team who has them and. we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from the realm plus. we've done the future covered. can't. stand. alone welcome to cross talk i'm people of our field bomber doctrine is there such a thing over the past few months we've seen the us waffle as change rages across the arab middle east and some western backed dictators remain firmly in power well at the same time forced regime change is happening in libya all in is this

a new doctrine or just muddling through. 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 crosstalk team yellin 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 we 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 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 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 embraced and is it being acted out phyllis. 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 phil was 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 what's really 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 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 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 if you're going 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 it only a few days ago when we you know you know we're not going to commit to more do we're 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. no no i 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 a. 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 this i'm not trying to so this is 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 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 certain that's 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 your reason that i'm not resisted 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 to back out of this terrorism since 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 an on going to school johnny just banks 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 on and the minute i personally don't want any arms and i'm not asking for in a situation where no one is on oppose it in that we've made a massive massive i understand then the more loving ourselves not only looking at have also to blow them out of the cold into those and three or two thousand and two if you 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 then you can really focus on but 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 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 mission do the. right the problem is there are some coming you're going to see what has family in the barracks i mean really you know 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 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. so hard to structure the notion of that's. my job. why is it ever 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. but i personally think that it's a numbers game and i think in terms of victims being a numbers game i don't want to say that there were more people here or more people who were there but equally we realize that gadhafi 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 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 for the rest of the world them along with it then for enough but there was no substance of the

argument good durfy was openly on the radio or on the radio waves of libya and forcing and people telling people you're in a will come in cleanse you know if you think that's an imminent threat i don't know ok but i personally wouldn't want my conscious and secondly you have to realize that if we're talking of the greater picture here of obama he looks like someone that obviously his intervention to 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 that 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 in a different you know a fish to the neo conservative background i would say that he's like 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 there are another holly charged names and countries and and you know the khalid charged if you haven't let me answer one that

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 buying 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 question those already overweight question here for the way 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 or you're going to jump in here it is really going to be really early to do a break and after that break we'll continue our discussion on obama's foreign policy in libya stay with us. in. the history of this place runs through the centuries.

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welcome back to. talking about the so-called obama doctrine live. live. but first let's see what russians think about the libyan intervention. a bomb a doctrine is 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 who would really know regarding the use of u.s. military force 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 the other twenty percent of the respondents expressed their support still the bomb a doctrine has yet to be declared but presidential talk trains 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 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 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 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 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 the u.s. 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 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 with some girls 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 or heinie first which is what nationals was decided to libyans was the libyans also doing what the libyans also for a no fly zone was asking for international that's one important if you're saying they won't that's a very important question is why someone 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 that's a reality anderson and that doesn't mean that voters nationally but push back from sort of up from was sort of the which is the stronghold of gadhafi that pushed back over a period of we pushed back militarily they were good little to do just 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 going to through an auto think we would like to i think we're working on very morally dubious grounds here 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 one to say man so you know wasn't in the area no i'm not saying what i'm saying in order to you know i

already own government because there's not a question of the morning or there can be threatened i'm saying no i'm not saying i can't really enjoy seeing what i can do what they could not you say what you want to say right now and i already asked do you jump in go ahead i'm not convinced that the united convinced that the united states government decision that my own personal view that the united states government decision was not a sudden one based on what the people of benghazi wanted they made a strategic decision like it's cold it's calculated it takes into account the moral issue only as a political factor in terms of how it will be assessed what their decision is ok and i want to ask you what you know you know so you know it's not really much of your decision that is going to make one last point 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 what it was it was being the dominant factor in foreign policy in america in the west there's a lot of broncho about however i do want to was whether that 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 to go so 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 and it was also different rather than from popular forces right but it was like you 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 made their own choice and second guess their choice was what the current choices were ok then we can argue but he wasn't showing them the same and there are

consequences to that and i want to ask you why should the government in yemen but i think 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 fueled 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 so of all civil war zone civil wars or when you have two conflicting sides with conflicting demands and i think i don't like to call them rebels on though 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 person you will arm people or people are always assumed are they rebels with arms are the rebels what are they civilians with arms i mean what's your definition of millions i mean these are teachers teachers students bakers government employees policemen i mean they're from every background that you would have in libya and i mean i work

for a minute or so and so 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 actually of political dysfunction is into i want to call them rebels because i have any political aims all there i mean is get rid of gadhafi is that we can have a more democratic and a more reflective government so i want to get rid of him so ultimately i think. that that's true in a classroom the kind of we have an arab spring. if i was going. none of those really there isn't and i think it is a civil war when people when two sides are fighting to hold territory i think that makes it a civil war i don't think the the opposition side is an arm when you're if you're on the outs on this if you're two hundred you're home one 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 reading into this is going to say i'm leaving the house and there but i was used the lesson of all but in the house as i'm not going to other close to force people

on this is not a very good if you want to call it is so that even i'm saying there are two sides fighting right eric and phyllis diller and if you see is have a show there's a stalemate the u.s. 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 wants to say she says she was here when she was in the throes of the dictators and the like but it's just same time is that this is what. exactly i will choose the dictators including gadhafi so where are we so good i feel no good or we have all the treasures of the region so we trust in 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 combat 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 flaws and when some of the really it was judged on what it was doing was measured look the world through this measure it is you know we have an issue we have an awful. for the last two weeks i mean i could go and prove it to you but i mean there are western journalists on the ground there are people in it 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 they've 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 all right through the area where i lost but it turns out it's a place where almost ten times according to time moved to ask one more question and ask how to break the stalemate here comes a clearly. 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 your. question is framed. it's not the framed it all that is the work on the social conflict when we can be broken the social contract with these people is rousseau i would say he's broken the social contract these people he has no legitimacy and so when he is with the people they're choosing to fight against or they try to so we have to negotiate with the people and not with gadhafi he has no terms he has not grown and he has no legitimacy to the negotiate with him and so also is the question to you as a military so they're going to eventually but arming the people themselves you've owned them for it to use however i don't there's a 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 cross talk rules. and you can. start.

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and again this is all see coming to live from the much smaller scale of the headlines that hamas the hour. london's engulfed in violence for a third night as riot police try to control what the government calls a wave of criminality then the rest has spread to battling them amid the poll with unconfirmed reports that other cities are also affected authorities say a peaceful protest against a deadly police shooting of a twenty nine year old man was hijacked by a troublemaker is more than two hundred people have been arrested. also that sinking feeling stalks deep shopping in the fuzz trading session after america's credit rating downgrade as the eurozone debt continues to wreak havoc with investors fearing recently and spain could be the next economies to fail on this despite president obama and european central banks trying to reassure the markets. and also three years after george's are typos.