Weissman writes: "As Paris, London, and Washington send special forces and
covert agents into Libya to set the stage for a new allied intervention,
Hillary backs the coming war."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the end of a one-day trip to Tripoli,
Libya, on Oct. 18, 2011, after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Media
reports referred to it as a 'victory lap.' (photo: Kevin Lamarque/NYT)
Hillary Backs New Allied War in Libya
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
29 February 16
As Paris, London, and Washington send special forces and covert agents into
Libya to set the stage for a new allied intervention, Hillary backs the
coming war.
Secretary of State in 2011, she led the earlier effort to convince a wary
President Obama to intervene against Gadhafi, defeating her usual ally,
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who saw no core American interest in Libya.
Like George W. Bush's ill-fated invasion of Iraq, Hillary's intervention in
Libya was a war of choice that the United States had no good reason to fight
- and a lot of good reasons not to, as her eagerness for a second war now
confirms.
The New York Times on Sunday gave a detailed account of how she convinced
Obama in "what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of
state." It is, said the authors, "a working portrait rich with evidence of
what kind of president she might be, and especially of her expansive
approach to the signal foreign-policy conundrum of today: when and how the
United States should wield its military power in Syria and elsewhere in the
Middle East."
Having skillfully won the earlier battle in Washington, Hillary ultimately
lost the war in Libya. The fall of Gadhafi "seemed to vindicate Hillary
Clinton," the Times wrote. "Then militias refused to disarm, neighbors
fanned a civil war, and the Islamic State found refuge." Add the
destabilizing spread of Gadhafi's enormous store of weapons to Syrian and
sub-Saharan Africa, and Libya's role in helping promote the refugee crisis
in Europe, and no one can avoid the big question: Did Hillary screw up? To
which she has found the perfect dodge. It's too early to tell, she told a
Congressional committee in October.
Or, as she told CNN's Chris Cuomo, we intervened at the time to prevent the
dictator from massacring the people, and now we're going in "to try to help
the Libyan people realize the dream that they had when they went after
Gadhafi."
"You know, the United States was in Korea, and still is, for many years,"
she explained, channeling a favorite argument of Republican senator John
McCain. "We are still in Germany. We are still in Japan. We have a presence
in a lot of places in the world that started out as a result of conflict.
And if you think about South Korea, there were coups, there were
assassinations, there was a lot of problems for the Koreans to build their
economy, to create their democracy."
Remembering myriad details of her much-vaunted foreign policy experience,
Hillary appears never to have asked why intervening in the former colonies
of North Africa and the Middle East so consistently fails. The best answer I
can find comes in Delphic fashion from oft-quoted Washington cynics. In
Iraq, they tell us, the United States intervened and occupied - and things
went to hell. In Libya, the United States intervened but did not occupy -
and things went to hell. And in Syria, the United States neither intervened
nor occupied - and things still went to hell.
In other words, the problem is not in in how we intervened, but that we
intervened. This puts Hillary on the wrong side of history, at least as seen
by large numbers of people in the region's former European colonies. The
anti-colonial sentiment appears less fervent in sub-Saharan Africa, where US
Special Forces are often seen working closely with their French
counterparts. But no one doubts that al-Qaeda and Daesh-affiliated groups
gain strength by being the only groups truly willing to fight against a
return of Western colonialism. Having failed to learn these lessons, Hillary
remains the have-gun, will-travel paladin of liberal imperialism.
The new war in Libya, which she now supports, seems largely invisible to
American media. But, it became headline news here in France on Thursday,
when Le Monde broke through official secrecy and revealed that French
special forces and clandestine agents were operating in Libya in close
cooperation with their Americans and British allies.
The French Minister of Defense was furious and launched a secret
investigation into who leaked the secret information to Le Monde. My guess
is that the major leaks came from within the French military, where many
officers feel over-tended by their current interventions in Syria and
Africa.
"Things are on the way now for a major operation in Libya," explained Gen.
Dominique Trinquand, the former head of the French Military Mission to the
United Nations and a frequent commentator on the government-owned France 24.
"You prepare an operation. So you send either special forces or people under
cover into the country.. They are mainly spotting important targets for the
future" and "establishing liaison with people who will fight against Daesh."
Some of these troops - French, British, or American - called in the drone
attack on the Libyan city of Sabrathan, which reportedly killed up to 40
people. The target, now claimed by a Pentagon spokesman, was a Tunisian
national, Noureddine Chouchane, whom authorities in Tunis accused of
masterminding murderous attacks last year at the Bardo museum (22 deaths)
and a tourist resort (38 deaths).
Also part of the build-up to war, Italy has given the Americans the go-ahead
to fly their drones into Libya and against Daesh targets elsewhere in
Northern Africa from an Italian base in Sicily.
No one has said exactly when the new war will move into the open, but as
Marine Corps general Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joints Chief of
Staff, said back on January 22, the decision on whether and when to begin
decisive military action would probably come in weeks, but not hours.
Meeting with the French military chief Gen. Pierre de Villiers, Dunford
publicly declared that President Obama had given authorization for military
action. At least officially, the justification was to stem the growth in
power of the Islamic State in Libya before it spread throughout North Africa
and the sub-Saharan countries.
