- Detailed study of the 1988 presidential elec-
tion that includes an analysis of the ideological
and policy conflicts between liberalism and con-
servatism during the 1980’s.
Rothenberg, Randall.The Neo-liberals. New York: Si-
mon & Schuster, 1984. Compares New Deal liber-
alism with the emerging “neo-liberalism” of the
1980’s, which emphasized free trade, high tech-
nology, and economic growth.
Sean J. Savage
See also Abortion; Affirmative action; Bork, Rob-
ert H.; Bush, George H. W.; Cold War; Congress,
U.S.; Conservatism in U.S. politics; Elections in the
United States, midterm; Elections in the United
States, 1980; Elections in the United States, 1984;
Elections in the United States, 1988; Environmental
movement; Feminism; Foreign policy of the United
States; Iran-Contra affair; O’Neill, Tip; Reagan, Ron-
ald; Reagan Revolution; Social Security reform; So-
viet Union and North America; Unions; Welfare.
Libya bombing
The Event The United States bombs military
facilities in Libya in retaliation for a terrorist
attack in Berlin
Date April 15, 1986
Place Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya, North Africa
The militar y strike against Libya and an earlier naval ac-
tion, both intended to curb terrorism, generated support for
the Reagan administration at home but were widely con-
demned abroad. The bombing established a pattern of uni-
lateral American militar y intervention in the Middle East.
At 2:00a.m.on April 15, 1986, British-based Ameri-
can F-111 bombers launched surprise attacks on
Aziziya Barracks in Tripoli, the residence of Libya’s
head of state, Muammar al-Qaddafi. They also
struck a suspected terrorist training facility at the al-
Jamahiriya barracks in Benghazi, another alleged
training facility in Tripoli, and several airfields. The
attacks constituted the largest U.S. air raid since the
Vietnam War. Sixty-three people, including one of
Qaddafi’s sons and an adopted daughter, died in the
attacks, which the United States justified as retalia-
tion for the April 4 bombing of a Berlin discotheque
frequented by American servicemen. The Berlin
bombing in turn had represented retribution for an
American naval engagement in Libya’s Gulf of Sidra
in late March, in which fifty-six Libyan sailors were
killed and coastal radar installations were destroyed.
The Libya bombing occurred as the Cold War
threat of the Soviet Union was on the wane, and the
Reagan administration sought a new military threat
to replace it. The administration focused on interna-
tional terrorism. Qaddafi, who actively supported
both the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), was an obvi-
ous target. A majority of Americans approved of the
action, but, except in Britain and Israel, interna-
tional reaction was strongly negative. The United
Nations Security Council attempted to issue a vote of
condemnation, but the United States vetoed it. Par-
ticularly disturbing, from an international perspec-
tive, was the use of U.S. military force in the at-
tempted assassination of a head of state.
Impact Bombing Libya solved nothing. Qaddafi,
demonized in the American press as a madman,
emerged more popular in his own country and in
the Arab world. In subsequent years, on the other
hand, he modified Libya’s international relations
in response to economic sanctions. In the short
run, the attack strengthened Libya’s commitment
to terrorism. Over the next two years, the country
clandestinely built up its capacity to manufacture
chemical weapons, none of which was ever de-
ployed. On December 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb
destroyed Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland. A Scottish court subsequently convicted a
Libyan national of planting the bomb in retaliation
for the 1986 raids on Libya. Although some analysts
believe Iran actually perpetrated this act in re-
sponse to the destruction of an Iranian commercial
airliner by the USSVincennesearlier in the year, Lib-
yan outrage and willingness to retaliate with terror-
ist acts were real enough. Contemporary British
commentators argued that the 1986 Libya bomb-
ing represented a new course of unilateral action
that, if carried to its logical conclusion, threatened
to embroil the entire Middle East in a generalized
conflict. Subsequent events did nothing to contra-
dict this interpretation.
Further Reading
Davis, Briant.Qaddafi, Terrorism, and the Origins of the
U.S. Attack on Libya.New York: Praeger, 1996.
Kaldor, Mary, and Paul Anderson.Mad Dogs: The U.S.
Raids on Libya. London: Pluto Press, 1986.The Eighties in America Libya bombing 589