By Gil Barndollar
Ten years ago today, the United States under President Barack Obama intervened in the nascent Libyan civil war. Using one of the most common tools of modern American statecraft, the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, U.S. forces led a coalition of NATO and Arab League partners in a campaign initially predicated on enforcing a no-fly zone and preventing massacres by the dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Frequent decapitation strikes failed to kill Gadhafi, but the self-styled “Brotherly Leader” suffered a brutal public death seven months later.
After the country was once more thrown into civil war in 2014, Libyans today may finally have grounds for cautious optimism: A ceasefire has held for nearly five months and an interim transitional Presidential Council is charged with preparing for a free and transparent national election in December. But a few lessons stand out from the past decade of conflict in what was once Africa’s richest country.
To the Western leaders who decided to intervene on the side of the rebellion, Libya offered a tantalizing mirage: a wealthy Arab country with a small population, close to Europe and yearning to throw off the yoke of a brutal and bizarre dictator. Despite the disaster of the Iraq War and the bloody stalemate in Afghanistan, it was easy to embrace what the investor Sir John Templeton once termed the four most expensive words in the English language: “This time it’s different.”
This piece was originally published in NBC on March 19, 2021. Read more HERE.