Hillary Defends Her Failed War in Libya

anatta · Oct 14, 2015

Using contested intelligence, a powerful adviser urges a president to wage a war of choice against a dictator; makes a bellicose joke when he is killed; declares the operation a success; fails to plan for a power vacuum; and watches Islamists gain power. That describes Dick Cheney and the Iraq War—and Hillary Clinton and the war in Libya.Clinton was criticized not just for the Iraq War vote that cost her the 2008 election, but also for the undeclared 2011 war that she urged in Libya.
The Obama Administration waged that war of choice in violation of the War Powers Resolution and despite the official opposition of the U.S. Congress.

She then put a positive gloss on the war’s outcome. “I'll say this for the Libyan people…” she said. “I think President Obama made the right decision at the time. And the Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951. And you know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot of other things, there was turmoil to be followed.”

Yet the answer didn’t hurt the Democratic frontrunner. That’s because neither CNN moderators nor prospective Clinton supporters understand the magnitude of the catastrophe that occurred amid the predictable power vacuum that followed Ghadaffi’s ouster. “Libya today—in spite of the expectations we had at the time of the revolution—it’s much, much worse,” Karim Mezran, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, told Frontline. “Criminality is skyrocketing. Insecurity is pervasive. There are no jobs. It’s hard to get food and electricity. There’s fighting, there’s fear … I see very few bright spots.”

U.S. arms found their way into the hands of Islamists.

“Nearly three and a half years after Libyan rebels and a NATO air campaign overthrew Muammar al-Qaddafi, the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t exist,”
Hillary Clinton Defends Intervention in Libya - The Atlantic

anatta · Oct 14, 2015

please read the link. Libya is every bit as bad as Syria, ( ISIS is in Libya too) -but Libya is the wests/US/NATO doing.

Hilary Clinton is a screw up - she had major influence ( along with the harpies Rice and Powers) on Obama.

I document the current civil war here. Libyan Civil War 2014 - Present | DCJunkies

Reading the link gets you up to speed, and you'll know much more then CCN/voters, or Clinton's lip glossing the pig she created in Libya -
Libya is a failed terrorist state.

donsutherland1 · Oct 15, 2015

Even as I have expressed concern about the possible partisan nature of the Benghazi Select Committee, I believe the U.S. decision to help bring about regime change in Libya was a bad decision that served no meaningful U.S. interests. What I wrote back in 2011 (http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...nvolvement-libya-edited-2.html#post1059428996) in opposing U.S. military intervention still holds true today:

No matter the outcome in Libya's civil war, no critical U.S. interests or allies are threatened. The U.S. military should be used to safeguard critical U.S. interests and allies, not to pursue regime change for the sake of doing so. The revolution in Libya should be waged, won, or lost by Libyans. That it has not been won despite close-air support missions is due to gross incompetence (political and military) on the part of the anti-Gadhafi forces and the reality that the anti-Gadhafi forces do not enjoy the broad-based support of Libya's people and tribes. It is a narrow regional uprising with national aspirations, not a nationwide uprising. Many Libyans continue to oppose the rebels. Hence, even if the dictatorship is toppled, there will be high risk of a wider civil war (power vacuum and incompetence of the anti-Gadhafi movement, which incredibly enough has made no meaningful efforts to build broad-based support nor issued any defining documents truly laying out what it stands for). Long-term security arrangements and potentially costly nation-building would likely be required to avert or reduce that risk.

That Col. Gadhafi's regime is brutal and has been hostile to the U.S. in the past is true. However, it does not pose a credible imminent threat to critical U.S. interests and allies to justify U.S. military intervention. If the U.S. and NATO can obtain a verifiable ceasefire that protects Libya's civilian population, they should take it. It is not NATO's nor the United States' obligation to wage the revolution on behalf of any faction within Libya given the absence of compelling interests.

Tragically, the events since regime change have led to Libya's becoming a failed state and destabilizing force in what is already an unstable region. It's difficult to argue that Libya's people are better off today than they were under the authoritarian rule of Col. Gadhafi. What is clear is that Libya is now a bigger source of instability and that instability had adversely impacted U.S. interests and the interests of regional U.S. allies.

AlbqOwl · Oct 15, 2015

donsutherland1 said:
Even as I have expressed concern about the possible partisan nature of the Benghazi Select Committee, I believe the U.S. decision to help bring about regime change in Libya was a bad decision that served no meaningful U.S. interests. What I wrote back in 2011 (http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...nvolvement-libya-edited-2.html#post1059428996) in opposing U.S. military intervention still holds true today:

No matter the outcome in Libya's civil war, no critical U.S. interests or allies are threatened. The U.S. military should be used to safeguard critical U.S. interests and allies, not to pursue regime change for the sake of doing so. The revolution in Libya should be waged, won, or lost by Libyans. That it has not been won despite close-air support missions is due to gross incompetence (political and military) on the part of the anti-Gadhafi forces and the reality that the anti-Gadhafi forces do not enjoy the broad-based support of Libya's people and tribes. It is a narrow regional uprising with national aspirations, not a nationwide uprising. Many Libyans continue to oppose the rebels. Hence, even if the dictatorship is toppled, there will be high risk of a wider civil war (power vacuum and incompetence of the anti-Gadhafi movement, which incredibly enough has made no meaningful efforts to build broad-based support nor issued any defining documents truly laying out what it stands for). Long-term security arrangements and potentially costly nation-building would likely be required to avert or reduce that risk.

That Col. Gadhafi's regime is brutal and has been hostile to the U.S. in the past is true. However, it does not pose a credible imminent threat to critical U.S. interests and allies to justify U.S. military intervention. If the U.S. and NATO can obtain a verifiable ceasefire that protects Libya's civilian population, they should take it. It is not NATO's nor the United States' obligation to wage the revolution on behalf of any faction within Libya given the absence of compelling interests.

