Topic: Western nutjobs destroyed Libya - another of their wrecks. Here are the results (Read 9715 times)

UN envoy to Libya not allowed to land in Tripoli

AP, Benghazi Wednesday, 23 March 2016

The Islamist-linked government in the Libyan capital has declined to give permission for the UN envoy to Libya to land in Tripoli, the diplomat said on Wednesday.

The envoy, Martin Kobler, said on his Twitter account that he has had to cancel another flight to Tripoli because of this. He said he “wanted to help pave the way to peace” and stressed that the United Nations must be given access to the Libyan capital.

Kobler has been pressing Libya’s rival parliaments - the one in Tripoli and a second, based in the far eastern region of the country - to reconcile and accept a third, UN-back government that emerged from a December political agreement between Libya’s factions.

The new, UN-backed government is facing major challenges, however - including how to get into Tripoli, something that had been tentatively planned for later this week.

Earlier, Kobler had been slightly more optimistic, telling reporters in neighboring Tunisia on Tuesday that though he doesn't have the exact date, it’s “a matter of days, not weeks” for the unity government to install itself in Tripoli despite opposition from the city’s authorities.

Libya's chaos, five years after the uprising that led to the ouster and killing of longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, has left the country deeply divided and ruled by an internationally recognized government and parliament based in the east and a rival government and parliament in Tripoli, backed by Islamist-allied militias.

The unity government, brokered by the U.N. and headed by a little-known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, is supposed to replace the two rival administrations.

ISIS has exploited the years of chaos in Libya and taken control of a central Libyan city and its surroundings, which in turn has given new impetus to Western countries and the U.N. to try to piece the country back together.

Kobler said that “it is urgent to stop the expansion” of the ISIS group into neighboring countries such as Tunisia. Serraj said that the world and the region “must react quickly” to stop the “cancer.” He called on Libyans to set aside differences and build a new, safe Libya.

The two spoke after a ministerial meeting of Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Chad, Sudan and Niger, all facing threats by extremists.

Tripoli authorities could not be immediately reached for comment on their refusal to allow Kobler to land. But a Tripoli-based media official, Jamal Zubia, said on his Facebook page that the UN envoy “will not visit Tripoli before Monday.”

There was no further explanation.

Last Update: Wednesday, 23 March 2016 KSA 16:08 - GMT 13:08

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/africa/2016/03/23/UN-envoy-to-Libya-not-allowed-to-land-in-Tripoli.html

Hillary Clinton Email Archive

On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for 30,322 emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The final PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016.

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/

ISIS plans for mini-Caliphate gains momentum

Hafsa Kara-Mustapha

Hafsa Kara-Mustapha is a journalist, political analyst and commentator with a special focus on the Middle East and Africa. She has worked for the FT group and Reuters and her work has been published in the Middle East magazine, Jane's Foreign report, El Watan and a host of international publications. A regular pundit on TV and radio, Hafsa can regularly be seen on RT and Press TV.

Published time: 21 Mar, 2016 12:17

According to ISIS, the Caliphate needs to spread from Iraq all the way to the Atlantic. The terror network that emerged in Iraq in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of 2003, is moving West after establishing a firm base in Libya.
The organization that relies on US support to clear Arab ground before it settles has opted for Tunisia as its next outpost.

In early March, ISIS operatives carried out a daring attack on a small town in the south of Tunisia, close to the Libyan border.

Most of the assailants were eventually killed or captured, but the attack left Tunisia severely scarred. After suffering several attacks in the last twelve months, this latest foray well inside Tunisian territory clearly indicates ISIS is looking to settle in the small North African nation.

The Tunisian army, which in the past couple of years has been working in close collaboration with the Algerian military in a bid to stop both ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb from crossing their respective borders, failed this time to stop what numerous sources had been predicting for weeks.

ISIS terrorists entered Tunisia and attempted the take-over of the town of Ben Guedrane. The town itself is small and insignificant, but its capture would have signaled the permanent presence of ISIS inside a new nation.

The goal, as it turned out, was to establish a small Caliphate inside Tunisia.

Despite having an overtly anti-radical government Tunisia is the country that surprisingly has provided ISIS with its highest number of recruits.

The deepening economic crisis in which Tunisia was thrown into after the ouster of Ben Ali and the consequent Arab Spring meant that young unemployed Tunisians were increasingly attracted to the concept of 'jihad' that would guarantee them a regular income and potential for progression in the ranks of an organization with grand ambitions.

The disenfranchised youth of Tunisia were providing the ideal fertile ground for ISIS to not only inflate its numbers but act as the 'respectable' face of ISIS. As perfect Arab speakers, Tunisians can therefore claim to understand Arabic and the sacred texts used by the organization to justify its actions. Those recruits coming from Europe or Asia and who do not understand Arabic are therefore entirely reliant upon native speakers to translate or narrate the texts they will need to establish the much dreamed about Caliphate.

Interestingly, while the Tunisian recruits are neither scholars or even remotely versed in theological studies, their limited knowledge is what makes them prized recruits, teaching non- Arab speaking arrivals whatever is needed to be learned irrespective of its authenticity or not: packaging the teachings in Arabic is what makes the discourse appear authentic. The European recruits rely on Arab speakers to translate supposedly sacred texts their 'teachers' never actually read themselves.

In this opaque scene of selective learning, recruiters are able to manipulate the new arrivals as they wish, but the help of native Arab speakers is essential in making the deceit believable.

That some Tunisian recruits were in fact involved in a life of petty crime prior to their arrival in Syria or Iraq is neither a deterrent for ISIS' leadership or a barrier for progress. In fact, their murky pasts are often a boon to the organization as they become favorable to carrying out the worst crimes in a bid to prove their loyalty to their new - generous - employers.

Exploiting oil resources from Southern Iraq, as well as generating money from human trafficking, ISIS is a fabulously wealthy organization that can afford to reward its diligent recruits handsomely.

For those escaping what has now become abject poverty in Tunisia, the offer is attractive in particular as job opportunities in once prosperous Libya have dried up since the country was destroyed by a NATO-led war in 2011.

The fall of Ben Guedrane would have signaled a major victory for ISIS in particular as it is having to retreat from some areas of Syria, and is looking to develop its presence in Libya and further southwest into the African continent.

