Hafter spent nearly two decades in Langley, Virginia, in the US, gaining U.S. citizenship.

The US should not have led NATO in attacking Libya.

She was not the primary leader. She *was* the primary leader reported in the US press because, well, she's a US person and the US press is in the US. It would have been strange for anything else. That's far from saying that the US press presented everything from a "we're in outer space and want to give a random, representative sample of the advocacy for the Libyan intervention." Our biased memories represent the bias towards local politics being locally important for those locals who are politically aware.

And as for NATO, the overall politics were were also local. Countries getting swamped with refugees (or threatened with swampage) actually led the battle. US provided logistics, the "leading from behind" strategy that reminds me more of Pierson's puppeteers than traditional imperialist thought. France and Italy lead the way. I think the best we did was help in a naval embargo during the siege of Tripoli. (You know, a siege, where food and medical supplies can't get in?)

Then again, it was the Soviet Cold War insurgency strategy, so there's that.

As soon as the goal was met--making sure that the centrifugal forces that Gaddhafi was brutally repressing could flower in his absence, NATO said, "Let a thousand flowers bloom, and be sure to cut and send us some in gratitude." Then they all but abandoned the country. People were happy to do this.

Many supporters of Gaddhafi throughout the '80s, '90s, '00s were suddenly vehemently anti-Gaddhafi. Oddly, their vehemence increased as his oppression and hate-mongering decreased under a bit of threat after Lockerbie, but certainly after 2001 and 2003 and when it was proven (by seizing one of his ships) that he was in cahoots with North Korea and doing some nasty military-related smuggling.