Did Libya make the Republican base and media less hawkish?

[darklordoftech]

And more open to some of Trump’s rhetoric in 2015 and 2016?

[Santander]

They loved war until a black man was the one making the order.

[Horus]

Libya was the biggest mistake of Obama's presidency in more ways than one, and with Iraq already deeply unpopular across the board, it only made sense that a terrible fp decision by a Democrat would have led to increased isolationism in the GOP. It certainly helped in the campaign because Hillary was so intimately connected with everything in Libya. Of course, most Republicans (Paul and the 10% of other genuine paleocons aside) had no problem with Trump's actions in Iran in January, so who really knows?

[Crumpets]

Libya was the biggest mistake of Obama's presidency in more ways than one, and with Iraq already deeply unpopular across the board, it only made sense that a terrible fp decision by a Democrat would have led to increased isolationism in the GOP. It certainly helped in the campaign because Hillary was so intimately connected with everything in Libya. Of course, most Republicans (Paul and the 10% of other genuine paleocons aside) had no problem with Trump's actions in Iran in January, so who really knows?

Spoken like someone who has never talked to someone from Libya about the issue:

"According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2012, 75% of Libyans were in favor of the NATO intervention, compared to 22% who were opposed. A 2011 Orb International poll also found broad support for the intervention, with 85% of Libyans saying that they strongly supported the action taken to remove the Ghadafi regime."

The Iraq war was a generational mistake and the US horribly bungled Afghanistan. We have barely any clear mission in Yemen and Syria and have supported authoritarian regimes against supposed terrorism across the Middle East causing horrible humanitarian disasters and irreparably damaging the US's legitimacy abroad. Libya is not even in the same league as these mistakes. It was a UN-backed mission with clear parameters that we achieved in a matter of months and the overwhelming support of the local population.

Yes, Libya has not had a good history since 2011. Once Gaddafi said that he would go alleyway by alleyway to eliminate anyone opposing his rule, this became practically inevitable. Had Obama stayed out of Libya, it would have become his Rwanda and people I'm sure would still be saying it was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

I get emotional about this one, so before I just type up a rant, I'll just post a link to this piece which I think makes the case better than I could:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/04/12/everyone-says-the-libya-intervention-was-a-failure-theyre-wrong/

Of course, Libya, as anyone can see, is a mess, and Americans are reasonably asking if the intervention was a mistake. But just because it’s reasonable doesn’t make it right.

Most criticisms of the intervention, even with the benefit of hindsight, fall short. It is certainly true that the intervention didn’t produce something resembling a stable democracy. This, however, was never the goal. The goal was to protect civilians and prevent a massacre.

Critics erroneously compare Libya today to any number of false ideals, but this is not the correct way to evaluate the success or failure of the intervention. To do that, we should compare Libya today to what Libya would have looked like if we hadn’t intervened. By that standard, the Libya intervention was successful: The country is better off today than it would have been had the international community allowed dictator Muammar Qaddafi to continue his rampage across the country.

Critics further assert that the intervention caused, created, or somehow led to civil war. In fact, the civil war had already started before the intervention began. As for today’s chaos, violence, and general instability, these are more plausibly tied not to the original intervention but to the international community’s failures after intervention.

The very fact that the Libya intervention and its legacy have been either distorted or misunderstood is itself evidence of a warped foreign policy discourse in the U.S., where anything short of success—in this case, Libya quickly becoming a stable, relatively democratic country—is viewed as a failure.

[Where's the Epstein Client List?]

Republicans hated Libya for the same reason they hated Bosnia.

"You want us to send our troops into harm's way to save a bunch of Muslims?"

[vitoNova]

Muammar Gaddafi actually killed US citizens in terrorist attacks.   Pan Am Flight 103 and the Berlin discotheque bombing come to mind. 

Obama made the correct call.  

Also, didn't Gaddafi start warming up to Bush around 2002/2003-ish?

Besides Barry Hussein being an illegal Kenyan immigrant, that was also probably a factor in the GOP getting the vapors.  

[หมูเด้ง]

Libya was the biggest mistake of Obama's presidency in more ways than one, and with Iraq already deeply unpopular across the board, it only made sense that a terrible fp decision by a Democrat would have led to increased isolationism in the GOP. It certainly helped in the campaign because Hillary was so intimately connected with everything in Libya. Of course, most Republicans (Paul and the 10% of other genuine paleocons aside) had no problem with Trump's actions in Iran in January, so who really knows?

Those dumb asses cost us Syria....but then again, there was nothing there to begin with but then again, there was the potential to form a very good alliance with the Kurds. What is Israel's take on the Kurds?

[Sir Mohamed]

They loved war until a black man was the one making the order.

This, 100%! You can basically run down a long list of issues where this is the case.

