While the media tends to tread lightly on the subject (they were, after all, war cheerleaders), it is nevertheless widely known that President Obama’s war on Libya to spread democracy and save the Libyan people from a dictator did not quite turn out as advertised.
On March 28, 2011, the president announced of his attack on Libya:
We are succeeding in our mission… Because we acted quickly a humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided and the lives of countless civilians…have been saved.
Fast forward just a bit and it is obvious that his confidence in the righteousness of his bombing mission is misplaced. Shortly after the president proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” in Libya, the radical Islamists with which his administration had allied to overthrow Gaddafi gained the upper hand and began to unleash a whole new kind of terror on the Libyan people. And, famously, on US diplomats as well.
Finally, in July 2014, the US could no longer play a convincing charade. The US embassy in Tripoli had to be evacuated, Saigon-style. What was never contemplated under dictator Gaddafi was achieved by US-aided “freedom fighters.” Bye-bye USA.
Gaddafi claimed at the time of the invastion that the US-backed groups fighting him in Libya were al-Qaeda and affiliates, but his claims were laughed off by an over-confident White House.
Now, today, Al Arabiya News reports:
Libya’s Islamist militant group Ansari al-Shariah has declared an ‘Islamic emirate’ in the eastern city of Derna and pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), according to media reports coming out from the North African Country.
As President Obama has declared war on ISIS everywhere and anywhere, how long before US fighters are sent back in to Libya to attack the White House’s erstwhile allies? Or are some ISIS members less threatening than others (as we are learning in Kobani, where the US stands down as ISIS mows down Kurds seen as not sufficiently hostile to Syrian president Assad)?
Bombs away on Libya?
