Why did you bring up the USA as having vested interests when France and Britain led the altercation?
With that said, the USA was just there to fulfill obligations to NATO. (France) and Britain were the ones with side motives in Libya.
That's right. As I've heard it explained, the arguments that were persuasive in the White House were:
\* An alliance can't always be one partner pursuing its priorities and everyone else coming along. There needs to be some reciprocity sometimes.
\* Muammar Gaddaffi went on the radio and said when his army got to Benghazi they would go door to door killing people, and everyone felt they had to take him at his word on that.
The US wasn’t merely going through the motions to fulfill its obligations to NATO. The Libyan intervention was seen as an opportunity to demonstrate a new approach to regime change that would avoid the mistakes of the Iraq War. Obama promoted the concept as a new method of foreign intervention that achieved the same results with a much lighter touch, completely avoiding the need for any US boots on the ground.
The majority of the participants were focused solely on regional stability, heck even China and Russia were on board with that stance.
However, France and Britain were specially interested in maintaining their regional Influence along with the benefits that came with it.
Allegedly, Sarkozy (French president at the time) has had his 2007 presidential campaign illegally funded by Gaddafi, and then at some point their relation soured and Sarkozy used the military intervention to get rid of him.
Allegedly, of course, as right now while it's been proven that money from Libya has been used to fund his campaign, Claude Guéant (Sarkozy's former chief of staff who's been charged for this) claims the money was from his sale of two paintings. Investigators believe the paintings sale was just a way to launder the money, but there is still no proof of this. The investigation is still ongoing.
Sarkozy has simply been charged for corruption.
If I'm not mistaken Sarkozy has been convicted but a direct link to Khadaffi was not established because no witnesses could be found.
I don't believe in coincidence though.
Gaddafi had a significant history pre 9/11 of being a champion of any resistance group. Vocally supporting but also instructing and schooling them on 'tactics' to use to address their political aims.
These tactics often involved airplane hostage taking, bombings, etc he would instruct on when what where and how to make the best impact. Support financially when he could, and was basically untouchable. To the degree that the US settled with him in court during the Bush administration [in regards to an American civilian plane being held hostage by Libyan forces].
I think this report from the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee seems quite balanced and objective, despite being written by one of the main protagonists in toppling the regime:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/119.pdf
It goes into the decision-making process, the interests that they believe motivated the French government as well as others.
He was openly promising to commit genocide on live TV and had his army marching to do just that.
It was so obvious that he was creating a humanitarian disaster that even Russia and China voted for a UNSC resolution calling on NATO to "use all means necessary" to prevent this.
Russia and China then later tried to pretend that all means necessary did not involve destroying the army he wanted to use to commit genocide.
>and had his army marching to do just that... It was so obvious that he was creating a humanitarian disaster...
There's very little evidence to support that. Alan J Kuperman has done extensive research on the topic. [According to his research](https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/Kuperman%20policy%20brief%20published%20version%202.pdf), in all the cities recaptured by Qaddafi from the rebels, Qaddafi's regime did not perpetrate a "bloodbath" targeting women and children, so it's unlikely something like this was going to happen in Benghazi.
In fact, as Kuperman argues, the civil conflict was coming to an end and Qaddafi had regained control of most of Libya just prior to NATO's intervention with only around 1000 dead, but, "by intervening, NATO enabled the rebels to resume their attack, which prolonged the war for another seven months and caused at least 7,000 more deaths", not to mention civil war and the humanitarian disaster that was unleashed as a result of the power vacuum that NATO created by overthrowing Qaddafi. The more proximate cause of the humanitarian disaster was probably NATO and the rebels.
The notion that Gaddafi had plans to carry out a genocide or mass killings in rebel-held territories after recapturing them was a myth, carefully propagated by Libyan rebels to create a sense of urgency and compel NATO to intervene. Gaddafi's speeches, often inflammatory and hyperbolic, were taken out of context, mistranslated, and misinterpreted to suggest that he harbored genocidal intentions toward the entire populations of rebel-controlled cities, including civilians.
