On 16 October 1911, a popular French magazine, Le Petit Journal, celebrated the Italian military occupation of Libya with a full front page drawing captioned: “Par l’occupation italienne la tripolitaine s’ouvre enfin à la civilisation.” It showed the Goddess Liberty holding her flame of freedom high and leading the way for smartly dressed Italian officers stepping on Libyan soil. In front of them, frightened local men in their traditional dresses run away; the sight of civilization and progress on the march appears to have stricken fear into them. As if to underline the link between advanced civilization and superior firepower, we see in the background three battleships in full steam moving toward the shores of Libya. The Goddess Liberty appears to have been inspired by Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People celebrating the 1830 French revolution. However, while Delacroix's Liberty standing on the barricades of Paris shows her bare breasts, Le Petit Journal's Liberty stepping on Muslim soil takes a more decent posture with her dress covering her entire body. Even then military occupations made some attempt to be culturally sensitive.

Almost exactly one hundred years later, on 16 September 2011, the French newspaper Le Figaro published a large front-page picture captioned “Sarkozy and Cameron accueillis en libérateur par les Libyens.” This time, it was to celebrate the successful overthrow of Libyan long-time dictator Qaddafi with the help of the French and British air forces. Although color photographs now replaced colored drawings and President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron replaced the Goddess Liberty, the underlying message is still the same: The West brings freedom to this underdeveloped Muslim country, something it would not have achieved by itself. The West, the images convey further, is still needed as a force – and this is mostly meant a military force – of goodness and progress in the world. And in this, women must not be missed. While in 1911 a goddess led men into battle, the Le Figaro image showed several young women clad in huge red scarves enthusiastically thanking the two men from the West who had led the military foray into Libya, allegedly bringing them liberty.