by PETER LEE
For the Chinese leadership, the ominous tottering of Middle East dominoes – and the foundations of authoritarian doctrine – continues. The Chinese media have become fixated on Libya as an object lesson of the dangers of revolutionary and humanitarian enthusiasm run amok.
…
Politico’s senior White House reporter Glenn Thrush revealed during a radio program that the administration was briefing congressional leaders with the dubious claim that “there could have been 50 to 100,000 deaths associated with allowing Muammar Gaddafi’s forces to over-run Benghazi”. [1]
It took Hafez al-Assad three weeks of shelling, bombing and ground operations against the virtually defenseless city of Hama, Syria to kill perhaps 35,000 people in 1982. That is currently the gold standard for massacres by Arab despots perpetrated on their own people. It is questionable whether Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would be in a position to exceed this figure in Benghazi, especially when reports indicate that the actual stock of trained rebel fighters opposing him there might only be on the order of 1,000. [2]
Gaddafi should be grateful that the State Department didn’t declare he was planning to annihilate Benghazi’s entire population of 700,000.
…
Xinhua also gave prominence to a report that called into question the “no boots in the sand” avowals of the West in enforcing the UN resolutions: the dispatch of the amphibious assault vessel USS Bataan, with 900 marines and perhaps three dozen attack helicopters, to join the Libya operation in the Mediterranean. [5]
In what is unlikely to be a propaganda windfall for the United States, the Bataan gained a certain notoriety when it was identified as a prison ship used to detain terrorism suspects incommunicado in the Indian Ocean in late 2001 and 2002. [6]
In an ironic aside – and an indication of how murky things are over there – Time Magazine dug up a US Army report that Libya provided the highest number of anti-US foreign fighters in Iraq per capita based on their home country. They virtually all came from the impoverished and neglected environs of Benghazi, Darnah, Ajdabiyah, and Misrata – the heartland of the current rebellion. [7]
Certainly, there is plenty to criticize, and China is not alone.
Asia Times Online for more