Reports are still sketchy, but it appears likely now that Moammar Gaddafi was shot and killed today in his home city of Sirte. This causes me to reflect. I graduated from high school in 1987. One of my good friends graduated in 1986 and then went to Syracuse University. Thirty-five Syracuse students died when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Scotland in 1988. Fortunately, my friend was not one of them, but he knew several of the victims. Dick Cheney and George Bush decided that they’d rather have Gaddafi’s oil than keep him in perpetual pariah status, so they pretended that he had some massive WMD program that he had agreed to give up. The U.K. wanted Gaddafi’s oil, so they released the man responsible for the Pan Am bombing.
I advised against getting the U.S. involved in Libya’s civil war. But, I have to say that I prefer Obama’s methods to the methods of Bush and Cheney. I swear that if Usama bin-Laden had possessed oil fields, Bush and Cheney would have allowed him to repent and then made a deal with him.
Now all of your misgivings about the difficulty of building democracy post-dictatorship come into play.
Yes, and the six month civil war has created a lot of boy soldiers who now need to find something else to do. Will they?
For example:
Yep, overthrowing the dictator is the easy part.
When a people topple their dictator, it’s always a crap shoot. You don’t know how it’s going to turn out.
Now, keeping the dictator – that’s not a crap shoot. You know exactly what they’ll get.
They are learning this in Egypt. They traded in one dictator for another (the military leadership). It is not at all clear that this has been a particularly good deal.
It’s also not at all clear that they’ve actually gotten the military dictatorship. It’s a transitional government until the elections. Hopefully.
It’s still very up in the air there, too.
He’d be alive today if he had only broken down and pumped his oil.
That is baloney. He had sweetheart contracts with western oil firms and was pumping oil. The price he paid for “respectability”. All of those oil contracts continue. Chinese and Russian contracts also will continue to the end of the contract period and then their drillers will have a more difficult time getting contracts.
The idea that this was a war about oil is a lie perpetuated by Gaddafi and his good buddies, including Hugo Chavez.
This was a war about refugees, who were flooding to Europe as a result of the Arab Spring and threatening to send France into the hands of the anti-muslim National Fronts with the election of Marine Le Pen.
The situation for European unity and stability is very much in doubt at the moment, as a result of immigration and Eurozone currency and economic issues creating nationalist pressure driving the EU apart.
One should not underestimate the potential for another Europe-wide war if the EU falls apart. We in the US has taken European stability for granted.
Note the tendency for Europe to have gut-wrenching, map-changing bloody wars every hundred years and one is due about now:
1914 WW I
1812 Napoleonic Invasion of Russia & US War of 1812
1701-1714 War of Spanish Succession
1618 Thirty Years War
1508-1516 War of the League of Cambrai
Have to admit I never heard of the last one before, but it was a major conflict involving all major nations of Western Europe and changed the map of Italy anyway. And was very bloody as urban warfare usually is.
You can jam the Franco-Prussian War in between those first two.
And you forgot Poland! WW2, 1939-1945.
For a some time, those major continental wars were quite a bit more frequent than once every century. This has been an extraordinary period of peace.
Yeah, that’s why I omitted 1411. That was smack in the middle of the Hundred Year War.
Waterloo pretty much set the map of Europe for a Century. Same with the treaty (forgot which one) that ended WW I. That map lasted until the breakup of the Soviet Union in the ’90s.
Lots of confusing reports. I just posted in Oui’s diary:
Gaddafi dead or captured, reports claim – live updates
(UK time stamps – 5 hrs ahead of east coast)
Jesus Christ.
Dubya, the gift that keeps on giving.
With this sort of incursion assaulting Iraqi identity, perhaps a partial adoption of the ‘Biden’ plan is still in the cards: an independent Kurdistan delivered in exchange for a recognized border on all sides (abandon designs/claims on Turkish territory) and an all-out attempt to curtail support for violence inside of Turkey. If Iraq is unwilling to lose land and resources, it will remain on a path of conflict with Turkey and is in a significantly weakened state. Since no one gives up oil freely, I’m sure we’ll be selling all sides a lot of arms in the near future, as is our wont.
