Part 3: Hillary Clinton’s Ineptitude – The Libyan Fiasco Does Not Begin With The Benghazi Attack, It Ends There….

It is remarkable how laser focused people tend to be around Libya and Hillary Clinton. The focus is almost exclusively on the Benghazi attack which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
The Benghazi attack which occurred on Sept 11, 2012, was a symptom of foreign policy failure; the actual cause of the policy failure happened a full year-and-a-half earlier in February 2011.
Part 1 – The Origin of the Libyan Crisis
Part 2 – The White House Tries To Catch Up

Part 3 – R2P Gives Cover To al-Qaeda’s Rise

It is ironic to see press reports today “The U.S. government is trying to apprehend an al Qaeda terrorist wanted for his role in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four Americans”. The irony is the terrorist we now seek, Muhammad Jamal, was released from Egyptian prison specifically because of the U.S. policy outlined in PART 1.
We digress.
In Part 1 we outlined the reality of President Obama remaining detached as the Libyan crisis began. In Part 2 we outlined the mistakes that were specifically a consequence of that disengagement strategy; including the failure to vet “the rebels”.
Today we’ll review the consequences of the March, April, May, June 2011 rush to catch up.
Senior foreign policy advisor Samantha Power exerted a strong influence during the response to a Libyan uprising. She was soon joined by then Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice. Together they convinced Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to approach the Libyan rebels as “freedom fighters”.

While this was happening between the White House in D.C., and the U.N. in New York, Kaddaffi had regained his footing from an initial successful uprising and was asserting his military might toward attacking the “rebels”. He really had no fallback position once the International Criminal Court filed charges of War Crimes against him and publicly stated they fully intended to arrest him and his family.
In essence Kaddaffi had nothing to lose by fighting as no seat at a table of cease fire possibility was afforded. So Kaddaffi began to deploy his air force to attack the Benghazi rebels, as his ground troops moved in toward their positions.
If no-one intervened on behalf of the “rebels”, it was only a matter of time before Kaddaffi regained control.
Absent of President Obama’s leadership, outside involvement fell to French Prime Minister Sarkozy who was desperately trying to form an EU coalition, and simultaneously beginning Hillary Clinton to leverage U.S. intervention and tip the spear.
NATO, for all intents and purposes a fully driven, U.S. supplied, military force, was the chosen spearhead by Sarkozy (France), Merkel (Germany) and Cameron (U.K.).

Hillary, acting on behalf of the White House, held a position that the Arab League would have to request NATO engagement before the U.S. would consider being the tip of the spear.
With Tunisia, Egypt and now Bahrain all aflame within the Arab Spring, a Libyan civil war threatened an economic EU oil crisis. Yemen was also a factor in Saudi Arabia’s final determination that something had to be done to put a stop to a civil war in Libya.
Reluctantly Saudi Arabia agreed to coordinate a meeting with OPEC and the Arab League where a decision was reached to request NATO engagement. Saudi Arabia also agreed to provide some military support, though none of the Arab countries were willing to engage in fighting their former ally Kaddaffi.
After all, Kaddaffi had almost a decade of good behavior behind him and was perceived as generally reasonable now.
What made Kaddaffi reasonable by their definitions, was his hard line approach against al-Qaeda radicals.
Kaddaffi was worried his fate would follow Sadam Hussein in Iraq when he saw George W. Bush take action – Consequently, Kaddaffi began to remove his terroristic tendencies in the hope he would avoid removal.
With the Muslim Brotherhood now legal once again in Egypt, and the extremist elements of Islam now openly advancing in Bahrain, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Kuwait, thousands of Libyan nationals who had left to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq jumped at the opportunity to return to Libya and destroy their nemesis, Kaddaffi.
The radical elements that formed the Benghazi Rebellion nucleus was brutally obvious. But for some reason it did not deter either President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, from advocating a false-narrative of “freedom fighters” to further a principle of Humanitarian Intervention (R2P).
Congress however, was not totally blind. Daily the more conservative and sensible elements, though few in voice, were asking questions about exactly what ideology was behind those “rebels”; and if we had really thought through the consequences to taking our military to tip the scale of balance in what would be yet another Mid-East war.
Knowing a congressional vote to use U.S. military action was essentially impossible the Powers/Rice/Clinton and now Obama coalition decided to go to war in Libya without congressional approval.
The argument immediately became “under what authorization“?
Indeed, absent of imminent danger, meaning a direct attack -against U.S. interests- there was no foundation for executive action without first gaining congressional approval. The constitution allows the President great latitude in moving military forces, but does not allow for entering into war without an impending U.S. interest; a “threat” against us.
In the Libyan civil war example there was no threat to the U.S., subsequently, according to the majority of constitutional followers and experts, there was no actual legal reasoning for President Obama to go to war.
The White House and the State Department pointed to precedent in Iraq/Afghanistan under George W. Bush. Which might have been a good deflection were it not for the obvious – President Bush did go to congress for authorization, and congress DID vote to authorize military engagement in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Libya President Obama specifically never went before congress and sought approval.
As a specific consequence it is a solidly established argument that any outcome which came as a direct result of U.S. engagement in Libya would be 100% owned by President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
This aspect of owning the consequence became *the* biggest risk to both Hillary and Obama once the entire Libyan FUBAR boiled to a head.
One might ask how big a risk was the political consequence to a rise of al-Qaeda in Libya if Kaddaffi was removed.
The answer has been playing out for the past two and a half years.
As the headlines pour out story after story of ideology behind the new Libya, you find a massive political movement to protect both Hillary and Barack from attachment to these visible outcomes.

The most obvious of which was the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stephens in Benghazi on Sept 11th 2012. Along with Ambassador Stephens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty also became expendable “bumps in the road”.
Subsequently an inordinate amount of obfuscation, deflection, avoidance and distraction have to be deployed to keep people from discussing the Libyan ownership.
How much do they own it ?
Well lets consider for a minute that after 30 days of U.S. military engagement, even if congress allows the President to begin an unauthorized war, the President must, by law, then request a vote to authorize further engagement beyond the 30th day.
During our engagement in Libya the White House’s own Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) specifically told President Obama and Hillary Clinton they were in violation of the law on the 31st day.
Two top OLC constitutional lawyers told President Obama he was not authorized to continue. What did Obama do? He ignored them and actually requested two more opinion documents from more left-wing lawyers to justify the continual engagement.
How rare is this approach ?
It had never before happened in the history of our nation. No President had ever gone beyond 30 days of military engagement, and no President had ever gone against the advice of his own White House constitutional legal team.
Never.
Never that is, until President Obama.
So yes, any outcome, intended or otherwise, which rose up as a specific consequence of the decisions in/around our Libyan engagement, should be 100% unavoidable for both Secretary Hillary Clinton and President Obama.