By: Peter Beinart
As Europe takes the lead on the Libyan intervention, it’s a powerful signal of America’s weakening global influence.

Some commentators love the Libya war; others hate it. But most agree that it’s profoundly unnatural that we were pushed into it by…France. Welcome to the post-American world. In the age we’re entering, most of the time, the choice will no longer be between humanitarian interventions controlled by the United States and humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead. The choice will be between humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead and no humanitarian interventions at all.

A comparison with the 1990s illustrates the point. In the early 1990s, when the former Yugoslavia began breaking up, and Slobodan Milosevic decided to try to put it back together via genocide, the governments of Western Europe insisted that they would handle things. But they couldn’t handle things, partly because of their disunity and military weakness, and partly because they refused–in a clash of civilizations sort of way–to make clear moral distinctions between the murderers and the murdered. In the summer of 1995, when the Clinton administration–after more than two years of deference–forced the Europeans into a humanitarian war against the Serbs, then-Lieutenant General Wesley Clark exulted “The big dog barked today.”

Back then, the big dog was not fighting any other wars. It was unchallenged in East Asia; its economy was beginning to boom and its fiscal problems were melting away. And even then, Americans only supported the Bosnia war, and its kid brother Kosovo, on the condition that no Americans died.

Today, by contrast, America’s fiscal condition is terrifying and the Pentagon is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, trying to stay out of one with Iran, and keeping one eye on a rising China. I don’t know what it took to convince an obviously reluctant Robert Gates to permit American involvement in the Libyan no-fly zone, but it’s a reasonable bet that had Barack Obama not been able to promise that it would be a mostly European affair, Gates would now be a military analyst on Fox News. It’s not the 1990s anymore. The American public’s appetite for humanitarian war has always been meager. And now the American government’s capacity for waging it is meager, too.

But in a strange twist, Europe’s appetite has grown. The continent’s military capacity is still tiny compared to America’s, and it still lacks unity, but the shame of European inaction in Bosnia lingers in British, French, Italian, and German minds. Overall, Western Europeans remain more dovish than Americans, but when it comes to genocide, the gap narrows. In the U.S., for instance, anti-terrorism is the only rationale that sustains public support for the Afghan War. In Europe, by contrast, the humanitarian argument sells best.

Libya is also a Mediterranean country. For France and Italy, it’s the equivalent of Mexico, or at least Guatemala. Economically, geopolitically, and culturally, Europe is also the dominant outside force. European countries, especially Southern European ones, have a lot more to gain, and lose, in Libya than we do, so it’s normal–indeed, healthy–that they’re trying to take the military lead.

Whether they’ll be able to–whether they have the capacity and stomach for what it would take to push Gaddafi from power–is another question. But it’s not surprising that Barack Obama is giving them a chance to try. Obama is what you might call a roundabout Jeffersonian. Jeffersonians, to borrow Walter Russell Mead’s phrase, believe that preserving America’s economic and political solvency requires reining in American empire. Presidents usually become Jeffersonian in times of economic crisis, public exhaustion, and unpopular war. The problem is that Jeffersonianism–which in different ways both Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter embraced as a result of Vietnam–is perilous politics. Retrenchment can look a lot like cynicism, if not defeatism.

The White House’s humanitarian hawks don’t want a Srebrenica on their watch, but they know they need other countries to bear more of the load. Enter Nicolas Sarkozy.

So Obama is trying to do it on the sly, to reduce the costs of American foreign policy without reining in our ambition. In Afghanistan, he’s moving inexorably toward greater reliance on drones–just as Nixon turned to air power in the latter stages of Vietnam–because it’s cheaper in blood and treasure. And he’s trying to burden-share, just as Nixon tried to get regional allies like South Vietnam and the shah’s Iran to do more of the work of containing the USSR. The Libya operation is a good example of this. The White House’s humanitarian hawks don’t want a Srebrenica on their watch, but they know they need other countries to bear more of the load. Enter Nicolas Sarkozy.

Will it work? Beats me. But it’s an illusion to believe we could have done this the old way. One of the crucial questions of our age is whether America’s liberal ideals can flourish despite the decline of American power. Libya will be one of the places we find out.

[ American Imperialist Empire -- Neo Colonialism & Hypocrisy ]

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   By: Philip Ochieng
By the “man-bite-dog” criterion of news taught in our schools of journalism, what happened at the African Union summit the other day should have been but a snippet tucked far away in the rear pages of our newspapers. For there was absolutely nothing new in it.

It was nothing but a run-of-the-mill “dog-bite-man” story. It is what African and other Third World leaders routinely do.

They commit tyranny and robbery and murder all the time and then, when accosted either at home or in international councils — try to depict one another as archangels.

If it had been known in advance that the human rights issue would come before Their Excellencies, even a child would have predicted that they would vote to a man ? not to mention the woman from Monrovia — to defend to the hilt the Man-on-Horseback in Khartoum.

No, it was not because they all love the Sudanese strongman.

It was only because none of the other heads of state and government may be innocent of the actions for which Omar al Bashir is wanted by Mr Ocampo in the historic Dutch city of international “justice.”

