Barack Obama had to be talked to intervening in Libya by the British and the French. The usual tag team of McCain and Graham supported it, too. The initial action was a success, but there was no plan to run the country, and it fell into anarchy. The GOP would probably beg to differ, but Obama considered it to be the worst foreign policy mistake of his presidency, and he may well have been right.
How times have changed! McCain is dead; Graham is now Trump’s bootlicker-in-chief; the British and French don’t have a solution to the ongoing strife; there are so many countries with troops in Libya that it looks like the Spanish Civil War, with oil substituting for extremist ideology; and Trump couldn’t care less. Erdogan and Putin are trying to fill the vacuum created by our absence by making deals. Is the lack of American leadership a problem?
Possibly for the poor Libyans, but not for us. Unlike Graham and McCain, I have never believed that the national ego requires us to play a leading role in resolving issues that don’t touch our interests. Disengaging with the world is a mistake, but we need to do a better job of picking our spots. If Putin and Erdogan can bring peace to Libya, God bless them.