NATO Doesn't Intervene in Libya in 2011

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.

Do you have any evidence of this support? As frankly comparing it to the bay of pigs ignores for starters that they were originally protesters against his regime and were normal Libyan citizens as opposed to the exiles seen in the bay of pigs.

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.

He threatened to destroy Benghazi and given how he has bombed civilian airliners I don't think any threat by him should have been taken lightly espailly given the 1996 prison massacre

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/12/libya-benghazi-gaddafi-revolution

https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/17/libya-benghazi-civilians-face-grave-risk

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/09/20119223521462487.html

Also looking at how many have died during the separate periods of fighting

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...eign-policy-plans.390691/page-3#post-12534099

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/08/libyan-revolution-casualties-lower-expected-government

http://www.libyabodycount.org/table

I think its fair to say the fighting from 2014 isn't as deadly as the 2011 civil war which to me looks like an indication that Gaddafi did indeed increase the body count.
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.

So Lockerbie bombing doesn't mean anything then? Also considering how more than 1000 people were massacred in the 1990's I think its fair to state a blood bath would be indeed likely http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/09/20119223521462487.html

Libyan human rights groups outside the country say up to 1,200 inmates were killed, out of a population of roughly 1,700. Only a few witnesses have come forward; one spoke to Human Rights Watch in 2004 and 2006. But the Libyan government has never given a detailed account.

And further looking at the inflation above on how many have died from the 2014 fighting vs the overthrow of Gaddafi I think its reasonable to conclude Gaddafi was creating a blood bath.
 
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.[/

Do you have evidence of this? I know it's a popular anti-western meme that the CIA is behind every protest and demonstration. However sometimes popular resistance against a brutal dictator is act?ly popular resistance a giants a brutal dictator. Especially when it was part of an existing wave of popular uprisings across the Arab world. Some of which definitely were not Western backed. (Unless you believe that the CIA toppled the same dictators and autocrats that America had previously been allied with.)

Of course after the uprisings and subsequent crackdowns began, America and other western issued declarations of a support, (or at least condemnations of violence against protestors) because realpolitik aside America does actually believe in people living in free democratic societies, and are is opposed to governments killing their own people. (That the USA in its more pragmatic or vindictive moods often abandons these principles is another story)

Frankly this kind of assertion is the same sort of deluded conspiracy theory that the Maidan protests were a western conspiracy plot to coup Ukraine. At some point you have to stop blaming your go to bogeyman for everything, and admit that there are actual issues that people in those countries feel strongly enough about to take a stand on.
 

Examples of Qadaffi era massacres:

Abu Salim Prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Salim_prison

Systematic use of Rape by Loyalist soldiers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Libyan_rape_allegations

RT report on Qadaffi crackdown (ignore the political rant at the end):

Mass Graves near Tripoli: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/libya-mass-grave_n_962395.html

A brief note on the bottom example. There were hundreds of corpses found around Tripoli, one of the loyalest cities in Libya to Qadaffi and one which had seen (relatively) little unrest during the early parts of the uprising. Now imagine how he would have behaved if he had entered Bengahazi, the very den of the opposition.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
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.

What exactly is your source for this?

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.

Wouldn't Gaddafi want to militarily recapture all of Libya, though?

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.

OK; understood.
 
In regards to the rest of the Arab Spring:

I see the Yemeni and Syrian governments being much more brutal when dealing with the opposition. In Syria, the opposition wouldn't take up arms as they realize that the West isn't going to save them like they with the Libyans. Yemen likely collapses into a state of civil war between Saleh, anti-Saleh, Shi'ite and jihadist forces dueling it out with each other.

The Egyptian democratic transition will likely result in either :

a.) increased pressure to reform and avoid a repeat of Libya's bloodbath
b.) the army stays in power without a (brief) abortive attempt at democracy. This can be done via having Shafik win over Mursi in the very close Presidental Elections. Egypt likely slides into a new wave of despotism with mass murder and dissappearances, only one year earlier.

Tunisia: Likely continues on path of democratic reform. Critics of failure to intervene in Libya will (mistakenly) claim that Tunisia's success story would have been replicated across the Arab world if only Obama had been "tough" and staged a military intervention in Libya.

Other Mid-Eastern States: Gulf States and the Egyptians likely remain more in line with the US against the Russians after the "weak" Obama is replaced by Romeny in 2012 (see below.)

Outside the Arab World:

America: Romney likely wins the foregin policy debates with Obama on the issue of LIbya/Arab Spring. This plus his strong showing in the economic debates will result in a Romney victory in 2012.

Europe: Gets flooded with large numbers (100,000s) of Libyan refugees. Additionally, Qadaffi could carry though with his threat to "drown Europe with migrants" and halt interfeering with the flow of black migrants northwards to Europe.

Russia: Position is likely strenthened in Mid-East with another anti-American and vaguely pro-Russian state in existence. With the Syrian Civil War getting butterflied away then there is likely no (major) Russian military prescence in Syria.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
b.) the army stays in power without a (brief) abortive attempt at democracy. This can be done via having Shafik win over Mursi in the very close Presidental Elections. Egypt likely slides into a new wave of despotism with mass murder and dissappearances, only one year earlier.
Eh ... without Morsi discrediting himself, I have doubts that Shafik would be able to consolidate his power as much as Sisi did after 2013 in our TL.
 
Eh ... without Morsi discrediting himself, I have doubts that Shafik would be able to consolidate his power as much as Sisi did after 2013 in our TL.

Okay. Thanks. That makes sense given the fact that he got attacked with shoes and stones on election day:

Bonus:
^Campaign ad for Shafik
 
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