15th Anniversary of NATO War on Libya
March 19, 2026

Canada’s Participation in Crime of Epic Proportions Carried Out in the Name of “Protecting Civilians”

NATO’s 2011 criminal war against Libya was carried out in the name of the imperialist doctrine of defending “human security.” The aggression occurred in the context of what was called the “Arab Spring,” in which protests took place against various governments in North Africa and the Middle East, in many cases instigated or co-opted by outside forces to engineer regime change in the service of imperialist interests.

The NATO operation, designated as a “no-fly zone” over Libya, officially took place between March 7 and October 31, 2011. War was declared shortly after the vehicles of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and other Libyans were bombed by NATO, and Gaddafi was captured and brutally murdered by NATO militia forces on the ground on October 20, 2011. What had been described as a “no-fly zone” turned out to be a ruthless bombing campaign against the Libyan army, whole cities and patriotic Libyan civilians who took up arms to defend themselves.

After this crime, the fraud that NATO was killing Libyans to defend protestors or promote freedom and democracy was forgotten. After a 24/7 monopoly media bombardment promoting the wildest tales to justify imperialist aggression, and then lionizing the brutal activities of NATO and its allies on the ground, Libya disappeared from the news save for occasional mentions of the dysfunctional state of the country and the ongoing crimes against the people committed by those NATO put in power. These included brutal instances of slaughter of protestors which were no cause for alarm for NATO or the U.S. and Canadian ruling circles but nonetheless, not to be tolerated..

Houses hit by NATO air strikes in the village of Majer, August 9, 2011.

Libya only reappeared in the news again in the context of atrocities committed against Coptic Christians by NATO-aligned forces who pledged allegiance to the “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as Daesh), complete with calls from Egypt and others for another military intervention in the country. No warranted conclusions were drawn by those who promoted and enabled the aggression that destroyed the Libyan state, devastated its cities, put hooligans in positions of power and created Daesh in the first place as an instrument of U.S. and NATO state terror.

To block the peoples’ opposition to aggression in Libya, U.S. imperialism undertook a total mobilization of its retinues in the media, politics, academia and NGOs – an unholy alliance which became a chorus insisting that the Libyan authorities were carrying out merciless slaughter and that genocide was impending if NATO did not launch a war. All the cartel parties with seats in the House of Commons, in fact all but one of Canada’s Members of Parliament, supported the mission. Opposition to the war was deemed impossible. Unlike in Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam and other U.S. wars, the people were told that U.S. imperialism and NATO were responding to urgent humanitarian needs, while Gaddafi who was influential in North Africa, was portrayed as a madman. The confusion and hesitation the government deliberately instilled among the people was coupled with deliberate refusal to make amends for the war propaganda, carried out in breach of the Geneva Convention, and crimes committed in Libya.

Protest outside the London Conference on Libya, March 29, 2011, where 40 countries and organizations, including the UN, NATO and the Arab League plot war and regime change.

The history of U.S. wars of aggression and occupation to that point already clearly showed that UN authorization for the bombing of Libya, via UN Security Council Resolution 1973, was not intended to defend civilians but to advance the self-serving interests of the U.S. on whose side Canada intervened. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) pointed out at the time that “any suggestion that humanitarianism motivates the likes of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany or Canada is ridiculous. So too are suggestions that the resolution not only enjoys Arab support but is passed at their request. To believe that the likes of reactionaries such as the House of Saud represent Arab opinion or that the current secretary of the Arab League Amr Moussa speaks for the Arab League is ludicrous. Moussa has an interest in currying favour with the U.S. and former colonial powers so as to advance his bid to become a new ruler of Egypt and can in no way be considered a defender of UN principles.”

The Lebanese representative put forward the resolution but he had no credibility either. This person had been sitting as Lebanon’s representative since January 2010 despite the fact that in January 2011, the Lebanese government was brought down and had yet to be re-formed. This representative was seen as a tool to disarm and isolate the Lebanese resistance to Israeli aggression in Lebanon. What Lebanese government he represented was questionable.

