President Obama said Sunday that the worst mistake he has made in the White House was failing to plan properly for aftermath of the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, a remark that highlights a failure by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do with intervening in Libya,” Obama said, when asked by “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace to name his worst mistake in office.
With other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United States led a bombing campaign against Gadhafi’s forces in support of rebels working to oust the dictator. In the wake of Gaddafi’s overthrow and death, rebel militias fell into infighting, leaving Libya divided between rebel fiefdoms and groups that include supports of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Clinton has bragged about her role in advocating regime change in Libya. As secretary of state, she oversaw American efforts to plan for the aftermath of the campaign. Most Republicans and Democrats in Congress also supported military action in Libya.
In congressional testimony in October, Clinton highlighted Libya’s first elections, but said little about the lack of a functioning democratic government in the country, which has two competing, ineffectual parliaments and administrations that each claim power to run the country.
Obama did not mention Clinton’s role in the fiasco. Elsewhere in the interview, he praised her work in the State Department.
In the interview, conducted while walking with Wallace at the University of Chicago after a sit-down interview, Obama said his “best day” in office was the day that he signed the Affordable Care Act. He said his worst day was one on which he traveled to Newtown, Conn., after the mass shooting of children and teachers at Sandy Hook elementary school in December 2012.
