NATO Doesn't Intervene in Libya in 2011

Gaddafi was that bad?

He was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing and other acts of terrorism as well and the only reason he was;t removed then was because the USSR backed him

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-25979532
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Gaddafi would have gone a killing spree that would have made Stalin puke.
If west doesn't support the rebels from the start, Libyan revolution goes nowhere, barely even blip on a radar for Gadaffi. Dissenters won't sign up en masse if they see west doesn't care about rebellion or that Gadaffi would crush it. Unsupported revolution -> no lengthy war -> no massive death-count, orders of magnitude less than OTL. Leaders of rebellion get quietly executed.

Western tourist to this day visit Libya for its beaches.
 
If west doesn't support the rebels from the start, Libyan revolution goes nowhere, barely even blip on a radar for Gadaffi. Dissenters won't sign up en masse if they see west doesn't care about rebellion or that Gadaffi would crush it. Unsupported revolution -> no lengthy war -> no massive death-count, orders of magnitude less than OTL. Leaders of rebellion get quietly executed.

Western tourist to this day visit Libya for its beaches.

Naaa...things stay relatevely quiet for a couple of years and when the colonel die (it was 70 years old and not really in good shape or health even at the beginning of the rebellion due to many years of excess) there is no real capable successor as the sons were idiotic nobodies and in the end we have a much more complicated situation.
 
If west doesn't support the rebels from the start, Libyan revolution goes nowhere, barely even blip on a radar for Gadaffi. Dissenters won't sign up en masse if they see west doesn't care about rebellion or that Gadaffi would crush it. Unsupported revolution -> no lengthy war -> no massive death-count, orders of magnitude less than OTL. Leaders of rebellion get quietly executed.

Western tourist to this day visit Libya for its beaches.

Well considering how many cities were taken over by the rebels before the counter offensive I think your amplifying the situation and I doubt tourist would travel to somewhere were a massacre (Gaddafi was treating to destroy Banghazi) and further as lukedaton says he sons weren't exactly competent so what we may end up is a more extremist revolution (Historically I think its proven that the rebels tend to radicalise after failure) years down the line which would probably be worse.
 
If west doesn't support the rebels from the start, Libyan revolution goes nowhere, barely even blip on a radar for Gadaffi. Dissenters won't sign up en masse if they see west doesn't care about rebellion or that Gadaffi would crush it. Unsupported revolution -> no lengthy war -> no massive death-count, orders of magnitude less than OTL. Leaders of rebellion get quietly executed.

Western tourist to this day visit Libya for its beaches.
Yeah, because the rebels had accomplished nothing and totally hadn't taken several cities before the West intervened.
 
"The millions of Libyans will from dessert to dessert, city by city, house by house, home by home, street by street, person by person, purify our nation of the dirt and unclean... " Qaddaffi, in regards to opposition.



^To lighten the mood.
 
You might not see such a substantial Russian intervention in the war in Syria. Gaddafi was one of their allies (barely) in the area, and the Russians wanted specific promises that the NATO intervention would not remove him. They thought this would be a possibility because of the general warming of relations between the NATO nations and Gaddafi after the Libyan nuclear program was dismantled. The Russian deployments to Syria have been meant to ward off an anti-Assad NATO intervention as much as they were meant to support Assad.

As for Libya, total independence for Cyrenaica is very unlikely, but some sort of semi-autonomous region could be a possible solution unless the situation is resolved militarily. The complete collapse of governmental authority that you see in Libya today, along with much of the Italian migrant crisis, would not have happened without Gaddafi's removal.

I couldn't possibly predict how different the course of the Arab Spring would have been, especially in Egypt. However, the chances of the various rebels and foreign fighters in Syria to overthrow Assad was essentially lost when the collapse of the Free Syrian Army façade essentially ended most of the "civil war" part of the war. Unless the FSA won the war very quickly, they were doomed to both failure and the usurpation of the pro-democracy cause by radical Islamist militias.
 
Gaddafi would have gone a killing spree that would have made Stalin puke.

Now there's some hyperbole. If Gaddafi wins, there'd be an initial bloodletting as he goes after a lot of the people who fought against him, but it would hardly be anything on that scale.

Whether that will cost more then toppling him ultimately would... actually remains to be seen. Things in Libya are still horribly unstable, with lots of angry militias at odds with each other flirting with the idea of Civil War. There's been semi-frequent exchanges of gunfire and even a few suicide bombings in Tripoli, with ISIS guerrillas raising their ugly heads. It remains to be seen whether it will stabilize or descend into a Syrian-esque bloodbath.
 
Yeah, because the rebels had accomplished nothing and totally hadn't taken several cities before the West intervened.
Rebels were supported covertly before they were supported openly.
If west gets cold feet after rebellion is underway, and doesn't send rebels promised support, its ends a lot like Bay of Pigs incident.
If west never supports them, not even covertly at first, rebellion doesn't go anywhere at all in the first place.
 

thorr97

Banned
James,

Gaddafi would have gone a killing spree that would have made Stalin puke.

