Foreign policy is certainly complicated, but sometimes the best approach is a non-interventional one.

Obama has even admitted that the way his administration invaded Libya was the worst mistake of his presidency. The move was championed by Hillary Clinton.

Libya is a failure of American foreign policy much like Iraq was. Regime change led to even more chaos and global instability. Behind closed doors, Obama has called Libya a "shitshow."

She's a joke. Her only main view she has ever had of her own is maybe healthcare being universal which is probably her only commendable position but as any other politician , it's pretty much impossible to remove private insurance companies out of the process which is just sad.

And she's tried to push censorship in violent video games and other forms of entertainment which is just an example of how short sighted and how she is willing to adopt any view that is seen as "good" in the eye of the majority of the public.

Her history of being a flip flop politician is elite when compared to other politicians who have changed their views.

The email scandal is way overblown but it's still indicative of just how much of a piece of shit she really is. She's the bread and butter career politician. She might as well be a psychopath capable of blending herself to any political dynamic in the guise of getting elected and having power.

This post was edited by sir_lance_bb on Nov 1 2016 01:36pm

i believe by "she's no worse than many" he essentially means the bolded. at least that's how i read it.

Obama wasn't saying that going into Libya was the worst mistake of his presidency, but rather failing to prepare for the aftermath was. That is an argument from Obama for more intervention, not less.

So your answer to my question is that we should have done nothing? Iraq and Libya are much different... Saddam wasn't fighting a civil war.

This post was edited by IceMage on Nov 1 2016 01:40pm

Indeed, but that's what he is saying now in hindsight. I think if he had to go back and do it all again, he wouldn't have gone through with the invasion, knowing what it would take for it to be successful. Certainly the US could have intervened more, but after overthrowing Gaddafi, the entire country was in even more chaos. I suppose we could have spent hundreds or even thousands of American lives and billions of dollars trying to fix Libya, but we've seen now that trying to repair other countries by force doesn't necessarily work unless you want to stay there for a decade or more.

Regardless, my original point is that the manner in which the US invaded Libya was championed by Hillary Clinton. As President, I think she is going to make a lot of similar mistakes that the George W. Bush administration did. I don't see a big difference between the Bush Doctrine and a potential HRC Doctrine. She's hawkish and doesn't think through the aftermath of her foreign policy plans, including her no-fly zone proposal over Syria. Voters may like it because polls have revealed that Americans want the US to be "stronger" against ISIS and Russia, and that's why she is proposing it, but it's not a good plan.

Whoa, when did Hackster namechange to ThatAlex?

he wouldn't, given a second chance, re-do what he called "the right thing to do"? gotcha, speculation at it's finest to make your argument make sense...

This post was edited by thesnipa on Nov 1 2016 01:50pm

I bet you think Dane cook is funny

I love Obama, but he's a politician. His administration made a mistake in invading Libya. He insists that it was still the "right" thing to do in theory, but in order for the country to not devolve into a complete shitshow, the US would have had to spend potentially hundreds of thousands of American lives and billions of dollars occupying the country to provide some sense of order.

That's the detail he was leaving out. But he didn't want another Iraq, despite running as the anti-Bush doctrine candidate. His administration cut their losses in Libya, which was probably the right decision. Foreign policy is complicated, I certainly admit that. He made a tough call, but in order for it to work, it would have taken a much larger investment in the ensuing aftermath, a human and capital investment his administration clearly didn't want to make.

But yeah, it "could" have worked if he wanted another Iraq. He didn't.

He explicitly said the Libyan invasion was "the right thing to do".

All we did was tip the scales against Gaddafi, partly in order to protect civilians, and I don't think there's any good reason to believe that had we not intervened and Gaddafi maintained the upper hand, Libya would be any more stable right now.

iraq wasn't in a civil war, libya was.

Sometimes a few thousand US lives and a few billion US dollars are worth a few hundred thousand or a few million foreign lives.