Libya is begging for help against the jihadist threat. Yahoo/AFP

Libyan soldiers in Benghazi. Yahoo/AFP

The Libyan government is begging for international help in fighting jihadist militias. Yahoo/AFP.  Specifically, the government is calling for an end to the 2011 arms embargo imposed by the UN security council during the revolution against Moammar Gaddafi. The government claims that the embargo is crippling their fight against Islamic extremist militias. The Islamic coalition Libya Dawn holds the capitol of Tripoli and third largest city of Misrata. Ansar al-Sharia, an ISIS affiliate also controls parts of Benghazi and Derna. ISIS is also suspected of running training camps in the south. The international community has been very wary of getting involved in Libya despite helping dispose Gaddafi. 

My Comment:

It looks like Libya is well on its way to being another failed state just like Syria and Iraq. The Libyan military has been pushed out of their capital and are not much of a fighting force. That would be true even if they did have weapons. And I doubt that they don't have weapons since Libya has long been a hot spot of the illegal arms trade. They can get weapons, just not legally. As far as the sanctions go though, Libya might have a better chance if they stop doing things like this... 

There seems to be a very strong pattern to what happens in the Middle East when the United States gets involved. We have overthrown brutal, but secular dictatorships in both Iraq and Libya, tried to do the same in Syria and overthrew a theocracy in Afghanistan. In all those countries Islamic extremism formed a large insurgency and caused civil war. Now I am not saying that getting rid of Saddam and Gaddafi were bad things or that Assad should still be in power. But getting rid of the first two and weakening Assad has allowed Islamic extremism to take over. 

So was it right to get rid of these dictators? No question it was a good thing to bring them to justice. But we screwed up the endgame and in each case Islamic extremism took over. Brutal dictators are a huge threat but they are a secular threat. I don't want to say that they are rational, because neither Sadddam or Gaddafi were, but their motivations were keeping power and staying alive. You can negotiate with that type of person. You can't negotiate with a zealot who believes that they are fighting for God. It's too late to do anything about it now, but in the future it would be wise for Western leaders to plan for the inevitable Islamic insurgency before they overthrow a dictator that is keeping them in check.