that's an idea for now for more on the star stories we covered at r.t.e. dot com slash usa check out our you tube page at youtube dot com slash arts in america and also please follow me on twitter at war in the start let us know you think of the show let me message and i'll see you right back here in an hour and a half at seven pm. john berman here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

today is once again. these are the images. from the streets of. corporations. and you can. start. following welcome to cross talk i'm people of our field bomber doctrine 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 and some western backed dictators remain firmly in power well at the same time forced regime change is happening in libya all in is this

a new doctrine or just muddling through. the. streets. discuss whether there's an obama doctrine i'm joined by phyllis bennis and washington she is project director at the institute for policy studies in paris we have to he is a libyan political analyst and another member of our cross talk team yelena hunger all 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 had harry truman he had a universal policy you are universal dock and that is to 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 say george w. bush on 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 that 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 embrace and is it being acted out to us. 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 and so we go to you and parents do you agree with the military intervention into libya well yes or do you see what i mean given what for which there 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 and boots and bombs and surely i can affect political change changes but only if you can to haunt everybody in the long run that you support it already here. well i think i think we need to have a bigger picture and we have to take a longer view what's really happening because i don't particularly pursue the truth to mention as a hopi or as an 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 national sort of terminations movements which laws are shaped and grew lines around that as it's the middle east the need for and those laws 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're actually on passports around the middle east and i think that's why we have a moral obligation to this on 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 here to throwing 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 but apparently cia sneakers are already there may be needed down 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. another think you should be a one off and let me go to the first point you're making sense if we if we talk about. military intervention as it is my only solution and i was working about

clandestine from the sea org. a personal look at the series involvement in panama and places that really really show the you know the old intentions of the i'm not trying to sow the. times behind however we do know that the sea and. as we're calling them from the transitional council in libya is actually being as transparent as possible because that's something that we've not had in libya and we've never had a transparent and accountable government there with. the training and it's not something that's kind of you know. as a mystery or something that's coming out as a witness and it's coming out quite openly from the city because they openly want. ok fellas you are jumping ahead and ask can i just ask you i want 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 with 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 i would have been that would you reason that i was instead it is because philip 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 that my point is if we started with that they were hemmed in if we were looking back and we are now i think we need to look back three weeks earlier the first day there was a government assault on unarmed protesters. the first day when it they were still unarmed that was a moment for the u.s. to quote intervene by saying you know what the final 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 hearing this will stop exactly as they should have in the others what is it is are they that's what i said point with if we're looking however long hiatus from jobs you're seeing in the conflict it looks in the conflict i mean what was the news so. you know you own your own problems and we know that one side is on the other side is not on and the minute i personally don't want any arms and to be on the asking for in a situation where no one is on a person that we've made a massive massive i understand loss of snow and it's going to turn looking at have also turbulent brought him out of the cold and into those and three or two dozen to as you'd like to call it but i personally think that huge media want to go about the situation is going also but the thing is we can talk about that because of the base can really focus on the president and there was an imminent threat and i can you can accuse obama of procrastinating during that period of time isn't it because

i'm going to do this because ocean but when the moment was imminent well i wouldn't risk that personally because my people and i personally know that they do themselves realize that. america has about a track record on fulfilling of the mission do they this is a. record there are some common good everyone has family in the chorus i mean really is it i don't have a marketing great all right phyllis champion go ahead. 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 where 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 decision in the same sense as there are two hundred one says you were. right on this why is it why is it with this additional use of the structure of the national it's. my job. why is it or because of a very good one why is it different because it isn't now with these different ideas . 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 here or more people who were there but equally we realize that 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 are wrong and things are right personally when bush and blair came out saying there was a forty five minute threats and it was imminent and they try to fool the rest of the world and we went along with it but for

a lot but there was no substance of the argument he was openly on the radio or on the radio waves of libya and forcing and people are going to. come and cleanse you if you think that's an imminent threat i don't know 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 like 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 i think we can accuse them of progress the notion but i look back at his legal background and i say to myself someone looks at a legal background and as a liberal and a different you know a fish to the neo conservative background i would say that he's looking a little perspective and trying to go through every avenue and track the developments as they come however when the thought was imminent he 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. another highly charged names and countries and and you know the whole charge the people who live and let me answer

is no i'm sorry point yourself to your school and nobody does headphones nobody does and i think i have that i had a different view and i wonder i supported intervention in the longer 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 whom 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 happened 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 he was the one question those already rules are way in question here from the weight on talking about the questions i was asked and he recognized you

know 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 going into jumping into really really are you going to break in after the actual break we'll continue our discussion on obama's foreign policy even with the states are. you.

saddam hussein. passed charge of iraqi citizens. disappeared brings further assurance it's a torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever. nice again every embassy in kabul. chance to watch occupied afghanistan. and now occupy sales at guantanamo bay. in the med. that is appropriate today in course as much as we can if he could even. face flat stomach slant if you can shoot him so that it shocks especially if it's stuff but you don't actually break any bones could deter a geisha take place that we use in jail if kuantan for the senior leaders should.

be nothing to. believe transference. wealthy british style. ties. markets why not come to find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause a report on r t.

the to. catch. the to soon. welcome back to crossfire i'm curious about to remind you we're talking about the so-called obama doctrine. soon.

