Stephen Walt cautions against it:
'As I've noted before, we still don't know how the "Libyan revolution" is going to turn out. Even if Qaddafi set a very low standard for effective or just governance, the end-result of his ouster may not be as gratifying as we hope. More importantly, we also ought to guard against the common tendency to draw big policy conclusions from a single case, especially when we don't have good theories to help us understand the differences between different outcomes.'
The fact of the matter is it is way too early to judge whether the Libyan war was a success or not. Toppling Gaddafi may appear to be a net-plus for the U.S. given the relatively low cost incurred so far in his ouster, but there are several scenarios that would cast even that joyous event in a harsher light. For instance, if several anti-aircraft weapons make their way from Libya into the hands of al-Qaeda, who then use them to down several American civilian aircraft, the war would have cost the U.S. vastly more than it gained.