[RINO Tom]

They loved war until a black man was the one making the order.

This, 100%! You can basically run down a long list of issues where this is the case.

Yeah, or you could much more accurately replace "Black man" with "Democrat."

[Badger]

They loved war until a black man was the one making the order.

This, 100%! You can basically run down a long list of issues where this is the case.

Yeah, or you could much more accurately replace "Black man" with "Democrat."

Or even more accurately, "some of column a, and some of column B".

[HisGrace]

If the Republican base had their way we'd have nuked Iran a long time ago.

[Donald Trump’s Toupée]

Strictly speaking, conservatives by definition are more doves. This gets mangled as societies and eras change, but that’s the starting point.

Ronald Reagan straight through to GWB were neocons and very hawkish, which worked well in the Cold War but didn’t translate well to the War on Terror.

Obama was the start of the neo-liberal - more hawk. This has since carried through as we saw it with Hillary Clinton, too.

Now this is where it gets fun:

NeverTrumpers are essentially the neo-cons of the 1980s - 2010, they are teaming up with the neo-liberals in keeping with the hawkish approach.

Whereas, most Trump supporters are the once neo-cons (like me...), who see that that strategy can no longer feasibly apply. That the Democrats not of today, but of 2001 were the right ones.
 

[courts]

Strictly speaking, conservatives by definition are more doves. This gets mangled as societies and eras change, but that’s the starting point.

Ronald Reagan straight through to GWB were neocons and very hawkish, which worked well in the Cold War but didn’t translate well to the War on Terror.

Obama was the start of the neo-liberal - more hawk. This has since carried through as we saw it with Hillary Clinton, too.

Now this is where it gets fun:

NeverTrumpers are essentially the neo-cons of the 1980s - 2010, they are teaming up with the neo-liberals in keeping with the hawkish approach.

Whereas, most Trump supporters are the once neo-cons (like me...), who see that that strategy can no longer feasibly apply. That the Democrats not of today, but of 2001 were the right ones.
 

well, i don't think it's necessarily that black and white. even some of the neoconservatives were skeptical, or out right opposed to certain police actions in the clinton years. krauthammer opposed intervention in the yugoslav wars for example. also even among the neoconservatives i think there were some considerable disagreements, particularly after the cold war ended. someone like jeane kirkpatrick is pretty different from bill kristol or john bolton.

[Crumpets]

Libya was the biggest mistake of Obama's presidency in more ways than one, and with Iraq already deeply unpopular across the board, it only made sense that a terrible fp decision by a Democrat would have led to increased isolationism in the GOP. It certainly helped in the campaign because Hillary was so intimately connected with everything in Libya. Of course, most Republicans (Paul and the 10% of other genuine paleocons aside) had no problem with Trump's actions in Iran in January, so who really knows?

Those dumb asses cost us Syria....but then again, there was nothing there to begin with but then again, there was the potential to form a very good alliance with the Kurds. What is Israel's take on the Kurds?

My understanding is that they tolerate the US-YPG partnership but aren't super enthused about it given the YPG's history of working with the IRGC. There's probably some nuance I'm missing.

[darklordoftech]

They loved war until a black man was the one making the order.

This, 100%! You can basically run down a long list of issues where this is the case.

Yeah, or you could much more accurately replace "Black man" with "Democrat."

Or even more accurately, "some of column a, and some of column B".

And some of Column C: Libya was never talked about as an intervention for “national security” or for “patriotism”, but rather was talked about as just a humanitarian intervention, and there could be a bit of “Pentagon good, NATO bad” among some elements of the right.

[หมูเด้ง]

They loved war until a black man was the one making the order.

This, 100%! You can basically run down a long list of issues where this is the case.

Yeah, or you could much more accurately replace "Black man" with "Democrat."

Or even more accurately, "some of column a, and some of column B".

And some of Column C: Libya was never talked about as an intervention for “national security” or for “patriotism”, but rather was talked about as just a humanitarian intervention, and there could be a bit of “Pentagon good, NATO bad” among some elements of the right.

That there should be no war except for expanding direct American influence and no war for expanding America’s soft power because only a stronger realpolitik position is worth the extra postbellum obligations.

Though Obama did work diligently to try to lessen the costs of securing the periphery of the American sphere of influence. Drones, for example.

[The sturm und drang years]

Libya was the biggest mistake of Obama's presidency in more ways than one, and with Iraq already deeply unpopular across the board, it only made sense that a terrible fp decision by a Democrat would have led to increased isolationism in the GOP. It certainly helped in the campaign because Hillary was so intimately connected with everything in Libya. Of course, most Republicans (Paul and the 10% of other genuine paleocons aside) had no problem with Trump's actions in Iran in January, so who really knows?