Tragically, the events since regime change have led to Libya's becoming a failed state and destabilizing force in what is already an unstable region. It's difficult to argue that Libya's people are better off today than they were under the authoritarian rule of Col. Gadhafi. What is clear is that Libya is now a bigger source of instability and that instability had adversely impacted U.S. interests and the interests of regional U.S. allies.

But how is 'critical interest' defined? When Lybian terrorists firebombed a bar and killed a number of Americans and allies, Reagan saw those people as our 'critical interest' and bombed Lybia in response. We didn't hear a peep out of Gadhafi for a very long time after that, he normalized diplomatic relations with the USA in the early 1990's, and our intervention in Iraq had Gadhafi scrambling to establish himself as a non threat and peaceful nation friendly to the USA. So when Lybian terrorists firebomb and kill four Americans, including our Ambassador, at one of our consulates, is that a 'critical interest'? Admittedly Obama and Clinton's decision for a regime change came before that terrible event and we could certainly think those two things were at least loosely connected. The shortsighted part of it was that initiating and promoting a regime change cannot be identified with any 'critical interest' of the USA.

Because of her inability to see things as they are, or unwillingness to honestly describe things as they are, I don't want Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States.

donsutherland1 · Oct 15, 2015

AlbqOwl said:
But how is 'critical interest' defined? When Lybian terrorists firebombed a bar and killed a number of Americans and allies, Reagan saw those people as our 'critical interest' and bombed Lybia in response. We didn't hear a peep out of Gadhafi for a very long time after that, he normalized diplomatic relations with the USA in the early 1990's, and our intervention in Iraq had Gadhafi scrambling to establish himself as a non threat and peaceful nation friendly to the USA. So when Lybian terrorists firebomb and kill four Americans, including our Ambassador, at one of our consulates, is that a 'critical interest'? Admittedly Obama and Clinton's decision for a regime change came before that terrible event and we could certainly think those two things were at least loosely connected. The shortsighted part of it was that initiating and promoting a regime change cannot be identified with any 'critical interest' of the USA.

Because of her inability to see things as they are, or unwillingness to honestly describe things as they are, I don't want Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States.

President Reagan responded appropriately. Libya had largely been deterred since that time and even abandoned its nuclear weapons program. In 2011, Libya posed no security threat to the U.S. or its regional allies.

The terrorist attack took place after regime change, not before it. Regime change resulted in the kind of power vacuum and sectarian fragmentation that concerned me and post-regime change Libya now does pose risks to U.S. interests. Without U.S. and NATO military intervention, it is highly unlikely that regime change would have occurred. Instead, the regional uprising would very likely have been squashed. That outcome would not have adversely impacted the U.S., as prior to regime change, Libya no longer presented security risks to the U.S. That's why I opposed U.S. military intervention in Libya. I believe that intervention entailed more costs than benefits and, tragically, the intervention's success in bringing about regime change contributed to Libya's slide into a failed state and the consequences of that outcome.

Exquisitor · Oct 30, 2015

annata said:
Using contested intelligence, a powerful adviser urges a president to wage a war of choice against a dictator; makes a bellicose joke when he is killed; declares the operation a success; fails to plan for a power vacuum; and watches Islamists gain power. That describes Dick Cheney and the Iraq War—and Hillary Clinton and the war in Libya.Clinton was criticized not just for the Iraq War vote that cost her the 2008 election, but also for the undeclared 2011 war that she urged in Libya.
The Obama Administration waged that war of choice in violation of the War Powers Resolution and despite the official opposition of the U.S. Congress.

She then put a positive gloss on the war’s outcome. “I'll say this for the Libyan people…” she said. “I think President Obama made the right decision at the time. And the Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951. And you know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot of other things, there was turmoil to be followed.”

Yet the answer didn’t hurt the Democratic frontrunner. That’s because neither CNN moderators nor prospective Clinton supporters understand the magnitude of the catastrophe that occurred amid the predictable power vacuum that followed Ghadaffi’s ouster. “Libya today—in spite of the expectations we had at the time of the revolution—it’s much, much worse,” Karim Mezran, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, told Frontline. “Criminality is skyrocketing. Insecurity is pervasive. There are no jobs. It’s hard to get food and electricity. There’s fighting, there’s fear … I see very few bright spots.”

U.S. arms found their way into the hands of Islamists.

“Nearly three and a half years after Libyan rebels and a NATO air campaign overthrew Muammar al-Qaddafi, the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t exist,”
Hillary Clinton Defends Intervention in Libya - The Atlantic

Bush didn't do a bad job on Iraq. First he should have declared war for humanitarian purposes (the Iraqi leader had diverted the Euphrates and was drying up the cradle of civilization) and non-compliance. Instead he got everybody all riled up about WMDs and then found none when this should not have been the consideration. Second; if life and limb of your people is of importance then have a troop surge and give your people a flooded zone right away. We took Iraq hands down no problem and then started getting bled trying to hold it. Third; I would put bunkers every so often along the border to keep arms, ammunition and IED material out and make it rain for my oasises that could be turned over to the Iraqis. Fourth; you pump their oil and tell them when they behave they can have their oil revenue back. This gives the Iraqi Government incentive to get things under control. Then you have a schedule; so many US injuries so much revenue withheld; so many dead Iraqis in the morgue, so much more money withheld. With everything under control in Iraq you have the leisure to go help out in the Sudan.

We made a specific point in Lybia; if you kill Americans then if and when we have the chance we will get you.

Asad in Syria hasn't killed Americans and when he crossed the line we were offered the opportunity to rid them of chemical weapons. Does anyone know if they followed through on this promise? If not then Obama gets some points off his grade.

Hillary Defends Her Failed War in Libya

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