The Real Dangers Of The Successful War With Libya

There are many things that have made the bombing campaign in Libya that helped oust Moammar Gaddafi questionable at best. Among these questions are the fact that there was no congressional approval for the campaign, and more. I myself asked this question as well as other important inquiries while the bombings were taking place. But all these questions were the sorts of queries that were more relevant while the war was being waged, but once Gaddaffi was at long last toppled and even violently lynched, many of the questions regarding the action have since subsided. Now that even Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam has been captured, there is reason to look back at this action and understand what strategic value it served, and what dangers it may have actually paved for the future.

The first issue that must be addressed is the looming possibility of an Islamist takeover of Libya. Admiral James Stavridis, Nato's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, said in March that "we have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al Qaeda, Hizbollah, we've seen different things" regarding the Libya rebels. In August, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that Iran "discreetly" provided humanitarian aid to Libyan rebels before the fall of Tripoli. "The heroic Libyan nation rose up against the oppressor leaders of their own volition and proved that in the era of the awakening of nations, there is no room for tyranny and that the demands of the people must be respected," said Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani. Iran is hoping the Libya domino will fall towards Islamism and expand her sphere of extremist Islamic revivalist influence.

Further troubling signs are worthy of viewing with worry now that Gaddafi is in the dustbin of history. Libya's interim leader said that Sharia law will be used as the basis for new legislation. The new Libyan Constitution even declares that “Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).” In fact, all of this raises the larger questions about this so-called "Arab Spring" in general. Islamists are to win most votes in Tunisia's first "Arab Spring" election, yet Obama calls it "an important step forward." The Head of Libya's National Transitional Council Mustafa Abdul-Jalil says Islamic Sharia law would be the “basic source” of legislation, and that existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified. Yet Obama calls this a "a new era of promise." Is it just me, or is the war on Islamofascism over under President Obama? Have we entered the "new era" in which the rise of Islamists is to be aided and praised by the President of the United States?

The rise of Islamism in Libya, helping raise a possible Islamic extremist State in place of the regime America toppled while, as an anonymous Obama administration official put it, "leading from behind," is of course problematic. But all of the above, while worrying, is really not the most pressing issue that arises from the Libya action. The real issue is that the intervention in Libya not only served no national interest, it was in fact counterproductive in serving a useful national purpose. Let me be clear, Gaddafi was a megalomaniac tyrant and his death is not worthy of a moment of mourning. Of course, as just mentioned, I am not sure that what will replace him will be better for world security, which is what is obviously worrying about the entire "Arab Spring." But even more than that, and most importantly, Gaddafi actually abandoned his Weapons of Mass Destruction program after he saw the U.S. invade Iraq. In fact, Libya's abandonment of its own WMD program is a lesser known most positive consequence of targeting Saddam Hussein. On Dec. 19, 2003, only six days after American soldiers found Hussein in a spider hole, Gaddafi announced he would abandon Libya's WMD programs and accept international inspectors. As former Vice President Dick Cheney put it, Libya’s abandonment of its WMD program was “one of the great byproducts … of what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also said, “I think what we did was to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction, or the most dangerous ones.”

In fact, most are unaware that the CIA reportedly worked closely with Moammar Gaddafi's intelligence services in the rendition of terror suspects to Libya for interrogation. Most do not even know that in 2004 the United States airlifted out of Libya components of the nuclear weapons program that country agreed to give up. On January 27 of that year the U.S. transport plane landed in the State of Tennessee carrying some 25 metric tons of Libyan weapons program components including centrifuge parts, uranium, and sensitive documentation.

All this should demonstrate the strategic folly of intervening in Libya. The point that is really worrying is the message America has now sent to rogue regimes everywhere. That message is that if you abandon your weapons programs, if you turn toward cooperation with America and the West, you risk soon thereafter being bombed into oblivion and overthrown. In other words, this action encouraged a country like Iran to continue to defy America, the West, and get the nuclear bomb as soon as possible. Why? Because abandoning the program like Gaddafi is nothing short of assigning yourself to the easy future attack and toppling of the U.S. It is unfortunately a very perverse incentive that was starkly created by this action. In contrast, regardless of what one thought of President Bush's military action, those wars simply could not create the dangerous incentives of this bombing campaign waged by Obama. At the very least with Bush his wars showed that if you mess with America you may very well have it coming. And this actually worked in the case of Gaddafi, who took the invasion of Iraq into account and in part because of that very lesson abandoned his own WMD program. Gaddafi would have not been as easy to topple had he had the WMD that he abandoned in favor of the now clearly false safety of cooperating with the West

This is the simple truth, no other anti-American dictator will make Gaddafi's mistake, which is to abandon their WMD programs or cooperate with the West, because soon enough they could be bombed and toppled by the U.S. Not only is there evidence of Iran and other Islamists backing and being part of the Libyan rebel movement, there is the perilous lesson that a regime like Iran must have learned from what Gaddafi faced. Iran, as an enemy of the United States, would be mad to abandon its nuclear program and cooperate with the West. Given the precedent of Gaddafi's topple, Iran would be crazy to abandon its quest for the world's most dangerous weapon. The greatest danger today is the nuclear armed Iranian fanatics thirsting for wiping Israel off the map and destroying the United States. Given this, the troubling incentive created is the most, and least recognized, danger of America's intervention in Libya. Tweet