Western intervention has made an incredible mess in Libya - anti-war activist

When a revolution takes place in a country – it is the business of the people in that country to conduct the revolution, believes anti-war activist John Reese from Stop the War Coalition.

“My point about the western intervention would be this: I do not think that they did intervene in order to assist a revolutionary process, I think they intervened in order to get control of the revolutionary process.”The people coming to the fore of the Libyan opposition “were trained in the west, have links with the west and western security services and would not have come to the top had the west not intervened,” evaluated Reese.Reese says The Transitional National Council that was formed in Benghazi was a democratic structure representing local people, but when the western powers intervened, the leadership of the council became selected from among the people who have the ear of the west, “therefore the whole democratic process of representing the Libyan people became distorted… the whole principle of popular democratic revolution becomes corroded, corrupted and demeaned by the intervention of the western powers.”The no-fly zone imposed on Libya is very similar to the one once imposed on Iraq, and as Saddam Hussein’s helicopters were allowed to put down popular uprisings in the south of the country, the same applies to Libya. If some sort of settlement and ceasefire is reached, it will allow Gaddafi to put down the remnants of the rebellion in Libya as well.The coalition forces are obviously very much concerned about full scale military intervention, because you cannot win a war simply with air strikes. The stalemate situation in Libya is already very hard to resolve without the deployment of ground troops, but if that does happen – it would be a “massive deterioration of the situation.” “But if it does not happen – then we are looking at a very messy situation which may lead to a partition of Libya, a prolonged civil war actually.”“If the west were kept off long enough – it might be over sooner,” Reese stated.“The public opinion in Britain and Europe, and the opinion polls are definitely reflecting it, is against the military operation in Libya, but as far as there is no ground operation the Europeans do not see it on the same scale as the Iraq war, which indeed it is not – yet,” the anti-war activist pointed out, saying that “if there were any sign that there was going to be a serious deployment of ground troops in Libya – you would have an absolutely massive response.”“A majority is against the intervention but there is a very large number of “don’t knows” that would turn very quickly if there were talk of a ground war,” Reese predicted.John Reese believes the stalemate situation in Libya will not change much and the help of the west has only caused more civilian casualties and “has not decisively altered the balance against Gaddafi”.“The western intervention has made an incredible mess which will last for a long time in Libya,” John Reese concluded.