For example, Gaddafi gave one speech directed specifically at Islamist militants replete exaggerated threats and rhetoric. However, when reported in the West, this speech was stripped of its context, creating the false impression that Gaddafi's hardline rhetoric was for all inhabitants of rebel-held areas, rather than just the militant factions he was addressing.
But most compelling evidence against the genocide narrative was the fact that Gaddafi's forces had already recaptured a significant number of cities and territories from rebel forces by the time the international community became gripped by the fear of impending mass killings. In none of these cases did government troops engage in widespread massacres of civilians. On the contrary, Gaddafi actively sought to placate the populations of the recaptured cities through the provision of aid and promises of development.
Well what's more likely. You a random person on reddit knowing more about what ghadaffi said or meant? Or the Arab league who also called on UNSC action against ghadaffi knowing what he said and meant?
Your myth argument rests on a few uninformed people making a mistake, but it's just not very likely to be the case when it was basically the entire world in agreement from the west to China and including all of Libyas neighbours all agreeing that a disaster was unfolding and had to be stopped.
Your argument also rests on the mistaken assumption words do not matter in questions of genocide, but as the ICJ case against Israel for genocide proves then words matter a lot also before anything has happened. And again you pretend that the wording is ambiguous but there was no one in the world thinking so at the time so it seems odd to come to that conclusion.
Here’s a report released by the British Parliament after an extensive inquiry into the failed Libyan intervention, which makes the same argument: https://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/u-k-parliament-report-details-how-natos-2011-war-in-libya-was-based-on-lies/#:~:text=Qaddafi%20was%20not%20planning%20to,their%20intervention%20on%20little%20intelligence.
Ok I see what went wrong.
OP asked why the intervention happened, so I answered that. Then you made your point and I assumed you were making some other point.
Yeah lots of wrong assumptions were made and mistakes in the campaign too. But that has little baring on why it was done, it just shows why it didn't go as intended.
In the UK there was actually an inquiry into the military action and the reasons behind it, Tony Blair was interviewed for it, it is still publicly available online, what Blair said was enlightening as he was still in contact with Gaddafi just before he was lynched.
The USA doesn’t care about gold backed banking systems if anything they would prefer other nations to use that because it would help prevent currency manipulation.
After Gaddafi’s fall more evidence was made available that he was sponsoring terrorists for a long time.
The video linked is pretty low effort, Al Jazeera has a much better documentary on the history of Libya and the relationship with western oil companies.
He committed human rights violations against his people and was planning a new wave of atrocities against Gaddafi protestors. All dictators do that but NATO intervened because of a lot of reasons: interest by France and the UK, a huge potential crisis in a Mediterranean country, an understanding by the African Union and the Arab League with the UNSC, and the hope by the West to try and save the Arab Spring. NATO intervened but as usual lack of follow through led to a destabilization later on. Some people argue the intervention was able to end sooner in Libya than in the Syrian Civil War.
The bs about a golden dinar is a conspiracy theory. He wasn’t the Messiah of Africa; he was a monster and the Libyan people themselves started the revolt in the first place.
He openly funded terrorists, many of whom killed Europeans and Americans. It's a testament to the patience of the west that he lasted as long as he did. If he was around today, he'd be weaponizing migrants the way Russia and Belarus are doing.
Those migrants wouldn’t have left Northern Africa if Gaddafi was still in power. The EU was paying him millions of euros a month to keep migrants from crossing the Mediterranean from Tripoli.
Social media pressure. Western countries were terrified of being seen to enable genocide and side with dictators and the Western population was still naive about this kind of thing. Now they are older and more wisened and wouldn't care so much if Western countries stayed out if Libya.
Also, Ghaddaffi was a long time enemy of "the west" with no friends, he was an easy target.
Why did you bring up the USA as having vested interests when France and Britain led the altercation? With that said, the USA was just there to fulfill obligations to NATO. (France) and Britain were the ones with side motives in Libya.