If Mr Bashir is arrested and taken to The Hague — if the International Criminal Court (ICC) finds him guilty of gross violations of human rights in Darfur — he will have opened a hideous can of worms for all the present and many former African and other Third World rulers.

Indeed, that precedent may prove extremely dangerous even for First World leaders.

The ICC itself has been accused of selective thirst for the blood of former and present tyrants.

It seems to go after Third World despots with much more gusto than it does after developed world leaders.

The Third World’s intelligentsia — including Africa’s — may be waking up slowly.

If Mr Bashir and certain former African leaders are found guilty and punished, the intelligentsia may begin to demand from Mr Ocampo a good explanation why America’s Gang of Five is at large.

Our civil society movements may want to know why George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin and Condoleeza Rice have not yet been mooted even for arrest for having ordered the murder of millions and millions of Iraqi and Afghan children and their parents.

The Spanish Daniel in The Hague may have to explain to humanity why Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw are still gallivanting all over the world as champions of freedom, democracy and human rights when they were central to the holocaust in the Middle East.

London, Washington, Paris, Rome and a city near The Hague may have to answer human rights questions about Latin America, Algeria, Korea, Kenya (during Mau Mau), Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Southern Africa and East Timor and other Portuguese colonies.

And the respondents may include John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Harold Wilson, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, John Major, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, there is just no Ararat from which African heads of state can defend anyone among them.

All of them are guilty of one crime or another — including mal-government, looting, corruption, complete neglect of mass suffering, nepotism and tribalism.

How many have not trampled underfoot all the tenets and institutions of good governance? How many have not rigged elections?

How many have not tried to tamper with the constitution to make themselves presidents-for-life? How many have not colluded to assassinate their rivals?

How many have not tried to impose their sons as heirs? And — most germane to our topic — how many have not organised armed clashes and ethnic cleansing?

Darfur, then, is merely the most spectacular, most tragic, example of this heartless playing around with human life.

Otherwise, which one of Africa’s leaders has the moral or political or juridical authority to declare that Mr Bashir does not deserve to face justice in the Hague? Which? Bongo? Bouteflika? Guebuza? Mubarak? Mugabe? Museveni? Sirleaf-Johnson? Wade? Zenawi?

But, of course, our own sense of justice — the tenet that you are innocent until proved guilty — constrains us to give Mr Bashir the benefit of the doubt. It is within the realm of possibility that the Tartar is not guilty.

But the fact remains that, under his regime, millions of human beings have been slaughtered in Darfur and that the culprit-victim line appears to coincide with the race line. The culprit appears to belong to the same race as those in charge in Khartoum.

That is why it has been claimed — rightly or wrong — that the blood-thirsty Janjaweed militia has vital links with official Khartoum.

It is why the leaders of a country like Kenya, Uganda or Tanzania should have an active subjective interest in that matter — if, for one thing only, because blood is thicker than water.

But, much more important than that, it is imperative for the world to be quite clear in its mind who the culprit is.

Yes, Mr Bashir is innocent till proved guilty. But, because he is among the prime suspects, some internationally sanctioned judicial authority must be the one to give him the certificate of innocence.

That is why it is upon the ICC that it devolves to investigate Mr Bashir.

Nobody has the right or the knowledge to declare him guilty or innocent except an authority like the ICC, after it has gone thorough Mr Bashir’s secret cabinets with a toothcomb.

As for the other African leaders, as nearly as we can see, all of them defend Mr Bashir against Mr Ocampo merely so as to pre-empt the probability of judicial “radioactivity” catching up with them — the usual dog-bite-man story.

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By: Austin Ejiet

   Nicolas Sarkozy and Omar Bongo Ondimba
Last month a French corruption inquiry accused the then Gabonese President, Omar Bongo Ondimba, of two grievous crimes: salting away a sinful proportion of Gabon’s wealth in an estimated 71 foreign bank accounts in France alone and buying off whole streets of the primest real estate in Paris and Nice; and secondly, of encouraging similar kleptocratic tendencies among the leaders of the republics of Congo and Equatorial Guinea, Denis Sassou-Nguesso and Teodoro Obiang Nguema respectively. The three West Africa countries are prodigiously endowed with crude oil deposits the combined proceeds of which could have wiped out Africa’s entire foreign debt. Instead, that oil wealth had become the preserve of a rapacious troika.

The French cannot pretend to wake up in May 2009 to investigate what they themselves created as far back as February of 1964. On February 18, 1964, a group of progressive members of the Gabonese armed forces overthrew the neo-colonial regime of President Leon M’ba in which Albert Benard Bongo was vice president.

The young army officers immediately released all political prisoners, promising sweeping political and economic reforms. But the next night, French paratroopers sent by General de Gaulle arrived in Gabon and reinstated Leon M’ba as president. On the latter’s death from natural causes in 1967, Bongo became president.

Under an Islamised president Omar Bongo, Gabon became the Jewel of French imperialism in Africa, a staging post for the latter’s colourful adventures which included the much vaunted but worthless support for the Biafran secessionist movement between July 1967 and January 1970; the invasion of Guinea- Conakry on November 22, 1970; the attempt to gain a beach-head in Cabinda in 1975; and the disastrous mercenary attack on Benin on January 16, 1977 organised by Bob Denard in coordination with the French secret services.

