By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 10 April 2016:
US president Barack Obama has confessed that Libya was probably his biggest mistake in eight years of office.
Obama . . .[restrict]said his greatest error was “Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.” He made the admission today in a brief interview with Fox News.
Last month the president had suggested that Libya was “a mess” because of the failures of the Europeans, the French and the British in particular, to follow up the decisive military intervention that led to the success of the 17 February revolution and the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi. He made it clear that he thought that Libya should have been the primary concern of Europe, not the US.
However, Obama did not expand on the extent of his own mistake by spelling out what he thought should have been done by the international community after the success of the Revolution.
A little over a year after Qaddafi’s capture and murder in Sirte, US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were assassinated by Ansar Al-Sharia in Benghazi. Stevens was a popular figure who had originally been sent to Benghazi as US special representative at the start of the Revolution. Up to the day of his death, he had been signalling Washington that he was increasingly worried about the safety of the US mission and wanted more security.
The failure of Obama’s then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to respond to her ambassador’s concerns has become a political millstone as she seeks to win the White House. [/restrict]