Spoken like someone who has never talked to someone from Libya about the issue:

"According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2012, 75% of Libyans were in favor of the NATO intervention, compared to 22% who were opposed. A 2011 Orb International poll also found broad support for the intervention, with 85% of Libyans saying that they strongly supported the action taken to remove the Ghadafi regime."

The Iraq war was a generational mistake and the US horribly bungled Afghanistan. We have barely any clear mission in Yemen and Syria and have supported authoritarian regimes against supposed terrorism across the Middle East causing horrible humanitarian disasters and irreparably damaging the US's legitimacy abroad. Libya is not even in the same league as these mistakes. It was a UN-backed mission with clear parameters that we achieved in a matter of months and the overwhelming support of the local population.

Yes, Libya has not had a good history since 2011. Once Gaddafi said that he would go alleyway by alleyway to eliminate anyone opposing his rule, this became practically inevitable. Had Obama stayed out of Libya, it would have become his Rwanda and people I'm sure would still be saying it was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

I get emotional about this one, so before I just type up a rant, I'll just post a link to this piece which I think makes the case better than I could:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/04/12/everyone-says-the-libya-intervention-was-a-failure-theyre-wrong/

Of course, Libya, as anyone can see, is a mess, and Americans are reasonably asking if the intervention was a mistake. But just because it’s reasonable doesn’t make it right.

Most criticisms of the intervention, even with the benefit of hindsight, fall short. It is certainly true that the intervention didn’t produce something resembling a stable democracy. This, however, was never the goal. The goal was to protect civilians and prevent a massacre.

Critics erroneously compare Libya today to any number of false ideals, but this is not the correct way to evaluate the success or failure of the intervention. To do that, we should compare Libya today to what Libya would have looked like if we hadn’t intervened. By that standard, the Libya intervention was successful: The country is better off today than it would have been had the international community allowed dictator Muammar Qaddafi to continue his rampage across the country.

Critics further assert that the intervention caused, created, or somehow led to civil war. In fact, the civil war had already started before the intervention began. As for today’s chaos, violence, and general instability, these are more plausibly tied not to the original intervention but to the international community’s failures after intervention.

The very fact that the Libya intervention and its legacy have been either distorted or misunderstood is itself evidence of a warped foreign policy discourse in the U.S., where anything short of success—in this case, Libya quickly becoming a stable, relatively democratic country—is viewed as a failure.

Spoken like someone who gets all their information from Washington, D.C. foreign policy elites:

https://youtu.be/UcbG-q5qy24

The United States destroyed Libya. We were given a Security Council Resolution to impose a no-fly zone to protect the people of Benghazi, and we proceeded to violently bomb and overthrow the Gaddafi regime. This didn't have to happen. Comparing his threats against Benghazi to Rwanda is absurd. Gaddafi always talked a big game because he was a blustering maniac, but he wasn't about to commit genocide in Benghazi - what ethnic groups were there to target? Why not invade Sudan instead, where there was an actual genocide going on in Darfur?

The principle of sovereignty is a precious thing, and it has kept the world in a period of unprecedented peace for the past 75 years. Every time the US invades or bombs another country because we feel like it, or because Raytheon wants to sell us some new jets, that principle is eroded. I don't want to live in a world where constant warfare between nations is the new (old) normal again, do you? Libya didn't attack anyone, we did. It wasn't 1991 and there was no Kuwait to be saved.

Furthermore, we lose all credibility when we launch aggressive wars like these. Who are we to scold Russia for invading Georgia and Ukraine when we've invaded Iraq and Libya? According to the US government, Russia's invasions are uniquely awful and worthy of sanction package after sanction package. But whose invasions have killed more people and destabilized more countries? Not Russia's.

I digress, but the main point shouldn't be lost here. Because of America, Libya has been in a state of utter chaos and civil war for a decade. Literal slave markets have reappeared. The warlord Khalifa Haftar is looking to make himself the new Gaddafi. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, and for nothing. Thanks, Obama.

Muammar Gaddafi actually killed US citizens in terrorist attacks.   Pan Am Flight 103 and the Berlin discotheque bombing come to mind. 

Obama made the correct call. 

Also, didn't Gaddafi start warming up to Bush around 2002/2003-ish?

Besides Barry Hussein being an illegal Kenyan immigrant, that was also probably a factor in the GOP getting the vapors. 

That was in the 1980s, and Ronald Reagan responded with missile strikes. Gaddafi learned his lesson and had stopped sponsoring terrorism a decade before the events of 2011, as you note. He posed no threat to the United States or the international community. But you know who was still supporting Al-Qaeda? Omar al-Bashir, and he was committing genocide in Darfur. Why not kill him instead?