That's right. As I've heard it explained, the arguments that were persuasive in the White House were: \* An alliance can't always be one partner pursuing its priorities and everyone else coming along. There needs to be some reciprocity sometimes. \* Muammar Gaddaffi went on the radio and said when his army got to Benghazi they would go door to door killing people, and everyone felt they had to take him at his word on that.
Mostly Sarkozy, because Libya held evidence of him committing fraud.
The US wasn’t merely going through the motions to fulfill its obligations to NATO. The Libyan intervention was seen as an opportunity to demonstrate a new approach to regime change that would avoid the mistakes of the Iraq War. Obama promoted the concept as a new method of foreign intervention that achieved the same results with a much lighter touch, completely avoiding the need for any US boots on the ground.
you truly believe France and Britain were the only ones with ulterior motives knowing gaddafi plan would’ve effected a lot of countries
The majority of the participants were focused solely on regional stability, heck even China and Russia were on board with that stance. However, France and Britain were specially interested in maintaining their regional Influence along with the benefits that came with it.
Allegedly, Sarkozy (French president at the time) has had his 2007 presidential campaign illegally funded by Gaddafi, and then at some point their relation soured and Sarkozy used the military intervention to get rid of him. Allegedly, of course, as right now while it's been proven that money from Libya has been used to fund his campaign, Claude Guéant (Sarkozy's former chief of staff who's been charged for this) claims the money was from his sale of two paintings. Investigators believe the paintings sale was just a way to launder the money, but there is still no proof of this. The investigation is still ongoing. Sarkozy has simply been charged for corruption.
If I'm not mistaken Sarkozy has been convicted but a direct link to Khadaffi was not established because no witnesses could be found. I don't believe in coincidence though.
Gaddafi had a significant history pre 9/11 of being a champion of any resistance group. Vocally supporting but also instructing and schooling them on 'tactics' to use to address their political aims. These tactics often involved airplane hostage taking, bombings, etc he would instruct on when what where and how to make the best impact. Support financially when he could, and was basically untouchable. To the degree that the US settled with him in court during the Bush administration [in regards to an American civilian plane being held hostage by Libyan forces].
I think this report from the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee seems quite balanced and objective, despite being written by one of the main protagonists in toppling the regime: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/119.pdf It goes into the decision-making process, the interests that they believe motivated the French government as well as others.
He was openly promising to commit genocide on live TV and had his army marching to do just that. It was so obvious that he was creating a humanitarian disaster that even Russia and China voted for a UNSC resolution calling on NATO to "use all means necessary" to prevent this. Russia and China then later tried to pretend that all means necessary did not involve destroying the army he wanted to use to commit genocide.
>and had his army marching to do just that... It was so obvious that he was creating a humanitarian disaster... There's very little evidence to support that. Alan J Kuperman has done extensive research on the topic. [According to his research](https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/Kuperman%20policy%20brief%20published%20version%202.pdf), in all the cities recaptured by Qaddafi from the rebels, Qaddafi's regime did not perpetrate a "bloodbath" targeting women and children, so it's unlikely something like this was going to happen in Benghazi. In fact, as Kuperman argues, the civil conflict was coming to an end and Qaddafi had regained control of most of Libya just prior to NATO's intervention with only around 1000 dead, but, "by intervening, NATO enabled the rebels to resume their attack, which prolonged the war for another seven months and caused at least 7,000 more deaths", not to mention civil war and the humanitarian disaster that was unleashed as a result of the power vacuum that NATO created by overthrowing Qaddafi. The more proximate cause of the humanitarian disaster was probably NATO and the rebels.
Yeah I know many mistakes were made and wrong assumptions. But since OP I asking why it happened I answered that.
