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What Are We Doing in Libya?

By Doug Bandow on 6.28.11 @ 1:52PM

My friend Ulf Gartzke reminds us how Western governments tend to routinely repeat false claims of atrocities in order to give their military campaigns a moral gloss. So it is in Libya.

Writes Gartzke:

While Western governments and the international media have seized the ICC indictment as a much-needed show of moral support for NATO's controversial / fledgling military campaign, two of the world's leading human rights organization - Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - have just announced that their independent, on-the-ground investigations found no credible evidence for the claim that Col. Qaddafi's forces have used mass rape as a weapon of war. The NGO investigation did reveal that the rebels in Benghazi have repeatedly and knowingly made false claims or manufactured evidence - essentially to bolster their PR case against Col. Qaddafi.

According to Donatella Rovera, the Arabic-speaking senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising, "we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape, or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped". She stresses this does not prove that mass rape did not occur, but there is no evidence to show that it did. Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women's rights at Human Rights Watch, which also investigated the charge of mass rape, said: "We have not been able to find evidence."

No one thinks Moammar Qaddafi is a good guy. But not all of the opposition are good guys either. And there's no guarantee that the people most likely to win a power struggle if Qaddafi is ousted will be good guys either.

Barack Obama's splendid little adventure in North Africa never made any sense. More than three months on, it has proved to be a monumentally foolish waste of money. If the French and British want to carry on, let them: the U.S. should say Enough!

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Josh| 6.28.11 @ 2:11PM

What are we doing in Libya?

1. Needlessly risking the lives our our military personnel
2. Wasting money
3. Wasting time
4. Supporting a Libyan opposition which we can't define

Oldefarte| 6.28.11 @ 2:22PM

Doug, great thoughts! Perhaps the MSM have possibly been reading a previous documented book [think the author was a woman named MILLER] about the history of rape, which detailed rape as a usual brainwashing/intimidation war tactic of various warring armies against their enemy's civilian women. As to the purpose of our misadventure into Libya, it is typical of this president's unknown agenda that amazingly began after his election in 2008. Why are these Arab countries' civilians NOW all of a sudden rising up in revolt against their dictatorial oppressive leaders/governments? Why is he/our government involved in some of these conflicts, but not others [Egypt-yes, Libya-yes, Iran-no, Syria-no]? What is the purpose of this pick-and-choose foreign policy in the middle east????????

jppc| 6.28.11 @ 3:38PM

Fighting "extremists" but allowing Moooooslims to immigrate to our country in higher and higher numbers. Enjoy that mosque going up in your neighborhood! Praise be to Allah!

Purple Lips| 6.28.11 @ 3:57PM

Why are We in Lybia?

I don't think that even the President could answer that. My thinking is that some Progressives inside the West Wing thought it would be swell for the US to follow some foreign multi-lateral organization like NATO or the UN. It would knock the US down a few notches, and show how we really are not that important anymore. However, these same Progressives never really thought the whole thing out. NATO is a joke (and it is on us). The Euros are not really behind it politically, and once Progressives get thier perfect war (think McNamara), they can just add it to the list of other agenda items and forget it. It just becomes another long Power Point presentation for some politically connected bureaucrat. Before you know it, the two week op has become a 2 decade op. And like the Mohair Sheep Farms, and the Dept of Free False Teeth for Transgendered Eskimos you can never shut it down. We will be in Lybia long after the good Colonel has good to rest with his 72 virgins.

James Padgett| 6.28.11 @ 5:10PM

It is sad to note that most of the US public is so complacent to check into things that our country is doing. Makes me understand how Hitler was able to exterminate 6 million Jews in Germany. As a country, most seem to only live for ease and pleasure. We are crminally destroying a country, but most have not inquired enough to see this. Shame on the US.

audace| 6.29.11 @ 8:09AM

Mr. Padgett, I believe that we can lay a great deal of blame for the nation's wayward military actions directly at the feet of the military personnel themselves.

Who better to speak about it?

I refer to military personnel both present and past (recent past, as in recently separated from the military or recently retired).

