When President Obama finally does hit the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton, there’s one issue he’s not likely to bring up: his administration’s airstrikes in Libya, and Clinton’s role in making them happen.
Obama has repeatedly said the worst mistake of his presidency was “failing to plan for the day after” the airstrikes. That lack of foresight or follow-through, or his over-reliance on European allies to step up after Muammar Qaddafi’s ousting, allowed Libya to descend into chaos, become a failed state and create a safe haven for the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.
Numerous accounts of the administration’s decision to launch U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria credit Clinton with playing a critical role in persuading the president to join U.S. allies in bombing Qaddafi’s forces. Then-Defense Secretary Roberts Gates has said she is responsible for tipping the scale in favor of the airstrikes, in what he called a “51-49” decision.
The Libya debacle has haunted Obama even as he has tried to polish his legacy in his final stretch in the White House. During a commencement address at the Air Force Academy in early June, the president once again cited Libya as one of his biggest regrets.
“In Libya, we were right to launch an air campaign to prevent [Moammar] Gadhafi from massacring innocent civilians,” he said. “But we didn’t do enough to plan for the day after, when deep-rooted tribalism plunged Libya into disorder.”
The statement stands out, considering that Obama won the White House in part by slamming the Bush administration’s lack of planning to stabilize Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Obama talked about his Libya regrets the same day Clinton was attacking Donald Trump’s incoherent, dangerous foreign policy in a major address in San Diego. During those remarks, Clinton specifically lambasted Trump for suggesting that Syria should remain a “free zone” for the Islamic State.
“Oh, OK, let a terrorist group have control of a major country in the Middle East,” she mocked.
But critics argue that the decision to launch airstrikes in Libya had a similar outcome, since the Islamic State now operates freely there, only 300 miles from Europe.
In addition to making a refugee crisis worse, the failure to secure Qaddafi’s vast weapons arsenal during the intervention has been credited with feeding into the Syrian civil war, and arming terrorist and criminal groups from Northern Africa to the Sinai peninsula.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a well-known opponent of the Libya intervention, said Obama has tried to inoculate himself on the Libya issue by “shifting the blame” to U.S. allies.
“He thought [the U.K.’s] David Cameron would be more invested,” he said. “That’s like saying your greatest mistake is believing that someone else would do better.”
Libya, he said, is “not going to be the real win theme” for Clinton’s campaign, considering its descent into civil war and the Islamic State infiltration.
While Republicans have hammered Clinton over the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic complex in Benghazi, Sanders seized on her role in pushing for the airstrikes during the primary campaign, and argued that she is “too much into regime change.”
Trump, with his isolationist tendencies and eagerness to appeal to some Sanders voters, could easily pick up the argument. But Gartenstein-Ross argues that Trump has already blown it on the Libya issue.
On the campaign trail, Trump had been hitting Clinton on the Libya decision, arguing the world would be better if Qaddafi were still in power. But during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” last week, Trump reversed his stance and said he would have authorized “surgical” strikes to take out Qaddafi.
The confusing reversal came after the show’s host asked him about a 2011 video in which he had called for a U.S. hit to “take out” Qaddafi.
In that video, Trump said the U.S. military should “immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively and save the lives.”
Trump tried to moderate the flip-flop fallout by blaming Clinton and Obama for the chaos in Libya.
“I wasn’t for what happened. Look at the way, I mean, look at with Benghazi and all of the problems that we’ve had. It was handled horribly,” he said.
He added: “I was never for strong intervention. I could have been surgical where you take out Gaddafi and his group.”
But Gartenstein-Ross argues the damage has been done.
“Rather than Trump tying her to her Libya record, she will neutralize the issue” by bringing up his support for taking out Qaddafi, he said. “She will still defend [the Libya intervention], but that’s no easy task.”
Instead of looking back, other foreign policy experts argue that Clinton and Trump need to tell the American people what they are going to do to fix the problems in Libya.
“The challenge is what would any candidate do in 2017,” the Brooking Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon told the Washington Examiner.
Clinton, as secretary of state, may not have had as much influence over all aspects of the Libya operation as she would have liked, O’Hanlon said, so it may not be her fault that we failed to “consolidate the peace after we helped overthrow Qaddafi.”
“But it will be her responsibility, if she wins, to come up with a plan going forward, and I haven’t heard much on that from Obama, Clinton or Trump.”
