Hacker News Reader

I'm curious where you see Libya fitting in this pattern.

Personally I'm more inclined to believe that the ally-turned-foe's invasion serves as a convenient excuse for the US to attack, rather than the root cause. One thing that at least Gadaffi and Saddam have in common is nationalizing their oil industry. This to me seems like a much more believable reason for US aggression.

View on HN

Gadaffi was a nominal socialist who kicked the US military out, aligned himself with the Soviet Union, proposed pan-Arabist and pan-African alliances to exclude the west and was implicated in bombings of US targets, undermining US-allied causes overseas etc. And yes, he nationalized the oil industry early in his rule. Even if he briefly achieved some sort of rapprochement (mostly with the EU) when he'd run out of allies, he's pretty much the exemplar of how to piss off the US, and so them helping finish his regime off fits the pattern perfectly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com