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i. follow and welcome to cross talk for all things are considered i'm peter lavelle two years after the force ouster of khadafi by nato forces libya stands at the abyss the lack of a strong central government weak rule of law and endless violence in a country awash with weapons has resulted in libya facing a failed state status add to this the presence of islamic militants can things get any worse in libya. to cross not the events in libya i'm joined by my guest in washington rich galen he is a republican strategist and we also have michael shank he is the director of foreign policy at the friends committee on national legislation and a professor at george mason university one gentleman in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want to very much encourage you to michael if i go to you and in washington two years on the libyan people living better better than before the

intervention that overthrew colonel gadhafi certainly not and we're seeing the same playbook u.s. playbook in syria that we saw in libya you know our prior to station in libya was military wasn't state building wasn't capacity building wasn't economic development we could have a lot of money at them a lot of arms which is now a trickle down it's a nice year in mali thirty seven billion unfrozen at the state department another one hundred fifty billion globally dumped into the fractious rebel groups so unsurprisingly they're very divided still and we're seeing that play out without saeed who is the rebel leader who kidnapped the prime minister earlier this month so the lives aren't better but that's because we didn't prioritize and we're not parties in that in syria as well rich how do you. not because we didn't have a plan b after a quote unquote victory against gadhafi is that why because it wasn't thought about not thought about the consequences of our actions and if there's

a go ahead. i don't know i think they probably did think about what they wanted to have happen clearly but but i mean one of the issues i think we're facing is is that america thinks that if we can just if we can just kind of wave the flag of democracy in front of a free and open democracy in front of people that they'll say oh that's a good way to do it in there is a good way to do it but we've been at it for two hundred what is it michael to a thirteen to fifteen years and a lot of places are still really more comfortable under tribal leadership and i think throughout the northern africa middle east the whole the meg grab in the event i think we're seeing that that there that people people are may have been more happy more living better under a dictatorship and one of the things we know i think from a long and tough history is people who trade safety and security for freedom at the

drop of a head ok but michael i mean it's not waving the american flag and saying democracy it comes at the end of a barrel of a gun that's the difference here it's not waving a flag or plenty of tomahawk missiles as was the case in libya and what obama wanted to do with syria same playbook again listen nobody on the continent liked hot off the certainly up until two thousand and eleven and certainly with assad no friends there maybe a few holdouts so i might counter rich's point because people on the ground didn't enjoy life under gadhafi let's be clear about that but in terms of what we're prioritizing whether it goes all the way back a couple hundred years to rich's point you know thomas jefferson ordered naval troops into tripoli so there's a there's a long history of invasion and the intervention that was naval base the republican war. or in you know the northern part of africa so a couple hundred i'm going to get my only i assume when trying would but i don't but there i said but there is an addition there michael michael there's an edition

that did not want american national interest at stake i want to generate something i like and i don't know but when when when jefferson did that there was an american national issue at stake here ok i still don't understand what they were the national lobel issue for the united states and nato was when bombing libya go ahead rich well one of the things that i think we have to remember that in the sequence of events the whole libyan nato intervention came sort of at the crest of the arab spring and that's where this i mean that's where the unrest began it didn't begin with us dropping a tomahawk missile you know down the lavatory and khadafi south it started with the arab spring from tunisia and it was working its way across and for reasons that frankly i just don't remember now it was decided that we would not put troops on the ground but as we've seen with the president president obama he doesn't equate dropping missiles with boots on the ground and it's far more eager to use those sorts of things remember we put in a no fly zone which we have not done in syria and we did

a lot of things that were interventionist with that question but it didn't begin with us to begin with the arab spring ok but michael the death count in libya really started going high after the intervention the military intervention that's when we had the body count increase dramatically. i remember well you're seeing the whole new intervention intervention a strategy coming out of the white house the same war powers act dispute was play in the house because i was working as a congressional staffer then when we were pushing back against the white house they were claiming it wasn't a war in libya now they're claiming it's not going to be a war in syria same war powers dispute now the house regenerated working for a minute authorization or funding it was working for us congress and my conda of california same pushback then saying it is a war and has to go through congressional authorization so now in syria the white house claiming it's not a war but to obama's credit asking for congressional authorization this time but the house pushing back yet again so we're saying almost parallel tracks here well