Meanwhile, Britain and the US are deploying troops with the official aim of destroying ISIS, implanted in Libya thanks to their military operation five years ago.

A return to peace in Libya is certainly not in Britain or the US' interest in light of the huge funds frozen by these governments when it was decided Gaddafi had to be removed.

Through the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), Gaddafi - thanks to the oil price hike of 2007-2010 - pumped billions into scores of projects. From stakes in major companies, to prime real estate in London, Paris or Rome, the funds currently frozen and unaccounted for run into several billions.

Pearson, one time owner of the Financial Times, even sold a 3 percent stake to the LIA.

Should ISIS target Tunisia in such a spectacular way, both the US and Britain will have no trouble in selling further military interventions in North Africa, even if it was those initial interventions in Iraq and later in Libya, which paved the way for ISIS' criminal enterprise.

During a meeting with British Premier David Cameron, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al Sisi warned against Western intervention in Libya.

Despite his apparent willingness to work with Western capitals, even Sisi recognises that US troops on Arab ground usually make bad situations far worse.

In an uncharacteristically candid remark to Cameron, Sisi explained why adding fuel to a raging fire was never a good idea, especially when the flames risk engulfing the rest of the region while both London and Washington will remain sheltered from its consequences.

At a time when the British government is approving major cuts to its welfare system, public opinion is wary of more costly foreign operations. However, the spectre of having an ISIS 'Caliphate' - however insignificant - so close to European shores would give Cameron the much-needed boost he needs in parliament should he put the motion to go into Libya to a vote.

In the US, Obama is in the last leg of his second and therefore final term in office. He is already more focused on his legacy than any short term plans for war. Thus, in order to get support for further intervention the casus belli would have to be substantial.

As Libya continues to sink ever deeper into lawlessness, Tunisia appears to be ISIS' next short term plan. Having considerably affected its vital tourism sector in the last year alone, forcing scores of young Tunisians into unemployment, the network will have to strike again and in a formidable way in order to indicate the Maghreb is its next treasured outpost.

Meanwhile, as war loving leaders and their lucrative partners in the military industrial complex continue to look for ways to justify further Arab interventions, no doubt ISIS - which has so far worked almost in tandem with those leaders -  will provide the much needed impetus for US troops on African ground.

In that respect, ISIS has never failed to disappoint.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/336426-isis-plans-caliphate-libya/

US-based companies & Turkish arms manufacturers 'breaking Libya embargo' – UN report

Published time: 12 Mar, 2016 14:09

Two US-based companied have allegedly broken the international arms embargo imposed on Libya during the Arab Spring revolution, UN investigators have reportedly concluded. The weapons were destined for two rival governments and allied militias fighting for control.
Investigators reportedly said the two US-based companies brokered an arms deal in 2011, as well as an Italian middleman working with a UK-based Libyan national on behalf of the Libyan authorities in control of Tripoli, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a UN report.

The oil-rich North African nation is currently ruled by two opposing governments: the internationally-recognized Council of Deputies (based in Tobruk) and the Tripoli-based General National Congress.

Libyan and international officials reportedly told UN investigators the government in Tobruk had been receiving equipment from abroad through its own procurement operations and from countries supporting it. Those countries allegedly include Egypt and the UAE, according to two sources cited in the report.

Turkish arms manufacturers meanwhile appear to have sold and shipped weapons to Libyan actors, according to the report cited by the Wall Street Journal. Turkish officials reportedly told the UN their government was committed to upholding the embargo, however, and that it was investigating the incidents detailed in the report.

Ukrainian companies are also said to be under investigation over alleged embargo violations.

Saad Sharada, a member of the congress based in Tripoli, reportedly confirmed that his political allies have received military personnel carriers, but denied they have procured any weapons.

“Arms and ammunition are continuing to be transferred to various parties in Libya, with the involvement of member states and complex networks of brokering companies that do not appear to be deterred by the arms embargo,” the report stated, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The large-scale research reportedly features over 100 pages of documentation, including copies of arms orders, invoices, end-user certificates and serial numbers and photos of armaments which were once held by national militaries but have ended up in the country. The report said, for instance, that Egyptian military hardware (including attack helicopters) ended up in the arsenal of the Tobruk regime, while the Sudanese government is alleged to have shipped ammunition, among other weaponry, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Officials from the government in Tobruk have allegedly confirmed they have received weapons from friendly allies but say such arms were necessary for self-defense. “I don’t think the [UN] Security Council should have any say in who the Libyan government buys or receives weapons from,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Abdulsalam Nasiya, an official with the House of Representatives in Tobruk, as saying.

The Security Council is expected to consider evidence presented in the report to decide what measures to take against UN member nations and individuals allegedly involved. The report, which was submitted to the Security Council in January, is set to be made public in the near future.

Libya has been in turmoil since October 2011, when a NATO air campaign helped the country’s opposition topple long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi. The battle for power between two rival governments in al-Bayda and Tripoli has led to 400,000 people being displaced, a spike in kidnappings, and the rise of radical groups, including Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently said in a report.

https://www.rt.com/news/335357-libya-arms-embargo-violations/

I don't believe any of the lies which are being spread through the western mainstream media. Why these media organizations remained silent when Qaddafi was alive? Once he was killed, these people started churning out all sort of stories about him. The same with Saddam Hussein as well. You are claiming that you are against the dictators. And at the same time, you are supporting the most evil dictator of all time (Salman of Saudi Arabia).

Libya: How Hillary Clinton Destroyed a Country
She’s learned nothing from her blood-soaked failure

by Justin Raimondo, March 04, 2016

“We came, we saw, he died,” exclaimed an ebullient Hillary Clinton, as she exulted over the horrific death of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, who was sodomized with a bayonet before being brutally murdered by rampaging militiamen. Visiting Tripoli, the Libyan capital, the American Secretary of State was eager to take credit for the “liberation” of yet another Muslim country by Western powers acting in concert. An extensive and quite revealing New York Times investigation (Pt. 1 here, Pt. 2 here) reports on “a ‘ticktock’ that described her starring role in the events that had led to this moment. The timeline, her top policy aide, Jake Sullivan, wrote, demonstrated Mrs. Clinton’s ‘leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.’ The memo’s language put her at the center of everything: ‘HRC announces … HRC directs … HRC travels … HRC engages,’ it read.”

