Why do Libyan politicians refrain from criticising NATO’s war on their country, despite civilian deaths? middleeastmonitor.com

Dr Mustafa Fetouri, libyan academic, freelance journalist and recipient of the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize.

Between 2011 and today, many Western leaders who supported the military intervention in Libya nine years earlier have expressed some kind of regret about the war. But not a single Libyan politician went on the record to criticise NATO’s killing of civilians and the destruction of Libya.

Former US President Barack Obama, whose administration participated and actively supported “humanitarian intervention”, regretted his decision. In an interview with The Atlantic magazine published in 2014, he described the intervention as “the worst mistake” of his administration. Behind closed doors, he told The Atlantic reporter that it was a “shit show”. The warmonger within his administration, Hillary Clinton, never regretted the disaster, despite the death of a US ambassador to Libya in 2012. Clinton, along with two other administration staff, drove Obama into the mess in Libya without any idea as to what to do once the government of Muammar Gaddafi was gone. […]

I once asked Hashim Bisher, a former top militia commander in Tripoli, why he does not distance his group from the rest by recognising the civilian victims of NATO? He explained that this would mean that we are “against” what NATO did, meaning, “we are not grateful to NATO or the revolution.” This kind of bizarre thinking made the majority of Libyans hate the militias who are supposed to have “liberated” them from Gaddafi’s rule, only to rule them with an iron fist ever since Gaddafi was toppled and murdered nine years ago. Läs artikel