Five years ago this month, the United States and allied nations began bombing Libya, striking forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Obama administration said the strikes were needed to enforce a no-fly zone and to protect Libyan protesters who took to the streets as part of the Arab Spring. Inside the Obama administration, there was a deep division over whether the U.S. should intervene militarily. One of the most hawkish members of Obama’s Cabinet was Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state.
Scott Shane talking:
five years ago, there were—there was a question about what to do as Gaddafi’s forces approached Benghazi. The Europeans and the Arab League were calling for action. No one really knew what the outcome would be, but there was certainly a very serious threat to a large number of civilians in Benghazi. But, you know, the U.S. was still involved in two big wars, and the sort of heavyweights in the Obama administration were against getting involved—Robert Gates, the defensive secretary; Joe Biden, the vice president; Tom Donilon, the national security adviser.
And Secretary Clinton had been meeting with representatives of Britain, France and the Arab countries. And she sort of essentially called in from Paris and then from Cairo, and she ended up tipping the balance and essentially convincing President Obama, who later described this as a 51-49 decision, to join the other countries in the coalition to bomb Gaddafi’s forces.
for a few months, it looked like things might go reasonably well. There was some attention to restoring Libya’s oil industry. And the optimism was based in part on the idea that this is a relatively small country population-wise, about 6 million people. It did not have the Sunni-Shia split that you see in many Muslim countries, and it had plenty of money from oil to rebuild. So, briefly, there was this sort of moment of optimism. And Secretary Clinton made her visit. And they were—you know, her people were actually thinking this would be perhaps a centerpiece of her record as secretary of state.
But what happened was the militias that had participated in the fight against Gaddafi, you know, essentially aligned with different tribes in different cities, and it proved impossible for these mostly Western-educated—in some cases, somewhat detached—opposition leaders to pull the country together, and eventually it sort of dissolved into civil war.
Hillary Clinton said, “We came, we saw, he died.”
in some ways, I think she would see that as unfair. She was giving a series of TV interviews, and that was in a break between interviews. The reporter for the next take was just sitting down in the chair, and an aide handed her a Blackberry with the news that Gaddafi—you know, first reports that Gaddafi might be dead. And that was her sort of, I think she would say, you know, exaggerated, humorous reaction. But, you know—but it did capture, I think, the fact that she had become very involved in this effort that first—that sort of began as protecting civilians and sort of evolved into overthrowing Gaddafi. And she was eager to see an end to what had become a surprisingly drawn-out affair, given the fact that this very large alliance of NATO and Arab countries were on the rebels’ side. So I think she was relieved and pleased that Gaddafi’s rule was over and that he was no longer around to make trouble.
I think what we found is that there is a subtle but distinct difference between President Obama and Secretary Clinton on the question of sort of activism and interventionism abroad. And, you know, in a situation like Libya, there are no good choices. It’s certainly conceivable that if she had tipped the other way, and the U.S. and the Europeans and others had not gotten involved, that perhaps Gaddafi would have slaughtered a whole lot of civilians, and we would be, you know, posing different questions to her today.
But, you know, what we found was that President Obama is, not surprisingly, very shaped by the Iraq experience, which he’s had to cope with the still ongoing aftermath of the decision to invade in 2003 all these years later. She, of course, has been in government longer, and I think she—you know, her aides say that she was also influenced by genocide in Rwanda, which taught her the cost of inaction in a situation like that, and by the experience in the Balkans, which sort of cut both ways. But, you know, I think she drew the lesson that intervention could prevent even larger massacres and do some good, as imperfect as the outcome was there. So they kind of look back to these different historical experiences and draw different conclusions.
[in the rest of the interview, Scott Shane trying to save Hillary. so skippnig]
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Scott Shane
national security reporter for The New York Times. Along with Jo Becker, he recently co-wrote a two-part exposé for the Times called “The Libya Gamble.”
— source http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/3/the_libya_gamble_inside_hillary_clinton
We came, we saw, he died. Its very important. This is true for the entire history of the world.