Strategic Failure by Mark Moyar

Author:Mark Moyar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Threshold Editions

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BIGGER IS BETTER

Libya

Following NATO’s decimation of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces outside Benghazi on March 19, 2011, the city of Benghazi became the hub of planning for a rebel counteroffensive. The largest city in eastern Libya, Benghazi had served as the seat of the Senussi monarchy until 1954. Benghazi had garnered American attention in 1967, when a mob angered by U.S. support for Israel overran the U.S. consulate, poured gasoline on it, and set it on fire.

Benghazi’s more recent history had been noteworthy for its mixture of sports with politics. The Al Ahly Benghazi soccer club had often accused Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saadi of bribing or bullying referees to ensure the victory of clubs owned by Saadi, resulting in denunciations of Gaddafi that aroused the dictator’s ire from time to time. In 1996, Saadi’s bodyguards opened fire on Al Ahly Benghazi fans inside a crowded stadium after they jeered his father, killing several of them. In 2000, Al Ahly Benghazi’s fans incurred Gaddafi’s wrath for painting the colors of one of Saadi’s clubs on a donkey and parading it through the stadium. Gaddafi’s goons ransacked the club’s headquarters, smashing the trophies and memorabilia, and then bulldozers flattened it.

More serious in their consequences had been Gaddafi’s armed clashes with Islamists in Benghazi and other towns in eastern Libya. In 1997, Gaddafi used helicopter gunships and napalm against Islamist forces in eastern Libya. In the early 2000s, a new group calling itself Al Qaeda in Eastern Libya emerged to join other Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. 1 Gaddafi’s tough measures against the Islamic extremists in the early post-9/11 era were applauded in Washington, which had its hands full helping less committed countries deal with their extremist problems.

At the end of February 2011, leaders of the anti-Gaddafi forces met in Benghazi to form a National Transitional Council, which laid claim to the role of interim government until Gaddafi could be ousted from Tripoli. The council’s leadership included intellectuals, professionals, tribal leaders, and disgruntled government officials. Like many interim governing bodies, it was better at talking about a bright future than at building one. Nevertheless, it was able to convince foreign countries to recognize it as the sole legitimate government of Libya.

On April 5, a Greek cargo ship pulled in to Benghazi to deliver the U.S. special envoy to the Libyan National Transitional Council, J. Christopher Stevens. The American embassy in Tripoli had closed two months earlier, so Stevens was now the principal U.S. representative in the country. Sensing that his arrival signified American support for the rebel cause, the resistance leaders rushed to embrace him. 2 They complained to Stevens that the European-led air campaign was too weak to bring Gaddafi down, and called for the United States to provide more military muscle.

Obama, however, remained disinclined to veer from the strategy of “leading from behind.” He had no desire to send U.S. ground forces into Libya to assist the rebels, because he feared that such a deployment would lead to a quagmire along the lines of Iraq.

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