From al-Jazeera – warning, graphic video.
From the #feb17 #libya Twitter stream:
Mohamed Nabbous was a citizen journalist in Benghazi who was killed by Gaddafi shelling of Benghazi on the day that the NATO air strikes began. He spent the day before the time of his death documenting the shelling that Gaddafi troops were doing and their advance into the city. And posting it on the internet.
I can’t fault Bush and Rice too much for trying to improve relations with Libya. Blessed are the peacemakers, right? There was a nasty, pariah dictator who wanted to come in out of the cold, and was willing to clean up his act somewhat in exchange for rejoining the international community.
So, it didn’t work out. I can’t fault them for trying.
And keep in mind, I’m pretty good at faulting the Bush administration for things.
I guess I don’t get the Republicans’ reputation for being tough on terrorism. Obama has now facilitated the end of the perpetrators of the biggest terror attacks in our nation’s history. The families of the Pan Am 103 victims had to wait 23 years.
I hear what you’re saying about peacemaking, but I just want to note that it was John McCain who was palling around with a terrorist on his ranch last year.
But you just obliterated your own case. Who was President “last year?” Why did the Obama administration let a known terrorist meet with our government officials on our own soil?
Oh wait, that’s right, because it wasn’t about counterterror. Hezbollah’s killed hundreds of Americans over the years. They still get into wars with our greatest ally and assassinate heads of state with impunity. And they do it all while chilling in a nation where thousands and thousands and people have gotten murdered in the streets on a daily basis. And will anything come of it? Nope, just like the last 30 years. And that’s not a failure of American leadership or ability to “keep us safe.” It’s just how things go.
Qaddafi didn’t get clipped because of a decades old terrorist attack. If it weren’t for the brave Benghazians who rose up in arms that first night, he’d have spent his October hanging out in New York giving another incoherent rant at the UN. And President Obama would smile his usual politician smile for the group photo-op. And ENI would buy the shit out of his oil as usual, and everybody on both sides of the Atlantic would keep looking the other way as far as the past was concerned.
McCain was at Gaddafi’s ranch.
I thought it was the other way around? No matter.
My point is there’s no way to win this “game.” In fifteen seconds, I can find a picture of SoS Clinton or Bob Gates shaking hands with the recently departed Muatassim Qaddafi. Or Seif. Or any of the Qaddafi moppets.
To pretend that Obama came into office with a plan to eradicate all of “America’s enemies” is fatuous. Policy changed on February 17. For good reason. And you know it.
Are you contending that this is a bad thing for Obama to have done?
He 1) didn’t come into office looking for a military confrontation with Libya, and 2) followed the lead of the protesters themselves, instead of trying to be the driving force of events.
I think that’s absolutely wonderful.
What bad thing?
All I said is this has little to none to do with a plane bombing two decades ago. That Musa Kousa guy is chilling in the Dubai Ritz-Carlton or whatever. The alleged bomber who got released, who the fuck even knows how he’s doing? Half the Libyan fighters probably weren’t even born yet when the terrorist attack took place.
The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, had made “peace” with the Qaddafi regime. And that “peace” would have held for years more if some Tunisian guy hadn’t lit himself on fire and anti-aircraft guns hadn’t been turned on protestors in Benghazi.
I don’t see Booman can go from “intervening in Libya was a bad idea!” to “Reagan was a pussy! Obama brings terrorists to justice!” in the span of five seconds.
Ah, I gotcha.
Yes, it was the Arab Spring uprising that was the impetus for our actions.
From Obama’s Cairo Speech:
IOW, you don’t have to have “a plan to eradicate American’s enemies” in order to be a friend of human rights and democracy who intends to seize opportunities as they develop.
None of this has anything to do with Pan Am 103. Qaddafi wasn’t killed because he was an international terrorist. He wasn’t killed by American special forces. He was mopped up by some kid from Misrata.
It was a civil war, not a counterterror effort. We aren’t protagonists in this story.
We’re a sidekick.
But, please explain why Bush never reached out to Castro? Castro has lots of oil off shore.
Because Texas drillers know they can get to that oil from US territorial waters.
