NY Times: Hillary Doubled Down & Pushed for Libya Bombing; Now ISIS Capitalizes on the Chaos

[amborin]

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

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.

snip

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......

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.

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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[bjo59]

1. It would appear that Isis capitalizing on the chaos was part of the original intent.

[amborin]

2. as Bernie and others have noted: was there a plan for the day after? what fills the vacuum? Did

HRC even think of the potential consequences? Anyone who stopped to consider would have been loathe to intervene; and even if there was a sound plan, it would still have been unwarranted interventionism

[jakeXT]

3. The do stupid shit caucus, but he's the decider

When The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need organizing principles, and?‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Obama became “rip-shit angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid shit” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? Who is pro–stupid shit?’?” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit. (Clinton quickly apologized to Obama for her comments, and a Clinton spokesman announced that the two would “hug it out” on Martha’s Vineyard when they crossed paths there later.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/

[amborin]

6. Obama was the wise one; and Hillary has not learned from any of her grievous mistakes

[Tarc]

4. six of one, half-dozen of the other

Khadaffi was a terrorist sponsor for nearly 40 years, most notably the Pan Am 103 bombing. Whatever scenario there is where he is not in the picture is one you can work with, there was no progress to be made in Libya at all while he was in power.

[amborin]

7. K had renouced that and leaned to the West; Libya was stable & contained; he had an egalitarian sys

system

meanwhile, HRC takes donations and sells sophisticated weapons and cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, who uses them against innocent civilians in Yemen

[amborin]

8. no "progress" to be made in Libya? like access to their sovereign wealth funds? or their universal

health care?

[guillaumeb]

5. So when the HRC campaign talks about "experience",

the obvious question is what does the candidate learn from the experience?

Would this make HRC more or less likely to repeat the mistake?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Hillary bragging about her foreign policy experience is like Dillinger bragging about his

banking experience.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, amborin.

[AzDar]

10. K & R

[Major Hogwash]

11. There is no way Hillary wins the state of New York.

No way, not with the 100s of 1000s of people who marched in the streets against war in 2003, 2006, or in 2012!

[woolldog]

13. So did most of DU.