and you can. follow in welcome to cross talk i'm people of the obama 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 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 an s. t. 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 where both americans and we are used to having presidents having doctrines when it comes to foreign policy and we had harry truman he had a universal policy or you do universal doctrine 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 then 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 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 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 surely i 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 took a longer view. last thirty forty years and fifty years since the nationals of terminations movements which laws are shaped and drew lines around the deserts of the middle east then you fall in the 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 i think 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 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 a really really show the you know the old intentions of the m o trying to sow the

great intentions behind however we do know that the c. and c. 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 santa because they openly want to jump in go ahead you know ok fellas i want to 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 was given that would you reason that i was instead it is because there was a little 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 on arm 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 say as i

was on the hearing this will stop exactly as they should have in the others what does it is or that's what i think point would do if we're looking however and going to school johnny just being in the conflict it looks in the conflict i mean what we're saying is sort of yourselves you know you own your own problems and we know that one solid is on the other side is not and the minute i personally don't want any arms and i'm not asking for and in a situation where no one is armed opposed to it in that we've made a massive massive i understand them the loss of someone they're going to looking at have also brought him out of the cold into those and three or two thousand and two if you'd like to call it but i personally think that huge but i do want to go about the situation there and also for the other thing is we can talk about the because moment face 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 isn't it because when i do his work elation but when the moment was imminent i wouldn't risk that personally because my people and i personally know that the indians themselves realize that. america has

a better track record on the fulfillment of nation do the. right the problem is there are so look i'm going to do 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 but

in the same sense of there are two hundred one says that you are. right and that's why it's really. hard to structure the notion of that's. my job. why is it different 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 i don't 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 gadhafi 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 there was imminent and they tried to fool the rest of the world and we went along with it then for enough but there was no substance to the argument good durfy was openly on the radio or on the radio waves of libya and forcing people to bring in ben has it all come in cleanse you know if you think that's not an imminent threat i don't know ok but i personally wouldn't want that

on 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 taken a legal perspective and tried 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 holly charged names and countries and and you know the whole is charged here 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 there was question those already rules are way in question here from some 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 or you're going to be jumping around we're going to do a break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on obama's foreign policy in libya stay with. you. if you want to. the history of this place runs through the centuries. a paradise for archeologists zoo ologists and ecological tourists. what one fateful night shots destroyed the harmony of life.

how this republic got its life back. hoping dreaming and returning. to. the world to. bring you the latest in science and technology from around russia. we've got the huge earth covered. up. the competition. on the. welcome back to crossfire computor 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 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 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 bottom line dr ian has yet to be declared but presidential doc trees have an impact on american policy and as a result on the entire world back to peter ok and this 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 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 owner is obama just 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 bank 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 recreate him in iraq and to try and fumble their 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 be as careful as possible and i think you have. to ration of others that everyone knows that thousand more troops i don't really think that this is a positive and necessary and i think this really 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 i mean 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 is nobody 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 i really question the economy first

which is what national rules which is decide the libyans was the libyans also what the libyans also for a no fly zone was asking for international that's one important if you're saying they weren't that's a very important question is what was the only or whether it's not the only question of course is that it was an eye for an imminent threat and that's a reality that's a reality and for them that doesn't mean that the jury is nationally but push back from sort of up from was sort of which is the stronghold of gadhafi that pushed back over a period of a week which back militarily they were good legally to do it is going 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 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 it was heated i mean he was no innocent man so you know wasn't there and the area no i'm not saying that's what i'm saying and always when i already own government because there's not a question

a lot more that can be threatened i'm saying no i'm not saying i can't really annoys you see what i 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 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 and i do know it's not very much of decision that there's little they will 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 timing factor in foreign policy in america or in the west if you will laws or 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 if you want i think you're going to 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 it was also different in there with us from popular forces right and but 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 fell face the same kind of attack that the people in yemen faced and i think they did a different choice and second guess their choice what would the cashless is where the ok going we can argue that but he wasn't showing them the same and there are consequences to that and i want to ask you a question government in yemen the other thing i decided to ask you

a question. that we're 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 wars and when you have two conflicting soldier conflicting demands and i think i don't like to call them rebels on though that it's a very small point to make and there's been points that have been made over and over again perino the shoe for the rest of the of that and you know but if you want to push your people. are they rebels or talk with armies are they rebels what are they civilians with arms i mean what is your definition of millions 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 artefact is that it's not an army it's

a people trying to govern themselves and 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 at their face that 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 already addressed but that's true in a classroom with a kind of we have an arab spring. if i was going to. run out of the field there have been 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 art when you're playing really well if you're an ass on this if your two hundred is your home phone it's not an army it's a it's an armed population i agree with that but there are now too cybill in zone reading into this is going to sort of meet in the house and there but it was used well some of them the house is a no go into other place on the cape to force people to join this in the game if you don't want to cause so many of them saying there are two sides fighting right

eric and phyllis diller and if she is have a show this is a stalemate the us and its allies have chosen the side as well in this game making it more and more aid to the side for a change although nobody wanted to say she says she was here when she was here for the significant haters and the like but it's the same time is that this was what. exactly i will choose the dictators including gadhafi so low or so good i feel no desire or we have all the treasures why we can't run them down the region so we trusting them with. them when. they're 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 but it's really one year alone one hundred forty four people were killed by the no fly zone so this is not something without flaws and some of the really it was judged on what it was judge it was doing let's measure look the owner says let's measure it as it is 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 there are western journalists on the ground there are people who would say well i think they want to support america whether they're killing them or know but they've come out and they've said the no fly zone has not killed civilians i mean i would be hard pushed to try and find more yes that's right all right through the area where i lost it turns out it's a place where i must have time to. time or to ask one more question and ask how to break the stalemate here comes. this is 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 i personally think you have to do

is you know the question is framed. it's not good did all that is the work in the social conflict when we can be if he has broken the social contract with his people as rousseau would say he's broken the social contract these people he has no legitimacy and so when it is with the people they're choosing to fight against they tried to so we have to negotiate with the people and not with gadhafi he has no times he has not grown and he has no legitimacy to the negotiate with him and so was always the question to you and they were terrible so they're going to eventually but arming the people themselves even on them for it to use however i don't use it 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 cross talk with us. and. see.

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