GBFan
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2013
- Messages
- 1,455
President Barack Obama admitted that his first-term policy of minimizing U.S. forces in Libya was a failure, and he’s now arguing that U.S. interventions — including in Iraq — should be strong and long enough to help locals gradually establish reasonably stable governments.
“I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this,” Obama said about his 2011 campaign to remove Libya’s dictator, Moammar Gadhafi.
Without U.S. forces on the ground to help a new government establish itself, the country is being wrecked by a slow-motion civil war between competing jihadi and tribal groups.
“So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after?’” Obama told the Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, on Aug. 8.
In 2011, Obama used the U.S. airpower to break Moammar Gadhafi’s army until rebels caught and murdered the long-time dictator.
But without any U.S. forces to manage the violence, the various tribal and jihadi rebel groups looted huge stockpiles of weapons, which were then used to start jihad wars in nearby countries, including Mali, Syria and Gaza.
The competing factions haven’t created a stable government, and the much of the country’s national airport was wrecked in July battles.
The lack of any strong government also allowed jihadi groups to launch the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in September 2012, just before the 2012 election.
Obama cited the Libya lesson just as he began telling Americans — and his military-averse progressive base — that he is sending U.S. forces back into Iraq, to fend of a fierce attack by an al-Qaida-style jihadi army.
The defeat of the jihadis’ so-called caliphate in northern Iraq can’t be done quickly, he told reporters Aug. 9, in a brief exchange shortly before he departed for a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard
“I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this,” Obama said about his 2011 campaign to remove Libya’s dictator, Moammar Gadhafi.
Without U.S. forces on the ground to help a new government establish itself, the country is being wrecked by a slow-motion civil war between competing jihadi and tribal groups.
“So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after?’” Obama told the Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, on Aug. 8.
In 2011, Obama used the U.S. airpower to break Moammar Gadhafi’s army until rebels caught and murdered the long-time dictator.
But without any U.S. forces to manage the violence, the various tribal and jihadi rebel groups looted huge stockpiles of weapons, which were then used to start jihad wars in nearby countries, including Mali, Syria and Gaza.
The competing factions haven’t created a stable government, and the much of the country’s national airport was wrecked in July battles.
The lack of any strong government also allowed jihadi groups to launch the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in September 2012, just before the 2012 election.
Obama cited the Libya lesson just as he began telling Americans — and his military-averse progressive base — that he is sending U.S. forces back into Iraq, to fend of a fierce attack by an al-Qaida-style jihadi army.
The defeat of the jihadis’ so-called caliphate in northern Iraq can’t be done quickly, he told reporters Aug. 9, in a brief exchange shortly before he departed for a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard
