More on Operation Odyssey Delight
March 23, 2011
MICHAEL D. writes in response to this entry:
The last occasion when the United States attacked Libya was in 1986 in Operation El Dorado Canyon. This operation consisted of a series of air strikes by air force and navy strike aircraft where they struck regime targets in Tripoli and Benghazi. President Reagan announced the operation to the public while the planes were in the air – the strikes were in reprisal for a bomb attack by Libyan terrorists on a nightclub in Berlin that was packed with many U.S. servicemen and civilians at the time. I have always liked this operational name from the time I first heard it. The name itself is undeniably, assertively and unapologetically American. For me it conjures an image of an avenging raid by rough-riding American horsemen in forbidding desert terrain. The contrast of Obama’s Odyssey Dawn with Reagan’s El Dorado Canyon cannot be more poignant. Only a soft, hesitant, inoffensive and weak-willed president would endorse such a name. This is not surprising, since mustering the courage to finish a burned latté is probably the bravest thing Obama has ever done.
Laura writes:
The biggest difference between that operation and this one is that there was some national interest at stake in 1986.
