"One thing is for sure: Qadhafi must go. We have made this decision with our allies and we want to see it through... .We're certainly involved in regime change. Certainly, our mission is to remove Qadhafi-either dead or alive-let's face it... .We made a mistake in the Gulf War I. When we freed Kuwait we should have removed the dictator [Qadhafi]. Shame on us we didn't do it. We had to wait for a number of years to get the job done the second time."
The US approach to the Libyan conflict seems to have been effectively unravelled by a professor of public policy and politics at George Town University in Washington, Bradely Blakeman, who previously worked for the then US President, George W Bush, as his deputy assistant. The remarks made by him at RT (formerly Russia Today) on March 22 2011 amply suggest that the military campaign by US and its allies is actually aimed at regime change in this North African country.
The debate titled "Creeping mission" raises question, among others, whether the "masterminds" of the air strikes will manage the unintended consequences of their military intervention. Abdallah Schleifer, a professor emeritus of American University Cairo, admits, albeit reluctantly: "Well, officially it isn't regime change, officially this is the intervention to prevent massacre of civilians." But, he adds, it could be argued that if air strikes wipe out the very instruments of Qadhafi --heavy artillery, tanks and air power-that had been killing civilians in towns held by the rebels, this might create a "more even playing field and there will be a regime change".
But the regime change, according to him, is not going to come from Nato, United Nations, the Brits or the French , it will be coming from the armed Libyan people who rose up first peacefully and then when they were fired at and shot down in the streets of Tripoli they took up arms.
"The reason why we didn't eliminate Saddam Husain in 1991 because the US made a deal with its coalition partners in order to maintain our coalition that we would remove Saddam from Kuwait and that would be the end of our mission," says Blakeman in response to the remarks by another guest on the show, Sami Ramadani, senior lecturer of sociology at London Metropolitan University, that the US did not remove Saddam in 1991 because of a massive upheaval and uprising in Iraq.
"And the uprising was anti-Saddam and as well as anti-US. They decided that they would keep Saddam rather allowing Iraqi people to control Iraq democratically," Ramadani adds: However, his claim is strongly disputed by both Blakeman and Schleifer. "Whose business is it to get rid of Qadhafi. Going from the right to protect civilians to regime change in the course of few hours it looks like?" Ramadani answers the host's question by saying that he always suspected that Britain, France and the US want to control Libya mainly because this country provides "cheap oil" to Europe.
According to him, there are upheavals for democracy and independence throughout the Middle East. "Protecting civilians in Libya is a façade, an excuse to wage another war," says he. At this point, he is interrupted by Blakeman who asks him whether he wants Qadhafi should remain in power and should be bombing his own people. Ramadani says Qadhafi is a ruthless leader, but it is for the Libyans to overthrow him "just like it was for the Egyptian people to overthrow Mubarak and for the Tunisian people to overthrow ben Ali and [it is or it will be] for the Bahraini people to overthrow their king".
According to him, Bahraini people are being killed and tortured in a country which "is practically a US colony" where US's Fifth Fleet is headquartered. He asks: "Where is the protection of civilians in Bahrain and Yemen?" The two other guests prefer not to respond to his repeated point in which he also adds two other Arab states--Saudi Arabia and Oman-- to the list of countries in relation to protection of civilians and protest demonstrations.
It is interesting to note the findings of a poll which, according to RT, has been carried out by Russian Public Opinion Research Centre to assess the attitude of people of Russia, one of the countries abstaining from the UNSC vote on Libya, towards the United Nations. The poll says that while 38 percent still look at the world body positively, as many as 29 percent have a negative feeling for it.