I enjoyed reading your post, and I share your opinion that this has been a disaster for the peolple of Libya. I have more of a State Dept. centered view based on conversations with friends, and as always in the places America finds itself involved in during the past 20 years, there seemed to be a shortage of well versed and embedded diplomatic or military personnel with long standing social or cultural connections to any of the the parties involved. I'm curious to know what specific actions you as the President would have committed US forces to engaging in, and for how long? What would have been your benchmark for a successful and completed mission permitting the withdrawal of US forces? I'm not sure the American people would have tolerated a Democratic President committing forces to the region, and President Obama had already depleted much of his goodwill with the Affordable Care Act, and no matter what the bipartisan support in the Senate looked like for some proactive foreign policy in Libya, Obama had suffered a devastating midterm swing of 60+ seats in the HOR. There was no way that House would have supported the President even if he was taking on actual Satan. I also think that after the Sept 11, 2012 attack, and the entirely political responses to that event (the State Dept. had been asking for funds to harden sites for years), any change of US involvement in Libya became such a political porcupine that there would have been no way President Obama was going to commit to US military forces being there. One man's opinion, and as I said, I'd be curious to know what the views of others who read and follow you are. With gratitude.
For some context regarding the missing uranium. Natural uranium is only composed of 0.07% of the fissile isotope U235. Even if we assumed the missing material was >99% uranium oxide, and assuming perfect enrichment, and zero material loss you get a theoretical maximum of 35 lbs. of U235, or ~39 lbs. of 90% enriched. It might be BS, but the Wikipedia entry for the Little Boy device stated 141 lbs. of the enriched uranium was used.
I recall a very lengthy NYTs article on Hillary Clinton's extensive prep for what the U.S. policy on Libya should be. She did all this extensive research and consultation... hmm... Something to be said about having some time in country living amongst the natives to help ground truth what is likely to follow one's expert handiwork. Not like we need to re-learn this lesson for the upteenth time.
A friend of mine in the IC with knowledge of corrupt money flows told me that one of the first buildings bombed by the French Air Force in March 2011 was the Libyan anti-corruption agency.
My friend described it as "the place where they kept track of all the bribes." It wasn't a military target, yet they pounded it right away. Apocryphal, but . . .
The other possibly connected scandal is Sarkozy's alleged support for Qatar's World Cup bid in the December 2010 FIFA vote for the 2022 World Cup
It's tough to get details, but it seems that Qatari Special Forces were in Libya very early on, helping the anti-Qaddafi militias in Benghazi - maybe these militias were some of the same ones who later attacked the US "Consulate" / CIA outpost in 2012.
I suspect the time line went like this: sometime before, the decision was made to get rid of Qaddafi, perhaps by Sarkozy and the Qataris. the Qataris were on the ground before March 2011, they advised, assisted, armed and organized the rebels in Benghazi. The counterattack by the Libyan state to Benghazi was framed as "attempting genocide" in western media, along with other war propaganda like "sub-Saharan mercenary rape gangs are being given Viagra by Qaddafi."
I went to Benghazi and Tripoli in 2014, a short consultancy for a EuropeAid program. A few weeks before I went, the chief of the program was briefly kidnapped and then released after a couple of days.
The program was to assist black Libyans who had been displaced, basically ethnically cleansed from their hometown of Tawergha and were living in displaced persons camps, among them at the Libyan Naval Academy in Tripoli.
These black Libyans had lived in Libya for generations, were the descendants of cross-Saharan traders. Qaddafi, who styled himself a pan-African king, patronized them and built modern housing in Tawergha for the community. In general, I found Benghazi and Tripoli to be intermediately well-developed but boring. Lots of cast-concrete housing.
When things kicked off, the Tawerghans fought for their patron Qadaffi against the Benghazi and Misrata militias supported by the Qataris and the West. There was strong evidence of the massacre of prisoners from Tawergha. Tawergha itself was burned, the survivors dispersed to camps.
Even though I spent a lot of time in Iraq, the Libya trip was especially scary. We had no armed security. The militias, Islamist and otherwise, controlled everything, including the airports. I saw the black-and-white ISIS/al Qaeda flag flying from a rooftop in Benghazi, and we rerouted based on news about checkpoints run by militias. For those of you who complain about TSA, it was a paradise, there was no security getting on planes. My boss saw a guy with a pistol get on the flight to Cairo, and complained to the crew, who persuaded him to leave the plane by saying they would never take off with him and the gun onboard.
Leptis Magna was great though, maybe the best Roman site in the world.
The question is whether the US were just dupes to the French and the British. Certainly you had a lot of the R2P "preventing genocide" talk but hard to imagine they believed that. Hillary wanted a scalp to burnish her Iron Lady credentials for 2016. And the story of Benghazi and the removal of Libyan weapons stocks for Syrian rebels is still obscured.
One aspect of the failure of Benghazi abandonment is I've never heard of the location of 6th Fleet's Amphibious Ready Group (ARG). The USMC V-22 aboard the ARG has the range and speed to put Marines on scene within 2 hours from any point in the Mediterranean Sea.
