Human Wrongs Watch
By Chris Marsden, WSWS* –The United States, Turkey and the Gulf States are actively preparing a military intervention in Syria. Russia’s security services claim to have concrete evidence of an imminent shift to a “Libyan scenario” of “direct military intervention,” beginning with establishing a no-fly zone—the very device that was used to sanction NATO’s bombardment of Libya.
But more than a no-fly zone links the overthrow of the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi with the fate now planned for Bashar al-Assad. Libya was the first major expression of a counter- offensive by Washington in response to the downfall of two of its key allies in the region, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, aimed at securing its hegemony over the region’s oil riches..
It involved the preparation of the direct military overthrow of Gaddafi by NATO, using a proxy force, the Transitional National Council, dominated by Islamist forces and funded and armed by US regional allies. This is now emerging as a pattern throughout the Middle East.