Another Failed American Intervention: This One Threatens Europe

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives on the tarmac in Tripoli, Libya, on October 18, 2011. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

There isn’t much good that can be said about the now deceased brutal dictator and mass murderer Muammar Qaddafi. But what can be said is that his presence at the head of Libya kept radical Islamists from putting their roots down in the country, and he prevented refugees using Libya as a launching pad over the Mediterranean and into Europe.

Now, thanks to the ill-conceived and poorly implemented intervention in Libya, spearheaded by Hillary Clinton herself and agreed to by the feckless, Nobel Peace Prize winning Barack Obama, Libya is a chaotic free for all.

Refugees pour through the country and board ships headed for European shores. Islamist extremists, including affiliates of ISIS, have taken over parts of the country. There is an on-again-off-again civil war between various groups who claim legitimate rule over the country. Perhaps worst of all, there are new reports that the slave trade has once again taken root in Libya. Despite the claims that intervention in Libya was a “humanitarian mission,” it has turned out to be anything but.

Ted Galen Carpenter writes at The National Interest:

When the Obama administration led a 2011 NATO military intervention on behalf of rebels seeking to overthrow Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, there was considerable optimism that the move would produce a much better country. Although U.S. officials and their media cheerleaders acknowledged that significant challenges remained for a post-Qaddafi Libya, they argued that the outcome could scarcely be worse than the oppressive status quo. Events over the past six years have proven their assumptions spectacularly wrong. Libya is now a cauldron of turmoil and Islamic radicalism….

Chaos has strengthened Islamic extremism inside Libya and led to massive refugee flows across the Mediterranean—a humanitarian nightmare rivaling the one taking place in Syria. Proponents of U.S.-led regime-change wars have yet another catastrophic failure on their record.