It will be fascinating to see how a new war with Hillary's blessing will
affect the presidential primaries.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the end of a one-day trip to Tripoli,
Libya, on Oct. 18, 2011, after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Media
reports referred to it as a 'victory lap.' (photo: Kevin Lamarque/NYT)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Hillary Backs New Allied War in Libya
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
29 February 16
s Paris, London, and Washington send special forces and covert agents into
Libya to set the stage for a new allied intervention, Hillary backs the
coming war.
Secretary of State in 2011, she led the earlier effort to convince a wary
President Obama to intervene against Gadhafi, defeating her usual ally,
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who saw no core American interest in Libya.
Like George W. Bush's ill-fated invasion of Iraq, Hillary's intervention in
Libya was a war of choice that the United States had no good reason to fight
- and a lot of good reasons not to, as her eagerness for a second war now
confirms.
The New York Times on Sunday gave a detailed account of how she convinced
Obama in "what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of
state." It is, said the authors, "a working portrait rich with evidence of
what kind of president she might be, and especially of her expansive
approach to the signal foreign-policy conundrum of today: when and how the
United States should wield its military power in Syria and elsewhere in the
Middle East."
Having skillfully won the earlier battle in Washington, Hillary ultimately
lost the war in Libya. The fall of Gadhafi "seemed to vindicate Hillary
Clinton," the Times wrote. "Then militias refused to disarm, neighbors
fanned a civil war, and the Islamic State found refuge." Add the
destabilizing spread of Gadhafi's enormous store of weapons to Syrian and
sub-Saharan Africa, and Libya's role in helping promote the refugee crisis
in Europe, and no one can avoid the big question: Did Hillary screw up? To
which she has found the perfect dodge. It's too early to tell, she told a
Congressional committee in October.
Or, as she told CNN's Chris Cuomo, we intervened at the time to prevent the
dictator from massacring the people, and now we're going in "to try to help
the Libyan people realize the dream that they had when they went after
Gadhafi."
"You know, the United States was in Korea, and still is, for many years,"
she explained, channeling a favorite argument of Republican senator John
McCain. "We are still in Germany. We are still in Japan. We have a presence
in a lot of places in the world that started out as a result of conflict.
And if you think about South Korea, there were coups, there were
assassinations, there was a lot of problems for the Koreans to build their
economy, to create their democracy."
Remembering myriad details of her much-vaunted foreign policy experience,
Hillary appears never to have asked why intervening in the former colonies
of North Africa and the Middle East so consistently fails. The best answer I
can find comes in Delphic fashion from oft-quoted Washington cynics. In
Iraq, they tell us, the United States intervened and occupied - and things
went to hell. In Libya, the United States intervened but did not occupy -
and things went to hell. And in Syria, the United States neither intervened
nor occupied - and things still went to hell.
In other words, the problem is not in in how we intervened, but that we
intervened. This puts Hillary on the wrong side of history, at least as seen
by large numbers of people in the region's former European colonies. The
anti-colonial sentiment appears less fervent in sub-Saharan Africa, where US
Special Forces are often seen working closely with their French
counterparts. But no one doubts that al-Qaeda and Daesh-affiliated groups
gain strength by being the only groups truly willing to fight against a
return of Western colonialism. Having failed to learn these lessons, Hillary
remains the have-gun, will-travel paladin of liberal imperialism.
The new war in Libya, which she now supports, seems largely invisible to
American media. But, it became headline news here in France on Thursday,
when Le Monde broke through official secrecy and revealed that French
special forces and clandestine agents were operating in Libya in close
cooperation with their Americans and British allies.
The French Minister of Defense was furious and launched a secret
investigation into who leaked the secret information to Le Monde. My guess
is that the major leaks came from within the French military, where many
officers feel over-tended by their current interventions in Syria and
Africa.
"Things are on the way now for a major operation in Libya," explained Gen.
Dominique Trinquand, the former head of the French Military Mission to the
United Nations and a frequent commentator on the government-owned France 24.
"You prepare an operation. So you send either special forces or people under
cover into the country.. They are mainly spotting important targets for the
future" and "establishing liaison with people who will fight against Daesh."
Some of these troops - French, British, or American - called in the drone
attack on the Libyan city of Sabrathan, which reportedly killed up to 40
people. The target, now claimed by a Pentagon spokesman, was a Tunisian
national, Noureddine Chouchane, whom authorities in Tunis accused of
masterminding murderous attacks last year at the Bardo museum (22 deaths)
and a tourist resort (38 deaths).
Also part of the build-up to war, Italy has given the Americans the go-ahead
to fly their drones into Libya and against Daesh targets elsewhere in
Northern Africa from an Italian base in Sicily.
No one has said exactly when the new war will move into the open, but as
Marine Corps general Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joints Chief of
Staff, said back on January 22, the decision on whether and when to begin
decisive military action would probably come in weeks, but not hours.
Meeting with the French military chief Gen. Pierre de Villiers, Dunford
publicly declared that President Obama had given authorization for military
action. At least officially, the justification was to stem the growth in
power of the Islamic State in Libya before it spread throughout North Africa
and the sub-Saharan countries.
It will be fascinating to see how a new war with Hillary's blessing will
affect the presidential primaries.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
