With The Benefit Of Hindsight, Would It Have Been Better If We Had Supported The Gaddafi Regime...

[sandyRoe]

...rather than had a hand in its overthrow?
I'm thinking that people like Gaddafi had no time for Islamic fundamentalists.

[anotheoldgit]

Don't all those that we help come back to bite the hand of kindness?

Time we stopped offering it about so much.

[Svejk]

Its all very complicated. As with Saddam Hussain, one might think they had the leaders they deserved. Should we be intervening in other countries' affairs at all.
I like to think there's lots of more intelligent people than me sorting all these things out. But who knows?

[zebo]

Did anyone seriously think that these revolutions wouldn't lead to further fundamentalism? They swapped one set of dictators for another all across North Africa, except the old dictators kept the fundamentalists down.

[New Judge]

No, it would have been better if we had done neither.

Looking back over the past few years we have interfered in the internal affairs of nations with scant regard for the eventual outcome. Heaven knows why. I would have thought that there are sufficient “wise heads” at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (the permanent staff, not the politicians) to know better. But I’m obviously wrong.

Looking particularly at the “Arab Spring” we assisted in the overthrow of Gadaffi, took sides in the Egyptian uprising, and made our views well known in Tunisia. We do not seem to understand that some nations do not adapt easily to what we know as “democracy”. Many of them are rife with “tribal” differences and need a very different kind of governance to ours. The western European version of democracy has taken centuries to evolve and yet we expect nations to adapt to it virtually overnight. Almost all of those nations are now extremely unstable yet we continue to get involved and now look like taking part in whatever goes down in Mali.

We should keep clear of these conflicts. Dipping our toes in here and there will not eradicate Islamic fundamentalists. As has been shown, when the going gets tough they simply up sticks and move elsewhere. Another way must be found to ensure the UK’s security

[bazwillrun]

"I like to think there's lots of more intelligent people than me sorting all these things out."

dream on, history , in most cases proves otherwise

[modeller]

Maybe but remember the conflicts with Egypt and Chad, Gaddafi's support for foreign militants led to Libya being labelled an "international pariah", with a particularly hostile relationship developing with the United States and United Kingdom. Remember Lockerbie and the Embassy murder of Yvonne Fletcher.
All this was years before the uprising .

[Mosaic]

Whiling away the ash cloud in 2010 in a cairo hotel, I recall the telly was full of coverage of some huge national celebration Gaddafi had got organised in Libya. It never seemed to get coverage in the west, but was obviously a vast expenditure of resources. Maybe this was part of the message that his losing it phase had ended and he had indeed lost it. He seems to have been bonkers beyond any scale we can devise and there were many people seeking change and desperate for outside help.
Like Hitler's Germany, smaller scale but lots of similarities.
Yeah, I think we should be pleased we helped to off the Barsteward.

[ichkeria]

Er, we DID support Gaddafi for that very reason, if you recall. And then what happened was the people rebelled and we intervened to prevent a massacre. Left to run its course without intervention it's quite possible something along the lines of Syria (where similar intervention is impossible) would have turned out - ie a major conflict with an increasingly radicalised opposition, embittered by a sense of abandonment. And Gaddafi would have fallen eventually. Or we could have done effectively what the French are now getting stick for in Mali and supported the government for the sake of defeating the perceived threat of radicalism (much more real in Mali of course) and that would have nipped it in the bud - I don't think

[Mosaic]

Revolution - terror - reaction - start again.
Choose your spot in history and examine.
all that's left is who you think are the good guys.

[pdq1]

The leadership in Russia and China must be laughing their socks off sitting on the sidelines as we try to bring democracy across the Middle East. If you want that country to change completely about face you don't send in the armoured troops and aerial firepower. You try to convince them they would be better off under another philosophy.

Our actions have just hardened the ruthless thugs and allowed the moderates to follow them. There was little internal strife in Afghanistan before we put the boot in but soon after we leave their could be a civil war. The same in Iraq. The Sunnis who had the upper hand under Saddam has been replaced by the Shias aligned to Iran. Every day we here that the Sunnis are taking revenge against the Shias and hundreds killed every week by hidden explosives. No doubt in time the same will happen in Libya.

We can't keep our noses out can we. Rather than protecting Britain by our actions we have created world wide disorder not knowing who will strike us first.

[New Judge]

A much better, far more succinct summary than mine, pdq.

[ichkeria]

pdq1, not sure if you're referring to Mali (not in the Middle East) or Libya (where we didn't send in arnoured forces at all) but in neither case are "we" trying to "bring democracy". In Mali the French have intervened to stop an islamic fundamentalist army overrun the country. I daresay they could have sent in a few French philosophers to reason with them but I think we all know where that would have got anyone :-)
In the Middle East and North Africa, the unrest has pretty much consistently been started internally after peaceful protest was brutally suppressed. In some instances the west has intervened, in some instances it hasn't Of course the Russian state media's position in observnig this has been utterly hypocritical - i.e. condemning the west where it HAS intervened and condemning them also for NOT intervening where it hasn't. Anyway, what they say hardly matters.
I suspect by the way that many Algerians will be bemused by our sudden realisation that Islamic fundamentalists are at large in their country: thousands of Algerians have died at the hands of these people over the years.

[New Judge]

Yes and they will continue to do so, all over the world regardless of our interventions. The UK's best interests lie in protecting our borders, keeping undesirables out and ejecting those already here. We can then deal with the fundamentalism that exists within these shores which is the best and only way to protect the UK's interests.