Clinton on Libya: 'Too Soon to Tell'; Everyone Else: 'This Was a Disaster'

The two-part New York Times examination of Hillary Clinton's role in the disastrous U.S. intervention against Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi includes a revealing sidebar featuring various people's opinions about what went wrong. A few of my favorites:Michael T. Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency:"This was a disaster. This was not a failure. It was a disaster.… We made it worse. All I know is that in Libya we took a guy out—again not a great guy—but a guy who maintained stability in a bad neighborhood."
Philip H. Gordon, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs under Clinton: "I'm not among the people who thinks there was a magical way we could have done this right. The 'failure-to-follow-up' critique in particular drives me crazy because it implies that if we’d only paid attention, et cetera, everything would be O.K.…We gave the Libyans a chance. It turned out that they weren’t up to it—or maybe we weren’t up to it. Maybe it was just too hard."

David H. Petraeus, retired general and former CIA director: "It’s pretty easy in hindsight. In the wake of Qaddafi’s fall, we weren't quick enough to get in there and try to do something and actually have a meaningful contribution that could help secure and stabilize the situation.…It's very hard to say whether additional assets in a comprehensive manner would have been enough. But what we did was certainly not enough."
Derek Chollet, former State Department, National Security Council and Defense Department official: "When I looked at Libya, I thought, all right, we've got a small population, six million people, we have tremendous energy resources that had been underdeveloped, we had the international community that is extraordinarily unified and invested in Libya's success. I mean, this is the opposite of Iraq in every way. So by God, if we can't succeed here, it should really make one think about embarking on these kind of efforts."

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