The way I remember it, the Obama Administration did not “go in” to Libya in any sense of what “going in” had come to mean up to that point. I saw it that the US played a proportionate role in enforcing a “no fly zone” in league with the “international community” but that there was no “going in” in the sense of committing ground forces where we’d have the usual hard time of getting back out. At the time however, I was appalled that Lawrence O’Donnell, whose “The Last Word” show I usually watch, kept harshly implying that “we” had “gone in” and were now in three wars—which included Iraq and Afghanistan. I personally thought that Obama should be credited not only for restraint but for helping to “repair” the international community which Bush/Cheney had done so much to marginalize during their pursuit of American “empire” where the sole reaming superpower seemed to intend to rule the roost. But it wasn’t just Lawrence painting US involvement in Libya this way. There was a lot of loose talk asserting American entry into a Libyan theater of warfare. And just yesterday, I heard a clip of Donald Trump on the phone with Joe Scarborough of “Morning Joe” where Trump was ranting that we should not have gotten involved in Libya. Instead of Scarborough straightening him out, he said “so you think we shouldn’t have gone in”? WTF?
I had come to think that the Bush/Cheney years had actually convinced everyone of American empire and that people were beginning to only default to this term of us “going in” or not. Any common view of the US using military of any kind had taken on this neo-con voice and gone was the sense that we were or could be a proportionate player in an international community.
As far as I know, we didn’t “go in”. What is up with this bit of modern American history here? We kinda have a grasp on what Libya has disintegrated into, but does that not reinforce that the US did not “go in” to Libya—except for the air support of the no-fly zone and Hillary Clinton’s trip in which she said “...we came, we saw, he died” (followed by some gallows humor cackling). Is the truth now dependent on not only which TV network one watches but which program on that network? Just what are the common perceptions of what US policy was toward Libya in the conflict in which Libyan rebels brought the Qaddafi regime to an end? Yes, I know I can research it myself and possibly aggregate an answer, but I’m curious if others at all share bewilderment at media uncertainty or, if not, a wholly different recollection of US involvement or lack thereof in Libya. I put no faith whatsoever in Donald Trump’s view, and have not much more for Scarborough’s. My opinion at the time was that Lawrence O’Donnell had drawn an unfair and heavy-handed conclusion that was subjective to him but also that it was subjective in varying degrees in other media personalities outside, of course, of right wing partisan media which I do not avail myself of. This will all be very relevant again soon. Help me out please, folks?