NATO’s Rasmussen On Libya: Gadhafi Regime Clearly Crumbling – OpEd
By NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
The Qadhafi regime is clearly crumbling. The sooner Qadhafi realises that he cannot win the battle against his own people, the better — so that the Libyan people can be spared further bloodshed and suffering.
The Libyan people have suffered tremendously under Qaddafi’s rule for over four decades. Now they have a chance for a new beginning. Now is the time for all threats against civilians to stop, as the United Nations Security Council demanded. Now is the time to create a new Libya – a state based on freedom, not fear; democracy, not dictatorship; the will of the many, not the whims of a few.
That transition must come peacefully. It must come now. And it must be led and defined by the Libyan people.
NATO is ready to work with the Libyan people and with the Transitional National Council, which holds a great responsibility. They must make sure that the transition is smooth and inclusive, that the country stays united, and that the future is founded on reconciliation and respect for human rights.
Qadhafi’s remaining allies and forces also have a great responsibility. It is time to end their careers of violence. The world is watching them. This is their opportunity to side with the Libyan people and choose the right side of history.
We will continue to monitor military units and key facilities, as we have since March, and when we see any threatening moves towards the Libyan people, we will act in accordance with our UN mandate.
Our goal throughout this conflict has been to protect the people of Libya, and that is what we are doing.
Because the future of Libya belongs to the Libyan people. And it is for the international community to assist them, with the United Nations and the Contact Group playing a leading role. NATO wants the Libyan people to be able to decide their future in freedom and in peace. Today, they can start building that future.
The majority of Qaddafi loyalist have not surrendered and have not given up their arms. You do not understand the point of a pincer movement and encirclement, NATO you are strategically challenged, a military simpleton.
It is not that I will allow they out once they submit it is that they cannot break out of a pocket. Slowly I squeeze them making the encirclement tighter and tighter, quadrant by quadrant.
Hence I get surrender and weapons handed in, individually, militia by militia, tribe by tribe, on mass. You have allowed food, water, fuel, ammo and allowed the enemy to fade away into the population.
Seriously you people in the NATO gastric castle are the most stupid people I have ever met. Now I am going back on holidays, if you end up with al-Qaida or a sectarian civil war and have to tie the insurgency off with sand on the boots. I do not want to hear about.
Nato is not stupid, nor are they taken by surprise by the recent development. They have planned it, the whole thing is rigged, we will see a civil war and the country being divided in two, perhaps three parts. The international oligarchy are now in the process of executing their old plan of destroying the Arab independent countries by creating chaos and war. Puppet regimes will be installed, and guess who will be controlling the resources? Syria will experience the same, the situation there is rigged as well. And after Syra they will turn to Iran.
The same thing is happening in the EU. The political classes serving the interests of the oligarchy are using the financial crisis to destroy the national states and the nations, depriving the peoples of their sovereignty and their democratic rights, plundering and privatizing the national assets, selling them cheap to the banksters and the financial houses that created the crisis.
They could not care less about the civil populations, wherever they are.