Vice President Joe Biden said developments in Libya show the U.S. approach to dealing with Moammar Kadafi was the right one.
“Whether he’s alive or dead, he’s gone. The people of Libya have gotten rid of a dictator,” Biden said, seeming to want to avoid a definitive statement on Kadafi.
“NATO got it right,” he said. “In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn’t lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past.”
A parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry in the U.K. in 2016 concluded that a “limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunistic policy of regime change by military means,” resulting in, “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil [Islamic State] in north Africa.”
A rebel leader estimated in August 2011 that 50,000 Libyans had been killed. And the death and misery continue.