Along with three other African presidents, Omar Bongo openly supported Apartheid in South Africa at the behest of France, often busting UN-sanctioned embargoes against arms shipments to South Africa and Savimbi’s UNITA.

But France was reaping more than just strategic dividends from Gabon. It controlled the modern sector of the economy to the tune of 65 per cent and enjoyed a total (no pun intended with the Total oil company) monopoly of Gabon’s vast oil reserves. In exchange for Omar Bongo’s astonishing largesse, the French helped keep him in power and allowed him to plunder the remnants of his country’s resources to the fullest extent of his obscene appetites.

So when France came up with a belated enquiry into the president’s corrupt excesses, they did not fool anybody. President Bongo lashed out at his former colonial masters the way Marshal Mobutu had lashed out at Belgium following the latter’s description of him as a “Ferdinand Marcos.” To underscore his displeasure, Bongo checked himself into a Spanish hospital rather than a French one. The Gabonese people too, a few of them at any rate reportedly jeered and booed both current French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his predecessor Jacques Chirac, yelling: “We don’t want you – leave!” “No to France!”

Nevertheless, the departed president was buried last Thursday at his home town appropriately named “Franceville.” The president had forgotten to build a pyramid or at least a mausoleum to house his remains, persuaded perhaps that he had more time to enjoy this side of eternity.

The Legacy of Omar Bongo

Let France do the right thing. A coffin, they say, has no pockets. That half-hearted commission of enquiry should be turned into a genuine and thorough treasure hunt for the late president’s hidden wealth.

If the French put their mind to it, they can track down Omar Bongo’s last penny. That money should, of course, be handed back to the Gabonese people, after a genuine democratic electoral exercise has found and installed, not a political spare tyre, but a popularly elected successor who should serve a maximum of two terms.

Reference: French President Sarkozy jeered at Bongo’s funeral

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Exclusive outtakes of Sarah Palin’s notorious pre-Thanksgiving TV interview, during which she ignored turkeys being prepped for slaughter right behind her.

Maybe Sarah is just auditioning for 2012 — Showing America what she can do to Terrorists!

Palin’s Turkey Interview: The Outtakes — See what else she didn’t notice!

Turkeys die as Palin attends to news conference — after pardoning.

After pardoning a big fat turkey for thanksgiving, Sarah Palin proceeded to do an interview with a local TV station while other turkeys were being slaughtered in her presence.

The “Killa From Wasilla” and whoever had accompanied her, didn’t seem to mind the brute killing that was going on right next to her — in the full glare of TV cameras.

| I DID IT |

Ms. Palin has become a major laughing stock — an embarrassing object of local and international ridicule.

If Sarah hopes to run again in 2012, her approach to maintaining political visibility is a sorry and pathetic spectacle. This woman has become an annoying “TV irritant,” a “Political Hillbilly,” horribly lacking in refinement and sophistication.

Polls indicate that Republicans favor her as president in 2012.

Sometimes I wonder why anyone would even think of electing this imbecile to lead America, but hey, it’s the Republican Party — the party of the STUPID, .. the REAL, NON-COMMUNIST Americans! LOL!

I don’t think she is even capable of re-inventing herself, for this woman is CONVINCED that…she KNOWS!

Only recently, she become the victim of a prank phone call by a Canadian comedian posing as the French president. Marc Antoine Audette convinced the governor that she was speaking to Nicolas Sarkozy during a six-minute chat aired on a Montreal radio program.

Topics discussed ranged from the beauty of Mr Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni, to the prospect of a joint hunting trip, …..and for good measure, some “Light PORN.”

Said Marc Antoine Audette to Sarah: “If one voice can change the world for Obama, one Viagra can change the world for McCain.” LOL!

Ever since John McCain selected her as running-mate, Palin has evoked vicious mocking not only in America but also in Europe:

We were, the Irish Times warned, “just a heartbeat away from the biggest half-baked Alaskan nightmare.”

Britain’s Financial Times said his selection of vice president raised serious questions about John McCain’s judgment and added: “The Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still dominates American politics.” LOL!

Spain’s left wing El Pais described Palin as “a figure who comes from the America that is farthest removed from and incomprehensible to the European spectator.”

Not to be outdone, the Russians dinged Palin: “Palin, the shrieking cow from Alaska is the joke of American politics.” “A potential win by the McCain-Palin team in the elections this November would be a ‘catastrophe.‘” “Palin is a ‘housewife, chosen by mere chance,‘” said a representative from the Russian Duma (Parliament)

It is obvious that the Europeans were/are appalled at the thought that someone who wants to be vice president of the most powerful nation on earth could be so stupid, and could have so little interest in the rest of a world which is so vitally affected by the decisions of the man, or woman, in the White House.

I am appalled too, especially at the right-wing of the Republican party, who have specialized in glorifying IGNORANCE, GUNS and some IMAGINARY GOD, over the years, while lying and FEAR-MONGERING their way into elected office(s), that they have NEVER DESERVED.

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