we will remember that he remember though even as he remembered the michael even as the president asked for congressional authorization they made it very clear at the white house that they didn't think it was necessary they just thought it was the right thing to do so i'm not sure we've moved very far off the previous stance ok ok ok michael was it the right thing to do in retrospect two years on was it the right thing. i don't i don't think it was i think nato's decision this month to send military advisors is a recognition of one responsibility but two that we did not focus on institution building building or capacity bill you know it's interesting that the transitional council which then became the government which then split up because understandably the militias and the rebels were more fractious to begin with used patton boggs as a legal firm to lobby on behalf of the thirty seven billion that state and freed up so there's money at play and also munitions at play that five hundred million small

arms are being trafficked all throughout the continent we have some responsibility for that certainly libya but also egypt our military aid to egypt seeps through porous borders so if we're inclined to help the african continent be safer and more stable one first step would be stumping the military aid that's trickling down from the north and also from the horn which what is the responsibility of now and then suddenly the one that's been one of the complicating go ahead jump in i'm sorry no i don't have to michael's to michael's point that's been one of the complicating issues in syria i don't want to keep going off libya but but i but it but there are parallels and disconnect said i think are interesting is that is that the administration was very hesitant about shipping arms into the current rebel rebels because we're not if we are either we're not clear we don't want to say actually who we're giving those arms to and how they're going to come back and

haunt us and you go way back to afghanistan when we supplied stinger missiles to the move move. gentlemen and generally where the learning curve here where is the learning curve here ok i guess we're already agreement here we're going to be very hard to grow right i just go michael first then rich where's the learning curve come on this isn't complicated stuff michael go ahead. it's not it's not complicated stuff yet remarkably the cia in in cahoots i should say not to use a loaded word but with saudi arabia and qatar funding rebel groups that just this month split you know the previously semi unified transitional council in syria has now split some going to more extremist islamic groups some going to the free syrian army so what was once unified and the state part was very happy about that has now split up i wouldn't be surprised i don't know the lobby for in this advocating on behalf of the transitional council but i'm sure it's a similar group but we clearly haven't learned because what we did all the way back

to rich's point the mujahideen we haven't learned in libya and we certainly haven't learned in syria rich go ahead jump in and i was i was in iraq for six months in two thousand and three and two thousand and four when we helped established the the the council the governing council and helped institute what we called the transitional administrative law which was sort of the proto constitution there but that's again that that still it's tribal warfare that's kind of disintegrating into into mafia type warfare so i don't know that there is a good answer but one of the things i do two quick points one in libya getting back there we have sent in one of our most accomplished diplomats deborah jones to be the ambassador and she has she has the ear of everyone because she may be one of the most talented professional diplomats we have currently working that's number one and number two i think whether you're looking at africa or southwest asia or or

the middle east at some point i think these the regional organizations that that that are in those areas have to step on the take some responsibility i understand that africa's got a lot of problems but at some point the western nations have to say you know what. to stay off our shores and you guys figure this out because we've got problems with you know among among and between ourselves and you have the additional actions of not actions but the additional gravity in terms of the gravitational pull of both russia and china in all of these regions plus the united states so there is there is this tension of who's going to i mean it's almost like going back to the cold war spheres of influence ok michael but maybe just not intervening in the first place might be the best idea i mean can't we derive that from these experiences going back to afghanistan. two points not intervening we like big splashes we like

the pomp and circumstance we don't like the small stuff so what's working in terms of economic development in afghanistan is a project a very small project twenty thousand dollars block grants thirty thousand dollars block grants that the world bank funds through the afghan ministry of rural rehabilitation development through the national solidarity program we don't like that because we like to put our name on things and we like we like the show so real development real reconstruction real stabilization is a slow process and it might require that we don't put our name our stamp our usaid stamp on it secondly transit point about regionally it's only a day and that might avoid some of the blowback in the future that might avoid blowback in the future gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on libya stay with our. lease with.

most of the missions that are that soldiers are sent to under the pretext of terrorism prevention are in many ways targeting the civilians that have nothing to do with with the actual attacks against israeli targets. to live the torch is on a big journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through two hundred cities of russia. really by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand killing. in a record setting trip by land air sea your numbers for. he's. a leg to our tree limb on r g r g dot com live.

