Even critics understate how catastrophically bad the Hillary Clinton-led NATO bombing of Libya was
The NY Times reports on Clinton's war leadership don't go far enough. Hillary's disaster in Libya should haunt her
The New York Times published two lengthy pieces this week detailing Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya. Both are important documents, and provide much insight into how, as secretary of state for the Obama administration, Clinton played a uniquely hands-on role in the war.
Sec. Clinton pressured a wary President Obama to join France and the U.K. in the war, the Times reported. Vice President Biden, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, among others, opposed the war effort. Numerous government officials recalled that her hawkish enthusiasm was decisive in the “51-49 decision.”
The Times spoke of “Clinton’s deep belief in America’s power to do good in the world,” but did not stress that this belief is rooted in an aggressive militarism. It did quote French President Sarkozy, who fondly remembered how the Secretary of State “was tough, she was bullish,” but the Times’ reporting understated Clinton’s belligerence.
At 13,000 words in length combined, the articles are important contributions to the historical record. Yet although they are critical of Clinton and her leadership in the conflict, they fail to acknowledge the crimes of U.S.-backed rebel groups, and ultimately underestimate just how disastrous the War was, just how hawkish Hillary is and just how significant this will be for the future of the United States — not to mention the future of Libya and its suffering people.
The U.S. President does not have as much control over economic and social issues as many pundits, analysts and even voters often insist. One must not forget that the head of State does not control the Congress, or the Judiciary. But the President does have enormous power when it comes to international affairs, diplomacy and War. This makes foreign policy one of the most crucial issues in any Presidential campaign.
Clinton’s leadership in the catastrophic War in Libya should ergo constantly be at the forefront of any discussion of the Presidential primary.
Throughout the campaign, Clinton has tried to have her cake and eat it too. She has flaunted her leadership in the War as a sign of her supposed foreign policy experience, yet, at the same moment, strived to distance herself from the disastrous results of said War.
Today, Libya is in ruins. The seven months of NATO bombing effectively destroyed the government and left behind a political vacuum. Much of this has been filled by extremist groups.
Millions of Libyans live without a formal government. The internationally recognized government only controls the eastern part of the country. Rivaled extremist Islamist groups have seized much of the country.
Downtown Benghazi, a once thriving city, is now in ruins. Ansar al-Sharia, a fundamentalist Salafi militia that is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., now controls large chunks of it. ISIS has made Libya home to its largest so-called “caliphate” outside of Iraq and Syria.
Thousands of Libyans have been killed, and this violent chaos has sparked a flood of refugees. Hundreds of thousands of Libyan civilians have fled, often on dangerous smuggling boats. The U.N. estimates more than 400,000 people have been displaced.
A disjointed peace process, mediated by the U.N. and other countries, drags on, with no signs of the War ending anytime soon.
Hillary has, understandably, said little of these consequences. Yet, in debate after debate, with her call for more aggression on Syria and Iran, Clinton has only continued to demonstrate that she is an unabashed War hawk.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, looking back, the facts show that she did not just push for and lead the War in Libya; she even went out of her way to derail diplomacy.
Little-discussed secret audio recordings released in early 2015 reveal how top Pentagon officials, and even one of the most progressive Democrats in Congress, were so wary of Clinton’s warmongering that they corresponded with the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in hopes of pursuing some form of diplomacy.
Qaddafi’s son Seif wanted to negotiate a ceasefire with the U.S. government, opening up communications with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Clinton later intervened and asked the Pentagon to stop talking to the Qaddafi regime.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich wrote a letter to Clinton and Obama in August 2011, warning against the War. “I have been contacted by an intermediary in Libya who has indicated that President Muammar Gadhafi is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict under conditions which would seem to favor Administration policy,” the Democratic lawmaker said. His plea was ignored.
A Pentagon intelligence official told Seif Qaddafi that his messages were falling on deaf ears. “Everything I am getting from the State Department is that they do not care about being part of this,” he explained.
“Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all,” the U.S. intelligence official added.
And not negotiate is indeed what she did. In fact, after Qaddafi was brutally killed — sodomized with a bayonet by rebels — Clinton gloated live on TV, “We came, we saw, he died!”
The Pentagon’s correspondence with Libya before and during the war has rarely been mentioned in media reports (it is not discussed in either of the two New York Times pieces) since the Washington Times originally reported it.
The irony in the media coverage of Libya is that the right-wing media, which tends to be more pro-War, has actually been more careful and diligent in its assessment of Clinton’s legacy in Libya. In a dogmatic bipartisan political system, perhaps these kinds of double standards have come to be expected.
Those to the left of the Democratic Party certainly took notice too, nonetheless. Jacobin, a firmly leftist magazine, published one of the most careful and scathing critiques of Clinton’s role in the war. Journalist and author David Mizner meticulously detailed the uncomfortable facts in a piece appropriately titled “Worse Than Benghazi.”
Hillary’s War in Libya is the real Benghazi scandal. As Salon has previously reported, mere hours after Clinton’s day-long Benghazi interrogation by Republicans in October, at least six Libyans were killed and dozens more were wounded when militants in Benghazi fired rockets at a protest against a U.N. proposal for a unity government.
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