Gadhafi’s death marks the symbolic end of the Libyan revolution — and the continued success of Obama’s foreign policy doctrine. Carl Hiaasen writes in his new column, “Fitting End For Libya’s Bloody Dictator”:
Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is finally rotting in the ground, ending the unsavory spectacle of his bloody corpse on public display in a refrigerated vegetable locker. A guy like him was lucky not to end up with his head on a stake.
He was a terrible man who, like Saddam Hussein, came to a terrible end. This overdue event would never have happened without air support from the United States and the commitment of President Barack Obama, whose strategy was lambasted from day one by the usual windbags.
Amazingly, the overthrow of Gadhafi required no American invasion and long-term occupation. It took only a few months, and was carried out by the Libyan people, not a foreign power. Most importantly, it didn’t cost trillions of dollars and the lives of 4,400 American troops (and of more than 100,000 civilians).
After eight and a half costly years, we’re finally getting out of Iraq. We accomplished more in Libya by not going in.
In the months following the 9/11 attacks, when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were looking around for an oppressed Muslim country to attack, they didn’t choose Libya. It would have been a more defensible choice, and they could easily have put out a similar story about imaginary weapons of mass destruction. (Gadhafi had the same number of those as Saddam did: zero).
But here’s what Libya had that Iraq didn’t: an actual history of terrorism against the United States, specifically the cowardly slaughter of American citizens.
