{"id":18853,"date":"2013-10-29T15:01:43","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T21:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=18853"},"modified":"2013-10-29T15:01:43","modified_gmt":"2013-10-29T21:01:43","slug":"us-trail-of-armed-gangs-drug-lords-in-post-revolution-middle-east-reminiscent-of-central-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=18853","title":{"rendered":"US trail of Armed Gangs, Drug Lords in Post Revolution Middle East, Reminiscent of Central America"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. inattention to Libya breeds chaos<\/strong>
\nBy David Ignatius, 25 October, 2013 – Washington Post<\/p>\n

For a case study of why America\u2019s influence has receded in the Middle East, consider the example of Libya. Some simple steps over the past two years might have limited the country\u2019s descent toward anarchy. But Libya became so toxic after the Benghazi attack that the United States has been slow to provide help.<\/p>\n

When Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan visited Washington in March, he made a straightforward request: He needed U.S. help in training a \u201cgeneral-purpose force\u201d that could protect officials of the democratically elected government and safeguard Libya\u2019s basic services. He explained that, without such protection, government officials couldn\u2019t move safely around the country to do their work.<\/p>\n

Helping Libya should be a no-brainer. The United States and its NATO allies spent billions toppling the regime of Col. Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, and they have a big investment in creating a secure state. Instead, Libya has become a nation of lawless militias. Zeidan\u2019s government can\u2019t even hold meetings safely. The United States should have begun training security forces immediately after Gaddafi was toppled. Every day of delay is a mistake.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration has approved, in principle, a plan to train 6,000 to 8,000 Libyans outside the country. But the situation in Tripoli is so chaotic that Libyans haven\u2019t yet made a formal request for this assistance. U.S. officials said it won\u2019t start until the spring, at the earliest.<\/p>\n

President Obama is said to have decided at a Cabinet meeting this month that \u201cwe have not been doing enough\u201d as the chaos grew in Libya and that he wants to \u201caccelerate\u201d assistance, according to a senior administration official. That\u2019s good \u2014 better late than never \u2014 but it\u2019s an open question whether Congress will let Obama do what\u2019s needed.<\/p>\n

Congressional Republicans deserve much of the blame. The GOP has staged more than a year of near-hysterical attacks about alleged failures and coverups involving the Sept. 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. compound in Benghazi that left four Americans dead. The relentless GOP sniping and second-guessing had the inevitable consequence: Nobody wanted to risk another Benghazi; U.S. diplomats hunkered down at the embassy in Tripoli; and Libya policy went in the deep freeze.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how bad the Libya phobia has become: When the Department of Homeland Security recently began drafting a rule that would allow Libyan students and workers to come to the United States for education and training, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) thundered that \u201cit is shocking that the Obama administration is turning a blind eye to real terrorist threats that exist in Libya today.\u201d And Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) denounced the move as \u201cunbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

What continued in the Libya vacuum were secret U.S. counterterrorism operations. These culminated in the Oct. 5 raid that snatched al-Qaeda militant Anas al-Libi in Tripoli and brought him to New York for trial on charges stemming from the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. This was a laudable operation, but counterterrorism is not America\u2019s only interest in Libya.<\/p>\n

The raid produced an embarrassing backlash: Zeidan, the pro-American prime minister, was kidnapped by angry militiamen from his hotel in Tripoli and held for hours. The gunmen released him partly because they didn\u2019t want to fight other armed gangs for control of the hostage. Zeidan said he hadn\u2019t approved the U.S. mission, but his cover of deniability was frayed when Secretary of State John Kerry insisted the operation was \u201clegal and appropriate,\u201d implying it had Libyan approval. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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U.S. inattention to Libya breeds chaos By David Ignatius, 25 October, 2013 – Washington Post For a case study of why America\u2019s influence has receded in the Middle East, consider the example of Libya. Some simple steps over the past two years might have limited the country\u2019s descent toward anarchy. But Libya became so toxic more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[4160],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18854,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18853\/revisions\/18854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}