US Should Learn From Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’

The “seeds of democracy” have been sown, but rising in their furrows has only been the roar of gunfire. In the half decade since 2011 and the beginning of U.S.-led NATO involvement in Libya, the flames of war have blackened the North African skies with their acrid smoke, while unemployment, impoverishment and a sense of hopelessness have permeated the country, leaving it in utter desolation. Today, the situation on the ground remains in flux, with U.S. President Barack Obama lamenting during an interview on April 10 that intervention in Libya was the worst mistake of his presidency.

During the French Revolution, it is said that Madame Roland’s last words on the path to the guillotine were “Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”

Five years ago, during Libya’s Jasmine Revolution, the United States and its allies seized upon protesters’ demands for Moammar Gadhafi to step down and launched their own campaign against the Libyan government. This push for “freedom and democracy” was no more than a facade covering the coalition’s true aim in maximizing their own national interests.

The declassified emails of Hillary Clinton have revealed that an important and previously unstated reason for the intervention in Libya was that the country contains rich gold and oil reserves. Upon deposing Gadhafi, Western leaders were quick to proclaim a “victory for democracy,” but failed to mention their true motivations in gold and oil. As expressed by political analyst Ariel Ben Solomon in a CCTV interview: “Think about it, there are many so-called dictatorships in Africa, but the West has not bothered to step in. From the very beginning, the Obama administration has missed the mark on which countries require intervention and which do not.”*

It is no wonder that Obama has identified the Libyan intervention as his most egregious misstep, as U.S. losses far outweighed what was gained. Despite the expenditure of vast sums of money in a war that has already lasted for five years, stability, peace and development have not yet come to Libya, while protests, conflict, chaos and destitution have spread, rendering the Americans incapable of acquiring their coveted gold and oil. Even more critically, Libya has now become ground zero for terrorism and rich recruiting grounds for the Islamic State group, with even the U.S. ambassador to Libya losing his life in a tragic attack.

Obama’s Libyan adventure has also been a black mark on his personal record. Throughout his presidential campaign, he promised to end the Iraq war and bring about a dignified conclusion to the war in Afghanistan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, he ultimately ended up opening a new front in Libya, only to find once more that piecing a state back together is far more difficult than taking it apart.

With countless innocents dead, is a simple admission that Libya was the greatest mistake of one’s presidency enough? For Obama, it may have only been a blunder to plunge Libya into turmoil and then turn tail, and one not worthy of an apology at that. For the Libyan people, however, it was a catastrophe that saw their homeland turned to rubble, a place where the dead wander restlessly, and the living are ever uncertain if they will live to see another sunrise. In a world where the strong rule the weak, what explanation can be given to Libyans for their fate, and what recompense for their suffering?

The United States interferes in other nations’ affairs almost as a matter of course; it has become a defining characteristic. The key here is that the United States failed to reap the rewards of its Libyan intervention, as it broke a fragile balance and was unable to establish a new one, and in the end spent more resources than it won. For the United States, perhaps successes and mistakes are measured by credits and debits on its ledger, and perhaps Obama’s statement has only come after viewing the balance in Libya.

As such, he has rated the Libyan intervention as the worst stumble of his presidency. But have the Asia-Pacific rebalance strategy that seeks to contain China, and U.S. involvement in the South China Sea also not been significant mistakes during Obama’s tenure? An American general once said that conflict with China would be “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”

One hopes that the United States will not commit the same error a second time.

Admitting one’s mistakes is the first step to correcting them, and Obama’s courage in acknowledging his own missteps as he prepares to leave office is worthy of praise. Although it has come a little late, it is, after all, better than never swallowing his pride. Yet, those who live by the sword must inevitably die by the sword, and one hopes that the next U.S. president will take Obama’s lessons to heart and refrain from overstepping the United States’ bounds, only to recognize the error in hindsight.

*Editor’s note: Correctly translated, this quote could not be verified.