CPC(M-L) decried the UN decision to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya. It said, “Knowing the destructive power in the hands of the U.S., NATO and European powers, the world’s people can predict the devastation they can expect from the enforcement of the so-called no-fly zone. Any interference in what has clearly become a civil war in Libya no matter what the pretext does not serve the cause of the peoples or peace or stability. It is foreign interference to set in motion forces which can usurp power by force which has been proven to be the reason why the peoples in any part of the world are not able to sort out the problems they face through their own efforts, using their own thought material and by mustering their own resources. Once the foreign dictate is imposed, calamity follows and everything is done to stop the people organizing themselves into a political movement which realizes their own demands.”

CPC(M-L) also condemned with utter contempt “the hypocrisy of the U.S., Canada, and European powers which tries to justify the UN Resolution against Libya on the basis of concocted stories about protecting civilians, but do not apply the same zeal to defend the civilians coming under the gunfire of Saudi Arabian tanks in Bahrain. Far from safeguarding peace and the security of all, this is international gangsterism which must be opposed.”

CPC(M-L) also denounced the “Obama doctrine” to provide the U.S. with a new raison d’état of applying military might against “evil dictators” such as, according to its murderous logic, Gaddafi. It called this “U.S. Outreach” while implementing “Regime Alteration” when dealing with “friendly dictators” such as the Al-Khalifas in Bahrain and the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia. “In the case of the former, the Obama administration will murder to protect democracy and in the latter case, its friendly dictators will do the murdering for the U.S. There is nothing new there,” CPC(M-L) wrote.

Raising the slogans, Hands Off Libya! and No to International Gangsterism in the Name of “Protecting Civilians!” CPC(M-L) called on Canadian workers and their allies to lead the anti-war movement to take a categorical stand against the UN resolution.

CPC(M-L) pointed out on the fourth anniversary of the war: “The war propaganda was so deceptive as to turn all the old terms and definitions from the 20th century into their opposite. Those terms became weapons in the hands of the imperialists to launch their aggressions and trample on public right. On the anniversary of the aggression against Libya it is more urgent than ever for the people to follow their own thinking and analysis of the objective conditions and not follow the emotive terms from the past with vague and distorted definitions that can suit monopoly right and imperialist war. Modern definitions of human rights, democracy, socialism, trade unionism and economic development can only be articulated in the fight against imperialism in defence of the rights of all, in actions with analysis to serve the people’s interests in opposition to monopoly right. Even the defining of the people’s interests and the struggle to fulfill those interests and control one’s own destiny must be the work and creation of the people themselves and their own organizations.”

Under Gaddafi, Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa and a wide range of social programs provided free of charge. It also possessed one of the world’s most extensive, advanced fossil water aquifer systems deep beneath its southern desert. These reservoirs were tapped through a colossal engineering project known as the Great Man-Made River (GMMR). The imperialists silenced all discussion of the system of rule Gaddafi created which was deeply embedded within the people. Known as the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (“state of the masses”), it was a kind of direct democracy which rejected traditional parliamentary democracy, political parties and independent civil society, claiming to vest power directly in the people through a network of local committees. The U.S. and NATO countries called it an authoritarian autocracy which required regime change.

When she was U.S. Secretary of State under Obama, Hilary Clinton infamously declared: “We came, we saw, he died.” It was a statement not unlike the statement of Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State under George W. Bush, who, when asked during a press conference whether she thought the deaths of half a million children as a result of sanctions against Iraq was a price worth paying for achieving the West’s aims for Iraq said, “We think the price is worth it.”

The anarchy and violence and massive refugee crisis which accompanied the destruction of Libya are tragedies. The crime lies squarely at the feet of the U.S. imperialists and NATO countries, including Canada. This destabilization not only affected other countries surrounding Libya but continues to this day with Libya divided between two warring factions. It makes clear that the so-called human security agenda/responsibility to protect doctrine is another brutal example of the irrational and bankrupt imperialist doctrine coined during the Viet Nam War: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Canadians must steadfastly and unequivocally oppose the U.S./NATO disinformation, lies and warmongering as a matter of inviolable principle and reject the imperialist pragmatic line of lawlessness and that “nothing succeeds like success.”

Demonstrations across Canada against NATO’s bombing of Libya in 2011.