From Mises Wire at the Misses Institute, May 11:
Starting in 2020, things started to get strange in Africa for those who knew what to look for. Normally, coups in Africa are nothing to write about. But starting in 2020, we saw six countries flip into a pro-Russian direction in just three years. Individually, they were a curiosity. Taken together, that rate of turnover outpaced even the most optimistic neoconservative ambitions for pro–United States regime changes in the Middle East. As General Wesley Clark summarized, “We’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
That fourth country, Libya, is where our story starts.
Muammar Gaddafi and the Disposal Problem
In 2011, the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization destroyed the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. They had wanted to do it for a long time. A true cosmopolitan, Gaddafi had provided lawyers, guns, and money to black nationalists in South Africa, Palestinian Nationalists in Tunisia, Irish Nationalists in the British Isles, White Nationalists in Canada, and Armenian Nationalists in Turkey. The one ideology for which the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution had no patience or tolerance was radical Islamic Salafi jihadism. In March 1998, Libya was the first country to issue an Interpol arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. The warrant received no attention or action. Five months later, Al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224.
In September 2001, President George W. Bush told Congress that “every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Gaddafi took the US up on the offer, dismantling its weapons of mass destruction program under the United Nations’ supervision. It paid over $1 billion in reparations to victims of terrorism to get removed from the State Sponsor of Terror list. In 2008, future US Ambassador to Libya (and Benghazi embassy casualty) J. Christopher Stephens reported that “Libya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent.”
Gaddafi had been highly suspicious of the citizens who chose to join the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan and surveilled them extensively, dutifully reporting them to other intelligence agencies whenever possible. In one particularly obscene case, a Guantanamo detainee named Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu was on the ground leading the Salafi jihadist group “Supporters of Sharia.” While hundreds are held in Guantanamo, being tortured without trial, the US knowingly released what it deemed a “probable member of al-Qaeda and a member of the African Extremist Network” to tear things up in Libya for them. A United Kingdom Parliamentary retrospective on the Libya overthrow later admitted, “The possibility that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion should not have been the preserve of hindsight. Libyan connections with transnational militant extremist groups were known before 2011, because many Libyans had participated in the Iraq insurgency and in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda.”
Gaddafi made a series of dire warnings of what would happen if he died:....
....MUCH MORE
We've been rattling on about Libya since the West decided "Arab Spring"was the thing to do.
The only organic/grassroots movement was in Tunisia where the man () burned himself to death. All the rest, Egypt, Syria, Libya were ginned up by the western spy guys and gals and higher up the totem pole. Gadaffi was killed in 2011, some of our posts since then:
September 2023"Humanitarian Imperialism Created the Libyan Nightmare"
As noted in the introduction to a 2020* post:
Libya: 3000 Camels Evacuated From Tripoli
October 2023
"A seemingly endless herd..."
I blame David Cameron.
Also assorted Americans.
Maybe a resident of the Élysée, or two.
The events of 2011, across the MENA from Libya to Syria, have yet to play out.
And the history of the U.S. and UK meddling has yet to be written.
I don't think "We came, we saw, he died" is going to be the final word.
Libya: What Clinton/Obama Brought Forth (also David Cameron)
The writer is a retired Indian diplomat, of which there are many, but I don't think he was ever the head of mission at any of the consulates or embassies. We've visited him a couple times....
"We came, we saw, he died."
—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on that time the British SAS-advised NTC rebels caught Gaddafi and sodomized him with a bayonet and Leading from Behind jokes made the rounds in D.C.
May 2020Or:
"Turkey warns Libya's Haftar of military escalation"
What the hell is Turkey doing in Libya?
I seem to recall something about "We came, We saw, He died"
And a U.S. Predator drone hitting Gaddafi's escaping convoy and then the French Air Force came screaming in.
And then the British SAS-advised NTC rebels caught Gaddafi and sodomized him with a bayonet and Leading from Behind jokes made the rounds in D.C. and David Cameron joined the Council on Foreign Relations and tried to raise a $1 billion UK-China fund but proved he's no Tony Blair in the money game but
What the hell is Turkey doing in Libya?
January 2018
Mr. Obama, Mr. Cameron, About that Libya ThingMarch 2016
January 2016
"Libya Threatens to Open Migrant Floodgates Into Europe"
US-Russian Marines Set Up Bridgehead in Eastern Libya for Campaign Against ISIS
Following up on yesterday's "Tony Blair Calls For Ground Troops Pretty Much the Across Middle East"....August 2013
I Don't Think U.S. Middle East/North African Policy is Working So Well: "Libya on the Brink of Chaos"
Either the U.S. backing of the "Arab Spring" was a deliberate attempt to set the MENA on fire or we are governed by idiots....
The October 2023 post ends on this note:
That doesn't seem like a good thing. At all.
