High Time for American Intervention in Libya

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar

The colonel’s departure has come to pass. His defiant radio broadcasts are relics of a foregone dictator in denial. As the National Transitional Council marches on Tripoli this week, the Arab Spring turned Arab Summer will establish its third concrete instance of regime change. But after a hard fought and messy victory, what comes next? Whatever the next chapter in this story, Libya through the remainder of 2011 will influence U.S. policy makers on the Middle East for the next quarter century.

Glancing at the opinion pieces in a dozen of America’s most read newspapers, there seems to be two ways Libya’s Arab Spring foray is being characterized. The first narrative is a rather pessimistic one, and it is becoming more and more widespread. Using Tunisia and Egpyt as comparative case studies, Libya’s revolution and the subsequent intervention appears to have backfired. Those other regimes seemed more entrenched than Qaddafi’s but had cleaner and more favorable results. Libya is left without any order or institutions, only a revolution-turned-civil war. Reports of mass executions by Qadaffi forces are now dominating the headlines.

Surveying the damage in Libya lends to the idea for some that the second set of dictators is learning from the first by successfully ignoring American and other international calls to step down. Overwhelming suppression of popular will can ultimately overcome what once looked like inevitable change, it would seem. While not overtly stated, there is an undercurrent in this pessimistic strain of ideas that suggests the U.S. was immature in advocating change in Libya. Furthermore, America probably had ulterior motives in all of this, although what those motives were and what interests they actually protected is never articulated.

The increasingly rare perspective is the one that sees events in Libya, culminating with Qaddafi’s messy disappearance, as an evolution towards positive change. Proponents of this view maintain the energetic optimism characteristic of the Arab Spring, lauding the rebels’ democratic initiative and consistent gains with, ultimately, little direct aid from America. It sees NATO intervention as more humanitarian than military, and assumes that once the person of Qaddafi is gone, things are likely to improve.

What is most interesting about these two perspectives is who espouses them. In the U.S., there is a rolling of the eyes, “I told you so” brand of reaction from many conservatives, who never actually told us so, at least not clearly. In addition, the liberal non-interventionists are having a field-day with the monumental confusion in Tripoli after Qaddafi’s fall, with the rebels undoubtedly inspiring little confidence.

To the contrary, though, the news and even Twitter reactions from individuals in the region has been incredibly positive. Not only Libyans, who overwhelmingly seem to support American and NATO intervention, but the larger Muslim world as well are mostly praising the rebel takeover and the end of the Qaddafi era. The view that NATO intervention was responsible for the march on Tripoli and that it was not an authentic product of Libyans is the minority view among this group.

The pulse of Libya and the world is hard to read on this one, but it does suggest a disconnect between those on the ground and those watching abroad. That wasn’t the case with Tunisia or Egypt, nor the ostensibly failing projects in Bahrain and Yemen. The next four months will be crucial in determining whether this experience will be viewed as good for Libya and the region, or bad.

And when that view is solidified, the weight of its direction will have crucial influence going forward. American policymakers have already stated on condition of anonymity that the result in Libya will influence how the Obama Administration will move forward on Syria and Yemen. The unique project of intervening on behalf of Arab rebels and revolutionaries has only one case study, and it is playing out before us. Without international involvement in these domestic conflicts, they are likely to fail. Do we want to stand by while the Middle East fights for universal values without our help?

This all means that our own behavior over the next few months will influence our behavior over the next few decades. It is high time for President Obama to dedicate time and resources to Libya immediately to guarantee its stability so that the U.S. can continue to promote the values he espouses and America was built on.