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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