christian lobby which also supports israel and you have an overwhelming overwhelming one sided pressure and when you do a little diagram in that there's no pressure coming from the other side so you know what's going to happen in the policy area and i think a lot of that happened with the nato expansion as well that all the hunger in americans in the polish americans and the czech americans were lobbying heavily for this and of course we saw this irresponsible. commitment made by the united states to defend countries like that i got a time that real quick yes or no then is u.s. foreign policy available to hi there well yeah i think it is ready to go i don't know maybe they opened up that was ivan eland senior fellow it and append it institue and that does it for now for all the stories we covered that r.t. dot com slash usa and follow me on twitter at loren lester's to get you through it so you can come right back here for more news.

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can. start. to think. along well come across talk i'm people of all 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 some western backed dictators remain firmly in power well the same time forced regime change is happening in libya all when is this a new doctrine or just muddling through. can.

still. 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 artie he's a libyan political analyst and another member of our crossfire peameal on the 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 a 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 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 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 embraced and is it being acted out phyllis. well 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 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. or do. you know i mean given we're still we're still is just said ok i mean i and i and all tend to agree with you you know we always think of sending tanks and planes and troops in boots and bombs and sure like in effect political changes but only became to haunt everybody in the long run but you support an already hit. well i think i think we need to have a bigger picture and we have to take a longer view but what's really happening because i don't particularly pursue intervention 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 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 both of those laws would rule and 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 we're

actually on the sports around 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 option is it morally right is it morally right to arm rebels at the same time i mean the argument is here to see 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 to more you're going to put boots on the ground but apparently cia sneakers are already there they beat me down 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. another think you should be a one off and let me go to the first point you're making in a sense if we if we talk about. military intervention as a as the new solution and it was looking about. from the serious. look at the

series involvement in panama and places that really really show the you know the old intentions of this i'm not trying to so the. times is 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 it's something that we've not have 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. and it's coming from the city because. ok fellows who 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 well 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 think that would be reason that i was instead 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 started with that they were hemmed in if we were looking at that 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 free market the 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 to 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 a really that's what i think point would be if we're looking however a long way with mr jones you're seeing in the conflict it looks in the conflict i mean what we're saying is. 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 in libya i'm not asking for in a situation where no one is on a person and that we've made a massive massive i understand then. looking at have also brought him out of the cold in two thousand and three or two thousand and two is you got to call it but i personally think that huge because i do want to go about the situation is going and also for the other thing is we can talk about money also because nobody is can really focus on but there was an imminent threat and i can you can accuse of of procrastinating during that period of time isn't it because many of the commission

but when the moment was imminent i wouldn't risk that personally because my people and i personally know that they do themselves realize that. america has a better track record on the fulfillment of mission do this. right the problem is there are some common good everyone has family but there are so many years that i don't have them are seeing 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's a mixed bag of the libyan opposition in terms of what people have asked for what they want the other thing that i think is makes this all very problematic is that in the context of the of the arab spring we're in each of these situations they began whether it was egypt whether it was tunisia whether it's been yemen bahrain all of them have faced massive military assault at the beginning only in libya was

the decision made to take up arms i'm not going to second guess that decision in the same sense that there are two hundred one says. all right and it's why is he claims he was. against the use of the structure of the notional it's. my job. why is it is because through stronach a very good one why is it different because it used now with these different ideas . 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 equally realize that birth he was on the radio program i mean if you 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 for the rest of the world and we went along with it and for another there was no substance of the argument he was openly on the radio or on the radio waves of libya and forcing and

people going in because the old coming claims you know if you think there'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 for someone and obviously his intervention through this was lackluster he didn't do anything and came in late egypt can be saying the roughly the same thing however in libya i think we can accuse them of procrastination but i look back at his legal background and i say to myself someone looks at legal background and as a liberal and a different you know other fish to the neo conservative background i would say that he's like a legal perspective and try 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 you charge the people who live and let me answer i don't want the right response i would point to your school and nobody does head falls

nobody does and i think i have that i have a different view and i wonder i supported intervention in rwanda 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 cohn 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 disaster was less than those already rolled away in question here a from some way on talking about the questions iran 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 or you're going to be jumping into really really are you going to break in after that short break we'll continue our discussion on obama's foreign policy in libya stay with. q. . download

the official c.m.y.k. should join a phone line called touch from the i.q. exams to. see the lights on the. video on demand copies of mine costs an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the. plane. welcome back across non-commital about true mind you were talking about the so-called obama doctrine. but first let's see what russians think about the libyan intervention. obama