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welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle remind you we're discussing the ongoing crisis in libya. ok rich i go back to you there are two hundred twenty five thousand libyans registered in militias and they're paid by the government. that's a rather curious thing isn't it i mean you're you're keeping these rival militias well armed and they have some spending money is that why a strategy for a country like libya that is breaking up and i'd like to talk about a little bit or a little while is breaking up into three different countries before our eyes well that's we haven't that's what i said in the beginning these things i mean these lines as we all know are largely drawn by westerners these country lines that that may or may not you know follow a river may run that five fire follow tribal lines but you know in terms of arming

everybody the other side of that is the russia and the u.s. or the soviet union then in the u.s. you know lived under a concept of mutually it's sure destruction. and it will be that the whatever the central government is in libya thinks that the safest way to do it is the not let any of these three groups gain any kind of you know measurable arms a superiority and that sort of keeps everybody out of balance so i'm not so sure that that that's the wrong thing but let's go back a step about i don't i don't want to leave the impression that i think that america are the bad guys in all these things i don't think that's right and if we look at syria as as again an example of non intervention a hundred over one hundred thousand people have been killed it is spreading across the borders as refugees scramble to get out of the way the especially the on the turkish border there's the turks are the turks don't want them there because the the syrian army and the syrian secret service follows them across the border so i don't know what the right answer is that but i don't know that i'm going to do the

right thing but only if you think it will be can you give me an example recently where interventions were a good thing because every time there's an intervention i mean what half a million half a million iraqis died for a reason that no one really can convince me was a good idea to go into iraq in the first place i mean it's all nice and five they say you know what do we know we go to the point my but i mean what i'm saying is that sometimes doing nothing is better because by doing something you make the the process even worse the outcome easier even worse well again i was i was interaction i was in iraq for a long time and i actually saw the mass graves of the kurdish mass graves way down south near the saudi border where saddam had gassed those people tens tens and tens of thousands of them we went to villages that didn't have that we had to train women on how to run the village because there weren't any men left they killed all the men so i don't i mean look a smidgen of somehow then i mean we're going to read it was days full mesopotamia

where does joe saddam get the gas in the technology. came from the united states well you know if we can go back to the first well well i don't know about that first that was an atom i mean that's that's you know you know who invented water i mean at some point you got to say well ok we're not you know when i do that anymore it's put you waited for the well documented but it's pretty well documented ok michael but you know you but again i'm i'm not i will not allow you to say that the united states is the cause of all these problems which is i think where you want this conversation i am i'm not and i'm not saying that i'm not saying it's the cause but i'm saying interventions make it worse i'm not saying it's the cause ok let's be clear although i don't i don't know you you can't really what you can't rewind the clock and see if we hadn't done a well then b. and that's that's exactly what i don't know if we learned enough for attention in the past on intervention in syria from the past got one hundred thousand at least one hundred thousand civilians to have been killed and there's no end in sight and

everybody's kind of jumping up and down about the fact that you know that a handful of inspectors are going in looking for sarah and gas and yet the killings continue to use support a military intervention in syria good idea either do you support a military intervention really finish rich do you support a military intervention sure good ok and is that yes you are going to i'm not that smart i don't know what the answer is but what i do know what i do know is that saying that in every case intervention is wrong it may not be the perfect answer but it may be a better answer than doing nothing and i think in syria that may well be the case ok all right i don't think people in iran what you're green is think so today is what i call that's why you're rattling your sword so much right now with a rattling international lowlife michael go ahead. you know playing over something because i think it's very kind of the good side of intervention richen richard and peter i think it's about the kind of intervention because i certainly support the u.s. being very involved in the kind of socio economic development schemes that i mentioned

earlier in the program in syria we did not aggressively engage the organization first lama cooperation or the arab league in advance we still haven't invited them aggressively into geneva two peace talks we haven't even tried it iran so it's the kind of intervention you know on libya this is a great example we brought in the arab league late to the game because we have centrally needed their stamp of approval on an invasion they supported a track through the u.n. which eventually led to a security council resolution allowing no fly zone etc but then they rescinded some of that because they didn't want to support a tomahawk invasion by sea but our engagement of the arab league was late in the game it was a stamp of approval we haven't really engaged them aggressively on syria so i would just pick the previous conversation where the two of you were going back and forth in terms of what kind of intervention is it we tend increasingly to choose primarily a military intervention and and clearly it's it's not working in iraq it's more

unstable than it ever was we didn't do a good job of political reconciliation between the sunni and the shia we kicked the sunni out and then we gave them arms and weapons in the province unsurprisingly now that we're not funding them anymore they're back in baghdad blowing stuff up because we don't prioritize reconciliation so it's the kind of intervention that's critical you know it's kind of paradoxical here because nation building didn't go so well in afghanistan and in iraq is that the reason why they didn't think about it in libya because why think about it because it doesn't work anyway is that logical reasoning in your mind no i'm not saying that no i think i think i think what you have to do as i said earlier i think what we've done i don't remember now why russia or the soviet union invaded afghanistan i care. member why that all happened but but i mean there was obviously some some reason for the soviet union to invade afghanistan before you got kicked out of there and that opened the door to the taliban and everything flowed from there i mean if to but to michael's point