These days, however, out on the campaign trail, Mrs. Clinton is not quite so eager to take ownership of what can only be characterized as an unmitigated disaster, a case history dramatizing the perils of “liberal” interventionism from inception to bloody denouement.

Mrs. Clinton was easily won over by the Libyan rebels who presented a utopian view of what the post-revolutionary era would look like: there would be free elections, a free media, women would be able to “do it all,” and everyone would get a pony. They “’said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,’ said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. ‘They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.’”

Confirmation bias in a writer or reporter is fatal, but only to his/her own career: in a Secretary of State it is a death sentence for thousands. And that’s exactly how it turned out in Hillary’s case.

To this day, Clinton avers that “it’s too soon to tell” whether the Libya intervention qualifies as an unmitigated failure – even in the face of marauding militias, no less than two self-declared governments, the horrific death of an American ambassador at the hands of the very militias we empowered, and the incursion of the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and other terrorist outfits. She refused to be interviewed for the Times article.

While Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice President Joe Biden opposed regime change, Clinton took the side of the younger “back-benchers,” as the Times calls them, who wanted to go in there and “get on the right side of history.” The misnamed “Arab Spring” was in full bloom, and the media was pushing the idea that this was a great awakening of “democracy.”

Hillary, who had hesitated at first to jump on the bandwagon during the Egyptian events, made up for lost time in Libya. She “pressed for a secret American program that supplied arms to rebel militias, an effort never before confirmed,” the Times reports. Those arms would be used to attack a CIA outpost in Benghazi, where Ambassador Stevens would fall at the hands of these very militiamen.

While initially the US was purportedly acting only to prevent civilian deaths at the hands of Gaddafi – a “humanitarian disaster” that turned out to be nothing but media-driven war propaganda – Hillary and her staff soon fell down the slippery slope to actively aiding the rebels. The ‘responsibility to protect” soon became another regime change operation, as in Iraq.

“’We don’t want another war,’ she told [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov, stressing that the mission was limited to protecting civilians. ‘I take your point about not seeking another war,’ she recalled him responding. ‘But that doesn’t mean that you won’t get one.’”

The French were pushing particularly hard for a more muscular Western response, and in a meeting with French and British officials the frogs played their “trump card,” as the Times describes it. Although the meeting was convened to decide whether to act, Clinton was informed that “French fighter jets were already in the air” – but, added the French official, “this is a collective decision and I will recall them if you want me to.”

This certainly gives new meaning to the phrase “leading from behind” that administration officials used to describe our role. Clinton was supposedly “irritated,” but she capitulated readily enough.

“’I’m not going to be the one to recall the planes and create the massacre in Benghazi,’ she grumbled to an aide. And the bombing began.”

The Libyan leader, who had ruled his country for more than 40 years, knew what the outcome would be. His regime, “he railed to anyone who would listen,” was Libya’s sole defense against Islamist crazies who would overrun the country if not for him. But no one in the West was listening.

Clinton was jazzed that this was supposedly a model of “multilateralism,” with the Arab League as well as the Europeans in on the deal. But that proved to be the original mission’s undoing as Qatar – a little shithole of an oil-rich country long dependent on the US military for its miserable existence – starting funneling weapons to Islamist militias with dubious credentials. This is how we were pressured into going from “humanitarian intervention” to regime change. If we didn’t arm the “good” militias, Clinton argued, the bad ones being empowered by Qatar would prevail. Yet military officials were not convinced:

“NATO’s supreme allied commander, Adm. James G. Stavridis, had told Congress of “flickers” of Al Qaeda within the opposition. Mr. [Tom] Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, argued that the administration could not ensure that weapons intended for ‘the so-called good guys,’ as one State Department official put it, did not fall into the hands of Islamist extremists.”

As the Times makes all too clear, Clinton has a bias in favor of action, as well as relying on what can only be called a woman’s intuition. Her aides, the Times says, “described her as feeling her way through a problem without being certain of the outcome.” Another word for this is recklessness.

Clinton eventually succeeded in persuading President Obama, who signed a presidential finding authorizing a covert action to overthrow Gaddafi. US weapons poured into the country. The militias were unleashed, while Clinton hailed the elections that were staged shortly after the “liberation.” Yet as it turned out the elected officials had no real power: the guns were in the hands of the militias, who extorted government officials for more weapons in return for not being killed. The country went to pieces rather quickly, but our Secretary of State and would-be President had already moved on: she was too busy plotting regime change in Syria to be bothered with the unraveling of Libya.

Clinton wanted to make a deal with the Qataris that we would arm their favored radical Islamists in Syria if they would lay off aiding al-Qaeda-type crazies in Libya. But when the President vetoed her Syrian regime change plan, the proposed deal was off – and Libya continued to deteriorate into the Mad Max scenario we see today.

She quit the State Department after losing the internal debate over Syria, and is now campaigning for the highest office in the land on a platform of “love and kindness.”

Not that there’s much “love and kindness” in the country she destroyed almost single-handedly.

This Times story dropped like a stone: although normally one would expect such a damning account of a presidential candidate’s tenure as Secretary of State to be grist for the media mill, there wasn’t so much as a peep about it from anywhere else – including from the Republican candidates, never mind from Bernie Sanders.

A woman who could very well occupy the highest office in the land, with near total control of US foreign policy, basically committed an entire nation to perdition. Where’s the outrage? Who is drawing the lessons learned from all this?

Antiwar.com is almost alone in underscoring Hillary Clinton’s horrific foreign policy record. The Republicans, who mostly agree with her interventionist views, are screaming about "Benghazi! Benghazi!" without understanding what led to the death of an American ambassador. The liberal media, which is clearly rooting for Hillary, isn’t about to point to this horrific example of incompetence and hubris. So it’s left to us – our little singlejack operation here at Antiwar.com – to speak truth to power.

But we can’t do that without your help – your financial help. Yes, our fundraising campaign is still ongoing and we really need to bring it to a close. So please – give what you can as soon as you can. And remember: it’s tax-deductible.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/03/03/libya-how-hillary-clinton-destroyed-a-country/

Oil, obviously. Energy, what else are wars really about? Read this thread and you´ll see the real reasons for that mess they created in 2011. Now the ruins have bred enough terrorists that they need to start bombing again. Also it´s spring soon with calmer waters across the Mediterranean so they´re in a hurry to get more refugee business going.

