Clinton’s Libyan War and the Delusions of Interventionists (Both Republicans and Democrats)

Last edited Mon Feb 29, 2016, 11:08 AM - Edit history (1)

The New York Times reports on Hillary Clinton’s role in the Libyan war. This passage sums up much of what’s wrong with how Clinton and her supporters think about how the U.S. should respond to foreign conflicts:

Mrs. Clinton was won over. Opposition leaders “said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,” said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. “They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.” [bold mine-DL]

“Wanting to believe” in dubious or obviously bad causes in other countries is one of the biggest problems with ideologically-driven interventionists from both parties. They aren’t just willing to take sides in foreign conflicts, but they are looking for an excuse to join them. As long as they can get representatives of the opposition to repeat the required phrases and pay lip service to the “right things,” they will do their best to drag the U.S. into a conflict in which it has nothing at stake.

The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton’s questions have come to pass.

If the article is referring to anyone in the administration, this might be true, but as a general statement it couldn’t be more wrong. Many skeptics and opponents of the intervention in Libya warned about many of the things that the Libyan war and regime change have produced, and they issued these warnings before and during the beginning of U.S. and allied bombing.

The U.S. isn’t obliged to indulge its allies’ wars of choice, and it certainly doesn’t have to join them, but the administration was already conceding that the U.S. would “follow and support” France and Britain in what they chose to do. As we know, in the end France and Britain definitely could and did drag the U.S. into their “shitty war,” and in that effort they received a huge assist from Clinton. It was already well-known that Clinton owns the Libyan intervention more than any U.S. official besides the president, and this week we’re being reminded once more just how crucial her support for the war was in making it happen.

NOTE: It is pretty sad when you can see a conservative publication write about Clinton's Disastrous Regime change mentality while seeing the NY Times (aka Clinton Times) do a whitewash. And they acknowledge the interventionist from BOTH parties. The old "but I wear your party label" is no longer an acceptable excuse.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/clintons-libyan-war-and-the-delusions-of-interventionists/