We now have a wealth of military personnel who have done several tours in that part of the world. We have people who have spent half of the last 8 years in Iraq.

I should think they would have very informative input to offer us.

When is the last time you have read an Army major's comments about a town he's seen three times in 6 years in Iraq, reading this major's well constructed account of what 1) has changed, 2) what has not changed, 3) what are the holdups to progress, 4) his prognosis for the future.

Have you heard a voice crying out from Tampa, Florida's CENTCOM -- a more senior, experienced voice -- saying, "Enough! Let's stop the madness already. We're not making any meaningful, tangible, lasting headway in _________ because of A.,B.,C.,D., and E. Take it from me, I've now been there countless times in this last decade....."

Have you heard that military voice?

I could say more here....but even they don't engage in thorough introspection. It seems that too many just grind through the deployments very unthinkingly.

They act like their cycles of military life/deployments are just pure fate and they have no input.

Or is this the real problem: Are they glad for the non stop missions, the never-ending busyness, and deployments because it greatly accelerates promotions, honors, more pay, better resume, better stature for later ventures in life?

Andrew Branca| 6.28.11 @ 8:04PM

I wonder what the pre-WWII Germans thought when Hitler invaded Poland.

"Oh, gosh, we're not really sure why he did it, it's not like Poland was about to attack Germany, but he says he has a good reason, and he is our leader, so we'll support him!" :-)

Libyan| 6.28.11 @ 9:37PM

It's remarkable how many Qaddafi apologists are out there. You site the fact that there is no proof that rape was used as a weapon. That is fine but the actions taken were to protect Libyan civilians who were being attacked by tanks and artillery by a brutal dictator. Unfortunately amnesty international or any other Human rights group habnot been able to conduct an investigation of the obliteration of el zawia. The people of the city held off a siege and attack of their city for weeks while the UN dithered. Eventually the city was overrun by Qaddafi and as he promissed his men went door to door hunting for "rats". This revolt started as peaceful demonstration demanding to know the where abouts of a libyan lawyer representing the families of 1200 prisoners who were executed at abu salim prison in 1996. Qaddafi decided to use force to crush the demonstration. Libyans have been oppressed by Qaddafi for 42 years. Disappearances, televised hangings of university students, torture, assasinatio s of disidents abroad... Not to mention abu nidal, pan am, Berlin disco bombing....I am amazed how many Americans actually hate their country or Obama so much that they would actually put forth a rational defense of Qaddafi!

audace| 6.29.11 @ 8:29AM

Libyan, no one is defending Qaddafi. I mean: NO ONE! He is a serpent who long ago should have met with a horrid death. Ditto for his sons.

Our concern is that we can militarily very easily tip the scales to oust Qaddafi. Frankly, at the moment, we're not even trying. Our concern: Who takes over in the aftermath? What kinds of people groups will move in?

It is not like we can have the slightest assurances that another younger (do you want another 42 years of oppression?) "Qaddafi-Lite" won't be the "new" next best "thing" in Libya.

Think Iraq for a moment: We've sacrificed an awful lot to offer 17 million Iraqis a better future. We've laid that opportunity on their doorstep. But what we know in our hearts: The cesspool of infighting, viscous civil war, sectarian violence, hatred, unrest, instability, economic incompetence, full-scale corruption (all now going on under the surface) will full resurface the moment the US military is no longer there to prop up a corrupt and craven Baghdad government.

There is no stable, liberty-minded, free market, trustworthy nation in North Africa or the Middle East. None. They are not the places I'd move my business. They are not the places I'd let my children visit alone. They are certainly not where I would ever freely choose to live.

It saddens me to write that; this should not be. Nations on the Mediterranean Rim are the cradle of all mankind.

One also has to ask: If Qadaffi is so bad (and he is), why cannot the people of Libya remove him themselves? What, you cannot collectively shame his henchmen into abandoning the evil dictator? And, if it is worth the effort, why get weak-in-the-knees and brittle about having to die for a better Libya in the effort to remove Qaddafi?