the biggest issues get a human voice ceased to face with the news makers who. can . still. following well come across talk i'm people of our field bamma doctrine is there such a thing over the past few months we've seen the us waffle as change rages across the arab middle east and some western backed dictators remain firmly in power while the same time forced regime change is happening in libya all in is this

a new doctrine or just muddling through. and you can. discuss 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 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 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 man 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 if 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 in this it being acted out philis 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're going to you in paris i mean do you agree with the military intervention into libya well yes or do. i mean given what from the way phyllis just said ok i mean i and i and all tend to agree with her you know we always think of sending tanks and planes and troops in boots and bombs and sure that can affect political change changes but only be tend to haunt everybody in the long run but you support it and go right ahead. well i think i think we need to have a bigger picture and we need to take a longer view of what's been happening because i don't particularly pursue military intervention as a whole interest what i think you have this is if we take a longer view but last thirty forty years and fifty years since the nationals of time a nation movements which laws are shaped and drew lines around the deserts of the

middle east and you fall in that 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 the sports or in the middle east and often that's why we have a moral obligation to disarm 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 you're just you're 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 they've admitted that after the fact i mean mission creep is involved here. can you have a one off and you're saying we should have a one off right. moer think you should be a one off and let me go back to the first point you're making innocence if we if we

talk about. about military intervention as a as an only solution and that was working about a clandestine move from the cia. a person look at the cia's involvement in panama and places that really really show the you know the old intentions of the i'm not trying to grow intentions 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 would think it was one of those you know the training and it's not something that's kind of you know. as a mystery or as something that's coming out a in this coming out quite openly from the center because they openly want. to go ahead you know ok fellas i want to jump in go 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 villa 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 hemmed 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 assault 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 it or as i say as i was on the hearing this will stop exactly as they should have in the others what does it these are that's what i said point what does it do if we're looking however the greatest from jamie just banks in the conflict it looks in the conflict i mean what we're saying is sort yourselves you know you own your own problems and we know that one solid is on the other side is not armed and the minute i personally don't want any arms and i'm not asking for and in a situation where no one is on oppose it in that we've made a massive massive i understand then going ourselves not into looking at i've also to blame out of the cold in two thousand and three or two thousand and two as you'd like to call it but i personally think that huge but i do want to go about a situation that is going and also for the other thing is we can talk about money also because of the base and we can really focus on but it has it right and there

was an imminent threat and i can you can accuse obama of procrastinating during that period of time and it is and it doesn't and it is like elation but when the moment was imminent and i wouldn't risk that personally because they are my people and i personally know that the indians themselves realize that. america has a better track record on the full salvation do the. right the problem is there are some coming you're going to see what has family but there are so many years that i don't have them are saying great all right fellas jump in 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. all right and that's why it's really. the heart of the structure of the notion and that's. why as we differ because phyllis brought up a very good point why is it different because it used now it is different i don't want to think of. well i don't personally think that it's a numbers game of i think in terms of victims being a numbers game i don't want to say that there were more people here more people who were there but equally we realize that good birth he was on the radio program i mean if we look at i want to use iraq as a very good example as to why 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 fool the rest of

the world and we were along with it then for life but there was no substance to the argument good earth it was openly on the radio or on the radio waves of libya and forcing and people telling people you're in but has it all come in cleanse you now if you think that's not 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 us 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 a fish to the neo conservative background i would say that he's like a legal perspective and try to go to every avenue and track the developments as they come however when the thought was imminent he would have been and it would have been a catch twenty two situation we were talking about anyway i personally want to be talking about another one there are a bosnia in libya another holiday charged names and countries and and you know the

whole it charged me with the live and let me answer what the right is not a good point. nobody does headphones nobody does and i think i have that i have a different view and i wonder 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 home 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. into 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 the general in question was already knows your way in question here for

the way i'm 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 what has 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 or you're going to jump in here literally we're going to liberate the area to do a break and after that break we'll continue our discussion on obama's foreign policy in libya stay with our. story. to. the history of this place runs through the centuries.

a paradise for archaeologists. and ecological tourists. but one fateful night shots destroyed the life. how this republic got its my spine. hoping dreaming and recreate it. well. the latest in science and technology from around russia.

