we'll. follow this is our team from moscow my name's kevin owen i'm taking your headlights global market fever and u.s. stocks head south of the first trading session for america's credit downgrade this comes on top of volatile trading elsewhere in the world to the spreading european debt crisis. but i think story tonight to anarchy in the u.k. london suffers another round of rioting of a new clashes between u.s. and police in the close of being lucia the weekend of violence across the city. and

war stories three years after georgia's attack on south of setia we talk to the people still better in the sky about how they are rebuilding them up. next the latest round of their base on people about stross talk show this week that talking about what the future may hold for libya so many are just a few. for the full story we've gone to. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. can . follow in welcome across car crime people about 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 well the same time forced regime change is

happening in libya all in is this a new doctrine or just muddling through. can the story. 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 on this album marty he is a libyan political analyst and another member of our cross talking yelling the hunger right phyllis i'd like to go to you first you know we're 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 on your 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 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 it this is his doctoring. americans 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 through us but i don't think that's a dark and i think it's a statement of lowering expectations i also think that one of the problems with all of these documents 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 why why i mean given what phil with 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 changes but only became to haunt everybody in the long run but you support an already hit. well i think i think really to have a bigger picture and we take a longer view there with me happening because i don't particularly pursue intervention as a whole interest i think you of 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 drew lines around the deserts of the

middle east and you fall in that or those loans with support was given and it wasn't in the economic sense it was given a military sense i mean we were actually armed. to get involved was actually on the sports or in the middle east and i think that's why we have a moral obligation to this on them i personally don't think it is a option 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 than 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. another think you should get

a one off and let me go to the first one they're making in a sense if we if we talk about the. military intervention as a as an only solution and that was working about. from the c.e.o. . i personally look at the c.e.o.'s involvement in panama and places that really really show the you know the old intentions of the m o trying to sow the c.e.o. has a great intentions behind however we do know that the c.n.c. as we're calling them from the transitional council in libya is actually being as transparent as possible because it'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 a in this coming out quite openly from the city because. i'm ok phyllis i want to jump in and ask 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 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 seen it would you reason that i'm not really since it is because. 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 aren't 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 hearing this will stop exactly as they should have in the others well this is easily that's what i said point would be looking however the greatest contribution just being in the conflict it looks in the conflict i mean what was saying is yourselves you know your own your own problems and we know that one side is on the other side is not on an american i personally don't want any arms in libya on the awesome forms and in a situation where no one is on a person that we've made a massive massive i understand then boiling ourselves not only for looking at also brought him out of the cold and into those 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 back to the situation is going and also for the other thing is we can talk about money also

because moment face can really focus on and there was an imminent threat and i can you can accuse obama of procrastinating during that period of time isn't it because there's a collision but when the moment was imminent i wouldn't risk that personally because my people and i personally know that branding themselves realize that. america has a better track record on for families and do it. right the problem is there are so common good everyone has family but there are so many years that 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 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 decision in the same sense as there were two hundred one says. all right and that's why as we always read what. the heart of the structure of the american notion of that's. why is that is because very few why is it different because it used now with these different i just think of. but i 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 who you know more people who are there are equally realize that he was on the radio program i mean if you look at i want to use iraq as a as a very good example as to why things are 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 went along with it then for another there was no substance of the argument he was openly on the radio on the radio waves of libya and forcing people to live in but has it all come in clones you know 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 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 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 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 you charged. and let me answer is no i'm sorry point to your school and nobody does it feels nobody does and i think i have that i have a different view and i wonder i supported intervention in a lot 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 i call on 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 the incident with question was already rolled away in question from some weight i'm 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 was going to be jumping into really really are you going to break in after the break we'll continue our discussion on obama's foreign policy didn't stay with. you.