Can someone please get BooMan a full glass of hater aid to clear his throat to say, “I was wrong!” And pass it around to like-minded haters on the right and left.
I’d like you to point out to me where I was wrong.
You questioned the Messiah, silly. This is intolerable. So drink your, um, haterade and don’t let it happen again.
BooMan hasn’t spent eight months blathering about “war for oil.”
BooMan didn’t posit the entire R2P as a conspiracy by imperialists to take over the world.
BooMan didn’t throw out cheap blather about Obama being JUST LIKE BUSH and Libya being JUST LIKE IRAQ.
There are a whole lotta people who need to drink their haterade and remember who irritating it was when the people who were similarly wrong about invading Iraq wouldn’t STFU.
BooMan isn’t one of them. He made a judgement call about likelihoods, and he wasn’t just spouting off.
I might add, that I never said it would be impossible to get Gaddafi. On the contrary, I said it would be better to focus on getting him and using more force to do so than to risk letting it play out over months. I said that the opposition was too weak and that it would take a long time to get them strong enough to take him out. I believe that turned out to be true. I said that we were going to arm-up a rag-tag group of kids who would be a problem to control when it was over. There are militias all over Libya right now under no centralized control. For unintended consequences, how about hundreds of anti-aircraft weapons going missing, possibly into the hands of Islamic radicals?
I don’t want to piss in anybody’s Wheaties on a day when we have a right to celebrate, but people should realize that they haven’t proven me wrong about anything. As a political matter, however, I doubt Obama will have cause to regret his decision. He’ll see what he thinks when he gets around to writing his memoirs.
Overall, so far, so good. He kept a light footprint, and that has helped him weather a longer campaign than he (but not me) expected.
Actually, BooMan, this has taken a remarkably short amount of time. Eight months for a group of DFHs to get their shiite together enough to overthrow the government of a state along with its military?
And as for “a longer campaign than he expected,” I can’t help but notice that the original UN resolution ran into September. When Obama, and the rest of the world, made the decision that there would be foreign ground forces put into the country, they had to know they were extending the conflict.
Also, the “days, not weeks” statement. The planning for an initial phase to be followed by a transition to other countries for command and the majority of sorties indicates to me that they knew there was a good chance this could drag out. If Obama was assuming it would all be wrapped up in short order, I don’t think he would have insisted on our dropping back after a short time.
i didn’t believe it b4, but i believe it now, Marco Rubio is auditioning to become VP. He’s on CNN now speaking shit over Libya
Cain-Rubio – There’s the Republicans playing against type.
The key point to remember is that this started as a peaceful protest in Benghazi on February 17. You can argue that the protesters knew how the authorities would respond. And that might be rephrase as “based on past experience, how the authorities would respond”.
What was unexpected was the defection of rank-and-file members of the military and security forces that gave a rather quick victory to the folks who attacked the police station. Then all over the country, folks started testing the regime with the result that the regime killed peaceful protesters in Liberation Square in Tripoli with 135mm rounds at point-blank range. And the videos got out as YouTubes for the world to see.
That in turn motivated a lot of overseas diplomats to announce that they “stood with the Libyan people”. One of those diplomats, the sacked ambassador to the UN was the one who got the diplomatic ball rolling for those opposing Gaddafi, which had no structure at that point. It was just a lot of groups. Those groups soon met in Benghazi, regardless or where they were from, and worked out an arrangement for a national transitional council to focus activities.
The diplomatic moves stalled until Gaddafi forces were approaching the suburbs of Benghazi on March 17 or so. Then, for as yet inexplicable reasons, Russia and China decided to abstain in the Security Council vote instead of veto. After that vote, Gaddafi sped up the advance so as to attack Benghazi and make a fait accompli. NATO countries and others at the meeting on March 19 reached agreement to begin operations immediately with France carrying out the first strikes against Gaddafi tanks and artillery before the end of the meeting.
Gaddafi lost because most of his military changed sides, especially after the beginning of the siege of Misrata.
Whatever actions NATO has taken in the last six weeks or so has been at the behest of the new Libyan government, which was recognized by the UN as the legitimate government.