we've got the huge earth covered. welcome back to crossfire computable about to remind you we're talking about the so-called obama doctrine. but first let's see what russians think about the libyan intervention. a bomb a doctrine is it a doctrine or an interventionist 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 really you know regarding the use of u.s. military support as the russian public opinion research center all citizens of this support that international military operation in libya sixty four percent said they

do not and then the other twenty percent of the respondents expressed their support still the bomb on dr ian 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 ok and as 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. do 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 what panama was 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 owner is obama does trying to muddle through on this one too because you can say well it's an international effort now many can

walk away from it that's not being very idealistic. obama was elected to have a third war in the muslim world i think it's very good for him and. in the post 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 fumble their way through that one again so i mean i personally think they did it with that he's done that in afghanistan or trying to be as careful as possible you know i think you know there's just. this situation about us that everyone knows that thousand more troops i don't really think that this is a positive but and this is again as i think this is the crux 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. what is there 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 at 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 debate in the united states you said you say you say there's nothing you say do you say there were some if there was transparency and there's transparency in benghazi but going into this conflict or war if it is a war there wasn't much transparency ok so and if you can finish your parents in washington ok well that that's what's most important because nobody else is going to washington all right go ahead phyllis go ahead but i think i think that the kick 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 say. 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 there also discrimination over what is tactics could be. it's one of the questions that needs to be asked it's not the only question but what is my one question at a time of the first which is what national resources decide what are the libyans was the libyans also doing was the libyans also going for a no fly zone why they're asking for international that's one important if you're saying they weren't that's a very important question is was and was only whether it's not the only question of course is that it was i think in the middle of threats and that's a reality came and that's the reality anderson for the for and that doesn't mean that voters nationally but push back from sort of up from what is sort of the which is the stronghold of gadhafi that pushed back over a period of we pushed back militarily generally good legally to do that to be exactly. ok have a good laugh because the capacity because using european arms no i really want to

point i really want to make here is is that whether or not we want to debate whether it's an image or through an 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 it was a heated i mean he was no one to say man so you know wasn't in the area no i'm not saying that what i'm saying is or was i mean i already own government but it was not a question of the morning or that can be threatened i'm saying no i'm not saying that gary was always you can do what they could not you say what you want to say right now and i already am going to jump in 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 and 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 and you know it's not very much of

decision that i was going to make one 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 that have a lot of branches however i do want to was whether 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 you want to go see 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 want to think differently with us from popular forces right but there's like things 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 was what the care choices were ok then we can argue that but he wasn't showing them his speed and there are consequences to that and i want to ask you a question government in yemen or other thing and i decided to ask you a question what they were talking about 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 that fuel 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 sides with conflicting demands and i think i don't like to call them rebels on know that it's a very small point to make points being made over and over again i guess will be a perino issue for the rest of the revolution and if you want to play but you are

people are people are always assumed are they rebels with arms are the rebels what are they civilians with arms i mean what is your definition of millions i mean these are teachers futures students brokers 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 that it's not an army it's a people trying to govern themselves trying to get rid of forty two years of political dysfunction isn't i want to call them rebels because i have any political aims all their aim is get rid of gadhafi is that we can have a more democratic and a more effective government so i want to get rid of him so ultimately i think. that's true in a classroom the kind of we have an arab spring. if i was going head to toe you could be a lot of the military have been there isn't it 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 art when you're on the ass

on this if you're going to treat your home phone no it's not an army it's a it's an armed population i agree with that but there are now two side buttons overrating going through this is going to say i'm leaving the house and there but it has used well some of all but within the house i'm not going to other close to force people on this john this is the easiest but if you want to call i would assume i mean i'm saying there are two sides fighting right eric and phyllis diller and if you see is how they show us the stalemate the u.s. and its allies have chosen the side as well in this again making it more and more the side for a change although nobody wants to say she says she was here when she was in the throes of the dictators and the like but it's the same time is that what. exactly will choose the dictators including gadhafi so well are we so going to feel no dinner we have all the treasures of returning from the region so we trust in them with. them with. 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 combat more people are going to die under the no fly zone in iraq but one year alone one hundred forty four people were killed by the no fly zone so this is not something without without flaws and some of that was a really it was judged on what it was judge it was doing let's measure look at the world through this measure it is you know we have an issue of the moment we have another flow. for the last two weeks i mean i could go out and prove it to you but i mean the western journalists on the ground there are people in there and they would say well i think they want to support america whether they're killing them or no but they've come out and said that the no fly zone has not killed civilians i mean i'll be hard pushed to try and find more yes that's right through the area

we're almost out of time so it's at a place where i must tell you. one more question and ask how to break the stalemate here comes. the last answer how can we break the stalemate without greater outside intervention and what would be fueling what a lot of people call a civil war how do you break the stalemate. ok but i personally feel although i think over to the north is that the question is framed it's not going to do all that is iraq and the social construction we can be broken the social contract with these people as rousseau would say has broken the social contract these people he has no legitimacy and so when he is with the people there are choosing to fight against a dictator so we have to negotiate with the people and not with gadhafi he has no terms he has no ground and he has no legitimacy to the negotiate with him and also ask the question do you ever see a military officer in going from injury but arming the people themselves even on them for you to 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. and. hungry for the full story we've got it for. the biggest issues get a human voice ceased to face with the news makers.

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