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greece risk free. to child free. dumb old free bonne chance plug in video for your media projects a free meal gondar tetons tom. the. kitchen sisters. welcome back across calculus about to mind you we're talking about the so-called obama doctrine. the kitchen. story.

but first let's see what russians think about the libyan intervention. i don't adopt three is it adult three for 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 in regard to the use of u.s. military supports the russian public opinion research center all citizens of 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 dr ian has yet to be cleared but presidential friens have an impact on american policy and as a result the entire world to peter ok 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 there obama had a sudden attacked 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 in panama was the 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 is 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 good for him and. in the post. the rock world i think. in terms of real political everyone knows that it's political suicide to recruit through iraq and to strong 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 as careful as possible you know i think you know there's just. the situation of everyone knows that he's thirty thousand more troops so i don't really think this is a great 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 living in 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 in 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 using you said it was over you say do you say there was a 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 i guess you can finish your parents here in washington ok but that ok 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 what's 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 girls to israel in a small room where his tactics could be. it's one of the questions that needs to be asked it's not the only question will be one question of timing mostly his right

national rules which is decide whether the libyans was the libyans also who was a libyan source in foreign affairs and why the asking for international banks when important the feeling they weren't that's a very important question is what was the only or whether it's not the only question of course it was highly personal threats and that's a reality that's a reality and for the for and that doesn't mean if hundreds nationally but bush vote from sort of up from which is the stronghold of gadhafi and push back over a period of a request back militarily to really good legally to do exactly ok have a graph it has the capacity because using european arms you know or the point i really want to make here is that whether or not we want to debate whether it'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 in the area no i'm not saying what i'm saying is your reason i already own government because there's not a question or a more that can be threatened i'm saying no i'm not saying i can't really avoid you

see what i can do what they could not you say what you want to see right now and i already. grant i'm not 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 so you know it's not very much of the decision that there's little i would. last point but i want to challenge you on that point however because i don't think that it is and sort of the principle of of what has always been the dominant factor in foreign policy in america in the west it's a lot of branches 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 you want to go so i mean 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 and they wanted to position themselves in a position of being on the right side of history that corresponded with. the finale with us from popular forces right and but there's i 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 found faced the same kind of attack that the people in yemen faced i think they did make their own choices and i guess their choice was not go for your choices was ok now we can argue that he was enjoying them with me and there are consequences to that and i want to ask you a question government in yemen other theaters 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 it fueled or fueled on or created a civil war that could last quite of why do 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 and i think i don't like to call them rebels on though that it's a very small point to make and that's the importance of being made over and over again i guess will be a perino issue for the rest of the revolution and if you are the people if you will aren't. people are people around this much 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 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 at a political dysfunction is and so i want to call them rebels because i don't have any political aims all their aim is get rid of gadhafi so we can have a more democratic and a more reflected government so i want to get rid of him so ultimately i think it's a war of ideas but that's truly a castros to have the kind of the arab spring. there was. none of the bilirubin 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 feeling good we'll if you're an ass on this if you're going to drill your home phone 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 required to say i'm in the house and there but as used to be a listener of all put in the house i'm not going to other places on paper for people i honestly john this is not easy if you know why because this is me and i'm saying there are two sides fighting right eric and phyllis and phyllis and if you see is

how they chose this stalemate the us and its allies have chosen the side as well in this again making it more in the age of the side for a change although neither of us want to say she says the truth because you can choose you chose a dictator is in the right but it's the same time as if this was what. exactly it was choose the dictators including gadhafi so we still give up easily just war we have all the treasures of the region so we trust in them when the north will keep it in washington one issue is usually 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's likely to be a stalemate that's going to go on for

a long time can be more people are going to die under the no fly zone in iraq because really one year alone a hundred forty four people were killed by the no fly zone so this is not something without flaws and so that was really it was judged on what it was judge was doing was measured look the onus is measure it as it is we have issued them you have an awful. for the last two weeks i mean i could go out and prove it to you but i mean there was some journalist on the ground there and they would say well i think they want to support america whether they're killing them or not but that's come out of them so the no fly zone has not killed civilians i mean the whole push to try and find i guess that's right through the area where i'm trying to hold in city this is a place ramos time to collect some time on this one more question as to how to break the stalemate here comes clearly reject the law says this is the last chance or how can we break the stalemate without greater outside intervention and what will be fueling with a lot of people call it a civil war how do you break the stalemate. ok personally three although i think it

was you know the question is framed it's not bush framed it all that it is a broken social conflict and we can be there for his growth in the social contract with his people as rousseau would say he's broken the social contract with people he has no legitimacy and so when he is with the people they're choosing to fight against a dictator so we have to negotiate with the people and not with the he has no terms he has no ground and he has no legitimacy to the negotiate with him and so also is the question of the oversight and illiteracy and get away from entry but arming the people themselves even on them for forty two years how do you 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. can. still.

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