How the West Rode in to Save Libya, then Abandoned it to its Fate
Photo Credit: EPA
At about the same time, three F16 fighter jets took off from Aviano Air Base in Italy and headed south, along with two MV-22 Osprey transport planes carrying a full complement of rapid reaction force marines from another US base in Italy, Sigonella. Surveillance drones circled overhead, and in support flew a KC-135 airborne refuelling tanker from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk. As often happens, Britain played a small but loyal part in this American military adventure.
Anyone of my generation thinks they know what happens next: a savage retaliatory raid, perhaps, against a terror-supporting dictator; a precision strike to warn some pariah state of the consequences of ignoring the West’s collective will; or a small country invaded, its regime removed, as per Panama or Grenada all those years ago.
But times have changed; how they have changed. This was no show of strength by the most fearsome, overwhelming arsenal the world has ever seen. This was panic. The American might was in place to protect the evacuation to Tunisia of the 78 staff of the American embassy in Libya, along with the 80 “heavily armed” marines who are supposed to guard them but are not enough, apparently, to keep them safe from the militias and crazies currently roaming the country. In the Pentagon, the cheers were not for a brave victory but for an ignominious escape.
No one wants to leave diplomats in danger, of course, and better an organised exit than the hurried 1975 airlift from Saigon. But that was at the end of a long and bitter war against the Communist Menace. On this occasion, the decision to abandon an important Western ally was taken after the embassy found itself too close to battles between a bunch of guys who fully merit that epithet so often used to describe them: ragtag.
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