Source:Foreign Affairs– free at last in Libya?

“On March 17, 2011, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973, spearheaded by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, authorizing military intervention in Libya. The goal, Obama explained, was to save the lives of peaceful, pro-democracy protesters who found themselves the target of a crackdown by Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi. Not only did Qaddafi endanger the momentum of the nascent Arab Spring, which had recently swept away authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, but he also was poised to commit a bloodbath in the Libyan city where the uprising had started, said the president. “We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi—a city nearly the size of Charlotte—could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,” Obama declared. Two days after the UN authorization, the United States and other NATO countries established a no-fly zone throughout Libya and started bombing Qaddafi’s forces. Seven months later, in October 2011, after an extended military campaign with sustained Western support, rebel forces conquered the country and shot Qaddafi dead.”

From Foreign Affairs

I supported a limited intervention of Libya that would have a coalition between America and Europe especially NATO that would establish a no fly zone over Libya as the Libyan rebels did the groundwork in Libya to knockout the Gaddafi Regime there. I was in favor of this by February 2011 and even criticized the Obama Administration for not acting soon enough.

President Obama finally makes the decision to intervene in Libya and be part of the NATO coalition that would hit Gaddafi forces in the air as the Libyan rebels did the groundwork. This was one of the most successful, cost-effective and quick military operations that America has ever been part of that ended in the early summer of 2011.

This was not Iraq 2011 where we would go in and invade the country with a hundred-thousand ground troops, knockout the government and establish our own state there to occupy the country. Why the Iraqi people would figure out what kind of country they wanted to have.

The operation in Libya was about knocking out a murderous dictator who was simply only interested in staying in power in Libya. And this is something I believe we could’ve done in Syria by now. Knocked out the Assad Regime in coalition with NATO and not have to debate and consider if we arm the Syrian rebels or not. But that is a different debate.

Libya is not a failed state now because America and Europe decided not to occupy it. Libya is a failed stated because they didn’t have the leadership to unify the country around a new government that could bring this large country the size of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Algeria physically, but with only six-million people, together and plot the course for the new Libya.

What Libya instead got was another semi-authoritarian government that wasn’t prepared to govern and defend the country. And now you have new rebels and terrorists including ISIS that Egypt of all countries has decided to intervene against and take out.