Parsing Hillary Clinton's Disingenuous Foreign Policy Record

A closer examination of the issues raised during the debate, in particular the decision to bomb Libya and remove the regime of President Muammar Gaddafi, the ongoing debacle unfolding inside Syria, and the recently concluded Iranian nuclear agreement, only underscore the reality that Senator Sanders, far from being weak on foreign policy matters, was right to question both the judgement of Hillary Clinton when it came to foreign policy and national security issues and her record as Secretary of State.

The decision by the Obama administration to intervene in Libya was both indefensible as policy and legally questionable in terms of international law. The United Nations resolution authorizing the imposition of a "no fly zone" did not contain any language that could sustain the notion of expanding the "no fly zone" into a general aerial bombardment of Libya designed to remove Gaddafi from power -- the United States, Great Britain and France were compelled to turn to NATO to provide some semblance of diplomatic cover for that operation.

Even if one accepts the morally unsupportable notion that the ends justify the means, the rapid decline of Libya from a relatively stable nation state run by a repressive yet containable dictator (Gaddafi) to the chaotic morass of Islamist-infused anarchy that exists today makes even that contention moot -- there can be no doubt that Libya and the world was better off with Gaddafi in charge.

Senator Bernie Sanders is quite right to question the historic error of judgement on the part of both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama in using -- or abusing -- a United Nations mandate for the creation of a humanitarian "no fly" zone as cover for large-scale military intervention, void of express authority under international law, to achieve regime change in Libya.

Compounding this error is the decision that followed -- to capitalize upon the significant stocks of arms and munitions existing inside Libya in order to supply Islamist groups in Syria, intended to facilitate yet another round of regime change, this time targeting Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. Hillary Clinton has denied any knowledge of CIA efforts, run from the now-infamous "annex" in Benghazi, to collect and ship captured Libyan arms and munitions to Turkey. Once in Turkey, the government of then-Prime Minister Erdogan transferred these arms to Islamist militants, including the Al Nusrah Front and other pro-Al Qaeda elements, who were fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. "You'll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex," the then-Secretary of State said to Senator Rand Paul after being questioned directly about a link between the CIA, Libya and Turkey when it came to illicit gunrunning. "I don't have any information on that."

In this response, Hillary Clinton is clearly lying. Her representative in Libya, Ambassador Christopher Stevens (who tragically died in an attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012), was at the center of a massive arms smuggling operation that saw hundreds of millions of dollars worth of guns and ammunition shipped from Libya to Turkey and Qatar (both of these nations were, and are, key supporters and suppliers for the anti-Assad Islamist militants fighting in Syria). Stevens was personally involved in getting US Government approval of a $200 million contract to ship weapons and munitions from Libya to Qatar (which then flew the weapons into Turkey for further transshipment to Syria), and on the day of his death he had met with the Turkish ambassador to Libya to coordinate shipments of additional weapons and ammunition via sea transport from Libya to Turkey, again for use in supplying Islamist rebels inside Syria.