What is so interesting about Libya? What are the gains for France and Italy?

Troops Trickle in as West Prepares for Libya War
Italy Insists War on Hold Until Unity Govt Formed

by Jason Ditz, March 03, 2016

Last week, major French newspaper Le Monde reported that the French government is engaged in a “secret war” in Libya, and has deployed special forces already. The Pentagon has also talked about its own presence in Libya, and Britain is understood to have some special forces there as well.

The numbers keep growing, and other assets for a Western war in Libya, which officials have been publicly championing for months, are being moved into place. It’s only a matter of time until the “secret war” becomes a public one, but how long?

That’s not clear, as leaked Italian documents confirm that they too are poised to send some ground troops across the Mediterranean, though officially the Italian Defense Ministry insists that there is no “war room” and that the conflict is awaiting the formation of a Libyan unity government.

These nations have all been emphasizing the growth of the ISIS affiliate in Libya, and indicating that they believe the ISIS war needs to be expanded there. The selling of the “merits” of the war seems to be running concurrent to the actual deployments in this case, indicating how perfunctory the whole PR effort is.

http://news.antiwar.com/2016/03/03/troops-trickle-in-as-west-prepares-for-libya-war/

From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer
A former aide to Hillary Clinton has been granted immunity in a criminal investigation, and the FBI is expected to question Clinton herself soon.

All of Hillary Clinton’s emails are out there. Now, how bad will the fallout be?

On Monday, the State Department released the last batch of Clinton’s messages when she was secretary of state—a total of around 30,000. And late Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department has granted immunity to a former Clinton staffer to work with investigators, an indication of progress in the criminal case over the emails. Bryan Pagliano, the staffer, helped Clinton set up a server in her home in New York, which she used for her emails while running the State Department. Pagliano previously invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when called to testify by congressional committees. A spokesman said the Clinton campaign was “pleased” that Pagliano was cooperating, though what else are they going to say?

Clinton herself is likely to be questioned by the FBI sometime in the next few weeks. The Post reports:

As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents will likely want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said.
Obviously this is not good news for Clinton. The question is just how bad it is.

Clinton is effectively fighting a two-front war. On one side, she’s running a political campaign for president. On the other, she’s working to defend herself against charges of wrongdoing in the email investigation, since criminal charges could effectively doom her campaign. The latest developments in the email case come just as things were starting to look good on the political side—Clinton has hit her stride in recent primaries and seems to have a solid edge over Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic nomination.

What isn’t clear yet is who might face criminal charges: Clinton? Other aides? No one at all? There’s not yet any evidence of a grand jury being convened to handle the investigation.

The case of David Petraeus, the former CIA director who it was one speculated might run against Clinton, looms over the case, and its impact is unclear. The Post reports that Petraeus’s wrongdoing is seen as worse, and since he got off with a light sentence of two years’ probation and a $100,000 fine, officials felt it would be hard to go after Clinton. But Petraeus’s escape angered some in the Justice Department and FBI who alleged political interference, adding to the scrutiny in this case and the pressure for an independent process. The final decision rests with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The fact that Clinton was using a private server for her work email emerged in the course of the investigation into the September 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, which killed four Americans. None of the content of the emails so far has been especially damning about Benghazi or anything else—though there are some embarrassing moments, including Clinton’s seeming technological ignorance and the flattery of friends like Sidney Blumenthal. But a total of 65 emails were not released because they contain information classified “secret.” Clinton and her aides insist she did not send any classified information, and that anything that is now secret had its classification changed later. Others, including the inspector general for the Intelligence Community, have disagreed.

The emails have become a classic Clinton scandal. Even though investigations have found no wrongdoing on her part with respect to the Benghazi attacks themselves, Clinton’s private-email use and concerns about whether she sent classified information have become huge stories unto themselves. This is a pattern with the Clinton family, which has been in the public spotlight since Bill Clinton’s first run for office, in 1974: Something that appears potentially scandalous on its face turns out to be innocuous, but an investigation into it reveals different questionable behavior. The canonical case is Whitewater, a failed real-estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978. While no inquiry ever produced evidence of wrongdoing, investigations ultimately led to President Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

With Hillary Clinton leading the field for the Democratic nomination for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to the State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—have fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.

Clinton’s State Department Emails


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton checks her phone on board a plane from Malta to Tripoli, Libya. (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)
What? Setting aside the question of the Clintons’ private email server, what’s actually in the emails that Clinton did turn over to State? While some of the emails related to Benghazi have been released, there are plenty of others covered by public-records laws that haven’t.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Serious. Initially, it seemed that the interest in the emails would stem from damaging things that Clinton or other aides had said: cover-ups, misrepresentations, who knows? But so far, other than some cringeworthy moments of sucking up and some eye-rolly emails from contacts like Sidney Blumenthal, the emails have been remarkably boring. The main focus now is on classification. Sixty-five emails contain information that is now classified. The question is whether any of it, and how much of it, was classified at the time it was sent. Clinton has said she didn’t knowingly send or receive classified material on the account. The State Department and Intelligence Community have disagreed about that. In addition, the Intelligence Community’s inspector general wrote in a January letter that Clinton’s server contained information marked “special access program,” higher even than top secret. Some emails that Clinton didn’t turn over have also since surfaced.

Benghazi


A man celebrates as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns on September 11, 2012. (Esam Al-Fetori / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)
What? On September 11, 2012, attackers overran a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Since then, Republicans have charged that Hillary Clinton failed to adequately protect U.S. installations or that she attempted to spin the attacks as spontaneous when she knew they were planned terrorist operations. She testifies for the first time on October 22.

When? September 11, 2012-present

How serious is it? Benghazi has gradually turned into a classic “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” scenario. Only the fringes argue, at this point, that Clinton deliberately withheld aid. A House committee continues to investigate the killings and aftermath, but Clinton’s marathon appearance before the committee in October was widely considered a win for her. However, it was through the Benghazi investigations that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became public—a controversy that remains potent.

