Hillary, Gadhafi and the ‘Son of Africa’

Senator Aleksei Pushkov on how Secretary of State Clinton cooperated with terrorists

In December 2009, about a year before the Libyan war, I had a chance to meet with Moammar Gadhafi at his residence in Bab al-Azizia, on the outskirts of Tripoli. Before me sat a calm, very confident person, deeply convinced of his own greatness, not even entertaining the thought that he might have to someday resign. I was astonished by the amount of hope Moammar Gadhafi was putting in Barack Obama. He asserted in part, that Obama is a "son of Africa" and also that he, Gadhafi, would like for Obama to remain the U.S. president indefinitely.

However, Obama did not return Moammar Gadhafi's sentiments. Their meeting, the one Gadhafi was counting on, never took place. However, what did take place was an operation to overthrow the government and to eliminate Gadhafi himself. The U.S. played a decisive role in NATO's war in Libya: 75 percent of the rockets and bombs dropped on Libya were American, and today, one of the main authors of this intervention of rockets and bombs, Hillary Clinton, is one step away from the U.S. presidency.

Hillary Clinton has always been part of the interventionist wing of American politics, and she was able to exhibit her interventionist instincts when she got the position as secretary of state in the first Obama administration. Whatever is being said now about the roles of Sarkozy and Cameron, who insisted on rocket and bomb attacks on Libya, the Libyan war is first and foremost on Clinton's conscience.

Had the United States said no, then their junior NATO partners would not have decided to carry out an independent operation. But the United States said yes: Obama seemingly unwillingly and Hillary with great enthusiasm. They say that almost every American president has their own war; but in Barack Obama's war on Libya is the unalterable signature of his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

Today, when Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton of creating the current black hole in Libya, which sucks in militants from al-Qaida, the Islamic State and other radical organizations, he is telling the truth. This black hole really is the result of Hillary Clinton's policies. But when Clinton herself talks about this war, we mostly hear lies. Before the beginning of the rocket and bomb attacks on Tripoli, which had the goal of eradicating the Libyan army and Gadhafi himself, Hillary Clinton thrice asserted to the hosts of American news shows: "The job is really to protect innocent Libyans." This triple lie is what became the prologue to war.

The actual goal of the U.S. in this war was indirectly admitted by Hillary herself when, seeing a picture of the mutilated body of the Libyan leader, she pronounced with glee, "We came, we saw, he died." Later, Clinton tried to explain her behavior as a passionate urge to establish democracy in Libya, even though it was already clear what kind of “democracy” resulted from the occupation of Iraq: They created a paradise for terrorists there. A second paradise was created for terrorists in Libya, with Hillary Clinton playing an active role. A third paradise was created in Syria with her most active involvement.

The Libyan opposition leader, Mahmoud Jibril, later remembered his negotiations with Clinton. According to him, she insisted on getting a utopian ideal from him and his comrades in arms: to establish a democracy and rule of law in Libya. Such a promise was indeed made to her: The opposition urgently needed weapons. In her attempt to justify her pursuit of a utopia, Hillary Clinton and her boss turned Libya into a dystopia.

Today, only a lazy person won't talk about the catastrophe that befell that country after Gadhafi's demise. Some in Europe are even nostalgic for him, remembering him as a person who could maintain order and control over a huge swathe of North Africa.

Under Gadhafi, Libya was a country free of radical Islamic organizations. When, at the end of the '90s, Osama bin Laden turned to him with a request for al-Qaida to create a headquarters in Libya, Gadhafi categorically refused. Later, Libyan intelligence forces co-operated with the Americans and Europeans in preventing acts of terrorism. Then, at the beginning of 2011, when radicals managed to infiltrate Libyan territory and start a war against Gadhafi, the Libyan leader tried to explain to Western leaders what was going on inside the country.

Here is what he tried to convey to Tony Blair, three weeks before the beginning of the war: "It's a Jihad situation. They have arms and are terrorizing people in the street. We are not fighting them, they are attacking us. I want to tell you the truth. It is not a difficult situation at all. The story is simply this: an organization has laid down sleeping cells [sic] in North Africa, called the al-Qaida Organization in North Africa...The sleeping cells in Libya are similar to dormant cells in America before 9/11. They have managed to get arms and terrify people."

However, the reply was a war by the Western powers on the side of the radical organizations. Here, then, it was discovered that which was later laid bare in Iraq and Syria: The NATO countries, the U.S. first and foremost, needed the terrorists; they were needed to deal with undesirable governments.

During the Libyan war, the U.S. already started to secretly arm militants on Libyan territory. There is evidence that Hillary Clinton knew about this and was behind it. Afterwards, through their Middle Eastern allies, the U.S. started arming radical organizations in Syria, and Hillary Clinton also knew about this and stood behind it. Finally, the formation of the so-called "Islamic State" on Iraqi territory, which later spread to Syrian territory, also occurred under the benevolent eye of the Obama administration.

Donald Trump even says that Hillary Clinton herself created the Islamic State group. Some might say that this is campaign rhetoric, another exaggeration. But pay attention: Clinton almost never talks about the importance of fighting the Islamic State group. Why such a careful response? Could it be because these are terrorists that the U.S. needs? Who knows, maybe in a few years we will again see a video of Hillary Clinton, this time as president of the United States, who, after seeing another photo of a mutilated leader, will say with unreserved satisfaction, "We came, we saw, he died."

The author is a member of the Federation Council on Defense and Security.