Hillary Rodham Clinton is responsible for the Obama administration’s disastrous war effort in Libya. According to a newly released email, Hillary’s aides explicitly congratulate their boss for effectively convincing President Obama to bomb Libya and destabilize its political infrastructure.
The former of Secretary of State managed to force the president’s hand, a difficult feat in it of itself; call it inception. In fact, Anne Marie-Slaughter (a name that’s perhaps too on the nose given the carnage seen in Libya today) Director of Policy Planning (January 2009 – February 2011) under the Clinton State Department, sent her boss a fawning email with the subject line: ‘bravo!”, praising an “exhausted” Hillary Clinton for “Turning POTUS [President of the United States] around” on the decision to lay waste to Libya. Here is a copy of the email:
Again, the debate is officially over; or at least it should be. Hillary Clinton and her poorly-run State Department single-handedly pushed the Obama administration’s ill-conceived Libya war.
The day Obama launched the Libya war, Anne-Marie Slaughter to Hillary: “Turning POTUS around on this is a major win” pic.twitter.com/6GjoHX4hWw
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 13, 2016
As expected, Clinton’s bestie Human Abedin was CC’ed. Abedin is a member of Clinton’s close coterie of corrupt confidantes with ties to both the Clinton Foundation and the United States Department of State.
More importantly, the email conclusively exposes Clinton’s utter hypocrisy. While she plays solemn martyr for her liberal base, Hillary’s administration as a foreign policy actor was not just hawkish, but incredibly reckless. And yet, she still has the gall to exploit the war in Iraq for political points, despite voting for it as Senator of New York.
Why does Hillary say regime change in Iraq was a bad idea but regime change in Libya was the right call? Both countries are way worse off.
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) February 12, 2016
Remember when Hillary Clinton claimed she learned from the Iraq War debacle? Yeah, not so much. #Libyahttps://t.co/OTtmxfIOeB
— Daniel Wright (@DanSWright) February 15, 2016
Indeed, it was at Hillary’s direction that the Obama administration agreed to bomb Libya in 2011, ousting dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Unfortunately, the Regressive Left is far better at moral absolutes like, “War is bad,” “peace is good,” and “dictators are evil,” than actual policy analysis and tactical nuances. While Gaddafi was in fact a madman, his tyrannical rule assured some semblance of security and stability.
The General’s loyal military commanders crushed both Islamist and secular dissent without flinching, ensuring that groups like ISIS could not gain a foothold in the country. Although Gaddafi certainly funded terror abroad, his reach was limited and he provided domestic non-chaos in Libya, as opposed to the crisis consuming the country now.
When Hillary Clinton decided to go Rambo on Libya, she failed to plan for the rebuilding period and post-development calculus. Instead, she chose to “lead from behind,” assembling American airpower to blow Libya to hell without any prospect of returning it to normalcy.
The plan to drop hellfire missiles over Libya was haphazard and clumsy. Republican members of Congress opposed Obama’s Libya policy, calling it an illegal breach of executive privilege. “The United States does not have a King’s army. President Obama’s unilateral choice to use US military force in Libya is an affront to our constitution,” Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, a House Republican on the Armed Services Committee told The Hill.
Libya soon became a mecca for terrorists across the region to congregate, regroup, and consolidate weapons caches. Without Gaddafi, the state of Libya devolved into a no-man’s land, drawing in foreign fighters and gun smugglers quickly, with many establishing a base of operations in the country.
“Weapons are spreading from Libya at an ‘alarming rate,’ fueling conflicts in Mali, Syria, and elsewhere and boosting the arsenals of extremists and criminals in the region,” Reuters reported in 2013 citing an analysis by the U.N. “Libyan government security forces remain weak and militias, made up of former rebel fighters, hold power on the ground.” The UN report added:
These zones [in Libya] also serve as bases and transit points for non-state armed groups, including terrorist groups and criminal and drug trafficking networks with links to the wider Sahel region.
Some 18 months after the end of the conflict, some of this materiel remains under the control of non-state actors within Libya and has been found in seizures of military materiel being trafficked out of Libya.
Civilians and brigades remain in control of most of the weapons in the country, while the lack of an effective security system remains one of the primary obstacles to securing military materiel and controlling the borders.
Fast-forward to 2015 and Libya is a hub of jihadist activity. The Obama administration has done nothing to curb arms trafficking and terrorist activity in the Libya. The New York Times is now reporting ISIS has established operational command in Libya. It was only a matter of time before the Islamic terrorist group took advantage of the relatively unguarded desert.
The crisis in Libya is perhaps the most underreported Clinton disaster of this election cycle. According to the Centre for Research Globalization, “the situation in Libya is continuing to develop alarmingly. The current situation in the country is characterized by a complete lack of any signs of a state system. Libya is being devoured by civil war, disintegration, and the seizure of its territory by a huge variety of forces, most notably the Islamic State.”
For the Clinton camp, Benghazi is just the tip of the iceberg. President Obama himself considers the Libyan affair one of the biggest regrets of his presidency.