It’s worth remembering that before Hillary Clinton convinced Barack Obama to support bombing the hell out of Libya, Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa.
Today, it has open air slave markets and is fought over by various Jihadist groups. The so-called central government is a punching bag.
Even if you thought Libya was a bad place, run by a bad man (and he was no saint), the truth is that you never, ever, want the US to intervene in any country unless you want it to become a failed state wasteland. This isn’t your great-grandfather’s US; it isn’t the US which rebuilt Germany and Japan. This is late-Imperial-decline-America, incapable of nation building even at home, let alone in other countries.
Libya was the primary reason Clinton was unqualified to be President. After being for the Iraq war, Libya proved she had learned nothing; that she would make the same mistake again.
Libya has also contributed to destabilizing the EU, as it has contributed to the refugee crisis. Whatever problems the US has with the EU, and vice-versa, straight realpolitik suggest that you don’t undermine you second most important ally in the world (right after Japan) when a new hegemonic power (China) is rising to challenge your dominance.
But ultimately it’s about the people. About the harm. About the slavery, death, disease, rapes, and torture that the “intervention” led to. The attack was, ultimately, monstrous, judged solely on its results. Results which, after Iraq and Afghanistan, were easily predictable.
American liberals have this weird idea that they’re still the good guys, and that the US is a force for good in the world. It isn’t. The best thing for the world, and the US (and Americans), right now, would be for the US to remove its troops from around the world, stop attacking other nations (including drone bombing them) and mind its own business. There’s plenty of problems at home the US should fix first, before it ever goes abroad looking for monsters.
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UserFriendly
yup. I was just reading this….
“The 21st Century Gold Rush
How the refugee crisis is changing the world economy.”
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/the-21st-century-gold-rush-refugees/#/niger
Truly horrifying deep dive into who is making money off the migration crisis.
And at least there is a chance of stability in Libya on the horizon.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/libya-from-ghaddafi-to-hafter.html
so
Thank You.
Bill H
@UserFriendly
Put away your rose colored glasses. The thrust of Ian’s piece was not about Libya.
ponderer
Well said. I would only add that producing failed states is not an accident, it is the intended outcome. It is much more profitable for foreign interests to deal with failed states. Clinton once said Gaddafi was like part of her family. What changed was that he wanted to give foreign oil companies less of the proceeds. Same thing happened in Iran, the shah was put in after Iran asked for the same deals the Saudi’s had.
StewartM
The best thing for the world, and America, right now, would be for the US to remove its troops from around the world, stop attacking other nations (including drone bombing them) and mind its own business. There’s plenty of problems at home America should fix first, before it ever goes abroad looking for monsters.
Of course, right out of the Social Control 101 course textbook, it says “To distract the proles away from real problems at home (that they might actually blame you for), find scary ‘monsters’, magnify their minuscule threat a million-fold, and fill the airwaves with talking heads shivering in fear of what they may do to us.”
Cue in: Saddam, Gaddafi, Putin, North Korea, Iran, immigrants (in caravans too, with immigrant rapist serial murdering children as well in their ranks!), Chavez, ISIS, ‘jihadists’ (a catch-all phrase that at last unites both Shia and Sunni radicals, something no one has ever accomplished!)…
America’s breaking things all around the world, and America’s inability to fix its own problems, both arise from the same source: the incompetence of its elites. Conversely, the America that both had a booming economy that worked for most people (nothing is perfect, the FDR economy wasn’t either) was also able to rebuild Germany and Japan, because its elites were far more competent.
Now, why were the elites of yesteryear more competent than those of today? Hmm, think that the fact that our embrace of neoliberal capitalism means that we recreated a new aristocracy that gets position of power more by birth and connections rather than by knowledge and skill? I think it’s telling that one of the conservative critiques of AOC is, as waitress and a bartender, she doesn’t deserve to be in Congress, to which I say “Heh, one of the few people there now who ever actually had a JOB and had to WORK.”
S Brennan
“Libya was [The] reason Clinton was unqualified to be President… ultimately it’s about….the slavery, death, disease, rapes and torture [not to mention the public execution/castration/lynchings of tens of thousands of black Libyans]. The attack was, ultimately, monstrous, judged solely on its results [which] were easily predictable”.
I could never have voted for Hillary [or any of her acolytes] after Libya. As I told my liberal friends, “nominate that (obscenity deleted) and I will vote for who ever is most likely to defeat her”. They did and I…responded as I said I would.
And so it goes…
KT Chong
There are two \”sects\” of liberals in America:
1. The \”economic equality\” or \”socialist\” liberals.
2. The \”identity politics\” or \”social justice\” liberals.
The neoliberal establishment Democrats typically belong to the identity politics/social justice sect. They can\’t pursue the economic equality or socialist platforms – because doing so would scare away the donor class. However, they have to run on SOMETHING. So, in the absence of an economic platform that is significantly different from the conservative/libertarian one, they turned to identity politics and social justice to appeal to voters and differentiate themselves from conservatives.
