Libya On My Mind

Let me start this morning with the two recent shipwrecks in the Mediterranean that killed as many as 1,300 men, women and children. As a sailor, the image of all those terrified people grabbing, clawing, gouging and fighting each other and the raging sea trying desperately to survive sticks with me like a nightmare.
Those dead would-be immigrants trying to get from Libya in North Africa to Italy in Southern Europe is the severest example of the same situation we see in many parts of the world, including along our own southern border: Economic and political refugees, asylum seekers and just eager immigrants trying to get into the Promised Land.
Obviously the developed world can’t absorb all the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But aside from increasing patrols in the Mediterranean to cut down on the human smuggling, there are things the civilized nations can do in terms of economic development in those impoverished lands. 
But first and foremost, when it comes to Libya, we can help what remains of a government there to suppress the savages of ISIS who have totally disrupted civil order there.
It was our blundering intervention that unraveled Libya. 
President Obama naively allowed himself to be led by the French and others into destroying the established order. Gaddafi was an imperfect and undemocratic leader; a dictator, but one who renounced nuclear weapons and embraced trade with the West. Importantly, when he was in charge migrants weren’t dying trying to escape.
Our Ambassador and three other brave Americans were murdered by ISIS or their cousins, al Qaeda-related terrorists in Benghazi Libya. We, the U.S. and our nearby European allies have a score to settle there, and an obligation to set that nation straight.