I enjoyed reading your post, and I share your opinion that this has been a disaster for the peolple of Libya. I have more of a State Dept. centered view based on conversations with friends, and as always in the places America finds itself involved in during the past 20 years, there seemed to be a shortage of well versed and embedded diplomatic or military personnel with long standing social or cultural connections to any of the the parties involved. I'm curious to know what specific actions you as the President would have committed US forces to engaging in, and for how long? What would have been your benchmark for a successful and completed mission permitting the withdrawal of US forces? I'm not sure the American people would have tolerated a Democratic President committing forces to the region, and President Obama had already depleted much of his goodwill with the Affordable Care Act, and no matter what the bipartisan support in the Senate looked like for some proactive foreign policy in Libya, Obama had suffered a devastating midterm swing of 60+ seats in the HOR. There was no way that House would have supported the President even if he was taking on actual Satan. I also think that after the Sept 11, 2012 attack, and the entirely political responses to that event (the State Dept. had been asking for funds to harden sites for years), any change of US involvement in Libya became such a political porcupine that there would have been no way President Obama was going to commit to US military forces being there. One man's opinion, and as I said, I'd be curious to know what the views of others who read and follow you are. With gratitude.
For some context regarding the missing uranium. Natural uranium is only composed of 0.07% of the fissile isotope U235. Even if we assumed the missing material was >99% uranium oxide, and assuming perfect enrichment, and zero material loss you get a theoretical maximum of 35 lbs. of U235, or ~39 lbs. of 90% enriched. It might be BS, but the Wikipedia entry for the Little Boy device stated 141 lbs. of the enriched uranium was used.
Not great, but not terrible.
I recall a very lengthy NYTs article on Hillary Clinton's extensive prep for what the U.S. policy on Libya should be. She did all this extensive research and consultation... hmm... Something to be said about having some time in country living amongst the natives to help ground truth what is likely to follow one's expert handiwork. Not like we need to re-learn this lesson for the upteenth time.
Isn’t the Ivy League wonderful? /sarc off
I served in NATO during that period and was directly involved in OUP. It made me feel dirty and fueled retirement decision.
Good piece, glad to see some attention to this crime.
The whole operation might have proceeded from the venal motives of Nicolas Sarkozy, who since then has been charged with receiving €50 million in illegal and off-the-books "campaign contributions" in 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_Libyan_financing_in_the_2007_French_presidential_election
The case has been dragging on since 2018 https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/dossier/l-argent-libyen-de-sarkozy
A friend of mine in the IC with knowledge of corrupt money flows told me that one of the first buildings bombed by the French Air Force in March 2011 was the Libyan anti-corruption agency.
My friend described it as "the place where they kept track of all the bribes." It wasn't a military target, yet they pounded it right away. Apocryphal, but . . .
The other possibly connected scandal is Sarkozy's alleged support for Qatar's World Cup bid in the December 2010 FIFA vote for the 2022 World Cup
https://qz.com/world-cup-final-qatar-ties-france-1849904532 Maybe Sarkozy wanted a new patron, and the strange Qatari goals of supporting Islamist uprisings and Sarkozy's wish to erase Qaddafi coincided.
It's tough to get details, but it seems that Qatari Special Forces were in Libya very early on, helping the anti-Qaddafi militias in Benghazi - maybe these militias were some of the same ones who later attacked the US "Consulate" / CIA outpost in 2012.
I suspect the time line went like this: sometime before, the decision was made to get rid of Qaddafi, perhaps by Sarkozy and the Qataris. the Qataris were on the ground before March 2011, they advised, assisted, armed and organized the rebels in Benghazi. The counterattack by the Libyan state to Benghazi was framed as "attempting genocide" in western media, along with other war propaganda like "sub-Saharan mercenary rape gangs are being given Viagra by Qaddafi."
I went to Benghazi and Tripoli in 2014, a short consultancy for a EuropeAid program. A few weeks before I went, the chief of the program was briefly kidnapped and then released after a couple of days.
The program was to assist black Libyans who had been displaced, basically ethnically cleansed from their hometown of Tawergha and were living in displaced persons camps, among them at the Libyan Naval Academy in Tripoli.
These black Libyans had lived in Libya for generations, were the descendants of cross-Saharan traders. Qaddafi, who styled himself a pan-African king, patronized them and built modern housing in Tawergha for the community. In general, I found Benghazi and Tripoli to be intermediately well-developed but boring. Lots of cast-concrete housing.
When things kicked off, the Tawerghans fought for their patron Qadaffi against the Benghazi and Misrata militias supported by the Qataris and the West. There was strong evidence of the massacre of prisoners from Tawergha. Tawergha itself was burned, the survivors dispersed to camps.
Even though I spent a lot of time in Iraq, the Libya trip was especially scary. We had no armed security. The militias, Islamist and otherwise, controlled everything, including the airports. I saw the black-and-white ISIS/al Qaeda flag flying from a rooftop in Benghazi, and we rerouted based on news about checkpoints run by militias. For those of you who complain about TSA, it was a paradise, there was no security getting on planes. My boss saw a guy with a pistol get on the flight to Cairo, and complained to the crew, who persuaded him to leave the plane by saying they would never take off with him and the gun onboard.
Leptis Magna was great though, maybe the best Roman site in the world.
The question is whether the US were just dupes to the French and the British. Certainly you had a lot of the R2P "preventing genocide" talk but hard to imagine they believed that. Hillary wanted a scalp to burnish her Iron Lady credentials for 2016. And the story of Benghazi and the removal of Libyan weapons stocks for Syrian rebels is still obscured.
One aspect of the failure of Benghazi abandonment is I've never heard of the location of 6th Fleet's Amphibious Ready Group (ARG). The USMC V-22 aboard the ARG has the range and speed to put Marines on scene within 2 hours from any point in the Mediterranean Sea.