Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Irregular Warfare 101
- Part One The American Revolution to Chasing Sandino, 1776–1930s
- Part Two The Cold War, 1940s–1989
- Part Three Latin America and the Cold War, 1950s–1980s
- Part Four Post–Cold War, 1990s–2000s
- 26 Dirty Wars after the Cold War
- 27 Colombia
- 28 Iraq
- 29 Intermezzo
- 30 Post-9/11 COIN in the Philippines
- 31 Intermezzo
- 32 The Longest War
- 33 The Fall of Muammar Qaddafi, 2011
- 34 Intermezzo
- 35 Conclusion
- Epilogue “I Feel More Like a Monster”
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
33 - The Fall of Muammar Qaddafi, 2011
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Irregular Warfare 101
- Part One The American Revolution to Chasing Sandino, 1776–1930s
- Part Two The Cold War, 1940s–1989
- Part Three Latin America and the Cold War, 1950s–1980s
- Part Four Post–Cold War, 1990s–2000s
- 26 Dirty Wars after the Cold War
- 27 Colombia
- 28 Iraq
- 29 Intermezzo
- 30 Post-9/11 COIN in the Philippines
- 31 Intermezzo
- 32 The Longest War
- 33 The Fall of Muammar Qaddafi, 2011
- 34 Intermezzo
- 35 Conclusion
- Epilogue “I Feel More Like a Monster”
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On the morning of September 12, 2012, the world awoke to shocking news out of Libya: U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, head of the American consulate in the provincial coastal city of Benghazi, and three additional American citizens had been killed overnight in a coordinated attack staged by radical Islamic terrorists. The controversy surrounding the incident would continue for months, becoming a key issue of the 2012 presidential campaign and leading to depositions on Capitol Hill and accusations of intelligence failures and even a White House coverup. The uncertainty surrounding the attack was fueled by confusion as to the timeline of the assault, the identity of the perpetrators, and the purpose of the American presence in Benghazi.
Lost amid the furor over the Benghazi attack was the broader issue of America’s deep involvement, beginning in 2011, with the bloody and highly controversial effort to overthrow the country’s dictator of forty years, Muammar Qaddafi. The harsh lessons of a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan helped shape a more hands-off and indirect American approach in Libya, one that relied in large part upon NATO allies to get the job done. In an interesting and telling turn of events, Washington found itself supporting and aiding an insurgency instead of fighting against one – as was the case in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Iraq. While U.S. policy toward Libya showed a desire to escape the “boots-on-the-ground” approach that proved so inconclusive, costly, and polarizing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Benghazi attacks demonstrated that even a more intentionally hands-off approach to a dirty war was nonetheless fraught with its own set of difficulties and dangers.
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- Chapter
- Information
- America's Dirty WarsIrregular Warfare from 1776 to the War on Terror, pp. 442 - 456Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014