Failure to plan for the aftermath of the American-led (from behind) intervention in Libya was the “worst mistake” of his presidency, Barack Obama said on Fox News Sunday.
That’s an awkward development for his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who was the driving force behind the U.S. military intervention in 2011, and who has cited Libya as one of her signature foreign policy accomplishments.
The New York Times has described Hillary’s efforts to persuade a “wary” President Obama to take military in Libya as “arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.” During a Democratic primary debate in October of last year, Hillary defended the U.S. effort to remove Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi as “smart power at its best.”
When Qaddafi was executed by rebel forces in October 2011, then-secretary of state Clinton was caught on camera making light of the dictator’s demise as she prepared for an interview with CBS.
Since then, Libya has become what President Obama has previously described as a “sh*t show.” Continued infighting among rival factions and the lack of a functioning central government have allowed Islamic State terrorist to dramatically increase their presence in the country. Hillary’s liberal critics have compared her failure to plan for the power vacuum in the wake of Qaddafi’s demise to the Bush administration’s bungling of the Iraq War aftermath.
Hillary’s efforts to defend the intervention in Libya has become increasingly awkward as the situation on the ground has deteriorated. During an MSNBC town hall event in March, for example, Hillary touted the fact that the United States “didn’t lose a single person,” which is true if you don’t count the four Americans, including Libyan ambassador Christopher Stevens, who died in the Benghazi terror attack on Sept. 11, 2012.