Conflicts of Interest in Foggy Bottom


Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic
What? Before becoming Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills worked for Clinton on an unpaid basis for four month while also working for New York University, in which capacity she negotiated on the school’s behalf with the government of Abu Dhabi, where it was building a campus. In June 2012, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin’s status at State changed to “special government employee,” allowing her to also work for Teneo, a consulting firm run by Bill Clinton’s former right-hand man. She also earned money from the Clinton Foundation and was paid directly by Hillary Clinton.

Who? Both Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin are among Clinton’s longest-serving and closest aides. Abedin remains involved in her campaign (and she’s also married to Anthony Weiner).

When? January 2009-February 2013

How serious is it? This is arcane stuff, to be sure. There are questions about conflict of interest—such as whether Teneo clients might have benefited from special treatment by the State Department while Abedin worked for both. To a great extent, this is just an extension of the tangle of conflicts presented by the Clinton Foundation and the many overlapping roles of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The Clintons’ Private Email Server


Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic
What? During the course of the Benghazi investigation, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt learned Clinton had used a personal email account while secretary of state. It turned out she had also been using a private server, located at a house in New York. The result was that Clinton and her staff decided which emails to turn over to the State Department as public records and which to withhold; they say they then destroyed the ones they had designated as personal.

When? 2009-2013, during Clinton’s term as secretary.

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; top aides including Huma Abedin

How serious is it? It looks more serious all the time. The rules governing use of personal emails are murky, and Clinton aides insist she followed the rules. There’s no dispositive evidence otherwise so far. The greater political problem for Clinton is it raises questions about how she selected the emails she turned over and what was in the ones she deleted. The FBI has reportedly managed to recover some of the deleted correspondence. Could the server have been hacked? Some of the emails she received on her personal account are marked sensitive. Plus there’s a entirely different set of questions about Clinton’s State Department emails. The FBI is investigating the security of the server as well as the safety of a thumb drive belonging to her lawyer that contains copies of her emails. And the AP reports that the setup may have made the server vulnerable to hacking. Given the shabby state of State Department cybersecurity, she might not have been any better off using the official system.

Sidney Blumenthal


Blumenthal takes a lunch break while being deposed in private session of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)
What? A former journalist, Blumenthal was a top aide in the second term of the Bill Clinton administration and helped on messaging during the bad old days. He served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and when she took over the State Department, she sought to hire Blumenthal. Obama aides, apparently still smarting over his role in attacks on candidate Obama, refused the request, so Clinton just sought out his counsel informally. At the same time, Blumenthal was drawing a check from the Clinton Foundation.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Some of the damage is already done. Blumenthal was apparently the source of the idea that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous, a notion that proved incorrect and provided a political bludgeon against Clinton and Obama. He also advised the secretary on a wide range of other issues, from Northern Ireland to China, and passed along analysis from his son Max, a staunch critic of the Israeli government (and conservative bête noire). But emails released so far show even Clinton’s top foreign-policy guru, Jake Sullivan, rejecting Blumenthal’s analysis, raising questions about her judgment in trusting him.

The Speeches


Keith Bedford / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic
What? Since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, both Clintons have made millions of dollars for giving speeches.

When? 2001-present

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; Chelsea Clinton

How serious is it? Intermittently dangerous. It has a tendency to flare up, then die down. Senator Bernie Sanders made it a useful attack against her in early 2016, suggesting that by speaking to banks like Goldman Sachs, she was compromised. There have been calls for Clinton to release the transcripts of her speeches, which she was declined to do, saying if every other candidate does, she will too. For the Clintons, who left the White House up to their ears in legal debt, lucrative speeches—mostly by the former president—proved to be an effective way of rebuilding wealth. They have also been an effective magnet for prying questions. Where did Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton speak? How did they decide how much to charge? What did they say? How did they decide which speeches would be given on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, with fees going to the charity, and which would be treated as personal income? Are there cases of conflicts of interest or quid pro quos—for example, speaking gigs for Bill Clinton on behalf of clients who had business before the State Department?

The Clinton Foundation


A brooch for sale at the Clinton Museum Store in Little Rock, Arkansas (Lucy Nicholson / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)
What? Bill Clinton’s foundation was actually established in 1997, but after leaving the White House it became his primary vehicle for … well, everything. With projects ranging from public health to elephant-poaching protection and small-business assistance to child development, the foundation is a huge global player with several prominent offshoots. In 2013, following Hillary Clinton’s departure as secretary of State, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

When? 1997-present

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; Chelsea Clinton, etc.

How serious is it? If the Clinton Foundation’s strength is President Clinton’s endless intellectual omnivorousness, its weakness is the distractibility and lack of interest in detail that sometimes come with it. On a philanthropic level, the foundation gets decent ratings from outside review groups, though critics charge that it’s too diffuse to do much good, that the money has not always achieved what it was intended to, and that in some cases the money doesn’t seem to have achieved its intended purpose. The foundation made errors in its tax returns it has to correct. Overall, however, the essential questions about the Clinton Foundation come down to two, related issues. The first is the seemingly unavoidable conflicts of interest: How did the Clintons’ charitable work intersect with their for-profit speeches? How did their speeches intersect with Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department? Were there quid-pro-quos involving U.S. policy? The second, connected question is about disclosure. When Clinton became secretary, she agreed that the foundation would make certain disclosures, which it’s now clear it didn’t always do. And the looming questions about Clinton’s State Department emails make it harder to answer those questions.

The Bad Old Days


Supporter Dick Furinash holds up cardboard cut-outs of Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)
What is it? Since the Clintons have a long history of controversies, there are any number of past scandals that continue to float around, especially in conservative media: Whitewater. Troopergate. Paula Jones. Monica Lewinsky. Vince Foster. Juanita Broaddrick.

When? 1975-2001

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; a brigade of supporting characters

How serious is it? The conventional wisdom is that they’re not terribly dangerous. Some are wholly spurious (Foster). Others (Lewinsky, Whitewater) have been so exhaustively investigated it’s hard to imagine them doing much further damage to Hillary Clinton’s standing. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal famously boosted her public approval ratings. But the January 2016 resurfacing of Juanita Broaddrick’s rape allegations offers a test case to see whether the conventional wisdom is truly wise—or just conventional.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/tracking-the-clinton-controversies-from-whitewater-to-benghazi/396182/

you are totally wrong.. muammar gaddafi is a modern times dictator who abused , murdered, exploit his own people not a peacuful politician..

