In These New Times

All quiet on the Sirte front

Cailean Bochanan

11th October, 2011

Silence reigns today throughout the world’s media regarding the TNC’s “final offensive’ against Sirte, a city which must now be all but completely destroyed after the aerial bombing and artillery bombardment which it has been subjected to. Subjected to because there is no truth in NATO’s claim that this is a liberation struggle and, lacking popular support on the ground, only these genocidal methods hold out any perspective of success at all. This has been an exhibition of killing from distance without quarter recalling Fallujah and Stalingrad. But has it worked for NATO? Can the TNC now declare victory?

If so we would have heard about it, trumpeted on the world’s media. But there’s nothing of the like. The latest news which can be corroborated from both mainstream and resistance sources is that ground taken on Sunday was retaken by  Jamahariya forces overnight. Throughout Monday there were desultory reports of “progress” and once again “the final push”. MSNBC spoke of the “surprising ” resilience of loyalist fighters. A Reuters report today talks of the TNC’s “struggle” to capture Sirte and focuses a report on the massive casualties being suffered by their forces. It also reports of the armed resistance not just of the Libyan army but of the armed citizenry. Is the mainstream media beginning to drift off-message in the face of uncomfortable realities? Is the strain of the outrageously mendacious narrative is beginning to tell?

Whatever the outcome in Sirte this will go down in the annals of warfare as a truly heroic defence and as a crime against humanity of immense proportions sanctioned and executed by the West with near unanimity a both state and cilvil society. The West has lost any claims to moral leadership in the world and is left trying to assert its influence through a series of demonic, near satanic, stratagems and deceptions which the rest of the world is rapidly wizening up to. In the rubble of Sirte is also the rubble of the West’s moral and political capital, of the UN, of NATO, of it’s political leadership, of it’s political opposition and of it’s insane, lying, media talking heads- all immolated amongst the smoke, flames and debris of the city which has had to pay the price of the failure of NATO’s plans.

Looking back this will be seen as a turning point in world history.  Sirte and those who have fought and died in its defence will be remembered for ever.