Quote Originally Posted by CrowBat

With other words: I would say that the civil war in Libya is entering its closing phase. One in which the UN-supported government in Tripoli remains where it is, but its military forces (GNA) are out of condition to continue fighting. Which means that everything is going to be decided by military dictatorship of Haftar, supported by Emiratis, Egyptians, and Jordanians...

EDIT: forgot to add my usual, 'Congratulations Oblabla', fantastic foreign policy...
I thought that the GNA only existed on paper, and that the squabble remains between the original GNC and the CoD?

At any rate, I prefer Haftar and the influence of the Jordanians, Egyptians and Emiratis to Islamists and the influence of the Turks and Qataris.

As for Obama, the sooner that the war ends, the sooner he can declare the past 5+ years of chaos as worth the NFZ and ousting of Qaddafi.

Obama made many rookie mistakes in his first term. From the standpoint of US national security, I would say that Operation Odyssey Dawn was worse than Operation Iraqi Freedom, despite the difference in casualties, especially American. Why?

  • Libya had agreed in 2003 to abandon its WMD programs in return for a resumption in normal relations with the West
  • China and Russia were under the impression that the NFZ would not be a cover for intervening on behalf of the rebels, which the British, French and Qataris did; the latter on the ground, in contravention of the UNSCR
  • Iran and North Korea regarded OOD as a betrayal of Libya's abandonment of WMDs
  • Between OOD and the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, rogue nuclear states observed that no gentleman's agreement or guarantee could substitute for the deterrence of nuclear weapons
  • Nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Pakistan, as well as potentially by Iran and others is more of a national security threat than the ongoing mess created by OEF