Well, the current Japanese military doctrine, setup and training are totally geared for defense and largely useless for any offensive operations. Apart from small special units but they´re pretty inconsequential in the large picture.

i completely agree with you.. western world must leave exploting middle east's oil or any other natural and human resources immediately if not we will wlecome ww3 soon.

Japan is not a part of the NATO, and they were not involved in the military invasion of Libya. The Nipponese are intelligent. They learnt their lesson during the WW2. Invading the third world nations (south-east Asia, Korea, Pacific islands, Manchuria.etc) didn't worked for them then, and that is why they are refraining from repeating the same mistakes now. 

yes, you dont have any reason to be there excpect exploiting their rich natural resources.. usa or any other western country must stay at their homeland. and leave middle east alone.. so these lands will turn better place for sure..

Japan is west of America.   

A Hawk Named Hillary
As her record shows, Clinton has embraced destructive nationalist myths about America’s role in the world.

By Anatol Lieven NOVEMBER 25, 2014

Hillary Clinton is running for president not only on her record as secretary of state, but also by presenting herself as tougher than Barack Obama on foreign-policy issues. With this stance, she presumably plans to distance herself from a president increasingly branded as “weak” in his approach to international issues, and to appeal to the supposedly more hawkish instincts of much of the electorate.


It is therefore necessary to ask a number of related questions, the answers to which are of crucial importance not just to the likely course of a hypothetical Clinton administration, but to the future of the United States in the world. These questions concern her record as secretary of state and her attitudes, as well as those of the US foreign-policy and national-security elites as a whole. They are also linked to an even deeper and more worrying question: whether the country’s political elites are still capable of learning from their mistakes and changing their policies accordingly. I was brought up to believe that this is a key advantage of democracy over other systems. But it can’t happen without a public debate—and hence mass media—founded on rational argument, a respect for facts, and an insistence that officials take responsibility for evidently disastrous decisions.

The difficulties that a Democratic politician must overcome in designing a foreign and security policy capable of meeting the needs of the age are admittedly legion. These include US foreign-policy and national-security institutions that are bloated beyond measure and spend most of their time administering themselves and quarreling with one another; the weakness of the cabinet system, which encourages these institutions and means that decisions are constantly thrown in the lap of the president and a White House staff principally obsessed with the next election; an increasing political dysfunction at home, partly as a result of the unrelenting American electoral cycle; a Republican opposition that is positively feral in its readiness to use any weapon against a Democratic White House; a corporate media that, when not working for the Republicans directly, is all too willing to help turn minor issues into perceived crises; and problems in some parts of the world (notably the Middle East and Afghanistan) that are indeed of a hideous complexity.

* * *

Even more important and difficult than any of these problems may be the fact that designing a truly new and adequate strategy would require breaking with some fundamental American myths—myths that have been strengthened by many years of superpower status but that go back much further, to the very roots of American civic nationalism. These myths, above all, depict the United States as—in one of Clinton’s favorite phrases—the “indispensable nation,” innately good (if sometimes misguided), with the right and duty to lead humankind and therefore, when necessary, to crush any opposition.

It is the strength and centrality of these nationalist myths that have prevented our elites and the American public from learning or remembering the lessons of Vietnam—a failure that helped pave the way for the disaster of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the consequences of which are still unfolding in the Middle East today. And as Clinton’s entire record—all her writings and all the writings about her—show, she has made herself a captive of those nationalist myths beyond any possibility of escape. As she asserts in her new book, Hard Choices:


Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America remains the “indispensable nation.” I am just as convinced, however, that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be earned by every generation.

And it will be—so long as we stay true to our values and remember that, before we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or any of the other labels that divide us as often as define us, we are Americans, all with a personal stake in our country.

It’s the same old nationalist solipsism: all we have to do is stick together and talk more loudly to ourselves about how wonderful we are, and the rest of the world will automatically accept our “leadership.” This is not a case—as has sometimes appeared with Obama—of a naturally cool and skeptical intellect forced to bow to the emotions of the masses. To all appearances, Clinton’s nationalism is a matter of profound conviction.

And let us be fair: this may help to get her elected president. Once she is, however, it is likely to constrain drastically her ability to shape a foreign policy appropriate to the new circumstances of the United States and the world. Above all, perhaps, it hampers her ability to learn from the past, and from her own and America’s mistakes—a defect blazingly on display in her latest memoir. Instead, even when (on very rare occasions) she does make the briefest and most formal acknowledgment of a US crime or error, it is immediately followed by the infamous statement that we must put this behind us and “move on.” This phrase is dear not only to Clinton, but to the foreign-policy establishment as a whole. It makes any serious analysis of the past impossible.

Of course, one hardly looks for great honesty or candor in what is, in effect, election propaganda—and one must always keep in mind the presence of a Republican Party and media ready to tear into even the slightest appearance of “apologizing for America.” Nonetheless, a passage early in the book did give me hope that it would contain at least some serious discussion of past US mistakes and their lessons for future policy. It concerned what Clinton acknowledges as her own greatest error—the decision to vote for the Iraq War:

As much as I might have wanted to, I could never change my vote on Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the right lessons from that war and apply them to Afghanistan and other challenges where we had fundamental security interests. I was determined to do exactly that when facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism, and humility.

Neither in her book nor in her policy is there even the slightest evidence that she has, in fact, tried to learn from Iraq beyond the most obvious lesson—the undesirability of US ground invasions and occupations, which even the Republicans have managed to learn. For Clinton herself helped to launch US airpower to topple another regime, this one in Libya—and, as in Iraq, the results have been anarchy, sectarian conflict and opportunities for Islamist extremists that have destabilized the entire region. She then helped lead the United States quite far down the road of doing the same thing in Syria.


Clinton tries to argue in the book that she took a long, hard look at the Libyan opposition before reporting to the president her belief that “there was a reasonable chance the rebels would turn out to be credible partners”—but however long she looked, it is now obvious that she got it wrong. She has simply not understood the fragility of states—states, not regimes—in many parts of the world, the risk that “humanitarian intervention” will bring about state collapse, and the inadequacy of a crude and simplistic version of democracy promotion as a basis for state reconstruction. It does not help that the US record on democracy promotion and the rule of law—including Clinton’s own record—is so spotted that very few people outside the country take it seriously anymore.

