Hillary Clinton attempted to put criticism of her handling of the 2012 Benghazi terror attack into context Tuesday during the first Democratic primary debate, urging her critics to “remember what was going on” at the time.
“We had a murderous dictator, [Moammar] Gadhafi, who had American blood on his hands, as I’m sure you remember, threatening to massacre large numbers of the Libyan people,” Clinton said of her push, while secretary of state, to intervene in the Libyan civil war in 2012.
“We had our closest allies in Europe blowing up the phone lines begging us to help them try to prevent what they saw as a mass genocide, in their words,” she said. “And we had the Arabs standing by our side saying, ‘we want you to help us deal with Gadhafi.’ ”
The Democratic front-runner said the U.S. intervention for which she advocated was “smart power at its best,” praising the controversial arrangement that saw the American military join a coalition that it did not lead.
“We did not put one single American soldier on the ground in Libya,” Clinton said of the conflict.
Libya today has become unstable, allowing the Islamic State to gain a foothold in the country. Even so, Clinton praised the Democratic elections that took place in Libya before Benghazi.
“Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot of other things, there was turmoil to be followed, but unless you believe the United States should not send diplomats to any place that is dangerous, which I do not, then when we send them forth, there is always the potential for danger and risk,” Clinton said.