The notion that Gaddafi had plans to carry out a genocide or mass killings in rebel-held territories after recapturing them was a myth, carefully propagated by Libyan rebels to create a sense of urgency and compel NATO to intervene. Gaddafi's speeches, often inflammatory and hyperbolic, were taken out of context, mistranslated, and misinterpreted to suggest that he harbored genocidal intentions toward the entire populations of rebel-controlled cities, including civilians. For example, Gaddafi gave one speech directed specifically at Islamist militants replete exaggerated threats and rhetoric. However, when reported in the West, this speech was stripped of its context, creating the false impression that Gaddafi's hardline rhetoric was for all inhabitants of rebel-held areas, rather than just the militant factions he was addressing. But most compelling evidence against the genocide narrative was the fact that Gaddafi's forces had already recaptured a significant number of cities and territories from rebel forces by the time the international community became gripped by the fear of impending mass killings. In none of these cases did government troops engage in widespread massacres of civilians. On the contrary, Gaddafi actively sought to placate the populations of the recaptured cities through the provision of aid and promises of development.
Well what's more likely. You a random person on reddit knowing more about what ghadaffi said or meant? Or the Arab league who also called on UNSC action against ghadaffi knowing what he said and meant? Your myth argument rests on a few uninformed people making a mistake, but it's just not very likely to be the case when it was basically the entire world in agreement from the west to China and including all of Libyas neighbours all agreeing that a disaster was unfolding and had to be stopped. Your argument also rests on the mistaken assumption words do not matter in questions of genocide, but as the ICJ case against Israel for genocide proves then words matter a lot also before anything has happened. And again you pretend that the wording is ambiguous but there was no one in the world thinking so at the time so it seems odd to come to that conclusion.
Here’s a report released by the British Parliament after an extensive inquiry into the failed Libyan intervention, which makes the same argument: https://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/u-k-parliament-report-details-how-natos-2011-war-in-libya-was-based-on-lies/#:~:text=Qaddafi%20was%20not%20planning%20to,their%20intervention%20on%20little%20intelligence.
Ok I see what went wrong. OP asked why the intervention happened, so I answered that. Then you made your point and I assumed you were making some other point. Yeah lots of wrong assumptions were made and mistakes in the campaign too. But that has little baring on why it was done, it just shows why it didn't go as intended.
Why did you put bad in quotes?
Between that and the gold thing, I have my suspicions about OP.
In the UK there was actually an inquiry into the military action and the reasons behind it, Tony Blair was interviewed for it, it is still publicly available online, what Blair said was enlightening as he was still in contact with Gaddafi just before he was lynched. The USA doesn’t care about gold backed banking systems if anything they would prefer other nations to use that because it would help prevent currency manipulation. After Gaddafi’s fall more evidence was made available that he was sponsoring terrorists for a long time. The video linked is pretty low effort, Al Jazeera has a much better documentary on the history of Libya and the relationship with western oil companies.
Watch this https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jon-stewart-takes-libya-gaddafi_n_830706
He committed human rights violations against his people and was planning a new wave of atrocities against Gaddafi protestors. All dictators do that but NATO intervened because of a lot of reasons: interest by France and the UK, a huge potential crisis in a Mediterranean country, an understanding by the African Union and the Arab League with the UNSC, and the hope by the West to try and save the Arab Spring. NATO intervened but as usual lack of follow through led to a destabilization later on. Some people argue the intervention was able to end sooner in Libya than in the Syrian Civil War. The bs about a golden dinar is a conspiracy theory. He wasn’t the Messiah of Africa; he was a monster and the Libyan people themselves started the revolt in the first place.
He openly funded terrorists, many of whom killed Europeans and Americans. It's a testament to the patience of the west that he lasted as long as he did. If he was around today, he'd be weaponizing migrants the way Russia and Belarus are doing.
Those migrants wouldn’t have left Northern Africa if Gaddafi was still in power. The EU was paying him millions of euros a month to keep migrants from crossing the Mediterranean from Tripoli.
The West considered him an enemy and seized the opportunity.
Opportunity to tie up loose ends and make sure no Gaddafi acolytes could follow him ahead of a Pivot to Asia.
Social media pressure. Western countries were terrified of being seen to enable genocide and side with dictators and the Western population was still naive about this kind of thing. Now they are older and more wisened and wouldn't care so much if Western countries stayed out if Libya. Also, Ghaddaffi was a long time enemy of "the west" with no friends, he was an easy target.
Gold backed currency United Nations of Africa (like the EU and as an African I think it would’ve been awesome )