America’s Role in Creating the Refugee Crisis

Libya 

The trouble between Libya and the U.S. goes back to 1986, when a nightclub in Berlin, Germany was bombed.  President Reagan said that Libya was behind the attack and responded with airstrikes. Approximately 100 U.S. Navy and Air Force planes pounded Libya.  Although the aim was to destroy military targets, Bin Ashur, a densely populated suburb in Libya’s capital, was also hit, as was the residential compound of Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi.  His adopted baby daughter, Hanna Qaddafi, was killed.

It’s said that this was the U.S. government’s first attempt at taking out Qaddafi, and that was the real aim of the operation.  Multiple planes were to specifically focus on Qaddafi’s residential compound, knowing that his family — and hopefully him — were there.  A few missed their targets and ended up hitting the French embassy and additional Western embassies, as well as housing and apartment complexes.  Multiple civilians were killed and wounded.  The operation was heavily criticized by several Arab countries, France and the Soviet Union.  This was considered the first U.S. military action in which the primary justification was ending international terrorism.

The operation was heavily criticized by several Arab countries, France and the Soviet Union.

It’s also interesting to note that Libya’s 27-year designation as a state-sponsor of terrorism was taken off in 2006.  Two years prior, in 2004, Qaddafi gave up his program to make weapons of mass destruction (nuclear weapons), and in the words of the U.S., “renounced his support of terrorism.”  At the time, oil companies had been lobbying for rights to do business in Libya.  It was believed that the normalization of relations with Libya would lower the cost of fuel, but Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch denied that the United States decided to restore ties to ease the rising cost of gasoline prices.

Despite this, in 2011, the U.S. found itself running further military interventions in Libya.  It’s duly noted that U.S. involvement in Libya has also been called unconstitutional and illegal, as only Congress can declare war.  The president can only initiate war when the U.S. has been attacked or is in imminent danger of attack.  However, practically every president since Nixon has liberally and subjectively defined “war” so that the War Powers Resolution has been effectively evaded.  Congress has never unilaterally challenged this as it happened, so the president authorizing acts of war as commander-in-chief of the military, without prior Congressional approval, had become a hardened precedent by the time Obama entered office.  The Nobel Peace Prize winner became the only U.S. President to be at war every day of his two-year term, leaving him with the distinctive legacy of being at war longer than any other American president in history.

The president can only initiate war when the U.S. has been attacked or is in imminent danger of attack.  

In 2011, the U.S. military further intervened in Libya, when U.S.-backed rebels took out Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in a brutal extrajudicial killing that constituted a war crime; it was found he had even been sodomized with a knife.

Qaddafi, a dictator, threatened the momentum of the pro-democracy Arab Spring movement.  (The same momentum that the U.S. failed to support in Yemen, ultimately leading to the current war).  With Qaddafi out of the picture, the assumption was that democracy would thrive in Libya.  After Qaddafi’s death, Obama declared victory, saying, “Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives.”

Yet the objective was allegedly never supposed to be a regime change.  In March 2011, Obama said, “The task that I assigned our forces [is] to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a no-fly zone.… Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.”  Days later, the same sentiment was echoed by James Steinberg, Hillary Clinton’s deputy, in a Senate meeting:  “President Obama has been equally firm that our military operation has a narrowly defined mission that does not include regime change.”

Despite regime change allegedly not being on the menu, Qaddafi’s personal compound was targeted again in 2011 strikes, although that wasn’t what killed him.

After Qaddafi’s death, civilians were still being brutally executed in war crimes, slaughtered by the Western-backed rebel groups.

The objective of the intervention in Libya was supposed to be to save the lives of civilians that Qaddafi would have brutally killed.  After Libya’s “liberation,” a harrowing picture began to emerge: Civilians were still being brutally executed in war crimes…except instead of being attacked by Qaddafi, they were now being slaughtered by the Western-backed rebel groups, who were backed by the U.S. to save civilians from Qaddafi’s brutalizations.

When NATO intervened, the death toll in Libya was about 1,000-2,000, per UN estimates. After eight months of NATO intervention, it was estimated to be at more than 10 times that figure, ranging from 10,000 to 50,000.

Obama’s victory lap was wholly premature.  Libya without Qaddafi didn’t magically materialize into a democracy.  In fact, the situation worsened, and Libya devolved into a failed state, with various militant groups fighting each other for power, and eventually developing its own ISIS franchise.  Later in an interview with The Atlantic, Obama painstakingly admitted that Libya “didn’t work.”  Behind closed doors, he allegedly called the situation on the ground — of his own doing — a “shit show.”

Libya without Qaddafi didn’t magically materialize into a democracy.  It devolved into having its own ISIS franchise.

Despite all the years the U.S. had been fighting the “war on the terror” and backing regime changes, a pervasive pattern had appeared:  The failure to plan for the days after.  Time and time again, the U.S. has failed to learn that post-conflict stabilization and nation-building are a vital component of ending terrorism and further armed conflict.

A memo from inside the White House regarding the destabilization of Afghanistan sums it up quite succinctly:  Under Secretary of Defense Policy Douglas Feith wrote, in a memo to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, that Washington “should not allow concerns about stability to paralyze U.S. efforts to oust the Taliban leadership. … Nation-building is not our key strategic goal.”

Afghanistan.  Iraq.  Libya.  As Dominic Tierney wrote in his article for The Atlantic, “In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, Washington toppled regimes and then failed to plan for a new government or construct effective local forces—with the net result being over 7,000 dead U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands of injured troops, trillions of dollars expended, untold thousands of civilian fatalities, and three Islamic countries in various states of disorder. We might be able to explain a one-off failure in terms of allies screwing up. But three times in a decade suggests a deeper pattern in the American way of war.”

It may be wrong to call these wars failures, as remember — “Nation-building is not our key strategic goal,” Douglas Feith wrote.  These wars are likely functioning exactly the way they were designed:  To create a never-ending need for U.S. involvement, intervention, and imperialism.

Prior to leaving office, Obama authorized several airstrikes against ISIS in Libya; it is believed that these would help Libya’s oil production.

Amnesty International reports that the violence has “impeded civilian access to food, health care, water, sanitation and education.”

Geoff Porter, president of North Africa Risk Consulting, told CNN:  “Since the defeat of the Islamic State in Sirte, Libyan oil production has increased from roughly 500,000 to 750,000 barrels per day. This is largely due to the inability of the Islamic State to threaten upstream, midstream and downstream oil infrastructure in the Sirte Basin.  Targeting Islamic State training camps in the Sirte Basin consolidates the oil production gains made in the last two months and reduces the risk that they will be targeted by the Islamic State again in the future.  Without oil production, Libya has no revenue. The only thing that could possibly save the struggling Government of National Accord is being able to restore the provision of social services. If oil flows, then the GNA has funds. If the GNA has funds, it can spend some of that money on electricity, gas, fuel, water, and can bolster the currency to reduce inflation.”

Meanwhile, the horrors of anarchy have taken its toll on the people of Libya so much so that they risk death at sea as refugees rather than remaining in Libya.  Amnesty International reports that the violence has “impeded civilian access to food, health care, water, sanitation and education. Many health facilities were closed, damaged or inaccessible due to fighting; those still functioning were overcrowded and lacked essential supplies. Around 20% of children were unable to attend school.”

Amnesty International also estimates that there are currently approximately 435,000 displaced people in Libya, some of whom have been displaced more than once.  Over 100,000 of them are living in makeshift refugee camps, abandoned schools and warehouses.