Um, no. Not even close. First off, there weren't tens of millions of rebels standing up against Khadaffi. So, that part of your assessment can't even hold up on a theoretical basis. Secondly, Daffy Khadaffi was well known for his bombastic bombast. The press happily flocked to him because they could count on his over-the-top speechifying. He's the guy who came up with that wonderful "Line of Death!" bombast back during the Reagan years. So, the prospect of the guy actually implementing his threat was never terribly real to begin with.

Lacking any outside intervention, the rebel threat would've been crushed. And it's not the first time Khadaffi had to do that in that region. It was - and is, still - a hotbed of Islamist fanatics. Khadaffi was long at work with such fanatics even as he allied with the Soviets and was anti-Western in his actions. The problem he had with the Islamists was that the Caliphate they wanted to set up wasn't one with him as the Caliph. And for a grandiose tyrant like Khadaffi, that just wouldn't do. So, he opposed the Islamists at every turn. This, long before 9/11. Hell, Khadaffi was one of the few Arab leaders to express official regret to the US over the attacks.

After the US knocked over Saddam's regime, Khadaffi read the writing on the wall and saw it written in Saddam's blood. As he didn't want to be next, he decided it was time to "come in from the cold" and ally himself with the West. He was still a tyrant but he was now a tyrant on our side. To sweeten that deal he voluntarily turned over his entire WMD program to the West. Included in this was his nuclear weapons development program and that was something the West had no idea was as advanced as we found it. To add to the joy, Khadaffi also turned over the names of all the vendors and suppliers and arms dealers who'd helped him build-up that WMD program. Then he opened Libya to the West to set up its "black sites" for interrogating the Islamists we'd captured. All in all, Khadaffi made himself exceptionally useful to the West.

And he provided a most excellent role model to other tyrants of what could happen if they chose to play along with whatever the West wanted.

From the West's perspective, yeah, the guy was a tyrant and a thug. But he was an old tyrant and thug. He'd gotten his glories and was seen as wanting more to die in his sleep among his many wives than anything else. Letting him remain in place was seen as preferable to any alternatives. At least if he died of old age the transition to a post-Khadaffi Libya could be better managed. Particularly as it was about the most secular and Western oriented of the major Arab states.

Lacking a US & NATO attack or support of the rebels, Khadaffi would most likely have gotten that chance to die peacefully in his sleep in his palace. And now there'd no doubt be the expected whining from certain quarters that the West was interfering in the Libyan people's affairs when it came to choosing who should rule Libya in the post-Khadaffi era. And if the world knew of US Ambassador Chris Stevens it'd be from the press conferences he'd be giving in Libya about how the US was "looking forward to assisting the Libyan people in their efforts to build a modern democracy for their country..." and nothing more lethal than that.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Gaddafi was that bad?
Yes, he was. It would have been a bloodbath. He would have gone after anyone who was siding with the rebels, and probably level Benghazi to the ground.

That he at one Point was pro Western and that he was secular doesn't change he was a brutal dictator ruling with iron fist, who had no qualms killing innocents in droves as soon as people fed up with him. Many seem to forget what he was doing in 2011.
 

thorr97

Banned
Yes, he was. It would have been a bloodbath. He would have gone after anyone who was siding with the rebels, and probably level Benghazi to the ground.

That he at one Point was pro Western and that he was secular doesn't change he was a brutal dictator ruling with iron fist, who had no qualms killing innocents in droves as soon as people fed up with him. Many seem to forget what he was doing in 2011.

Prove that, please. Prove that as evidenced by his previous decades of rule and previous decades of fighting the same rebels in that same territory. Prove it by producing the body counts. The man, Khadaffi, was great at making threats and grand pronouncements. But the reality? Not so much. Oh, he was a tyrant alright. And his regime was brutal, at times. But after American tanks were live on TV roaming at will through the streets of Baghdad, Khadaffi suddenly saw the error of his ways and fell all over himself to be on the "right side" of history.

Would he have put down that rebellion with "all due prejudice?" You bet. A "bloodbath?" Not likely. Neither he nor his regime was known for being so bloody minded about how it ran. He had decades, literally, of dealing with rebels in that region and yet he never once razed it nor slaughtered all who stood against his rule. This, when he had plenty of previous opportunities.

There's nothing in Khadaffi's decades of actual rule and actual fighting against those same rebels to give support to your contention that his response to their latest rebellion would'be been any different or any more lethal than his decades worth of previous responses.
 
Rebels were supported covertly before they were supported openly.
If west gets cold feet after rebellion is underway, and doesn't send rebels promised support, its ends a lot like Bay of Pigs incident.
If west never supports them, not even covertly at first, rebellion doesn't go anywhere at all in the first place.
Oh bullshit. The Libyan rebels were backed by decades of opposition to Ghaddafi's oppression, and had been joined by defecting military units. The same thing was happening in Tripoli and and Egypt. But somehow you expect us to think that if the evil West hadn't gotten international backing to help topple Ghadaffi everything would have been sunshine and daisies. The West's big contribution was allowing the rebels time to be able to fight back.
 
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