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 a real regarding the use of u.s. military reports 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 declared but presidential tree have an impact on american policy and as a result on the entire world to peter 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 when this part of the program 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 panama was accepted successful you can go to panama a lot of people will say it wasn't ok so i guess it depends on how we define success here but very idealistic or is obama just trying to muddle through on this one too because you can say well it's an international effort now any can walk away from it that's not being very idealistic. obama was elected to have a third war in the muslim world bank good for him and. in a post in the post the rock world i think. in terms of real political everyone knows that it's political suicide to recruit in iraq and to try and come by the way through that one again so i mean i personally think they did it with but he's done that with afghanistan or trying to be as careful as possible you know i think you know there's just. this situation about this than everyone knows that he's thirty

thousand more troops so i don't really think this is an islamist 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 it isn't this is it 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 it is 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 news international you said it was over you say did you say there were some if it was transparency and there's transparency and then gansey going into this conflict or war if we did this war there wasn't much transparency ok so and if you can finish your parents here in washington ok well that blockade that's what's most important because nobody else is going to 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 would call for a no fly zone and u.s. position was no we don't think a no fly zone is going to work but instead of saying and therefore we're going to vote no. they said let us take the resolution we will rewrite it and we'll come back with a better resolution which of course said not only a no fly zone but all necessary means to protect civilians but with the world's discrimination over what is tactics could be. it's one of the questions that needs to be asked it's not the only question my one question or kind of person is right nationalists is this side of the libyans why the libyans also for the libyans also for a no fly zone more than asking for international that's one important the feeling they weren't that's a very important question is a was and was only the word or it's not the only question of course of the. threats

and that's the reality came in that's the reality anderson and that doesn't mean that hundreds nationally but push back from sort of up from was that which is the stronghold of gadhafi and pushed back over a period of requests back military take a look at me as exactly ok have a good effort has the capacity because using european norms you know we want to at the point i really want to make here is is that whether or not we want to debate whether it's going to through an auto think we would like to i think we're working on very morally dubious grounds here but 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 going to say man so you know wasn't in there and the area no i'm not saying what i'm saying is always going to have to remember this is not a question only more than can be threatened i'm saying no i'm not saying i can't really a choice you can do it if they could not you say what you want to say right now and i already asked doing jumping go ahead i'm not convinced that the united. states

government decision not my own personal view but the united states government's decision was not a sudden one based on what the people of benghazi wanted they made a strategic decision because 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 really a challenging situation 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 primary factor in foreign policy in america in the west there's a lot of broncho about however i do want to was whether or not we believe that this is not a coincidence of interests that we can all see 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 it was also all i think all of the finale with from popular forces right and but it was 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 fell face the same kind of attack that the people in yemen faced. i think they made their own choices and. guess their choice was the care choices was ok now we can argue that he wasn't showing them was made and there are consequences to that and i want to ask you a question government in yemen earth is going to ask you a question what they were talking about doing 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 fueled fueled on or

created a civil war that could last vital quite a while at the expense of the libyan people civil civil war of all civil wars or civil wars or when you have two conflicting stories or 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 perino the issue for the rest of the organization and its you are the people who aren't. people or people around the stage are they rebels or talk with armies or the rebels what are they civilians with arms i mean what's 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 try to get rid of forty two years separate the political dysfunction isn't i want to call them rebels because i have any political aims all their aim is get rid of a good birthday so we can have

a more democratic and a more reflective government so i want to get rid of him so ultimately i think i said there were three of us but that's true in a classroom because we have an arab spring. it was scheduled to be good but none of the recent it would have been there is 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 doing really well if you're in the us on this 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 required to stay over here in the house and there but has used the bureau where some of them has i'm not going to of those on paper foolish people i honestly john this is amazing if you if you want because this is me and i'm saying there are two sides fighting right character and phyllis and phil is the yes it is sad to see is how they chose to stalemate the u.s. and its allies have chosen the side as well in this again making it more and more

extreme the side for a change without invoking the sanctions you see the truth is you wish you sure this isn't the right but it's just same time is that this was coerced chile is exactly i will choose the dictators including gadhafi so lonely so give up easily no just war we have all the treasures of the region so we trust in them a little bit in washing them on the issues because you are 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 to get more people are going to die under the no fly zone in iraq because really one year alone one hundred forty four people were killed by the no fly zone so this is not something without looking at the plaza until it was really

it was joe joe who was doing was most of the world and says let's measure it as it is we have an issue the moment we have another flight. 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 the people in there would say well i think they want to support america whether they're clinton or not but they'll come out in the no fly zone has not killed civilians i mean be hard pushed to try and point out yes that's right larry we're almost at a time so it's a place where i must tell you the killers. just one more question and ask how to break the stalemate here comes. the last of this is the last answer how can we break the stalemate without greater outside intervention and what would be fueling with a lot of people call a civil war how do you break the stalemate. ok i personally feel all the finger it was really serious the question is framed it's not bushrangers all this work on the social conflict and we can be there for as broken

a social contract with these 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 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 goetia with him and also is the question of the oversight and illiteracy and going from entry arming the people and so you go on them for forty two years how was the use of their on this point folks thank you very much for a very heated discussion many thanks to my guest today in washington and in paris and thanks for viewers for watching us here on r.t. see you next time and remember cross talk with us.

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