Libya was the biggest mistake of Obama's presidency in more ways than one, and with Iraq already deeply unpopular across the board, it only made sense that a terrible fp decision by a Democrat would have led to increased isolationism in the GOP. It certainly helped in the campaign because Hillary was so intimately connected with everything in Libya. Of course, most Republicans (Paul and the 10% of other genuine paleocons aside) had no problem with Trump's actions in Iran in January, so who really knows?

Those dumb asses cost us Syria....but then again, there was nothing there to begin with but then again, there was the potential to form a very good alliance with the Kurds. What is Israel's take on the Kurds?

We never should have been in Syria in the first place. The CIA's secret funneling of billions of dollars to the "moderate rebels" via Timber Sycamore is one of the main reasons Syria became as awful as it did. ISIS would not have created their caliphate without the chaos we helped foment in Syria. Essentially, we were copying the Operation Cyclone strategy we used for 1980s Afghanistan. You know, the one that led to the rise of the Taliban and allowed Al-Qaeda to launch attacks on us from there. Not a smart move if you're looking to avoid another 9/11. Also pretty sucky for the hundreds of thousands to millions of people who have died in Afghanistan and Syria as a result of our policies.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Obama gave endless wars that new fresh face for Democrats.

[darklordoftech]

NeverTrumpers are essentially the neo-cons of the 1980s - 2010, they are teaming up with the neo-liberals in keeping with the hawkish approach.

Whereas, most Trump supporters are the once neo-cons (like me...), who see that that strategy can no longer feasibly apply. That the Democrats not of today, but of 2001 were the right ones.
 

Yet neocons have consistently been anti-Iran since 1979, and Trump has clearly been more anti-Iran than Obama, Hillary, or Biden.

[R.P. McM]

NeverTrumpers are essentially the neo-cons of the 1980s - 2010, they are teaming up with the neo-liberals in keeping with the hawkish approach.

Whereas, most Trump supporters are the once neo-cons (like me...), who see that that strategy can no longer feasibly apply. That the Democrats not of today, but of 2001 were the right ones.
 

Yet neocons have consistently been anti-Iran since 1979, and Trump has clearly been more anti-Iran than Obama, Hillary, or Biden.

I think the crux of the issue is that neoconservatives — many of whom have endorsed Biden — generally have a consistent, principled perspective on foreign affairs. I don't agree with Samuel Huffington, but he's no ignoramus. Most Trumpists (aka, Republicans), on the other hand, are authoritarians and tribalists. So the viewpoint they're currently professing is subject to change, depending on which party is advocating what.

[Sumner 1868]

I really don't any sign of the GOP became less hawkish under Obama. As late as 2014, polling found consistently that Republican's were screaming for extreme military actions against ISIS and a harsher tone toward Russia.  And just look up any Breitbart/WND article or Fox News piece from 2014-2015 about Russia. The difference is, well, stark.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/10/22/support-for-u-s-campaign-against-isis-doubts-about-its-effectiveness-objectives/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/181553/isis-terrorism-seen-graver-threats-russia-ukraine.aspx



2016 really did destroy a lot of old right-wing assumptions. In turn, Democrats and liberal media outlets that favor them have gotten way more hawkish. Case in point:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-romney-russia_n_5028810

[Statilius the Epicurean]

ctrl+f 'china' 0 results

It's not really sustainable to paint the GOP base as 'dovish' compared to Democrats when the Trump administration is intent on starting a cold war with China that will define US foreign policy for a generation or more. Actually quite absurd that this hasn't been mentioned at all in favour of discussion of an irrelevant no-fly zone in Libya as defining hawkishness in 2020.



I've had this argument with leftists on Twitter also, when I ask if the military budget cuts they want mean they're OK with abandoning Taiwan to the PRC their brains short-circuit because they can only conceive of US foreign policy in the context of Middle East adventures.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I really don't any sign of the GOP became less hawkish under Obama. As late as 2014, polling found consistently that Republican's were screaming for extreme military actions against ISIS and a harsher tone toward Russia.  And just look up any Breitbart/WND article or Fox News piece from 2014-2015 about Russia. The difference is, well, stark.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/10/22/support-for-u-s-campaign-against-isis-doubts-about-its-effectiveness-objectives/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/181553/isis-terrorism-seen-graver-threats-russia-ukraine.aspx



2016 really did destroy a lot of old right-wing assumptions. In turn, Democrats and liberal media outlets that favor them have gotten way more hawkish. Case in point:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-romney-russia_n_5028810

I didn't have a favorable view of Russia and yet also really don't like it when either party just yells Russia like its still the 20th century.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

I don’t think it was Libya. I think it was ISIS. ISIS showed us that you don’t just get sunshine and rainbows when you take out a tyrannical fascist dictatorship. You get a power vacuum that can be filled with someone worse. We could see this in Republicans’ reluctance to arm rebels in Syria.

[ilivlit]

It's Dubya rather than Libya