At the time there was an actual uprising in Libya. Gaddaffi’s grip on the country was loosing. There were reports of the government slaughtering demonstrators and mass incarcerations. Should other nations sat around and do nothing, or helped keep Gaddafi in power? Libya had descended into civil war. A coalition of western nations helped topple a brutal dictator. At best we helped speed the conclusion to a civil war without involving our own troops. The hope was to stop the killing sooner rather than later. If we had done nothing the criticism would be the same that we hear about Syria, “Why didn’t we do something.”
If anything, the criticism should be how we failed to help make Libya a more stable nation, not that we helped take out a brutal dictator. The results in Libya informs our view of Syria now, - damned if you do, damned if you don’t .
Roskam is such a friggin’ lightweight. His idea of an investigation is, “I think what happened. …I have a theory what you did. …I believe…blah, blah, blah.” Not one damned fact; not one scintilla of evidence to support his horsesht assertions. THIS is what passes for a committee investigation.
It would be laughable if the stakes were not so high. As it is, it’s pitiable, empty and loaded with nothing but Republican speculation and innuendo. McCarthy (as in Tailgunner Joe) would be proud. Thank all that’s holy, the nation isn’t quite so gullible any longer and these tin horn demagogues can’t even begin to get away with such amateurish tripe today without being confronted and challenged on every point on such accusatory bullsht as Roskam’s “theories”.
Clearly this was a transparent attempt to moderate the damage done by revelations that (surprise, surprise!) the hearings are politically motivated by accusing Hillary Clinton of having used our policy toward the Libyan revolt for political reasons.
As a matter of fact, taking out Gaddafi has been the same kind of disaster as taking out Saddam - there really is no Libya anymore and a branch of ISIS has supposedly found a foothold. We aided and abetted the destruction of the old regime with no guarantees that anything acceptable would arise in its place.
Vietnam ring any bells, except for the part about “damned if you don’t.” We can’t “fix” countries like these. The hatreds run too deep, the potential for chaos is too great and, most important, we have no cultural commonalities.
Dumb move on their part. They are actually giving Hillary the spotlight to show she can handle them, act cool and composed and to state her beliefs. To put it bluntly,she is campaigning in front of TV cameras with a lot of people watching. And she is taking them on with great answers and solid comebacks.
I can’t believe how mind-numbingly stupid the GOP is. Particularly since she was seen as the victim of a witch hunt after McCarthy’s truth telling moment. They should have canceled the hearing and folded up the tent. But of course that woul;d have been too smart for them…
What this hearing boils down to is a free (for Hillary Clinton) 11 hour campaign ad, brought to you by the Republican party and paid for by American taxpayers. She is proving herself unflappable and poised in the face of overt hostility, she is displaying remarkable stamina, proving that she is physically up to the job, and she has a complete command of the subjects at hand. It really is kind of hard on the mental midgets that are “interrogating” her.
I guess it’s just another case of bagger projection – teabaggers mugging for the camera, hogging the limelight with ridiculous rants about how Clinton is hogging the limelight.
One difference is Libya was descending into chaos and Ghaddafi threatened to go house to house and kill his own citizens. The UN approved action, and the Arab League pleaded with the West to stop the carnage.
Iraqis were not begging us to invade their country.
I fault the coalition for not working toward stabilizing Libya, but I am hopeful that out of the coalition effort to battle ISIS will come a regional defense cooperative that will enable those countries to defend themselves.
It is interesting to see how many commenters here seem to think that we should be policing the world and and removing dictators that we don’t like. That view I guess makes sense - as long as you don’t care about the hundreds of thousand of Iraqis, Libyans and Syrians who are dead, and the millions who are refuges.
A Republican holding a show trial/hearing accusing the target of hogging the limelight: Isn’t that a dictionary example (I’m not sure which one, maybe Oxford) of Psychological Projection?