Her book manages simultaneously to repeat the claim that the United States and its allies were only enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya and to try to take personal credit for destroying the Libyan regime. And she wonders why other countries do not entirely trust her or America’s honesty! There is also no recognition whatsoever in her book that those who opposed US military action were in fact right and not “despicable,” to use her phrase about Russian opposition to the US military intervention in Syria. Nor has her disastrous record on Iraq led her to take a more sensible stance toward Iran. On the contrary, in her anxiety to appear more hawkish than Obama, she has clearly aligned with those who would make a nuclear deal with Iran impossible and therefore leave the United States in the ridiculous and unsustainable position of trying to contain all the major forces in the Middle East simultaneously.

This kind of nationalist faith in American strength and American righteousness is no longer adequate to the challenges the country faces. Above all, such a faith makes it impossible to deal with other nations on a basis of equality—not only on global issues or those of great interest to Washington, but on issues that other countries regard as vital to their own interests.

This also makes it far more difficult for US officials to do what Hans Morgenthau declared is both a practical and moral duty of statesmen: through close study, to develop a capacity to put themselves in the shoes of the representatives of other countries—not in order to agree with them but to understand what is really important to them, the interests on which they will be able to compromise and those for which they will feel compelled to fight. Clinton displays not a shred of this ability in her book.

* * *

The greatest future challenge in this respect is our relations with China. The arrogance with which Washington treats other countries is at least understandable given that none of them are or are likely to be equals of the United States—though some, like Russia, can often compete successfully in their own regions. China is another matter. If, as now seems all but certain, its economy soon surpasses that of the United States, then on issues of interest to Beijing, it will indeed demand to be treated as an equal—and if Washington fails to do so, it will propel the two sides toward terrifying confrontations.


In terms of the day-to-day conduct of relations with Beijing, Clinton had a generally good record as secretary of state—though in this, she was following what has generally been a restrained policy by both political parties. But if Clinton’s day-to-day record was pragmatic, her long-term strategy may prove disastrous. This was the Obama administration’s decision—in which she was instrumental—to “pivot to Asia.” As Clinton’s writings make clear, “pivot” means the containment of China through the enhancement of existing military alliances in East Asia and the development of new ones (especially with India). This strategy is at present reasonably cautious and somewhat veiled, but if Chinese power continues to grow, and if collisions between China and some of its neighbors intensify, then a containment strategy will inevitably become harsher—with potentially catastrophic consequences.

This is not simply a case of a knee-jerk US reaction to the rise of a potential peer competitor. Some of China’s policies have helped to provoke the new strategy and also enabled it by driving China’s neighbors into America’s arms. This is above all true of Beijing’s territorial claims to various groups of uninhabited islands in the East and South China seas. While some of its claims seem reasonably well founded, others have no basis in international law and tradition; and by pushing all of them at once, Beijing has frightened most of its neighbors and created real fears that in East Asia, at least, its “peaceful rise” strategy has been abandoned.

But if aspects of China’s strategy have been aggressive, that does not necessarily make the US response to them wise—especially since Obama and Clinton’s announcement of the pivot to Asia, at least in part, preceded the new aggressiveness of Chinese policy. In particular, Clinton appears to have forgotten that a key difference between the Cold War with the USSR and the current relationship with China is that during the Cold War, Washington was careful never to involve itself in any claims by neighbors on Russian territory. In consequence (as I can testify from my work as a British journalist in the USSR during the years of its collapse), there was no successful mobilization of Russian nationalism against the United States. That has come later, when with monumental folly the United States (under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations) involved itself in the quarrels of the post-Soviet successor states.

As a senator, Clinton was entirely complicit in the disastrous strategy of offering NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine, which led to the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 (and a de facto US strategic defeat) and helped set the scene for the Ukraine crisis of this year. This is not to excuse Russia’s mistaken and criminal reactions to US policy; but to judge by her book, Clinton never bothered to try to understand or predict likely Russian reactions—let alone, once again, to acknowledge or learn from her mistakes. On the Georgia War, she simply repeats the lie (which, to be fair, she may actually believe) that this was deliberately started by Putin and not by Georgia’s president at the time, Mikheil Saakashvili.


In her policy toward China, Clinton and the administration in which she served have embroiled the United States in the islands disputes. Formally, Washington has not taken sides concerning ownership of the islands. Informally, though, by emphasizing the US military alliance with Japan and its extensive character, it has done so—at least in the case of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. As a result, Clinton may have helped put her country in a position where it will one day feel compelled to launch a devastating war to defend Japanese claims to uninhabited rocks, and at a time dictated by Tokyo.

As the Australian realist scholar Hugh White has suggested, underlying the other disputes between the United States and China is Washington’s refusal to accord legitimacy to China’s system of government, something repeatedly demonstrated in Clinton’s book. White argues that such recognition is essential if the two countries are to share power and influence in East Asia and avoid conflict.

This is admittedly a very difficult moral and political issue, given China’s human-rights abuses. Clinton made human-rights advocacy a hallmark of her tenure at the State Department (without, it seems, understanding the disastrous effects on this advocacy of the US international record). More substantial has been her contribution to raising global awareness of women’s rights; and perhaps most praiseworthy of all (because it is deeply unpopular with many Americans as well as others around the world) is her staunch defense of gay rights.

It would be an immense help, however, if American representatives could recognize the degree to which the US model at home and abroad is now questioned by enemies as well as concerned friends—at home due to political paralysis and the increasing and obvious inadequacy of an eighteenth-century Constitution to deal with a twenty-first-century world; abroad due to a series of criminal actions carried out in defiance of the international community, as well as the catastrophic failure of the US war and state-building effort in Iraq—and very likely in Afghanistan, too. There is not the slightest indication of such a recognition in Clinton’s book.

