There is always money for war

Taking a break from lecturing the British people on tightening their belts, accepting pay freezes and bearing with cuts in social services and infrastructure, British prime minister Cameron has found the necessary resources without batting an eye lid to send expensive British war planes to Libya for an imperialist intervention justified as support for the Libyan democratic movement and protection for the country's civilians. This argument is, of course, badly flawed:

Saudi Arabia's military has just recently intervened with arms bought from America and Britain in supporting the Bahraini government against a popular uprising; no wonder the Arab league has repaid Western nations for their support by adding their voice to intervention in Libya. More poignantly, when Israel went on the rampage during operation "Cast lead", neither Britain, nor France nor the US nor the UN security council thought it necessary to declare and enforce a "no fly zone", although the brutality meted out by Israel against Palestinian civilians - since officially declared a war crime - dwarfs anything Gaddafi has done or might do into complete oblivion.

The all-out war against Libya's defence capability is essentially a small scale "shock and awe" operation after having learnt the lessons from Iraq: that declaring an official war is highly unpopular and costs credibility at home: Let the people believe that this is a humanitarian mission. Far from it, however, it is a grab for oil just like Iraq and proves that the recent restructuring of the Middle East has not been about democracy but about securing the region for Big Oil and Israel, with not tangible outcome or benefits for the people themselves who naively believed in the false promises of the West.

What is unprecedented in the Libyan adventure is the shameless dropping of the last fig leave of legality: The UN security council, an exclusive club of second war victor nations completely unrepresentative of the UN general assembly, has never before authorised force against a government dealing with an internal opposition. Using the justification for intervention, it would have been equally acceptable for Russia or China to have bombed the UK in order to stop the British government from cracking down on Irish terrorism and "brutalising" Irish dissidents, and it thus sets a dangerous precedent. Maybe the American people will soon rise up against their ever more dictatorial government and ask for outside help?

America, France and Britain, having propped up so many unpopular dictatorships around the world, are not the least bothered about humanitarian or democracy abroad. Cameron's reference to the national interest, a euphemism for the interests of the national industries and banks who run the country, is a more honest admission. And it is in the interest of the very same corporations that the British people should remain enslaved to them perpetually and pay off the debts the government has got into by borrowing money from banks after allowing them to create this very credit out of thin air in the first place, backed by nothing tangible other than a fraudulent claim on tax revenue. So taxes have to go up, wages have to go down, services have to be cut, but there is always plenty of money for war.