Hillary's Libya: The Second Time as Farce

[anatta]

Amidst the welter of commentary on Hillary Clinton's June 2 foreign policy speech in which she allegedly eviscerated Donald Trump as the most unreliable leader since Caligula (projection?), I couldn't avoid thinking of Karl Marx's oft-quoted line from The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce."

What Hillary instigated in that North African country, with the obvious acquiescence of Barack Obama, is the most absurd American foreign policy blunder of my lifetime from which the damaging fallout (thousands of drowning refugees in recent weeks, a possible ISIS takeover of that now essentially lawless country, replete with beheadings of Christians, etc.) is just beginning.
Only our complaisant media could conclude anything but the obvious -- that the perpetrator of such a disaster should be totally disqualified as president of the United States.

But let's go back to 2002 or so during the ramp-up to the Iraq War to see how Hillary's Libya became the "second time as farce," both tragedy and farce, in this case. Back then Mrs. Clinton -- unlike Donald Trump, who waffled -- was among the clear majority of American decision-makers of both political parties who favored the war

We hadn't reckoned on that cocktail of tribalism and Islamic ideologies, Sunni and Shiite, that makes those cultures so intransigent and resistant to change. And we weren't ready to "go to the mattress," killing hundreds of thousands as we had in Germany and Japan, to overcome that resistance. And even if we had, who knows if it would have worked with those backward lands? It's no easy thing.

But that didn't stop Hillary Clinton from trying it again a few years later, in Libya, against Muammar Gaddafi, an admittedly crazy despot but one who had agreed to abjure nuclear weapons because of Iraq. (Ironically, Gaddafi was the only serious victory from the whole thing.) Acting partly under the advice of the sniveling sycophant Sidney Blumenthal (paying attention to Blumenthal should disqualify anyone from anything), Hillary decided to push for a second go-round of a failed policy before the first failure had even come close to resolution. Talk about the second time as farce. Result? As Colin Powell said, you break it, you own it. *POTTERY BARN RULE*

Hillary Clinton broke Libya.

So this is the person who is now telling us that Donald Trump is dangerous. Well, it makes sense, because this is the same person who told the parents of the Benghazi victims at their children's funeral that their sons died because of the response to some amateur YouTube video nobody watched and not from an organized terror attack by an al Qaeda affiliate -- in other words, an absolutely immoral liar.

Whether Trump would be a great leader on the international stage is impossible to say because it always is before that person is in that leadership position. That's the inconvenient truth of foreign policy, which, with notable exceptions, is more often about situational reactions than about planning in the great, ahem, laboratories of the State Department.

We do know, however, how Hillary Clinton would perform. We have already seen it. And not just in the emails or the opera bouffe of the Russian reset or the backing of Islamists like Erdogan and Morsi or the horrifying mess of Syria or the even more horrifying, non-existent Iran deal, but, most of all, in Libya. That was her baby.
https://pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2016/06/03/hillarys-libya-the-second-time-as-farce/2/

 

[anatta]

Mr. President, what is the one thing you would go back and change during your presidency, and how would you change it?” asked the questioner in Elkhart, where Obama made his first trip as president seven years ago.

On foreign policy, Obama said it was the 2011 operation in Libya, where the U.S. spearheaded a U.N. and NATO-backed airstrike campaign. Former President Muammar Qaddafi — “this guy,” Obama called him, in a reminder the strongman was considered a state sponsor of terror — had threatened to slaughter thousands of Libyan people.

“We succeeded and probably saved tens of thousands of lives,” Obama responded, referring to the “broader coalition” that went in. “But I did a little too much counting on other countries to then stabilize and help support government formation, and now it’s kind of a mess.”

In March 2011, the U.N. authorized a military intervention, and days later, the U.S. and coalition partners established a no-fly zone over the North African country and began to bomb its government forces. Qaddafi was ousted and killed that October. But Libya has continued to unravel, with the Islamic State swarming in to fill the chaotic vacuum ripped open by the war and the rival factions and governments that followed in its wake.

It’s not the first time Obama has expressed regret over the faltering follow-up. But Obama’s remarks on Libya came just hours after his former secretary of state gave a national-security focused speech with sharp criticism of her likely rival in the 2016 presidential election, presumptive-GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Clinton’s speech in San Diego also served to launch her line of attack against Trump in the general election, arguing his often incoherent and contradictory pronouncements on foreign policy prove he is too dangerous to be commander in chief.

But with the inevitability that the Libya “mess” will be inherited by Obama’s successor — along with a spate of global crises from Syria to Ukraine to the South China Sea — the president’s remarks also remind that Clinton’s more aggressive tack also opens her far more extensive record up to higher scrutiny.

While it’s far from clear whether Obama’s successor will be Trump or Clinton, it’s the likely Democratic nominee who is most closely associated with the current president’s foreign policy — particularly in Libya.

As secretary of state, Clinton was one of Obama’s advisors who advocated strongly for military action in Libya. She also headed the State Department when the U.S. ambassador and several other Americans were killed during attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012. Republican lawmakers continue to try and build a case that Clinton is at fault for failing to provide adequate security before the attacks and that the administration intentionally misled the public after, though a handful previous investigations haven’t found evidence of wrongdoing.

The Libyan ambassador to the U.N. recently told Foreign Policy that the chaos that followed the intervention was not the United States’ or the coalition’s fault, but a crisis of governance of the Libyans’ own making. Still, Republican opponents have already made clear they will attempt to use Libya, and Clinton’s far deeper experience, against her.

“Crooked Hillary Clinton’s foreign interventions unleashed ISIS in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. She is reckless and dangerous!” Trump tweeted on May 21.

It should be noted that Trump also once supported intervention in Libya to remove Qaddafi, saying at the time, “At this point, if you don’t get rid of Qaddafi it’s a major, major black eye for this country.”

In 2016, Clinton, for her part, has decided to defy these efforts and not only defend but tout her experience as a major strength for her bid to be commander in chief.

She has argued that Libya’s own obstruction prevented success. While the Libyans couldn’t provide their own security, she has said, they resisted U.S. troops — or any foreign force — providing it for them.

“We can’t walk away from that,” she said in a Democratic presidential debate in New York in April. “The Libyan people deserve a chance at democracy and self-government. And I, as president, will keep trying to give that to them.”

Clinton did not mention Libya in her speech Thursday
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/libya-is-obamas-biggest-regret-and-hillarys-biggest-threat/

 

[anatta]

She has argued that Libya’s own obstruction prevented success. While the Libyans couldn’t provide their own security, she has said, they resisted U.S. troops — or any foreign force — providing it for them

^don't buy it. in order for the US/NATO to have helped Libya, there would have had to be US/NATO presence after the 2011 Regime Change of Qadaffi.

There was no way in hell we were going into Libya, after our air war blew the place apart.

Clinton is blaming Libya for not magically becoming a democratic state - when even in Iraq our heavy presence produced a failed state..

She's a crafty dodger, and will continue to blame everyone but heself for Libya "mess" (Obama's words) today