http://original.antiwar.com/srichman/2016/01/13/hillary-clinton-proven-warmonger/
Sheldon Richman
[…]
Her vote for George W. Bush’s
criminal and lie-based Iraq war, for example, would be more than enough to rule
her out. That political ambition now prompts her to express regret for her vote
should count for nothing, especially in light of what is to be discussed below.
When she says she learned her lesson, she lies.
Likewise, her declaration of
open-season on Syrian President Assad gave a boost to the Islamic State and
al-Qaeda affiliates.
But if no other horrors were
on her record, one should be enough to bar her from office: Libya. It would be
hard to find a better example of how one person can wreak havoc on a society
and create far-ranging catastrophes beyond.
In 2011 the U.S. government
led a NATO air assault on Libya under doubly false pretenses. Falsehood number
1 was that Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi was threatening to wipe out hundreds of
thousands of residents of Benghazi. As was noted at the time, including by the Defense
Intelligence Agency, there was no evidence for this claim and much reason
to disbelieve it. Falsehood number 2 was related to the first: that NATO’s
mission was to protect civilians when in fact it was to help the rebel
opposition overthrow Gaddafi’s government, after which he was murdered extra-judicially
by rebels.
The result of the Libya
intervention is well-known. The country is in chaos, with al-Qaeda- and
ISIS-affiliated guerrillas running wild. With US oversight, heavy arms from
Gaddafi’s arsenal flowed freely to rebels in Syria who either were bin
Ladenites or alleged “moderates” eager to sell the arms to ISIS. Clinton brags
that the intervention is a good example of “smart power,” which speaks volumes
about her.
The US military and Secretary
of War Robert Gates did not want to intervene in Libya. But then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton and her co-conspirators Susan Rice and Samantha Power
did, and Barack Obama sided with them. Even after the intervention was underway
it would have been possible to limit the damage, but it was not to be. As
investigative journalist Gareth Porter explains:
“The JCS warned that
overthrowing the Gaddafi regime would serve no US security interest, but would
instead open the way for forces aligned with al-Qaeda to take over the country.
After the Obama administration went ahead with a NATO air assault against the
Gaddafi regime the US military sought to head off the destruction of the entire
Libyan government. General Carter Ham, the commander of AFRICOM, the US
regional command for Africa gave the State Department a proposal for a
ceasefire to which Gaddafi had agreed. It would have resulted in Gaddafi’s
resignation but retain the Libyan military’s capacity to hold off jihadist
forces and rescind the sanctions against Gaddafi’s family.
“But the State Department
refused any negotiation with Gaddafi on the proposal. Immediately after hearing
that Gaddafi had been captured by rebel forces and killed, Clinton famously
joked in a television interview, ‘We came, we saw, he died’ and laughed.”
Did Hillary Clinton, who admires
Henry Kissinger, honestly believe her intervention was a humanitarian
mission? Not bloody likely. How do we know? Her own emails tell us so. In the
latest Clinton
email dump, Brad
Hoff of Levant Report found “truly
explosive confirmations…: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers
inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the US
backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the
nefarious origins of the absurd
Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves
threatening European currency.”
The intervention, which
brought incalculable death and mayhem to Libya, Syria, and Mali, was no
innocent blunder, and it discredits Hillary Clinton’s claim that she learned
the lesson of Iraq.
[…]
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