by FAROOQUE CHOWDHURY
Nato planes bomb a Gaddafi compound in Tripoli, Libya PHOTO/Limping Messenger
“More than anyone else, Hillary Clinton pushed for, and helped effectuate, the overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi.”
A ruined Libya still lives in the US politics. There’s still no escape from the country devastated by imperialist intervention. It was, as is claimed, a failure in planning. But is it a failure in planning or “something” else? The oil-rich land is now ruled by anarchy, and is actually not a single country.
Barack Obama, the US president, said, as news agencies reported, the biggest mistake of his presidency was a “lack of planning” for the aftermath of toppling and murdering Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, with the country descending into chaos. Asked in a Fox News interview to cite the “worst mistake” of his presidency, the US president said it was “probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya” in 2011.
It wasn’t the first time the US president admitted the failure in its intervention in the now war-ravaged country. In a recent profile in The Atlantic [1], Obama called Libya “a mess.” He blamed, partly, the European coalition led by David Cameron, the British prime minister now tarnished by Panama Papers, for not doing enough. The US leader also put blame on Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French leader now sunken in scandal. However, the US president blamed his own analysts for failing to understand the Libya reality.
There’s an opposite view also. Former Secretary of State and Democratic candidate in this year’s election Hillary Clinton cites intervention in Libya as one of her chief accomplishments when she headed the US state department. As Secretary of State, she was one of the strongest proponents of the intervention. A leading mainstream US newspaper evaluates the decision on military intervention in Libya as “arguably her moment of greatest influence as Secretary of State.”
There’s Hillary’s “famous” pronouncement: “We came, we saw, he died.” Corbett Daly’s report said: “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed. ‘We came, we saw, he died,’ she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews.” (“Clinton on Qaddafi: ‘We came, we saw, he died,’” CBS News, October 20, 2011, also CNN, “Hillary Clinton’s real Libya Problem”, June 9, 2015)
“Obama blamed his own analysts for failing to understand the Libya reality.”
Contrasting evaluations of the intervention, one by Mr. Obama and another by Mrs. Clinton, appear. The fact, which is told, appears to be that Libyan intervention was Hillary Clinton’s war. Scott Greer refers to The Washington Post that dubbed Libya intervention as “Hillary’s war,” and adds: “She was the one who pushed President Obama to agree to enforce a no-fly-zone that allowed Gaddafi’s opposition to regroup and win the bloody 2011 civil war. She advocated for supplying weapons and military training to rebel forces, some of whom were affiliated with the Islamic militants who later assaulted the US compound in Benghazi.” Scott informs that : “Hillary was evidently proud of her work. On the day of the Benghazi attack, she emailed a staffer a note indicating she wanted…a documentary on Libya that celebrated her as a hero.” (“Remembering Libya: Hillary’s Iraq”, The Daily Caller, May 28, 2015)
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