What should we have done in Libya?

[GeneralMacArthur]

In 2009, as part of the Arab Spring, a wave of peaceful protests began against Colonel Gaddafi, who had been governing as a de facto dictator of a police state for 42 years.  Gaddafi responded by just f***ing murdering the protestors.  Some Libyan troops refused to shoot protestors, so Gaddafi had to bring in foreign mercenaries to do it.  Journalists were banned from Libya, the phones were jammed, the internet was censored and eventually shut down entirely.  Gaddafi, echoing the language Hutus used to justify the massacre of Tutsis in the Rwandan Genocide, called those who would oppose his regime "cockroaches" and said he would "cleanse house" of them.  He also said they were being mind-controlled by Osama bin Laden via psychotropic drugs.

So that's your situation on 18 February 2011, the starting date of the "18 February Revolution" a.k.a. the Libyan Civil War.  Protests began to turn violent.  Gaddafi flew in helicopters to massacre the protesters.  Meanwhile, the former Minister of Justice led the National Transitional Council (NTC), the primary opposition organization, which called for re-organization of Libya into a true democracy, drafted a constitution, and released a road map to guide this transition.  The NTC called for the international community to impose a no-fly-zone over Libya to stop Gaddafi's air power.  Much of the rest of the government resigned as well as a lot of the senior military leaders, with many defecting to the NTC.

Within a week, the International Federation for Human Rights determined that Gaddafi was pursuing a "scorched earth" strategy.  Death squads of his mercenaries roamed the streets and shot anyone who behaved even remotely sympathetically towards the protests (including trying to remove dead protestor bodies).  Soldiers who refused to fire on protesters were burned alive by their commanders.  In Tripoli, tens of thousands of people were imprisoned and tortured.  International NGOs were denied any access.  Journalists who entered in rebel-controlled areas were attacked, kidnapped and murdered by Gaddafi forces.  Gaddafi used the Cersei Lannister strategy of forcing civilians to act as a human shield for his military.

But what about al-Qaeda?  While the intel available told us that some composition of the rebel forces may have been former members of al-Qaeda, it's kind of like saying some members of the U.S. military are former members of the KKK.  It's gonna be true, but that doesn't really say much about the overall group.  Or at least, that was the intel at the time.  The Gaddafi regime was very committed to an international propaganda effort to portray the protests as extremely violent and the rebels as an al-Qaeda led terrorist rabble, but it was pretty transparent.

On March 1, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning Gaddafi and calling for the UNSC to impose a no-fly zone.  Full text here https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/sres85/text

So here we are on March 1.  The NTC is losing the war to Gaddafi's forces, who have begged the West to help.  If you do nothing, the rebels will probably not win the war.  Either it will be a Gaddafi victory within the year, certainly leading to mass bloodshed, torture, a draconian police state and misery for millions, or it will be a long, bloody conflict between a leader and his own people like what we are currently seeing in Syria, possibly becoming a proxy battleground for regional powers.

It is March 1, 2011.  You are Barack Obama.  What do you do?

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Nothing

[GeneralMacArthur]

Nothing

What do you think would have happened if we had done nothing?  What would Libya be today?  How many would have died?

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Nothing

What do you think would have happened if we had done nothing?  What would Libya be today?  How many would have died?

Libya would probably be better off than it is now.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Nothing

What do you think would have happened if we had done nothing?  What would Libya be today?  How many would have died?

Libya would probably be better off than it is now.

More people died in just the six months of the 2011 Civil War than have died in the entire conflict from 2012-present, even if you don't count all the civilians massacred by Gaddafi.

[PSOL]

We should have put sanctions and cut off Gaddafi from Western markets, anything further is (and was) an illegal and illogical act.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The Western intervention was fully justified, and one of the few moral and courageous things the West has done in this decade (it's one of the few things I honestly give full credit to Sarkozy for). The mistake was not getting more involved in the state-building for the post-Gaddafi era.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The Western intervention was fully justified, and one of the few moral and courageous things the West has done in this decade (it's one of the few things I honestly give full credit to Sarkozy for). The mistake was not getting more involved in the state-building for the post-Gaddafi era.

This is the take I agree with.

We did just the right amount of intervention to take out Gaddafi and put the NTC in control, without putting boots on the ground or fighting their battles for them.

The problem is that while they were setting up the government, they had no military, so law enforcement was left up to a patchwork of local militia groups that were at odds with each other and susceptible to corruption and influence by foreign groups and terrorist organizations.  The election of weak national leadership and ineffectual composition of the new military/police (due to all previous Gaddafi forces being banned) compounded the issue.  Conflict between different militia groups, as well as between many of those groups and the state, was inevitable, especially since many powerful entities (not just foreign entities but all the Gaddafi people) were interested in seeing NTC fail.

