Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic presidential nomination last time around because of her vote for a disastrous war. With any luck, she will lose again for supporting a second one.
As secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Clinton didn’t just vote for the war in Libya. She is one of the policymakers most responsible for the decision to go to war and how the “kinetic military action” would be conducted.
Make no mistake, Libya was every bit as much of a foreign-policy blunder as Iraq. In some ways, it was worse.
Iraq was at least authorized by a congressional vote. Libya was not.
In Iraq, the rebuilding of the country was bungled. In Libya, it wasn’t even attempted. We helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and then basically said, “Have a nice day.”
Or as a jubilant and chortling Hillary Clinton put it, “We came, we saw, he died.”
But the dying wasn’t limited to Gaddafi. Since 2011, Libya has been torn asunder by criminal gangs and radical Islamists of various stripes.
The Islamic State is executing people. Benghazi, the city we intervened to protect and the place where four Americans were murdered at the U.S. consulate, is once again erupting in violence. The violence spread to Mali.
Libya technically has two rival governments, but it effectively has none. It is now described as “Woodstock” for jihadists.
Ironically, Libya had already given up its weapons of mass destruction in 2003, partly because Gaddafi was spooked by what happened to Saddam Hussein. Thus, one of the few arguable positives of the Iraq war was negated by a war that effectively told the world’s dictators that the best insurance against regime change at the hands of the U.S. is to get WMDs and keep them.
It seems that the only lesson Hillary learned from Iraq is that boots on the ground are unpopular, so in Libya they were avoided. She paid little attention to what happens in a fractious country when the strongman holding it together is toppled, and how overthrowing a brutal but well contained dictator can unleash even worse forces we may someday have to fight.
Michael Brendan Dougherty correctly observes, “The lessons of Iraq have been internalized: Once you create a total power vacuum that will attract terror gangs and radical Islamic fundamentalists, it’s best to not have any boots on the ground to stop them.”
Now the civil war has been prolonged and the death toll has likely been increased. The United Nations’ Libya envoy has been quoted as saying, “Libya is falling apart. Politically, financially, the economic situation is disastrous.” U.S.-approved arms shipments to Libyan rebels have instead gone to jihadists.
Instead of contrition, we’ve been treated to pictures of Hillary Clinton grinning like an idiot while flashing the sign for peace or victory. Except in Libya there is no peace and no victory.
Although most Republicans in Congress wanted no part of Hillary’s Libya folly, that doesn’t include some of the GOP lawmakers hoping to run against her in 2016. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham were among the supporters of intervention.
Only Rand Paul rails against “Hillary’s war,” citing it as an example of the need for a foreign policy that “protects American interests and encourages stability — not chaos.” (John Bolton was skeptical of both the Obama-Clinton Libya missions and congressional Republicans’ efforts to block it).
Libya undermines Obama’s claim he is against “dumb wars,” although he is president today because he gave this speech while Hillary was supporting the Iraq war.
But Libya eviscerates Hillary’s claim to be the competent command-in-chief capable of answering the 3 a.m. phone call. At this point, what difference does it make? If there’s any justice, the difference between Hillary being president or once again being defeated.
W. James Antle III is managing editor of The Daily Caller and author of the book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped? Follow him on Twitter.
