The Legacy of Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’

Obama calls Libya his “worst mistake” 

The White House says US President Barack Obama has tried to apply the lessons from 2011 intervention in Libya to other situations where he must decide whether to use military force. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Obama admitted that his worst mistake was the lack of planning for the aftermath of the fall of late Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi. However he noted that he still feels the intervention was the right thing to do. The White House also said that there was need for urgent action to prevent violence in Libya and that the vacuum of power should have been filled. The North African country has descended into chaos since Gaddafi was toppled in 2011.

The Legacy of Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake:’ There’s a problem with the American way of war by Dominic Tierney 

In a Fox News interview last Sunday, Obama was asked about his “worst mistake.” It’s a classic gotcha question, but he had an answer ready. “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” This was yet another act of presidential contrition for the NATO operation in 2011 that helped to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi but left the country deeply unstable. In 2014, Obama said: “[W]e [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions.” In recent interviews with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the “Obama Doctrine,” the president bluntly said the mission in Libya “didn’t work.” Behind closed doors, according to Goldberg, he calls the situation there a “shit show.” To read more go to the link below:

link: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/obamas-worst-mistake-libya/478461/