Unfortunately the identity politics and social justice liberals (who are often derided by the other liberal sect as \”regressives\”) are very militant on feminism and LGBTQ. If you have dealt with or seen SJW, they know they are bullies and tyrants who want to enforce their feminist and LGBTQ ideologies onto everyone and everywhere else – at all costs. And they do not particularly want to have any discussion over it. They are would shout you down and silence you if you disagree with them in anyway. They are just, militant. If some foreign cultures or nations did not share their social justice beliefs on feminism or LGBTQ, they would support using interventions and wars to enforce their social justice onto those nations. For them, the end they desire means justifies any means.
So that is the whole sect of liberals who want more intervention and more wars – because that is their way to spread and enforce their feminism and LGBTQ agendas to all over the world.
Hugh
While Hillary Clinton voted for the 2002 AUMF authorizing the Second Iraq War, she did become a critic of it. The essence of her criticism was that she could do it better. This position quickly evolved so that in her book Hard Choices, a mere 12 years later and only 3 years after the last American troops had left Iraq, she presciently recognized in retrospect and in a manner as plainly and simply caveated and nuanced as possible, and thoughtfully concentrating on her own “pain” and not the pain she had caused others, that she had made a “mistake” kind of sort of:
“[M]any Senators came to wish they had voted against the resolution. I was one of them. As the war dragged on, with every letter I sent to a family in New York who had lost a son or daughter, a father or mother, my mistake become more painful. I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had. And I wasn’t alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/clinton-iraq-bush-war-hussein-wmd-senate/499160/
Hard Choices came out in May 2014 with its admission that it was a mistake to send troops into Iraq and it wasn’t until June 2014, nearly a month later, that Obama sent troops back into Iraq with Hillary’s blessing. In this, Hillary showed herself to be a perfect Restoration Bourbon, of whom Talleyrand wrote, they had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.
“Results [in Libya] which, after Iraq and Afghanistan, were easily predictable.”
Yes, but look at how well Yemen has turned out.
In all seriousness, I admit I am of two minds. I expect most of our world to collapse in the next 30 years due to climate change, habitat loss, resource exhaustion, and overpopulation as well as the traditional elements of apocalypse: famine, disease, and war. The US as hegemon has presided over a spectacular series of foreign policy disasters. It could manage to some extent the coming collapse but it won’t or will do so poorly. The problem is that a US withdrawal from the world, an end to its hegemonic role, will only accelerate the collapse. As hegemon, even a bad one, the US acts to limit or suppress local and regional conflicts (at least some of the time). Without a hegemon and as the collapse proceeds, these conflicts will re-assert themselves. China will not become hegemon. There isn’t time before the collapse. And I don’t see China assuming a hegemonic role. Rather I think it would try, is trying, to return to its traditional system of an protectorates. And this is even more anachronistic and ineffective than hegemony.
StewartM
KT Chong:
Unfortunately the identity politics and social justice liberals (who are often derided by the other liberal sect as \”regressives\”) are very militant on feminism and LGBTQ. If you have dealt with or seen SJW, they know they are bullies and tyrants who want to enforce their feminist and LGBTQ ideologies onto everyone and everywhere else – at all costs. And they do not particularly want to have any discussion over it. They are would shout you down and silence you if you disagree with them in anyway. They are just, militant. If some foreign cultures or nations did not share their social justice beliefs on feminism or LGBTQ, they would support using interventions and wars to enforce their social justice onto those nations. For them, the end they desire means justifies any means.
I largely agree with you, but even some of the “economic” progressives share in the blame.
Let’s say you are genuinely concerned about the plight of LGBTQ people, or women, in what you consider an oppressive state. What would be the easiest, cheapest, least violent, and least destructive remedy you could offer? Why, let those who can and want to come in, to come in! Immigration! That’s cheap, it adds to our talent and enriches our culture, properly done it results in no one losing their jobs, and it blows nothing up. I know personally specific people in such straits.
But mention this, and letting those non-English-speaking people/non-white people come ruffles more than a few feathers, especially among those who wrongly think that ‘we lose our jobs’ to these. Such ‘progressive’ types, whether they realize it or not, agree with the neoliberals that supply-and-demand should apply to jobs and pay, and/or that a ‘real job’ must only be a non-government job in the private sector.
Years ago, on discussing the plight of children fleeing gang violence here, there was a commentator who argued with me on this point, and came out and said outright that rather than let those kids in as immigrants, we should send in the troops into their countries to, in essence, regime change.
(Oh, I also agree with you on the militancy of these ‘social liberal’ types, but the sad thing is I find their views about feminism and gay rights is extremely crimped and limited; nothing like the more expansive and tolerant views of their predecessors. (Say, on gay rights, versus someone like Harry Hay).
KT Chong
Pro-immigrant and pro-immigration activists belong to the identity politics/social justice sect of liberalism. The economic equality/democratic socialist sect of liberalism actually oppose immigrants and open borders, which benefits the wealth class and undercuts the middle-class and underclass by suppressing wages.
Per
You do know that Gadaffi was not the ruler of Libya when the washington terror regime attacked?
He was/is their spiritual leader tho, and now every tribe is rising to throw out the unfukus terrorists ruling Tripoli and a few other patches of Libyan soil.
libyanwardotcom have gathered the knowledge for us, now you do some studying.