Seven months & Two Weeks. $1.1 Billion. One F-15E crashed due to mechanical failure, both pilots rescued with only minor injuries. One unmanned Navy Fire Scout helicopter drone shot down by Gaddafi forces.
That was the total cost for the United States to do its part in preventing a wholesale slaughter of the people of Eastern Libya (and Misrata, and the Nafusa mountains), and in finally ending the 42-year reign of one of the world's most brutal and terroristic dictators.
And as of 6 PM Eastern Standard time, NATO and US military involvement in Libya officially came to a close.
http://www.cbc.ca/...
Gaddafi is dead, his most brutal sons Khamis and Mutassim are dead, and Saif is nearing the end of the rope. Almost all of his inner circle are dead, in custody, or in exile. All major loyalist redoubts have been taken over by NTC forces.
Muammar Gaddafi, who sponsored the murder in excess of 300 Americans in the 70s & 80s...from the Munich Olympics to Lockerbie. Who sponsored and trained mad men all over the globe. To include:
Sending Semtex explosives, missiles, and flamethrowers (yes, FLAMETHROWERS) to the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Weapons that turned Northern Ireland into a warzone that killed thousands on both sides.
Sent troops to rescue Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, propped the teetering regime of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and in the 1980s invaded Chad.
-Opened the 'World Revolutionary Center' which was a training camp for many of Africa's worst butchers. Including Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor of Liberia,
-Openly harbored and directed terrorist groups such as Abu Nidal, the PLF, Japanese Red Army, Black September, Carlos the Jackal, the Red Brigades, Baader Meinhoff Group, PFLP.
-In more recent years was found to still be financing terrorist groups, including FARC in Colombia and MEND in Nigeria.
-Repeatedly attempted to launch terrorist attacks on US soil. In 1988 dispatching a Japanese Red Army terrorist named Yu Kikumura to bomb targets in New York on the anniversary of Operation El Dorado Canyon. Libyan agents also attempted to provide weapons, including rocket launchers, to the Chicago street gang 'El Rukns' or Black P. Stones. The gang had agreed to launch attacks in exchange for money.
Far more than Saddam, Gaddafi was a man who exported violence. The world, not just Libya, is a much safer place without him.
And let us be eternally grateful that NOT ONE AMERICAN soldier had to die in the military mission to dislodge him.
That is a luxury that America has almost never had. For a President to look in the camera, after a bloody, months-long conflict in which Americans were in harm's way every single day and say "Everyone is coming home, safe and sound."
Many armchair generals love to talk about wars and interventions that were 'cake walks.' Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Desert Storm, the Balkans. But American servicemen and women died in every one of those conflicts. Even the first bombing of Libya, the 1986 one-night mission called 'Operation El Dorado Canyon' resulted in an F-111 bomber being shot down, both pilots lost.
The risk was always there that we might lose men and women in the skies over Libya. You can never guarantee everyone will come home. But this President undertook a course of action that mitigated those risks. He brought along our allies, set clear rules of engagement, ordered a mission that went in heavy at the outset to guarantee a No Fly Zone was established within hours. No Libyan Migs ever got up off the ground to challenge our pilots, no Libyan SAM sites were able to target our jets. Libyans fought for their own country, no Americans were necessary to do the grunt work on the ground.
The people of Libya have many challenges ahead. To include rebuilding what was destroyed, reconciling with those who have been defeated, corralling those militias they relied upon for victory, and building the democracy they fought for. We should do what we can to help them achieve those goals, but the fight is over.
Everybody's coming home. Don't ever take that fact for granted.