In a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Libya in its February 23 issue, New Yorker Magazine's Jon Lee Anderson quoted "a senior (Obama) Administration official" (the capital "A" is Anderson's) who, incredibly, claimed that the country's descent into virtual chaos resulted from "the politicization" of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.
You see, because of that alleged politicization, Team Obama-Hillary claims that it, in the Administration official's words, "reduced our geographic scope and presence in the country," and, in Anderson's words, that it "wound down its diplomatic presence and essentially abandoned its role" there. A "senior Administration official" chimed in with how Benghazi "brought a 'broader chill'" to U.S. efforts.
Translation: It's all Republicans' fault, even though the GOP has had no executive branch authority for over six years, and even though its congressional oversight efforts have been cut off at the pass time and again by Obama administration stonewalling.
Apparently there was still a bit of auxiliary blame still available to throw at America's allies in Europe (bolds are mine):
... There is no overstating the chaos of post-Qaddafi Libya. Two competing governments claim legitimacy. Armed militias roam the streets. The electricity is frequently out of service, and most business is at a standstill; revenues from oil, the country’s greatest asset, have dwindled by more than ninety per cent. Some three thousand people have been killed by fighting in the past year, and nearly a third of the country’s population has fled across the border to Tunisia. What has followed the downfall of a tyrant—a downfall encouraged by NATO air strikes—is the tyranny of a dangerous and pervasive instability.
... The intervention that helped decide the Libyan conflict began tentatively. As Qaddafi moved harshly to put down the rebellion, vowing to “cleanse Libya house by house,” President Obama was reluctant to get involved, and his aides argued about the wisdom of forcing Qaddafi from power. But America’s allies in Europe, particularly the British and the French, were already convinced. In March, 2011, the well-connected French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy arrived in the city and took it upon himself to make sure that the rebels got aid. In Paris recently, I asked Lévy why he’d adopted the Libyan cause. “Why? I don’t know!” he said. “Of course, it was human rights, for a massacre to be prevented, and blah blah blah—but I also wanted them to see a Jew defending the liberators against a dictatorship, to show fraternity. I wanted the Muslims to see that a Frenchman—a Westerner and a Jew—could be on their side.”
Lévy said that he returned to Paris and told President Nicolas Sarkozy that humanitarian intervention wasn’t enough. “The real objective had to be to topple Qaddafi,” he told me. Sarkozy agreed, and Lévy became his emissary. Lévy accompanied a Libyan opposition leader to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to lobby for U.S. involvement.* “It was hard to convince the Americans,” he said. “Robert Gates was totally opposed. Obama as usual was hesitating. But Hillary got it.”
... In the end, Lévy was pleased with the intervention. “The NATO mission, as far as I am concerned, was as it had to be.”
On September 11, 2012, the country’s history again turned in Benghazi: a mob of extremists set fire to the U.S. consular compound and attacked a nearby annex, killing the Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans. In the United States, a rancorous debate began about the circumstances of Stevens’s death, with Obama’s opponents in Congress assailing him for the lack of security at the compound and accusing him of a coverup. The U.S. wound down its diplomatic presence and essentially abandoned its role in the international efforts to rebuild Libya and foster democracy.
“The killing of Chris Stevens had the effect of helping the terrorists acquire greater power,” a senior Administration official told me. “The bad guys were trying to get the West out, and they succeeded. Because of the politicization of that episode in the U.S., the government paused to make sure no one else got hurt, and reduced our geographic scope and presence in the country.” A senior government official said that Stevens’s death had brought a “broader chill” in efforts to influence events in Libya. “We had a pilot training program, for instance,” he said. “Suddenly, we were being accused of supporting terrorism.” For Lévy, the West’s abandonment of Libya was a dismaying moral failure.
Gee, guys, that's not how I, or the contemporaneous history, remember it.
The President said he would spare no effort in bringing the terrorists who carried out the attack to justice. But the real punishment was meted out to some guy who produced an anti-Islam video which was known to never have been the proximate cause of the planned terror attack.
Meanwhile, the effort to get the perpetrators was so unimpressive that Ahmed Abu Khattala, the primary suspect who was ultimately captured 21 months after the attacks "was interviewed by CNN and The New York Times in recent months and years, even after the U.S. charged him with crimes related to the deadly assault."
No one forced the administration to pull out of Libya. A concerted attempt to capture the terrorists involved and to extract revenge would likely have been applauded by most Americans.
Anderson didn't challenge the administration's attempt to blame Republicans at all, nor did he challenge Obama apparatchik Ben Rhodes's pathetic attempt to defend the indefensible:
Rhodes was one of the aides who, along with Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, helped persuade Obama to join the intervention. In spite of the chaos that followed, he stands by that decision. “We saved a lot of lives in Benghazi and the rest of the country,” he said. “If Qaddafi had gone into Benghazi, I think Libya would look more like Syria today.” He added, “What did we do wrong? Even the President would acknowledge that it’s been extremely difficult to fill the vacuum in Libya. We were keen for the Libyans to take the lead. Everyone knows the dangers of a completely U.S.-owned postwar environment. We might have used a heavier hand, but there’s no guarantee it would have made a difference.”
Other officials were more blunt about the limits of the intervention. The senior Administration official believed that three failures had led to the fiasco in Libya: “The lack of a single national-security apparatus, replaced by militias; a real terrorist problem, which was small but has gotten much worse; and a proliferation of arms."
Libya is arguably worse than Syria, given that one-third of its population has fled to Tunisia, and that people are so desperate to leave that they're willing to risk drowning by the hundreds on boats attempting to cross the Mediterranean.
The charitable explanation for the failures identified in the final excerpted paragraph essentially constitute an admission that the administration and the rest of the world had no idea of what would follow next. The more frightening explanation is that they all knew that either chaos or control by Islamic fundamentalists would follow, and didn't care.
Consider this effort to pin the blame on the GOP effort a trial balloon. I don't think it will fly any further, but in this administration-friendly, GOP- and conservative-hostile establishment press environment, who know?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
