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ISBN: 9781926824529

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Slouching Towards Sirte

NATO's War on Libya and Africa

NATO’s war in Libya was proclaimed as a humanitarian intervention—bombing in the name of “saving lives.” Attempts at diplomacy were stifled. Peace talks were subverted. Libya was barred from representing itself at the UN, where shadowy NGOs and “human rights” groups held full sway in propagating exaggerations, outright falsehoods, and racial fear mongering that served to sanction atrocities and ethnic cleansing in the name of democracy. The rush to war was far speedier than Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

Max Forte has scrutinized the documentary history from before, during, and after the war. He argues that the war on Libya was not about human rights, nor entirely about oil, but about a larger process of militarizing U.S. relations with Africa. The development of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, or AFRICOM, was in fierce competition with Pan-Africanist initiatives such as those spearheaded by Muammar Gaddafi.

Far from the success NATO boasts about or the “high watermark” proclaimed by proponents of the “Responsibility to Protect,” this war has left the once prosperous, independent and defiant Libya in ruin, dependency and prolonged civil strife.

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Contributors

Maximilian C. Forte

Maximilian C. Forte is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec. He teaches courses in the field of political anthropology dealing with “the new imperialism,” Indigenous resistance movements and philosophies, theories and histories of colonialism, and critiques of the mass media. Max is a founding member of Anthropologists for Justice and Peace. He writes regularly for the Zero Anthropology Project, CounterPunch, and was formerly a columnist for Al Jazeera Arabic.
Chapter Title Contents Contributors Pages Year Price

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- 15 $1.50

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In Chapter One Sirte: Keystone of Independence, Forte contrasts the city of Sirte– found to be in near total ruin by the end of the 2011 Libyan Civil War– to the Sirte which was once … 39 $3.90

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In Chapter Two Sirte: Touchstone of Imperialism, Forte examines how Sirte represented a post-colonial Libya, as the seat of the Al-Fateh Revolution and later the focus of international attention … 68 $6.80

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In Chapter Three, Forte focus on Pan-Africanism and the relationships between Gaddafi’s Libya and key African Leaders. Forte highlights how much of Gaddafi’s thinking followed in the … 50 $5.00

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In Chapter Four, Forte examines the role of the United States military in Africa through the role of the Africa Command (AFRICOM), the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), the work of the … 50 $5.00

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In Chapter 5, Forte asks the reader to consider what the alternatives were to foreign intervention. He does this by criticizing popular myths that worked to legitimize military intervention and … 30 $3.00

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In the Conclusion, Forte ends with an extension of one of the key themes in this book, namely that the war against Libya was also a war against Africa. He examines critical perspectives on regime … 42 $4.20