Monday, June 08, 2015

The Anti-Iraq

Every day I cherish the thought that the big brains in our government learned the lessons of Iraq and refused to commit American ground forces to stabilize Libya after attacking Libya, and just provoke jihadis into going to Libya in response.

Wait. What?

Islamic State militants have seized another town in Libya, the group and a military source said on Friday, expanding the territory they control in the strifetorn country.

The militant group ... has exploited a security vacuum in Libya as two rival governments struggle for power, four years after the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi. Islamic State took over the city of Sirte on Libya's central Mediterranean coast in stages this year[.]. The group has now also taken over the town of Harwa to the east of Sirte[.]

Obviously, bombing Libya in 2011 until the dictator Khaddaffi was killed but staying out on the ground after that allowed the locals to constructively resolve their own problems without our destructive presence.

In 4 years of war, civil strife, and civil war, Libya has suffered about 15,000 dead in its 6 million population--625 per year per million people. About 120,000 (I'll leave out the farcical studies that extrapolated dramatically higher death tolls) Iraqis died in 8 about years of serious fighting (prior to the current round of fighting) in a population of about 25 million--600 per year per million people.

And remember that Iran and Syria were actively funneling jihadi killers into Iraq to increase the violence.