President Obama’s announcement of a major new expansion of the ISIS war into Syria came along with talk of an increased US commitment nationwide, and he explicitly mentioned the need for “vigilance” in Northern Africa.
That suggests that the administration has its sights set squarely on the increasingly failed state of Libya, which grows more failed by the day, and where Gen. Khalifa Hifter, long funded by the CIA, is aiming to secure territory from various Islamist factions.
In last month’s comments, President Obama talked up intervention in Lbiya, saying that the lesson of the NATO-imposed regime change was that the US needed “a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions.”
It may be that President Obama was not merely talking about future conflicts, but about having a re-do on Libya, with an attempt to get into the nation-building business in the oil-rich, but decidedly chaotic, Mediterranean state.
