Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism by Scott Horton

Author:Scott Horton [Main]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: political science, Terrorism, World, Middle Eastern, Public Policy, Military Policy
ISBN: 9781733647342
Google: vhIYEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: The Libertarian Institute
Published: 2021-01-16T23:33:31.510928+00:00

Chapter Eight: Libya

“We had a war in Libya?”

—Apocryphal

“Senator McCain assured Muatassim [Gaddafi] that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for security. He stated that he understood Libya’s requests regarding the rehabilitation of its eight C130s and pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress.”

—U.S. State Department Cable, 2009

“Gaddafi must go.”

—John McCain, 2011

A Deal with The Devil

Col. Moammar Gaddafi, dictator of Libya, was expendable. The U.S. relationship with Gaddafi was only eight years old. He had been brought back into America’s good graces in 2003 when President Bush needed a publicity stunt to try to make it seem as though Iraq War II had accomplished something. The administration adopted the narrative that the attack on Iraq had frightened the international outlaw into compliance. In fact, as former senator Gary Hart has written, Gaddafi had been begging to come in from the cold since 1996. All he had done differently this time was buy some old first-generation centrifuge parts from A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani black-market nuclear equipment supplier, to have a bargaining chip to trade away. In reality, Libya had no nuclear weapons program or expertise to create one. It was mostly old junk still in its crates. He had only bought the equipment to give the American president a victory and make a friend out of a former enemy. Luckily, Bush needed a win, so he took the opportunity to make peace.

But the Bush administration made not just friends, but allies out of Gaddafi, helping him and using his help to fight against al Qaeda. The Wall Street Journal called it a “tight working relationship.” For example, when the CIA and Egyptian secret police were finished torturing Sheikh Ibin al-Libi into inventing fake connections between Iraq and al Qaeda and needed him to be disposed of, they rendered him home to Libya where he promptly “committed suicide” in his prison cell. Intelligence sources told the Washington Times that the Libyan government was “pretty helpful” when it came to capturing high-value al Qaeda targets, “because there were so many Libyans in al Qaeda and they had a unique window into that.”

Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, the three most outspoken hawks in the U.S. Senate at the time, made a big point of making friends with Gaddafi and going over to Libya to try to sell him armored personnel carriers and other equipment. But that would not last.

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