Hillary Clinton's Libya problem
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, June 23, 2015
Libya is now split up under the control of multiple militias, with ISIS controlling some land in the north of Libya, and Turkey and Qatar supporting Islamist parties that lost the low-turnout 2014 elections in a civil war against the American-backed Council of Deputies.
Blumenthal wrote in 2011, "By acting in Libya we have helped advance the cause of democracy and freedom throughout the Arab world. We have provided an important support for neighboring Egypt." In 2015, Egypt attacked ISIS in Libya after ISIS murdered 21 Egyptians.
The Libya mess is representative of the broken dreams throughout Arab Spring states. Egypt's short-lived democracy reverted to autocracy. Yemen is mired in a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The bloody Syrian Civil War rages on with no end in sight.
In the aftermath of Benghazi, Clinton said, "We recognize that these transitions are not America's to manage, and certainly not ours to win or lose." But, in the case of Libya, America was one of the instrumental forces that caused the overthrow of the government. America applied pressure, to various degrees, to Egypt and Syria as well. As a hegemon, it would be hard for America not to take some of the blame. Clinton will be evaluated on the basis of the results of those policies.
Clinton's defenders have argued that, given the intensity of the crisis, there was only so much that Clinton and the Obama administration could have done. Some say the Secretary of State didn't have much influence over the administration. "Her critics are correct in the sense that her record isn't particularly impressive. But that is the fault of the way administrations, especially the Obama administration, now function," Isaac Chotiner wrote for The New Republic.
At best, this argument absolves her of some of the blame, but it doesn't give her a record to run on. That's not an inspiring record for someone who has had presidential aspirations for at least the past eight years.
David Gordon, who was the State Department's Director of Policy Planning under George W. Bush, said, "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that for Clinton, the Sec. State role was substantially about positioning her to run for president." E-mails sent by some of her aides seem to corroborate his view.
After all that, she left the office with more vulnerabilities than achievements.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm
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