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HRC's Disastrous Regime Change in Libya Led to Chaos and A Haven for ISIS
This is how Hillary pushed Obama---against his better inclination----to bomb Libya. Part of her neocon perspective, and no doubt influenced by Kissinger, her self-proclaimed role model.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
New York Times Feb 28, 2016
Hllary Clinton's Smart Power and A Dictator's Fall
President Obama was deeply wary of another military venture in a Muslim country. Most of his senior advisers were telling him to stay out. Still, he dispatched Mrs. Clinton to sound out Mr. Jibril, a leader of the Libyan opposition. Their late-night meeting on March 14, 2011, would be the first chance for a top American official to get a sense of whom, exactly, the United States was being asked to support.
In her suite at the Westin, she and Mr. Jibril, a political scientist with a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, spoke at length about the fast-moving military situation in Libya. But Mrs. Clinton was clearly also thinking about Iraq, and its hard lessons for American intervention.
The Libya Gamble
An examination of the American intervention in Libya and Hillary Clinton’s role in it.
Did the opposition’s Transitional National Council really represent the whole of a deeply divided country, or just one region? What if Colonel Qaddafi quit, fled or was killed — did they have a plan for what came next?
snip
Mrs. Clinton was won over. Opposition leaders “said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,” said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. “They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.”
Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.
In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.
The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton’s questions have come to pass.
This is the story of how a woman whose Senate vote for the Iraq war may have doomed her first presidential campaign nonetheless doubled down and pushed for military action in another Muslim country. As she once again seeks the White House, campaigning in part on her experience as the nation’s chief diplomat, an examination of the intervention she championed shows her at what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state
In her suite at the Westin, she and Mr. Jibril, a political scientist with a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, spoke at length about the fast-moving military situation in Libya. But Mrs. Clinton was clearly also thinking about Iraq, and its hard lessons for American intervention.
The Libya Gamble
An examination of the American intervention in Libya and Hillary Clinton’s role in it.
Did the opposition’s Transitional National Council really represent the whole of a deeply divided country, or just one region? What if Colonel Qaddafi quit, fled or was killed — did they have a plan for what came next?
snip
Mrs. Clinton was won over. Opposition leaders “said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,” said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. “They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.”
Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.
In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.
The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton’s questions have come to pass.
This is the story of how a woman whose Senate vote for the Iraq war may have doomed her first presidential campaign nonetheless doubled down and pushed for military action in another Muslim country. As she once again seeks the White House, campaigning in part on her experience as the nation’s chief diplomat, an examination of the intervention she championed shows her at what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state
snip
Here's what we have in Libya Today:
What We Know About ISIS in Libya
The self-described Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has long been making a push to capitalize on the chaos in Libya.
For over a year, it has carried out terror attacks, taken over territory and released propaganda from its franchise in Libya. Now, a new assessment from the Pentagon states the number of ISIS fighters in Libya has doubled since the fall to over 5,000, spurring fresh debate among security officials over the possibility of foreign intervention.
Analysts and officials worry that Libya is increasingly becoming a sort of fallback option for ISIS as it loses territory and power in Syria and Iraq.
“If we look at the raw numbers, the presence of ISIS is definitely strengthening and growing. I think the security threat they pose is definitely going up,” Riccardo Fabiani, senior North Africa analyst at political risk research firm Eurasia Group, told The WorldPost.
The threat ISIS presents in Libya is different than in other nations, and is related both to the group's changing capabilities and to the country's ongoing instability
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isis-presence-in-libya_us_56b369e2e4b08069c7a6352f
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The self-described Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has long been making a push to capitalize on the chaos in Libya.
For over a year, it has carried out terror attacks, taken over territory and released propaganda from its franchise in Libya. Now, a new assessment from the Pentagon states the number of ISIS fighters in Libya has doubled since the fall to over 5,000, spurring fresh debate among security officials over the possibility of foreign intervention.
Analysts and officials worry that Libya is increasingly becoming a sort of fallback option for ISIS as it loses territory and power in Syria and Iraq.
“If we look at the raw numbers, the presence of ISIS is definitely strengthening and growing. I think the security threat they pose is definitely going up,” Riccardo Fabiani, senior North Africa analyst at political risk research firm Eurasia Group, told The WorldPost.
The threat ISIS presents in Libya is different than in other nations, and is related both to the group's changing capabilities and to the country's ongoing instability
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isis-presence-in-libya_us_56b369e2e4b08069c7a6352f
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9 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
bvar22 (39,228 posts)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511647122
"Cleaning Up Hillary’s Libyan Mess"---Robert Parry, April1, 2016
"Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.
<snip>
Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger.
Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations."
(Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.)
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/01/cleaning-up-hillarys-libyan-mess/
"Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.
<snip>
Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger.
Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations."
(Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.)
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/01/cleaning-up-hillarys-libyan-mess/
Before Hillary "helped" them, Libya was the most advanced, mostly secular country in North Africa. Women had many rights. They could own their own money, own and sell property, own cars, drive cars, run businesses, attend the University, wear blue jeans, dance at clubs, and go where they wanted, but not anymore since Hillary helped the rebelsBlack Flag Terrorists with our Freedom Bombs. The new ruling faction has imposed Sharia Law.
NOW, these Bill Boards have appeared all over Libya dictating how women MUST dress:
” For all his dictatorial megalomania, Gaddafi is a committed pan-African - a fierce defender of African unity. Libya was not in debt to international bankers. It did not borrow cash from the International Monetary Fund for any "structural adjustment". It used oil money for social services - including the Great Man Made River project, and investment/aid to sub-Saharan countries. Its independent central bank was not manipulated by the Western financial system. All in all a very bad example for the developing world.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD27Ak01.html
NOW, these Bill Boards have appeared all over Libya dictating how women MUST dress:
” For all his dictatorial megalomania, Gaddafi is a committed pan-African - a fierce defender of African unity. Libya was not in debt to international bankers. It did not borrow cash from the International Monetary Fund for any "structural adjustment". It used oil money for social services - including the Great Man Made River project, and investment/aid to sub-Saharan countries. Its independent central bank was not manipulated by the Western financial system. All in all a very bad example for the developing world.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD27Ak01.html
("Pan-African" means African Resources for Africans...NOT Wall Street, the IMF, or Western Banks)