he'll cheat and censor chill mckown rip churchill much harder ground need a virtual macumba division marco resources will be sold at the sochi olympics new mccoll the local channel with results much will never be closer to joe look at revere if it's only true cintra hotel mckown. back to what you are seeing here is a look at the top stories british m.p.'s accuse the government of greatness judgment over the selling of weapons to arab regimes now using them against their own people the u.k. sold over three hundred million dollars worth of weapons to congo dothan shortly before the libyan uprising began. frissons in one find himself under attack first really out of gas chechen terrorists martin and his terra link supporters in helsinki finland salvors an extremist islamist web site were

a march make statements about terror attacks in. breaking the news breaking apart that u.s. networks count the cost of covering disasters and war but still find the billions needed to pay their star anchors some outlets have spent most of their annual budget in just a few months. people of al next in his cross dog discuss america's foreign policy that's president obama's call of his own lawyer or has seen harriet his course of action from the bush administration that's coming up next here in our. world. bringing you the latest in science and technology from the realms. we've done to the future of coverage. can.

start. following welcome to cross talk i'm people of god deal by my god when is there such a thing over the past few months we've seen the u.s. waffle as change rages across the arab middle east some western backed dictators remain firmly in power well the same time forced regime change is happening in libya all in is this a new doctrine or just muddling through. the. story. just as whether there's an obama doctrine i'm joined by phyllis bennis in washington she is project director at the institute for policy studies in paris we have on this album art he is a libyan political analyst and another member of our cross talk e-mail and hunger right phyllis i'd like to go to you first you know we're both americans and we're used to having presidents having doctrines when it comes to foreign policy and we

have harry truman we have a universal policy or you know universal doctrine that is if you support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation ok john f. kennedy pay any price bear any burden to assure the survival and success of liberty we all remember that one and we should it's a good saying george w. bush had his own to the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world now mr obama a few days ago had the following to say let's discuss of this is his doctrine america should not be expected to police the world particularly when we have so many pressing concerns here at home is that a doctrine should it be a doctrine should it be in braced and is it being acted out phyllis. well i don't think that's a doctrine i think it's a statement of lowering expectations i also think that one of the problems with all of these doctrines is that it bases the whole of u.s. foreign policy on the military so if we say should we intervene should we help it's

assumed to mean should we send troops in my analysis that's almost never the case we should intervene with a whole range of other things but not with military force and that question of how are we defining intervention is an ongoing challenge in the particular for president obama i think what he faces right now given that the arab spring has turned upside down all of the longstanding assumptions of what u.s. policy in the middle east needs to be i don't think they're anywhere close to having a real doctrine yet ok so we're going to you and parents you agree with the military intervention into libya well you know why why are we giving away free when it was just said ok i mean i and i and all tend to agree with you you know we always think of sending tanks and planes and troops in boots and bombs and sure like in effect political changes would only be ten to haunt everybody in the

long run but you support an already hit. well i think i think we need to have a bigger picture and we need to take a longer view what's been happening because i don't particularly pursue intervention as a whole be of interest what i think you have this is if we take a longer view but the last thirty forty years and fifty years since the nationals of time a nation movements which laws are shaped and grew lines around it doesn't serve the middle east then you fall in the eye of those lines were drawn support was given and it wasn't in the economic sense it was given a military sense i mean we were actually armed not only given vocal support but we were actually on what's around the middle east and i think that's why we have a moral obligation to this on them i personally don't think. is it morally right is it morally right to arm rebels at the same time i mean the argument is if you're just joining in more and more arms into a very very volatile dangerous situation ok and we also have the problem of

mission creep ok we heard only a few days ago. you know we're not going to commit more to going to put boots on the ground apparently cia sneakers are already there they've admitted that after the fact i mean mission creep is involved here. again if you can you have a one off and you're saying we should have a one off right. moer think it should be a one off and let me go to the first point you're making since if we if we talk about. military intervention as a as an only solution and i was looking about. from the. other person look at the c.e.o.'s involvement in panama and places that are really really show the. old intentions of this i'm not trying to so this is great intentions behind however we do know that we see and. as we're calling them in france transitional council in libya is actually being as transparent as possible because it's something that we've not in libya and we've never had

