Libya U.S. Intervention: Al Jazeera Examines Obama's Choices In The Middle East (VIDEO)

On Feb. 15, four days after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down, Libyans hit the streets in countrywide demonstrations to demand the resignation of their leader Muammar Gaddafi. That protest, as time has proved, became the start of a five-month-long civil war between rebel groups and Gaddafi's forces.

In "The U.S. and The New Middle East," Al Jazeera's "Fault Lines" investigates the reasons behind the U.S. decision to intervene in Libya while it chose to remain on the sidelines in Bahrain and Syria.

Was the operation prompted by an urgent need to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, as the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated? Or were other concerns also at stake -- Libya's high-quality crude oil, for example. "Is oil the only reason they intervened? I'm not in a position to say," Edward Chow from the Center for Strategic and International Studies says in the program. "But was it a factor? Certainly. That's hard to ignore," he concludes.