The Atlantic – Joshua Foust Asks: Is the U.S. Really Responsible for Post-War Libya?
Source: The Atlantic, 8/22/2011
ASP Fellow Joshua Foust is a featured author.
“While the West celebrates the “fall” of Tripoli to the rebel Libyan forces, it’s important not to get too carried away in the grandiloquent utopianism that has marked much of the push for the war. There is a real danger of the endorphin rush of toppling a dictator as hated as Gaddhafi continuing long past his downfall, leading to poor judgment about the future.
What strikes me the most about the war in Libya is how profoundly unimaginative it has been. Even while NATO smarts from its bitter experience meddling in one civil war in Afghanistan, several of its largest member states pushed for immediate involvement in another one in Libya. As the American policy community wrestles with how to responsibly reduce or eliminate its military presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a substantial portion of it insisted on moral necessity of engaging in Libya.
Even today, as the various think tanks, policy groups, and planning committees put their heads together to figure out what to do next, there seems to be some emerging consensus that “we,” that is the West, must somehow take over responsibility for what will come next…”
Read the full article here…