a transparent and accountable government and there was. you know the training and it's not something that's coming out. as a mystery or something that's coming out as a something that's coming out quite openly from the from the center because they openly want unfair was. ok fellas want to jump in go ahead and that's can i just ask you i wanted to ask and ask you raise the issue of looking back further and i think that is very very crucial i think part of the problem of our discussions about libya has been that we've all focused on that one day when allegedly and i'm not convinced it was either imminent or inevitable that there was going to be the kind of massive slaughter that has really used as the reason that there was no alternative let me just finish and that is we have and it was a reason i was instead it is because it was really just what i'm saying is let's go back let's go back two days before that when the libyan opposition had managed to

drive those government tanks out of out of out of benghazi with their own power without military force i'm not convinced that they could have done it again i'm not sure but my point is if we start with that day we're hand in if we're looking back and we are now i think we need to look back three weeks earlier the first day there was a government are sold on unarmed protesters. the first day when it they were still unarmed that was the moment for the u.s. to quote intervene by saying you know what the colonel gadhafi we have allowed you since two thousand and two to be on our good side no more no more arms no more contracts no more military support you're going back out of this terrorism since i was on the theory this will stop exactly as they should have in the others well this is i think that's what i think point would do if we're looking over a long way to describe germany and just relax in the conflict it looks in the conflict i mean what we're saying is sort of yourselves you know your own your own problems and we know that one side is on the other side is not i mean i personally

don't and your arms and i'm not asking for in a situation where no one is on a person that we've made a massive massive i understand them more loving ourselves not only looking at have also brought him out of the cold in two thousand and three i want to those and to is about to call it but i personally think that hugely you want to go to a situation where you can also where the thing is we can talk about it because of the base and we can really focus on and there was an imminent threat you can accuse them of procrastinating during a period of time isn't it because anything is like elation but when the moment was imminent i wouldn't risk that personally because my people and i personally know that they do themselves realize that. america has a better track record on full salary if you do this is. right the problem is they are so. good everyone has family in the us i mean really you know don't have them are seeing great all right fellas jump in head. there are people in libya who also

recognize that there are cia people among the libyan opposition the guy who came back from northern virginia for twenty years who is now one of the commanders of the military is somebody who clearly was involved with u.s. intelligence during that period there is a mixed bag of the libyan opposition in terms of what people have asked for what they want the other thing that i think is makes this all very problematic is that in the context of the of the arab spring we're in each of these situations they began whether it was egypt whether it was tunisia whether it's been yemen bahrain all of them have faced massive military assault at the beginning only in libya was the decision made to take up arms i'm not going to second guess that this is not in the morning there are two hundred one says you are. right on this why is it why is it with. the structure of the national it's. my job. why is it is because those products are very good why is it different because it

used now with these different i do think. but i personally think that it's a numbers going on i think in terms of victims being a numbers game i don't want to say that there were more people who hear more people who are there but they quickly realize that if it was on the radio program i mean if you look at i want to use iraq as a very good example as to what things were wrong and things are right personally when bush and blair came out saying there was a forty five minute threat and it was imminent and they tried to for the rest of the world and we went along with it but if there was no substance to the argument could thirty was openly on the radio or on the radio waves of libya and forcing and could go in because the old coming claims you know if you think that's an imminent threat i don't ok but i personally wouldn't want my conscious and secondly you have to realize that if we're talking of the greater picture here of obama he looks for someone that obviously his intervention to this was lackluster he didn't do anything and came in late egypt can be saying the roughly the same thing however in libya i think we can accuse them of procrastination but i look back at his legal

background and i say to myself someone looks at legal background and as a liberal and a different you know kind of a fish to the neo conservative background i would say that he's taken a legal perspective and tried to go through every avenue and try to developments as they come however when the thought was imminent it would have been and it would have been the case with the situation we were talking about anyway i personally want to be talking about another one in libya another highly charged names and countries and and you know the whole you charge that you have and let me answer i don't want to when i was going to say good point there was. nobody does headphones nobody does and i think i have that i had a different view in rwanda i supported intervention and i want to and i blame the united states and france for not only not intervening but affirmatively preventing the united nations from intervening so i'm not somebody who says there should never be any intervention the question is under what circumstances and by clone one of the key things that president obama did was to recognize that there's

a difference between legality and legitimacy he knew he could force his way. and to a u.n. resolution in the security council the u.s. has a long history of that by bribing threatening to get votes it happens here it will happen again it's happened before but he also knew that without clarity from the arab league and the african union that wasn't going to be possible so early on if you recall the general impression was already underway in question here from the way on talking about the questions i was asked and he recognized no let me just say the question for me is partly international legitimacy and having both the arab league and the african union would have been important what we found was that the african union was not prepared to sign on to even a no fly zone let alone all necessary measures and as soon as they made that clear the obama administration stopped talking about the need for african union jumping into really really really really really good break in after the break we'll

continue our discussion on obama's foreign policy in libya she. came.