but first let's see what russians think about the libyan intervention. a bomb adultry 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 say it reveals the beginnings of which we know regarding the use of u.s. military of course the russian public opinion research center all citizens this support their international military operation in libya sixty four percent said they do not and another twenty percent of the respondents expressed their support still the bhandup three has yet to be declared but presidential doc tree have an impact on american policy and as a result on the entire world. ok and so 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 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 and 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 what obama does 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 a post in the post the rock world i think. in terms of real politic everyone knows that it's political suicide to recruit to ruin iraq and to try and fumble their way through that one again so i mean i personally think they did it with he's done that in afghanistan or trying to be a scrap of as possible i think he has us through this situation and everyone knows

that he's thousand more troops so i don't really think that this is a positive and it's a serious i think it's really it's across to the reason i ask you is that you support this intervention ok you're a libyan ok if your country fine but i mean this is this isn't this isn't but isn't this what 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 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 and this was just done over the weekend i mean you know it was no just debate in the united states you said you saying there's a you say there's nothing you say do you say there was it was transparency interest rates parents even gansey going into this conflict or war if you will it is a war there wasn't much transparency ok so and if you can finish your parents in washington ok well that look a that's what's most important because nobody else can do i think that 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 would 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 was the world is really his goal was his tactics could be. it's one of the questions that needs to be asked it's not the only question was my one question of how many verses were national it was decided the libyans why the libyans also why the libyans also for the it was a more than asking for international that's one important of the feeling they

weren't that's a very important question it was the only or whether it's not the only question of course of the. threats and that's a reality game and that's the reality and for them that there was a method because nationally but pushback from sort of up from was which is the stronghold of gadhafi that pushed back over a period of a week pushed back militarily saying only good news was going to be exactly ok good because the capacity because using european arms you know and what we really want to point i really want to make here is is that whether or not we want to debate whether there's an imminent threat on auto 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 it's a threat or it was you know heated i mean he was no innocent man so you know wasn't in the area no i'm not saying that what i'm saying is always the united referring government of the design a question a lot more than can be threatened i'm saying no i'm not saying i guess it was always you say we're not going to want to say could not you say what you want to say right now ready to jump and go ahead i'm not convinced that the united

convinced 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 like 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 so you know it's not very much of decision that will delay. last point greg i want to challenge you on that point however because i don't think that humanitarian aid is and sort of the principle of of life has always been the dominant factor in foreign policy in america or in the west there's a lot of however i do want to was whether or not we believe that this is not a coincidence of interests and if i can also personally what do you think the motivating factor was in order to go into libya. because i think it was a combination of factors the main one i think the main factor was

a lack of clarity about what their posture 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 all the things differently with the from popular forces right and that was like think 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 thout faced the same kind of attack that the people in yemen faced and i think they did make their own choices and guess their choice. is was ok you know we can argue but he was enjoying them with me and there are consequences to that choice and so i want to ask you a question government in yemen. to ask you a question. that we're talking about killer 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 quite a quite a while at the expense of the libyan people civil civil war civil civil war zone civil war so when you have two conflicting soldier conflicting demands and i think i don't like to call them rebels on that so it's a very small point to make and there's been points being made over and over again perino the issue for the rest of the revolution and if you want to play person you aren't. people are talking around this which are they rebels or talk with arms or the rebels what are they sebelius with arms i mean though what's your definition of billions i mean these are teachers teachers students bakers government employees policemen i mean they're from every background that you would have in libya and i mean i work for a minute or so and so i'm not an artifact is that therefore in its own army it's a people trying to govern themselves and trying to get rid of forty two years that political dysfunction is in so i want to call them rebels because i have any

political aims all their aim is get rid of get their feet so we can have a more democratic and a more effective government so i want to get rid of them so ultimately i think i said they were very impressed but that's true in a castro's economy has an arab spring. there was going. lot of the really 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 army of failure it will appear on us on this if your territory is your home and for no 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 of those is really going to say over here in the house and there but it has used the do it well some of them the houses are not going to other to force people out on this john this is a very good because you don't want to cause i would assume i mean i'm saying there are two sides fighting right eric and phyllis tanfield was the u.s. and its ally you see is have a show there's a stalemate the u.s. and its allies have chosen the side as well in this and again making it more on the

edge through the side for a change although you know back in the sixty's you see the truth because you're shooting a fairly significant haters in the eye but it's the same time is that this was like oh yes cheers exactly i will choose the dictators including gadhafi so we feel no guilt or we have worldly treasures while we can the rest of the region so we trust in them a little bit in watching them with. 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 really one year alone are hundred forty four people were killed by the no

fly zone so this is not something without close it went on and it was obviously it was judged on what it was judge it was doing was measured look the world says measure it as it is we have issued them we have an awful. for the last two weeks i mean i can go and prove it to you but i mean the western journalists on the ground there are people and they would say well i think they want to support america whether they're killing the model and that come out and i've said the no fly zone has not killed civilians i mean i'll be hard pressed to try and find the yes that's right through the area where i was trying to place ramos sometimes occur. just one more question and ask how to break the scale here comes. the line was this a last chance or how can we break the stalemate with our greater outside intervention and what would be fueling what a lot of people call a civil war how do you break the stalemate. ok i personally feel although i think you are going to see is that the question is framed it's not bush framed it all

that is the broken the social conflict and 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 the same military considering going from injury but arming the people themselves even on them before if you use how do i know this is there 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 prostitutes. keep the story.

i.