All progressive forces should categorically oppose the military intervention underway in Libya. The no-fly zone, which was given the green light by the UN Security Council, has nothing to do with the humanitarian pretexts offered up by the industrialized western powers.

Rather, it represents a violent and naked colonial subjugation of a formerly colonized country. The bombing of Libya by American, British and French planes is not protecting human life, as the 'collateral' casualties attest, but is transforming the country into a death zone with thousands set to perish. It is further disseminating Libya into a lawless country governed by regional warlords.

Ostensibly, the moral western warlords tell us that, the attack is to "protect" the Libyan people from the hand of Gaddafi. But is such a rationale even remotely credible?

We need to pose various questions: Why are the western powers not applying the same criteria in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the client regimes they support employ brutal violence against any opposition? And what of Bahrain, headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, where unarmed Shia protesters and medical personnel have been brutally gunned down by the Sunni Royal regime of Sheikh al Khalifa with Saudi support? What about Gaza, where these same western powers stand by as the apartheid Zionist Israelis massacre and oppress Palestinians and deny them statehood?

What about Yemen, where the Western-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime shot dead 52 protesters? In Cote Devoir, the post election strife has claimed hundreds of innocent lives and yet beyond the ritualistic condemnations by the western powers, we have had no proposal of military intervention.

Could it be that cocoa, Ivory Coast's chief export product, does not constitute the same strategic importance as energy resources that Libya has?

Military intervention in Libya, whose energy resources have made it the object of foreign military intrigues for decades, is being used both to secure access to oil and to manage the revolutionary movements in the region, which are increasingly directed against the interests of foreign powers and private property. A military presence in Libya, which is bordered by Egypt to the east and Tunisia to the west, would help the major powers to intimidate revolutionary movements throughout North Africa and the Arab world.

The military intervention in Libya is also a coldly calculated political survival manoeuvre by the chief advocates of the so-called 'no-fly zone', British Prime Minister, David Cameron and France President, Nikolas Sarkozy.

David Cameron straining to mimic the gung-ho Iron Lady is criminally dangerous. Desperate Cameron, badly rattled over the incompetent Conservative led coalition's mishandling of the economic crisis that continue to grip the United Kingdom sees the Libyan crisis, as his Falklands moment, and appears to relish a war of his own. He threatens and is unleashing fire and brimstone on a poor and defenseless people on the African continent. He hopes this aggression will divert the frustration and anger of the British public whose very fabric of life is under savage attack by Cameron's austerity policies.

With his domestic popularity at a record low and facing a humiliation in an election next year, Nicolas Sarkozy is in an equally desperate need of a boost to his political stature. With almost theatrical gravitas, Sarkozy said France had "decided to assume its role before history" by militarily intervening in Libya. Barely more than three years ago, the same Sarkozy gave Gaddafi the red carpet treatment in Paris.

As with Cameron, Sarkozy has overseen the implementation of severe austerity measures that are deeply unpopular with the French public, and is likely to receive a political rebuke in next year's elections. Having observed that "The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history", monsieur Sarkozy has, as his predecessors, assumed the responsibility that history has burdened the white men with, of saving non-whites with the assistance of tomahawks and cruise-missiles, and thus marrying them with the tapestry of civil history.

South Africa, under a popularly elected liberation government broke rank with our strategic partners, BRICS, by voting in support of the 'no-fly zone' thus providing a veneer of legitimacy to western aggression and subjugation and exploitation of an African country. It is disingenuous for any government that supported the so-called 'no-fly zone' to bemoan the carnage under way in Libya, as this is a very logical outcome of any foreign military intervention. Our vote for the so-called 'no-fly zone', which effectively translates to military aggression, betrays a vacuous and incoherent foreign policy.

We have also not contested and exposed the legitimacy of the seemingly politicized International Criminal Court (ICC). Western leaders, particularly in the U.S and Britain, who by the post-Nuremburg definition are war criminals, have not been pursued with the same zeal as leaders of the African continent. George Bush and Tony Blair created self serving lies and executed an unprovoked war against oil rich Iraq, which has claimed over a million lives and internally displaced more than two million, have not been made to account for their war crimes.

Instead they have both written best-selling books in which they seek to legitimize their war exploits. The current U.S president, Barack Obama, has continued the criminal policy of drone attacks in the Afghan- Pakistani boarder, which has killed and maimed thousands of innocent people, and has been awarded a Noble Peace Prize. What peace?

We appear to be at a key historical inflexion point in which geopolitical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the hegemonic dynamic is facing popular contestation.

The ANC government must carefully reconsider the contours and implications of its foreign policy, as the current trajectory threatens to undermine South Africa's leading role in the African continent and alienation in emerging alliances.