but first let's see what russians think about the libyan intervention. i wanna adopt is it a doctrine or an intervention strategy in his speech at the national defense university barack obama articulated the grounds for the intervention in libya and now many see it through beal's the beginnings of which we know regarding the use of u.s. military force the russian public opinion research center also citizens this support the international military operation in libya sixty four percent said they do not and another twenty percent of the respondents expressed their support still the obama doctrine has yet to be declared but presidential doctrines have an impact on american policy and as a result on the entire world back to peter kay and it's i'd like to go back to you in paris here a lot of people will say and i want to talk about george w.

bush in this part of the program that obama had a sudden attack of stupid idealism. if you think that's a fair thing to say because again if we look at interventions in the past a lot of people can say you know panama with success successful you can go to panama a lot of people will say it wasn't ok so i guess it depends on how we define success here but very idealistic or is obama just trying to muddle through on this one too because you can say well it's an international effort now any can walk away from it that's not being very idealistic. obama was elected to have a third war in the muslim world good for him and. in the post. the rock world i think. in terms of real politic everyone knows that it's political suicide to recruit in iraq and to try and fund all the way through that one again so i mean i personally think they did it with but he's done that in afghanistan or

trying to do as careful as possible you know i think he has us through this situation and honest and everyone knows that he's the thousand more troops so i don't really think this is a positive but and this is again that's i think it's across to the reason i ask you is that you support this intervention ok you're a libyan ok if you're a country fine but i mean this is this isn't this isn't but isn't this well i mean even i'm willing to admit that people can have a personal attachment to an issue ok that's fair enough ok but if the same time isn't this just bush lite this is another intervention and this time there's there is a difference too is that the american people and the world were lied to for months on end preparing for the war to go into iraq this was just done over the weekend i mean you know it was no just debate in the united states you said you seriously you said it was i mean you say do you say there were some transparency industry experience in bin gansey going into this conflict or war if it is a war there wasn't much transparency ok so an issue can finish in florence parity

in washington ok bill that look a that's what's most important because nobody else is going to do i think all right go ahead phyllis go ahead but i think i think that the key question of transparency is important and was not true in washington but i also think that we should be clear this was not a sudden decision that was made at a moment of urgency this was a decision that was several weeks in the making as we know that come about first when the french and the brits said we want a resolution that will call for a no fly zone the u.s. position was no we don't think a no fly zone is going to work but instead of saying and therefore we're going to vote no. they said let us take the resolution we will rewrite it and we'll come back with a better resolution which of course said not only a no fly zone but all necessary means to protect civilians but with the world's discrimination over what is tactics could be. it's one of the questions that needs to be asked it's not the only question my one question or highly personal his word national which is decide the libyans why the libyans also why the libyans also for

the it was and why the asking for international that's one import of the feeling they weren't that's a very important question it wasn't the only or whether it's not the only question of course of the it was an imminent threat and that's a reality came and that's the reality and for those at the messenger it is nationally pushback from sort of up from which is the stronghold of gadhafi that pushed back over a period of a week which back militarily they were. going to be exactly ok good because the capacity because using european arms no i really want to point i really want to make here is that whether or not we want to debate whether there's an imminent threat on the other think we would like to i think we're working on very morally dubious grounds here if we were to say that it doesn't matter if there's a threat or it was you know it was heated i mean he was no innocent man so you know wasn't in the area no i'm not saying i'm saying it all because of the night already going to go because there's not a question of more and more of the congress what i'm saying no i'm not saying i can't really annoys you i can do what is really could not you say what you want to

say right now ready to jump and go ahead i'm not convinced that the united that the united states government decision not my own personal view that the united states government decision was not a sudden one based on what the people of benghazi wanted they made a strategic decision it's cold it's calculated it takes into account the moral issue only as a political factor in terms of how it will be assessed what their decision is ok and i want to ask you what you know you know this and you know it's not very much of decision that there's little i would. last point but greg i won't challenge you on the point however because i don't think that humanitarian aid is and so the principle of of life has always been the dominant factor in foreign policy in america in the west there's a lot of punch about however i do want to was whether or not we believe that this is not a coincidence of interests and if we can all see personally what do you think the motivating factor was in order to go into libya i. believe it was

