The editors of the Washington Post woke up this morning and noticed how bad the situation in Libya has become:
WHEN LIBYA’S attempt to construct a new, democratic political system faltered after 2012, the Obama administration and NATO allies who had intervened to support the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gaddafi could still rationalize that they had headed off the mass bloodshed and civil war that the Gaddafi regime threatened and that later overtook Syria. The respite, however, proved to be temporary. As 2015 begins, Libya is well on its way to becoming the Middle East’s second war zone — with the same side effects of empowering radical jihadists and destabilizing neighboring countries.
The sprawling but sparsely populated country of 7 million is now split between two governments, parliaments and armies, one based in the eastern city of Tobruk and the other in the capital, Tripoli. While Syria’s war is fought along the Arab world’s Sunni-Shiite divide, in Libya the contest pits the region’s secular Sunnis against Islamists (along with minority Berbers). Since that same divide dominates the politics of Egypt, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories and much of the rest of the Maghreb, outside powers have predictably picked sides: Egypt and the United Arab Emirates back the secular forces in the east, while Turkey, Qatar and Sudan support the Islamist Libya Dawn in the west.
May I point out that this is exactly what I predicted? At the time I said that we had intervened in a civil war between what amounted to two old Ottoman provinces on the side of one of the provinces.
If you are a knee-jerk supporter of every move that President Obama makes, you think that Libya is a splendid victory and, since it has already achieved its objective (whatever that was), you have lost interest in it. If you are a knee-jerk opponent of the president, your primary interest, apparently, continues to be the events that happened in Benghazi when our embassy was attacked and sacked and our ambassador murdered.
Neither of those interest me. IMO our intervention in Libya has resulted in a tactical victory and a strategic defeat. It has also had the effect of driving a third of the Libyan population from their homes. Italy is already sheltering no fewer than 200,000 Libyans and 1,000 more try to reach its shores every day. The Italians are painfully aware of the magnitude of our defeat there.
Before it gets tossed down the memory hole, let us not forget that President Obama’s opponents supported blowing up Libya, and when they realized they were on the same team, they jumped onto the Benghazi fiasco. Team Obama did not help by claiming an obvious terrorist attack was the local activists protesting a film they never knew existed.
While we are all forgetting, let us also forget how Osama bin Laden and the Taliban got their start. I am sure this will work out just as well.
Boys and girls, this is what happens when your experts are actually political operatives, security salesmen, or military contractors. If your expert’s sources are other experts, run.
How’s that Syrian operation going?
So Italy ends up with 200,000 refugees if we do or do not attack.
Steve
As the link notes since the overthrow of Qaddafi there have been 2 million Libyan refugees–a third of the total population.
Yes. Whether or not we attack, we get another 1.8 million refugees (who do not go to Italy). We could have saved the few billions we spent and gotten the same outcome.
Steve
Well, I think Libya, like many countries in the region, was doomed. The old order was falling apart and continues to fall apart. We decided to take sides. What our intervention in Libya did was hasten the fall while providing a huge advantage to Islamist elements.
The only strategic advantage I can see is the support we gave our allies and I suppose after we drug them into Afghanistan and, for some, Iraq, we owed them.
I think that most would see that as a strategic defeat.
I agree. Our allies had hoped to stop a flood of refugees. They got it anyway and they got a worse govt than they had hoped to have. You would hope that we would eventually learn that we are not good at getting the govt we want when we overthrow the leaders in a ME country. Our efforts to “help” just aren’t appreciated for some reason.
Steve
Our general disrespect for history has the foreseeable consequence of our rarely learning from our own mistakes while our arrogance makes it hard for us to learn from the mistakes of others.
you’re all wrong, Libya was a stable, prosperous nation always threatened by the old colonial order (which had left the country a dirt-poor monarchy), the US, and later by jihadists (look at Libya, Syria and Iraq now for how they operate). Gaddafi with the support of the whole country, kept all these elements at bay with means ANY nation has displayed when under a terrorist threat, genuine or contrived. The US and NATO took the side of the worst of those who sought to destroy the country to remake it into a economic-vassal state of Europe or a muslim-extremist bastion. only a fool could foresee a good outcome of this deadly combination, especially after purposely destroying anything of economic and civic value and murdering and torturing black Libyans and whole groups that supported the pre-invasion Libyan government. There was no imminent massacre in Benghazi in 2011, no mercenaries from anywhere else (except the muslim brotherhood from Egypt), only the type of lies that led to the Iraq war. Being in bed with the ruthless killers, muslim fanatics and fringe-dwelling criminals that made up the bulk of the counter-revolutionaries of 2011 created Benghazi 2012. its no mystery why what went wrong went so very wrong. Humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect were just cruel jokes on the politically gullible.
@Andy
The old order in Egypt is back up and running. They probably engineered the last coup, and they may have engineered the first one.
In Libya, our allies decided to murder the head of a country and kill as many of its citizens as necessary in order to steal their oil. There is an actual humanitarian crisis going on now, and they are AWOL.
In Syria, the old order decided that it was not doomed, and so far, they have been correct.
@Hatuxka
Libya was not some North African coastal paradise, but I was not a total shithole either.
Gaddafi was a US rat, and you protect your rats, especially when your friends are trying to kill them and steal their oil. He rolled over to keep from being invaded and/or killed, and for holding up his part of the deal he was killed and invaded.
“The old order in Egypt is back up and running. They probably engineered the last coup, and they may have engineered the first one.”
Yes, and I think the Obama Administration finally realized the folly of promoting democracy in the region.
An older example is Algeria. They had a bloody civil war against Islamists in the 1990’s and the US stayed out of it. The authoritarian government won and spared Algeria from chaos of the so-called Arab Spring.