The UN should have gone in afterwards and served as a disinterested paramilitary organization to help the NTC maintain law and order while setting up a new government.  Militia groups should have been recruited into a national military or rewarded for their loyalty and sent home.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Nothing

What do you think would have happened if we had done nothing?  What would Libya be today?  How many would have died?

It wouldnt be  under the constant threat of falling into the hands of radical Islamists

[HillGoose]

Disarm Gaddafi, free the people of Libya, and save the world from grave danger.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

In hindsight it would have been best to have NATO enforce the "no drive zone" around Benghazi as the UN resolution stipulated and not use it as an opportunity to overthrow Gaddafi in the west, perhaps supporting the rebels until they were cohesive enough to win on their own and without immediately collapsing into factional conflict.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Disarm Gaddafi, free the people of Libya, and save the world from grave danger.

So basically what we did?

I'm just saying, this keeps getting pointed to as the key failure of the Obama administration's foreign policy, and I've even seen many posters put the blood of Libya on Clinton's hands.  But no one can actually propose a less bloody outcome than what the United States initially achieved.  And furthermore it's silly to put whatever happened solely on Obama when the NATO Libyan intervention was spurred on by the French more than anyone else, and the failure of NTC afterwards is what caused the subsequent bloodshed, not anything NATO or the United States did.

[HillGoose]

Disarm Gaddafi, free the people of Libya, and save the world from grave danger.

So basically what we did?

Ya but with more Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Blackwater, televised shock and awe, and tearing down of statues.

[Orser67]

Disarm Gaddafi, free the people of Libya, and save the world from grave danger.

So basically what we did?

I'm just saying, this keeps getting pointed to as the key failure of the Obama administration's foreign policy, and I've even seen many posters put the blood of Libya on Clinton's hands.  But no one can actually propose a less bloody outcome than what the United States initially achieved.  And furthermore it's silly to put whatever happened solely on Obama when the NATO Libyan intervention was spurred on by the French more than anyone else, and the failure of NTC afterwards is what caused the subsequent bloodshed, not anything NATO or the United States did.

The two things people always bring up to criticize Obama's foreign policy are Libya and Syria, but I don't see a clearly better solution that he should've pursued in either country (criticism of the Red Line remark is fair, but I'm talking about overall policy). And many of the same people who now criticize Obama for Libya would probably be labeling it as "Obama's Rwanda" if he had let Gaddafi crush that rebellion.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     We should have stayed out. Libya is yet another datum pointing to the thesis that American intervention abroad is ruinous and to be avoided.

[Dr. MB]

Gaddafi was a bit of a prick but at least he didn't allow literal slave markets.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

We should have put sanctions and cut off Gaddafi from Western markets, anything further is (and was) an illegal and illogical act.

[dead0man]

If you're against Gulf War II, you should be against this too.  Leader was killing his people, we thought it would be best to get rid of him, then when the big bad guy wasn't in charge anymore, all the little bad guys decided to flex.  Sure, there are some differences on the edges, but the biggest difference was what political party the US President was in and that's how you know which of these you might want to support and which of these was the worst foreign policy decision the US has made in 70 years.

[jaichind]

Nothing

[BP🌹]

Arm Qaddafi.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Arm Qaddafi.

Nah. Assad maybe, but we should have just let the situation play out. Qaddafi would have won with or without our sanction.

[Blair]

If you're against Gulf War II, you should be against this too.  Leader was killing his people, we thought it would be best to get rid of him, then when the big bad guy wasn't in charge anymore, all the little bad guys decided to flex.  Sure, there are some differences on the edges, but the biggest difference was what political party the US President was in and that's how you know which of these you might want to support and which of these was the worst foreign policy decision the US has made in 70 years.

There’s a fair few flaws in this; if anything Gulf War 1 and Libya is a better example.

Both had UN Security Council resolutions, support from the regional neighbours, a wide military coalition, were largely air based and reacted to an event rather than something formulated in advance.

[dead0man]

If you're against Gulf War II, you should be against this too.  Leader was killing his people, we thought it would be best to get rid of him, then when the big bad guy wasn't in charge anymore, all the little bad guys decided to flex.  Sure, there are some differences on the edges, but the biggest difference was what political party the US President was in and that's how you know which of these you might want to support and which of these was the worst foreign policy decision the US has made in 70 years.

There’s a fair few flaws in this;

indeed, it would be weird if it was a perfect match

if anything Gulf War 1 and Libya is a better example.

Libya didn't invade and occupy a country did they?


All three events do have some negative things in common, the big one being we let sh**theads take over once we thought we were done.  A couple of other things in common are unmentionable though, and they play a much bigger role in why those places are sh**t now, but nobody can score political hay with them and you'll no doubt be called a bigot if you mention them so they don't get brought up much.

[Blue3]

I think we chose the best out of many bad options.

[Lechasseur]

     We should have stayed out. Libya is yet another datum pointing to the thesis that American intervention abroad is ruinous and to be avoided.