a combination of factors the main one i think the main factor was a lack of clarity about what their pastor was going to be in the arab spring in general they wanted to position themselves in a position of being on the right side of history that corresponded with us also want to think differently with us from popular forces right and that there's a link that we do have to separate what i might want to happen as an individual person what i want isn't really the point i would have wanted maybe for a revolution at the very very beginning that very first day when they when people in benghazi found faced the same kind of attack that the people in yemen faced i think they did make their own choices and second guess their choice what choices was ok we can argue but he was enjoying them with me and there are consequences to that choice and i want to ask you question the government in yemen other theaters to ask you a question what are the we're talking about two hundred ok i want to ask you i mean

the intervention is started it's going on as we speak there is a stalemate at least as we speak has the intervention it fueled or fueled on or created a civil war that could last well i don't quite a while at the expense of the libyan people civil civil war civil civil wars or civil wars or when you have two conflicting soldier conflicting demands understood thing that i don't like to call them rebels on though that it's a very small point to make and there's been points being made over and over again perino the shoe for the rest of the revolution and if you want to play but you warm . people are talking about our own systems are they rebels or talk with armies or the rebels what are they civilians with arms i mean what you're going to civilians i mean these are teachers teachers students bakers government employees policemen i mean they're from every background that you have in libya and i mean i work for a minute or so and so not an artifact is the point it's not an army it's a people trying to govern themselves and they're trying to get rid of forty two

years that political dysfunction is and so i want to call them rebels because i have any political aims all their aim is get rid of gadhafi so we can have a more democratic and a more effective government so i want to get rid of them so ultimately i think they were ready to support but that's truly a crossroads of the kind of arab spring. it was going to julie one of the really right there isn't and i think it is a civil war when people when two sides are fighting to hold territory i think that makes it a civil war i don't think the the opposition side is an arm when you're training really well if you're an ass on this if your surgery is your home then for now it's not an army it's a it's an armed population i agree with that but there are now two cybill in zone rating which you know this is going to say over here in the house and there but as you should there be a lesson of within the houses i'm not going to of opposed to force people on this john this is the easiest if you want because this is me and i'm saying there are two sides fighting right eric and phyllis tanfield was the u.s. and its allies he is having shows this stalemate the u.s.

and its allies have chosen the side as well and this again making it more and more entry to the side for a change although you know both of you say she says you said it was your shoes in the throes of the dictators and the like but it's the same time is that this was childish exactly i will choose the dictators including gadhafi so we feel no good or we have only treasures what richard is right in the region so we trust in them a little bit in washington when one issue is usually syria doing it wrong exactly or using military force in a way that is guaranteed and i said it before they did it and i say that it has come true that the military force has made the military stalemate emerge in libya it is now whatever you want to call it i'm not going to fight over the words but there are two military forces battling for control of territory there is likely to be a stalemate that's going to go on for a long time can get more people are going to die under the no fly zone in iraq

because in one year alone a hundred forty four people were killed by the no fly zone so this is not something without that flows it went on that was really it was judged on what it was georgia was doing was measured look the world says let's measure it as it is we have an issue we have an awful. for the last two weeks i mean i could go and prove it to you but i mean there was some journalist on the ground there people in there would say well i think they want to support america whether they're killing them or not but they'll come out and they've said the no fly zone has not killed civilians i mean be hard pushed to try and find. through the area where are you trying to place ramos the time the killer. is one more question on is how to break the stalemate here comes out. of this is the last answer how can we break a stalemate with greater outside intervention and what would be fueling with a lot of people a civil war how do you break the stalemate. ok but i personally think you have to be honest here is that the question is framed it's not

a good all of it is broken the social contract when we can be broken the social contract of these people as rousseau would say is broken the social contract these people he has no legitimacy and so when it is with the people they're choosing to fight against a dictator so we have to negotiate with the people and not with their feet he has no terms he has no ground and he has no legitimacy to the question with him and also is the question you are saying military or civilian or infantry but arming the people themselves you've owned them for for if you use how the use of their on this point folks thank you very much for a very heated discussion many thanks to my guest today in washington and in paris and thanks to our viewers for watching us here on r.t. see you next time and remember. if the story.

wealthy british style assignments and sometimes.