DAVID N. GIBBS, [email protected]
Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona and the author of three books, including First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia(Vanderbilt University Press) and most recently Revolt of the Rich: How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide (Columbia University Press).
He said today: “President Donald Trump is threatening military intervention against Iran, based on reports that the Iranian government has massacred thousands of innocent demonstrators. However, we should not forget that previous U.S. interventions have also been justified by reports of mass atrocities, which later proved greatly exaggerated or fabricated altogether. In 1999, U.S. intervention in Kosovo was based on reports that Serbian authorities had killed 100,000 Kosovars, but when the war was over, this figure was revealed to be a gross overstatement. In 2011, the U.S. and NATO allies overthrew the government of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, based on claims that Gaddafi was about to perpetrate a genocide against his opponents. When the war was ended, however, a UK parliamentary investigation found there was no basis for the claims of impending genocide. And it should also be recalled that both interventions produced negative results: Kosovo is today a failed state, whose stability is only maintained by a permanent NATO/EU peacekeeping force, which has been there for a quarter of a century; Kosovo’s first prime minister is being tried for war crimes. And Libya experienced a six-year civil war after Gaddafi’s overthrow.
“Based on the experiences of past interventions, we should be skeptical of the huge casualty figures now being presented for Iran, and the U.S .government should refrain from intervening in Iran’s internal politics.”