The Libya Gamble Part 1: Hillary Clinton, “Smart Power” and a Dictator’s Fall
The Libya Gamble Part 1: Hillary Clinton, "Smart Power" and a Dictator's Fall by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, New York Times
By the time Mahmoud Jibril cleared customs at Le Bourget airport and sped into Paris, the American secretary of state had been waiting for hours. But this was not a meeting Hillary Clinton could cancel. Their encounter could decide whether America was again going to war.
In the throes of the Arab Spring, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was facing a furious revolt by Libyans determined to end his quixotic 42-year rule. The dictator’s forces were approaching Benghazi, the crucible of the rebellion, and threatening a blood bath. France and Britain were urging the United States to join them in a military campaign to halt Colonel Qaddafi’s troops, and now the Arab League, too, was calling for action.
President Obama was deeply wary of another military venture in a Muslim country. Most of his senior advisers were telling him to stay out. Still, he dispatched Mrs. Clinton to sound out Mr. Jibril, a leader of the Libyan opposition. Their late-night meeting on March 14, 2011, would be the first chance for a top American official to get a sense of whom, exactly, the United States was being asked to support.
In her suite at the Westin, she and Mr. Jibril, a political scientist with a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, spoke at length about the fast-moving military situation in Libya. But Mrs. Clinton was clearly also thinking about Iraq, and its hard lessons for American intervention…
What’s new here? Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was utterly clueless outside of domestic political pandering with an eye of the Presidency, as if focus group phrasing helps in international affairs:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/what-hillary-s-emails-say-about-us-pakistan-diplomacy/story-S2u6wyhb3HqhbQCs4oboXP.html
Middle East, China, NATO, it’s all the same. She’s deeply ignorant as are all of the people in that world. She asks staff for papers to read and her politicized staff sends dumb Foreign Policy articles to her according to the emails.
It’s over. The Deep State wants a Clinton presidency because she can be easily maneuvered and persuaded. She, like most American politicians, is deeply ignorant of the outside world and knows only personal connections as a political operative, as the wife of a President, etc. She will keep the party going, keep the money to contractors flowing. Trump is a wild card and erratic and Sanders has an actual record of not voting for war from time to time to go on.
It doesn’t matter. The Borg will win. I don’t regret many things in life because life is to be lived and supposed to be messy and complicated but I do regret ever coming across any of the bloggers that I did because I have spent years unlearning things, and then relearning how morally corrupt the Deep State is with its ugly McLean houses, etc.
Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks “proudly” linked some talk by David Kilcullen and a former Red Cross official — who is now a contractor too. All without pointing out any financial disclosures.
If he did ask for them, he’d be dropped so quickly he wouldn’t know what hit him. Look, he could be a good guy but he’s a marketer for war, just like Dr. Linn talked about in that Gresham College talk. Funny, Dr. Linn talked about Evans as someone to listen to even as he brought up the need to understand how war is marketed.
One way might be the hesitance of people to criticize if they personally like someone. Just because you are a nice person doesn’t mean you are doing the right thing.
Hillary Clinton is easily outmaneuvered because she doesn’t care and neither do her tribal supporters. Any foreign intelligence agency can get at her by supplying the opposition to a regime she doesn’t like with all kinds of planted information.
She doesn’t know anything. Who thinks that talking differently to the Pak mil would get them to change course. How dumb do you have to be? But everyone wanting a position in her admin will still kiss her ass. I expect Andrew Exum or David Killcullen–or who knows, even a future rehabilitated John Nagl– to discover her unique brilliance. They could be nice people in real life for all I know but it doesn’t matter. Actions count.
What strikes me most about these articles, and many others on similar subjects, is a plaintive, almost childlike conviction that outcomes in places like Libya, Iraq, and Syria are all about US, and that if America could just somehow “get it right”, a clean, painless transition from dictatorship to democracy would somehow follow.
This is, of course, complete nonsense.
It’s not about us. The nation where the transition is happening can “get it right”. Tunisia has, to a large extent. Egypt has, to a lesser extent: the transition is anything but clean and attractive, but the nation has not collapsed into anarchy. That’s not up to us. It’s up to them.
It’s easy to play the retrospective hypothetical game, and pretend that Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan would be on a better course if only America could “get it right”. Of course nobody knows what “getting it right” would have been, or how it could have been achieved, and any given alternative course could just as easily get it wrong.
Leaving a dictator in power in the face of a popular challenge can have devastating consequences. Removing a dictator can have devastating consequences. Aiding a rebellion can have devastating consequences. There is no sure recipe for a positive outcome, and in many cases there is no “getting it right”. It’s just not up to us: there are many other forces in play, and many other internal and external actors, and things can easily go completely wrong no matter what the US does.