By Robert Presser on April 21, 2011
The revolutions taking place across Arabian North Africa are astounding for the rapidity with which they overthrew longstanding dictatorships and the confusion they provoked in Western governments. The US, UK, France and Germany had to decide when and how they would abandon the leaders they had backed for decades, and in the case of Libya the first coalition of the willing since the 1991 Gulf war was created to pound Gaddafi’s forces into retreat to allow the rebels to retain Benghazi.
