Thread: Turkey and the Middle East: The Reshaping of Regional Relati

Turkey and the Middle East: The Reshaping of Regional Relations

by Eric Walberg
Global Research, March 25, 2011

Recent initiatives by its government attest to Turkey’s determination to bring a new realism to world politics, and events in the Arab world provide an opportunity to reshape regional relations,

As Turkey gears up to parliamentary elections in June, recent pronouncements by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed the importance that the Turkish leadership places in defining a more dynamic role for Turkey in the Middle East as a bridge between East and West.

The Leaders of Change summit 13-14 March in Istanbul brought together a hundred political leaders, academics and journalists primarily from the US, Europe and the Middle East. The summit was opened by the Turkish prime minister, who referred to Turkey as a “democratic social state based on social justiceâ€

"Progressives" Support the US-NATO "No Fly Zone" on Libya

by Joe Emersberger
Global Research, March 25, 2011

Iraq lone should have made any progressive support for Western military intervention in Libya negligible. It is very sad to see that didn't happen. The corporate media has, again, succeeded in getting many well intentioned progressives to think within its box.

A dictator falls out of favor with the West and, after quietly supporting him for years, we are suddenly told that "we" must not tolerate him (and only him) a second longer. The other tyrants we support, however, are just fine. In fact, those tyrants can even boost their standing in "our" eyes provided they cooperate with bringing down the "bad" dictator. See the way the Arab League's support for a "no fly zone" (i.e. war) on Libya is routinely offered to justify it.

A similar argument can be made tomorrow against any one of the West's allies - Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, among numerous others - should they "go bad" in the West's eyes. All the crimes "we" ignored, never heard about, and were complicit with will suddenly be thrown in our faces. If "we" aren't willing to support our blood drenched governments as they "liberate" people then clearly we are putting our political views ahead of our humanity

No surprise that BBC presenters have repeatedly said "Saddam" recently when they meant to say "Gadaffi". They’ve come to instinctively know the drill, even if they mess up the names.

Should we want to stop Gadaffi from killing people? Of course, but why only Gadaffi? Why not our own governments and their allies who have done so on a much larger scale and not only through war?

We - who want civilized polices - should never forget the incredible destructive power and criminality of the West. Again, look at Iraq - with about 2 million dead since the West "liberated" Kuwait from Saddam in 1990 then all of Iraq in 2003. One progressive writer, in support of the "no fly zone" (i.e. war) on Libya argued that the Western dominated UN Security Council is analogous to the police within a typical capitalist country - guilty of grave double standards in its behavior, no doubt, but still necessary to protect innocent people. The analogy fails completely because it grossly understates the criminality of Western governments internationally. That goes far beyond what anyone can accuse police of in a country like the USA. Again, see Iraq, the most obvious example from recent history but there are many others.

We - who want civilized polices - do not control our governments. With considerable effort, we can influence what our governments do internationally; limit some of their destructiveness (like prevent Vietnam from being nuked or Iraq from being bombed even more heavily). That kind of influence is not to be dismissed but must not be exaggerated either. Influence is not control. In fact, we don’t even have control of our governments at home, much less abroad.

When we support Western bombing we are helping to bolster the most criminal and destructive governments in the world - and solidifying their alliances with other tyrants. The US and its allies would likely have invaded Iran by now if they had not run into unexpected trouble (an undeniable disaster) in Iraq. A bogus military "success" (Kosovo, Grenada, the 1990 Gulf War, the bombing of Libya in 1986) where the carnage can be successfully covered up and downplayed softens the public up to get behind "disasters" in the future.

So what should we do? Rather than helping (however minor the help may be) to unleash destructive forces we do not control, we should be trying to hold our own leaders accountable for their crimes - in other words, get control over them. Among many other things, we need to put the arms manufacturers (overwhelmingly located in the self-proclaimed “civilizedâ€

America's First Black President Invades Africa

by Don DeBar
Global Research, March 23, 2011

Over the objection of the African Union, US attacks Libya

NEW YORK - In a move reminiscent of Senator Mike Mansfield's observation that "Only a Nixon could go to China," President Barack Obama has begun a military invasion of Africa.

For those unaware, Libya is in Africa.

Ignoring the call of the African Union - the regional organization having jurisdiction which counts every African nation save Morocco among its members - and channeling the political ghost of George W. Bush on the eighth anniversary of the "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq, "America's First Black President" ordered the launch of some 110 Tomahawk missiles on Libya Saturday, killing an unknown number of Africans for oil.

According to various media sources, Libyan authorities reported that 48 people were killed and more than 150 injured, most of them civilians, and that the missiles hit civilian targets, among them a hospital in Tripoli, in an attack that Obama claimed was intended to protect civilians from the Libyan government.

At present, as we saw during "Shock and Awe" and have seen pretty much every day since, the mainstream media tell the same story, if in different words - that Gadaffi is crazy, that he's a brutal dictator, that this is not about oil, and that we will be in and out quickly. And this time again, as in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq (and more recently in Cote D'Ivoire), we have seen the so-called progressive media pile on in the demonization of the leadership that is a prerequisite to progressive acquiescence, if not outright acceptance, of imperial intervention.

However, facts are pesky little buggers, and have - and will - give the lie to the best conducted campaigns of obfuscation and misdirection, over time.

One example - do we still believe that the Iraqi people want to give us flowers for bombing, and then invading, invading their country - particularly after we had starved it for a decade prior?

Meanwhile one wonders here in New York how a former Senator from this state who helped sell the Iraq debacle and lost the presidency as a consequence is now apparently making war policy for the White House over the objections of the Secretary of Defense. Could it be that elections here matter as little as they are claimed to in those varied places around the globe that await our enlightened intervention?

One thing for certain - once again, the symbolism of the first-strike attack couldn't tell the story more clearly. The Tomahawk missile barrage features a weapon ostensibly named after a weapon of self-defense by the original inhabitants of this continent. To those who value truth, however, it is known that, in the first act of nation-building by the bearers of the missiles, those original peoples suffered a genocide at the hands of these purported freedom-lovers so complete that it lacks historical analogy before or since. That these weapons are now being used on the people of Africa - the second stop for genocide in the building of that nation of hypocrites - simply makes the point for those too blind to see it in the first case.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=23887

Obama’s Bay of Pigs in Libya: Imperialist Aggression Shreds UN Charter

by Dr. Webster G. Tarpley
Global Research, March 22, 2011
http://tarpley.net/

On March 19, US and British cruise missiles joined with French and other NATO combat aircraft in Operation Odyssey Dawn/Operation Ellamy, a neo-imperialist bombing attack under fake humanitarian cover against the sovereign state of Libya. Acting under UN Security Council resolution 1973, US naval forces in the Mediterranean on Saturday night local time fired 112 cruise missiles at targets which the Pentagon claimed were related to Libya’s air defense system. But Mohammed al-Zawi, the Secretary General of the Libyan Parliament, told a Tripoli press conference that the “barbaric armed attackâ€