Obama’s Libyan legacy

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gaddafi mounted head

Benjamin Franklin is believe to have said it first:

“Our Constitution is in actual operation. Everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

We can add another. Nothing is certain but death, taxes and Barack Obama lying.

Two years ago I wrote

Why you’re an idiot to believe anything Barack Obama says

In it were documented the mounting lies told by Obama:

– We’re not after Gaddafi

– We won’t impose

– No boots on the ground

None of that was true. Obama got his wish and toppled Moammar Gaddafi.

Shortly after I wrote:

The goal is to remove Gaddafi from power. Do not for one moment think it is anything else. And it could all end very badly.

It was pretty much the only goal:

Later on in the debate, the discussion turned to Syria, and Romney used the subject as an opportunity to criticize Obama’s lack of leadership on the world stage. Obama changed the subject back to Libya, and gave a very revealing answer:

But you know, going back to Libya, because this is an example of — of how we make choices, you know, when we went into Libya and we were able to immediately stop the massacre there because of the unique circumstances and the coalition that we had helped to organize, we also had to make sure that Moammar Gadhafi didn’t stay there. And to the governor’s credit, you supported us going into Libya and the coalition that we organized. But when it came time to making sure that Gadhafi did not stay in power, that he was captured, Governor, your suggestion was that this was mission creep, that this was mission muddle.

Imagine if we had pulled out at that point. That — Moammar Gadhafi had more American blood on his hands than any individual other than Osama bin Laden. And so we were going to make sure that we finished the job.

To Obama, “finishing the job” meant getting rid of Gaddafi. That was, no doubt, part of the job, but to Obama that was it. Once we got rid of Gaddafi, the mission was over. This is in full concert with the president’s hearty embrace of targeted assassination; it is a definable mission that requires no follow-up.

Obama got his trophy head and washed his hands clean of Libya’s future, other than for that pesky Benghazi thing. Obama has abandoned Libya and today Libya is a disaster:

The Libyan former prime minister Ali Zeidan fled last week after parliament voted him out of office. A North Korean-flagged oil tanker, the Morning Glory, illegally picked up a cargo of crude from rebels in the east of the country and sailed safely away, despite a government minister’s threat that the vessel would be “turned into a pile of metal” if it left port: the Libyan navy blamed rough weather for its failure to stop the ship. Militias based in Misrata, western Libya, notorious for their violence and independence, have launched an offensive against the eastern rebels in what could be the opening shots in a civil war between western and eastern Libya.

Without a central government with any real power, Libya is falling apart. And this is happening almost three years after 19 March 2011 when the French air force stopped Mu’ammer Gaddafi’s counter-offensive to crush the uprising in Benghazi. Months later, his burnt-out tanks still lay by the road to the city. With the United States keeping its involvement as low-profile as possible, Nato launched a war in which rebel militiamen played a secondary, supportive role and ended with the overthrow and killing of Gaddafi.

So why did Gaddafi have to go?

But the Nato powers that overthrew him – and by some accounts gave the orders to kill him – did not do so because he was a tyrannical ruler. It was rather because he pursued a quirkily nationalist policy backed by a great deal of money which was at odds with western policies in the Middle East. It is absurd to imagine that if the real objective of the war was to replace Gaddafi with a secular democracy that the West’s regional allies in the conflict should be theocratic absolute monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. This is equally true of Western and Saudi intervention in Syria which has the supposed intention of replacing President Bashar al-Assad with a freely elected government that will establish the rule of law.

Libya is imploding. Its oil exports have fallen from 1.4 million barrels a day in 2011 to 235,000 barrels a day. Militias hold 8,000 people in prisons, many of whom say they have been tortured. Some 40,000 people from the town of Tawergha south of Misrata were driven from their homes which have been destroyed. “The longer Libyan authorities tolerate the militias acting with impunity, the more entrenched they become, and the less willing to step down” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Putting off repeated deadlines to disarm and disband militias only prolongs the havoc they are creating throughout the country.”

Obama clearly doesn’t buy into the “You broke it you bought it” philosophy. Libya is an unmitigated disaster for a reason Obama seems not to be able to comprehend:

Can anything positive be learnt from the Libyan experience which might be useful in establishing states that are an improvement on those ruled by Gaddafi, Assad and the like? An important point is that demands for civil, political and economic rights – which were at the centre of the Arab Spring uprisings – mean nothing without a nation state to guarantee them; otherwise national loyalties are submerged by sectarian, regional and ethnic hatreds.

Say what you want about George Bush, but he tried to make something of Iraq and it had a chance to succeed until Barack Obama decided to throw it under the bus. All Obama ever wanted was the trophy head to mount on the wall. Now he would do the same in Syria.

Whatever you do, don’t ever shake hands with Obama

obama-gaddafi

Bad things can happen.

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Gaddafi was one of those Middle East/North African leaders who allowed non-Muslims to live in his country with a certain amount of freedom.
That’s why he had to go.
Bit Obama WAITED until Islamists had consolidated their power over all other factions before he assisted in taking out Gaddafi.
Yes, now Libya, like every other Islamist-run place, is a basket case.

Thank you very nice site!

Obama did not have authorization from his beloved UN to assassinate Ghaddafi. Who can forget Hillary’s callous interview when she stated: “We came – we saw – he died! Hahahaha!”
In the meantime, their actions gave us ‘Benghazi’ and, both still stonewall to this day – hiding their Fast and Furious gun running into Syria via Turkey to repeat the same actions they took in Libya. There never was an embassy in Benghazi – it was a CIA hub to smuggle high tech weapons into to Syria and, the frantic attempt to recover the 30,000 MANPADS lost during their time but, distributed to AQ, MB and other affiliated jihadist groups.
The continuous destruction of the Obama/Hillary/Samantha/rice of Libya is still felt to this day!

Nanny Iraq under Saddam was one of the most secular countries in the Mideast I guess that’s why Bush had to make him go?
Benghazi was a mistake but not nearly on the scale of Iraq for which all was forgiven