* * *

When it comes to the Obama administration’s dysfunctional policy toward Afghanistan, Clinton herself cannot be held chiefly responsible. As her work and books by others make clear (notably Vali Nasr’s The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat), this was a policy driven chiefly by the White House, and for domestic political reasons. Nonetheless, she can hardly evade all responsibility, since on issues that can in any way be presented as successes, she is so anxious to claim responsibility.

At the core of the administration’s failure (leaving aside the horribly intractable nature of the Afghan War itself) was the combination of a military surge with the announcement of early US military withdrawal. As far as hardline Taliban elements were concerned, this meant they only had to wait. As far as actual or potential moderates were concerned, Washington failed to accompany the surge with any serious attempt at a peace settlement.



For this failure, opposition by the US military and Afghanistan’s then-president, Hamid Karzai, was chiefly responsible, together with the fear of a political backlash in the United States. But as Clinton makes clear, there was no way that she would have supported any peace offer that even the most moderate Taliban elements would have discussed. In her words, “To be reconciled, insurgents would have to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda and accept the Afghan Constitution.” In other words, not a settlement but surrender.

Such an offer should indeed have been made by the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003; it probably would have been accepted by many Taliban commanders, since at the time the Taliban appeared to have been thoroughly defeated. That opportunity was missed, and today—with the United States withdrawing, the Afghan “constitution” deep in crisis, and the Taliban conquering more and more of the east and south—it will not even be looked at. And this syndrome, of either pretending or genuinely believing that Washington is offering compromise when it is actually demanding surrender, is a leitmotif of Clinton’s work. It is very sensible to make such offers if you are winning, not so if you are retreating.

This is not to say that, in Afghanistan or the Middle East, there are easy answers that Clinton has somehow missed. In both cases, there are no real “solutions,” only better or worse management of crises based on a choice of lesser evils. Perhaps as president, Clinton would prove to be a competent manager of these crises; but on the basis of her record and writings so far, the verdict on this must at best be “unproven.” So far, her actions and those of the United States have succeeded only in making things worse.

Can the United States escape the trap created by its belief in its own supreme morality and right to lead? To do this would require its leaders to tell the American people a number of things that a majority of the country’s political classes (which on foreign policy can generally manage to impersonate the people) really do not want to hear: about the relative decline of US power and the need to adjust both policy and rhetoric to accommodate this development; about the consequent need to seek compromises with a number of countries that Americans have been taught to hate; about the insufficiency of the American ideology as a universal path for the progress of humankind; and, most important of all, about the long-term unsustainability of the US economic model and the absolute need to take action against climate change.


In an ideal world, an astute president with popular support should be able to reach past the elites to appeal to the generally sensible and generous instincts of the majority of Americans. As recent polls have demonstrated, on the question of arming Syrian rebels and of seeking a reasonable compromise with Iran, large majorities have shown much more cautious and pragmatic instincts than Clinton, let alone the Republicans. Only 8 percent of Americans want Washington to attempt to lead the world unilaterally, compared with overwhelming majorities in favor of seeking cooperation (and cost-sharing) with other powers.

But as Peter Beinart has shown in a recent essay in The Atlantic, there is a yawning gap on these issues between the American public and the political and media elites—and, most crucial of all, the big donors on whom candidates increasingly depend. If, as many now believe, the United States is heading toward a de facto oligarchy, then the views of that oligarchy on foreign-policy and security issues are clear—and they’re close to those of Hillary Clinton.

There is certainly little basis for the belief that she would be prepared to challenge the oligarchy on these issues. Thus, on the crucial question of climate change, she has indeed taken a rhetorical stand sharply different from the Republicans and a number of conservative Democrats. On the other hand, the chapter on it in Hard Choices begins with an extended passage in which Clinton crows about a tactical victory over China at the 2009 Copenhagen summit—a victory that did nothing to combat climate change and only managed to alienate further the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians. Clinton’s verbal commitment to this central issue is impressive and commendable, her actual record much less so. But again, the real question is whether any US statesman could do better, given that most Republicans—who now dominate Congress and control federal legislation on this issue—have managed to convince themselves that the problem does not even exist. How is it possible to implement rational policies if much of the political class has abandoned respect for facts and evidence?

Given the US record of the past dozen years, there is a great deal to be said in principle for a long period in which Washington simply pulls back from involvement in international crises. In practice, though, as several administrations have found, international affairs will not leave a US president alone. Crises blow up suddenly, and to craft an appropriate response requires a consistent philosophy, deep local knowledge, a firm grip on the US foreign-policy apparatus, and the ability to frame that response in ways that will gain the necessary support from the policy establishment, media and population. These are sufficiently great challenges in themselves. To expect in addition that a statesman will display originality, moral courage and a willingness to challenge national shibboleths is probably too much to ask of anyone. On the evidence to date, it is certainly too much to ask of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

http://www.thenation.com/article/hawk-named-hillary/

NATO troops are pretty much useless on the ground. That has been confirmed in Afghanistan where they´ve been dicking around for years unable to secure anything except maybe the torture centers. They can´t even go on patrols with the local military forces because they can expect a bullet in the back at any moment. It´s exactly the same problem as when the Vietnam war was fizzling out.

Doesn't matter. The NATO guys are only interested in destruction. They are not very concerned about the rebuilding of the country. Rebuilding is up to the Libyans and the natives are expected to rebuild the infrastructure without any help from the outside. Also, the falling crude oil prices are not making this task any easier.

On Monday, the Libyan military lost a MiG-23ML over the city of Derna, when it was shot down by one of the local Islamist factions. Today, they’ve lost another over Benghazi, amid another bombing campaign against Islamist forces.

ISIS is claiming credit for today’s shoot-down, though interestingly the warplane was bombing the Mujahedeen Shura Council, a separate faction that is seen more close to al-Qaeda than to ISIS. The military insists that the pilot again parachuted to safety, though they said they aren’t sure where he is now.

Unclear from the reports is how the plane was shot down. Monday’s plane was hit by stationary anti-aircraft guns, but ISIS is also believed to have access to a lot of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.

The planes were under the control of the Tobruk-based parliament faction, which controls most of what’s left of the old Libyan Air Force. Though MiG-23s were a big part of Libya’s air power in the past, they were only believed to have four left at the start of this week, and thus are now down to two.

http://news.antiwar.com/2016/02/12/isis-claims-downing-of-libyan-mig-23-over-benghazi/