a few you know there are a lot of people i think correctly believe that after after the soviet union got thrown out of afghanistan that that more civil civil civilian intervention might have stopped the taliban from taking taking over and that would have helped that situation but you know these. sort of learn as you go a little bit better but the first thing you do in all these cases whether it's rush or of the u.s. or china well china is not there yet but they'll get there is that you see you first you launch a missile and see what happens ok i hope they learn history better than than what's happening in the last ten years in the war on terror you guys haven't you guys haven't i mean russia is you're not going to be doing any kind of everywhere in the world i mean my goodness trying to bring those you bring you to your behavior but you are saying any type of well that you can feel like i mean they're coming if you want to if you want to keep pressing security want to keep pressing that point that you know no ritual if you want to please press saying let's leave your look let's

go back to it's go back to libya ok let's go back to libya and i want to give this to michael here ok because for all the criticism that you have about russia and syria russia doesn't want to see syria explode because you know what syria is a lot closer to its neighborhood before it you get blowback in the united states in the u.k. it's twenty hours away by car from damascus to chechnya you get my drift here everyone thinks it's russia trying to protect its friend it's by geopolitical i just know it's about a region because explode and they explode in a really vicious fashion jordan lebanon and said you are so i don't rushes because action is a better stakes a way for me to go to islands of the owners because. not doing killed in a civil war is that your position nobody would say that it wasn't your people that doing something that is little were doing nothing and allowing one hundred a lodger to be heiress richie your problem is that

a lot of that is going on like me as even across the political will on the roads this is surely you son you said at the beginning of this thing that that we could that we could each take a turn and ok you go ahead and finish the russian line with. the line of peter lavelle to my mind ok not talking about facts on the ground if you want to compare with your link if you do that your line is well we can do that michael you heard a lot you want to weigh in. a couple of things russia of course doesn't want to see you in this debility in syria. us doesn't want to see instability in the middle east now would we invade these countries if they were closer to our shores maybe not i want to offer up one thing that's perhaps a lesson learned here and bill horry who was with the state department this month came out with a statement saying for every drone strike we create forty to sixty enemies if you will adversaries and he came out saying this recognizing that his friends in

previous colleagues at the state department wouldn't be happy with him saying it i think we need to look at the efficacy and efficiency of our military strategy is it costing us more in the long run and is it bringing people to our side is that winning hearts and minds and i would say pretty consistently with the various invasions in the middle east north africa horn of africa and south asian central asia it's not so that's what we need to look at what do you think the world community should do for a libya the sort of the choice of michael if these are keeping is that go ahead go ahead we're going to say anything all right i'm not no i'm not because as soon as i start talking you're going to start talking again go ahead no there is a slight time delay when i saw you starting to speak i shut up so please which go ahead. that the other side of that michel is that what we don't know you and i don't know is is how many threats against america and american interest specifically have been thwarted by those drone strikes and i'm not

a huge fan of the drone strikes either i have a nice i have some some truly ethical issues with it but that but if if you first agree that we're still in a war and you don't have to agree with that but i do then then winning the hearts and minds it's not the same thing as as a war between states it's the isa metrical war and i think that the the second administration in a row now has determined that the safest plan to protect american interests which is which is sort of the president's job is to find and destroy potential adversaries before they can find and destroy us michael gave you last ten seconds to. two concerns having worked in the middle east central asia and south asia i've seen public opinion turn against america because of our military endeavors in the country and secondly i real concerns with the authorization to use military force from two thousand and one to let the president kill anyone anywhere any time so all right is it really concerns that we need truly heated debate i appreciate i agree

with both of you many thanks to my guests in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember. the only one. isn't. wealthy british style it's time to rise. markets why not scandals. find out what's really happening to the global economy because a report on. some

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to be in the. another day another tragedy iraq endures a series of blasts that kills more than sixty people as a merciless campaign by the nation's oil qaida cell shows no sign of easing. the war that we had to terrorists the way they were doing the more terrorism appears waste war how the brainchild of asylum bin ladin has spread its wings from central asia all the way to the atlantic since washington launched its war on terror. and president obama has reportedly known for years the n.s.a. was spying on the german chancellor yet chose not to stop but a claim that the agency strongly denies.