[adventured]

> Obama was trying to stear the boat a different way, but he didn't have the support of the legislative bodies which made it their job to give him hell no matter what.

No he wasn't. He went after journalists in the most vicious way since Nixon. His intelligence services violated privacy in the US on a scale never seen before in the country. He attempted to invade Syria and de facto ended up doing exactly that, starting new wars across the Middle East. He didn't do a damn thing different, he was just another President in the White House committing new atrocities, like the guy before him. Then on the way out the door he sent the FBI after his replacement, in a pre-staged attempted coup. Dirty as can be.

People try to pretty up the Obama Administration years, because he's a fan favorite. I get it, he's a lot more likable than Bush or Trump; he's more composed, smoother, and smarter. It's all a con, all the way down to the fraudulent Nobel Peace Prize he apparently got ahead of time for destroying Syria and Libya. His Presidency was a travesty filled with many acts of extraordinary evil. There should have been a Syria death counter every night on CNN, but the left didn't have the integrity to do it to one of their own.

[mola]

Sorry, but that's lazy thinking. I used the term steer the boat for a reason. He was in charge of a huge system with its own momentum expecting a change of the sort you want is just silly. US abandoning all the fronts he had would've been disasterous for everyone. Regarding syria, the Syrian situation was in full swing without Obama's US involvement. The ISIS situation and Iran fighting along side Assad is a direct reprocussion of the bush invasion of Iraq. Obama did everything he could not to have forces inside syria, that's why russia and Iran established forces there. Just compare US involvement in Syria, to it's involvement in iraq and afghanistan. If anything, you could blame him for not doing enough to ward off Iran Assad and Russia.

Your type of delusional perfectionism will deter any leader who tries to follow your moral compass while keeping in touch with reality. We will be left only with assholes in charge, because they don't give a fuck what you think.

[bigbizisverywyz]

>Your type of delusional perfectionism will deter any leader who tries to follow your moral compass while keeping in touch with reality. We will be left only with assholes in charge, because they don't give a fuck what you think.

Thank you very much for that great phrase to describe so much of politics today 'delusional perfectionism', and which might explain a lot of the aggressive antagonism towards the media from US and UK today (and probably others).

>We will be left only with assholes in charge, because they don't give a fuck what you think.

Which I think perfectly describes Trump, and to a large degree Johnson in the UK, but also Modi on India and Erdogan who have moved themselves out of the way of all criticism.

[rusticpenn]

There is a lot of perspective missing here. Libya was in total chaos before US or France began supporting the civilians. The support from US (and France) was welcome at that time and was a huge relief to the civilians there.

I am not sure how he destroyed Syria. The whole resistance was part of the Arab Spring. It was a mixture of unhappiness with the dictatorship and the food scarcity outside of the cities. The involvement from outside powers came in very late and mostly were half hearted approaches (except the Russians).

Obama is not perfect, and during his reign, journalism and whistleblowers were affected a lot. He also had other issues but these were not part of them.

[csomar]

> Libya was in total chaos before US or France began supporting the civilians.

You got it all backward comrade. Libya was just fine before France and the US intervened. Sure the infrastructure and liberties were not there, but that's kinda the theme of the region.

Actually Libya was going on a "revolution" as Gaddafi was delegating his powers to his son who was interested in liberalizing the economy , building infrastructure and giving people more freedom.

It all went downhill and now it's a hotbed for ISIS and friends.

[rusticpenn]

> You got it all backward comrade. Libya was just fine before France and the US intervened. Sure the infrastructure and liberties were not there, but that's kinda the theme of the region.

Here is a link to the civil war (Arab spring) before the involvement of other countries. I can find more if needed.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/happening...

[csomar]

Unlike Tunisia, Libya had a strict and brutal dictatorship. Someone armed the people and France did intervene militarily to make them win. Otherwise, they'll be dead now and Libya would still have the same ruler.

I know because I live in Tunisia and the previous president did authorize moving arms to rebels through the country.

[fit2rule]

Libya didn't have open slave markets until the US and the French decided to bomb the shit out of their society, then send in billions of dollars to fund insurgents, and then arm those insurgents and let them promote their hateful ideology, in order to 'weaken the Middle East'.

Don't even try not to own up to that fact. Everyone who has been counting the piles of smoking rubble the US and its allies leave around the place, know just how much nicer things were before Americans decided to drop bombs on people they think the world doesn't care about.

[rusticpenn]

I am not American and dont live in USA. I was following the events in Arab Spring very closely even before USA was involved. It was expected that the situation will get worse before it got better when/if the dictators went down.

[luckylion]

... and then it never did. I mean, if we don't set a timer on it, I'm sure they will, eventually. But "in 2155, Aliens shared their wisdom with humanity and it lead to global peace, which also included Libya" shouldn't be attributed to the NATO intervention.

The direct, immediate consequences (that is: the current state) have to be attributed to the intervention. Some consider the belief "hey, we'll just bomb it and everybody will love each other and it'll be great" naivete bordering on retardation, but I think "we really didn't know any better" has to be ruled out after repeated use. At some point even a toddler learns not to put their hand on the hot stove, unless pain is their goal.

[rusticpenn]

I am sure Libyan citizens would have led a better life ( compared to today) without the civil war. NATO did not start the war. If anything, It helped it end faster, with lesser loss of life. The choice was made by the civilians.

> On 19 February, several days after the conflict began, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi announced the creation of a commission of inquiry into the violence, chaired by a Libyan judge, as reported on state television. He stated that the commission was intended to be "for members of Libyan and foreign organizations of human rights" and that it will "investigate the circumstances and events that have caused many victims."[137] Caricature of Gaddafi, Al Bayda, April 2011

> Towards the end of February, it was reported that the Gaddafi government had suppressed protests in Tripoli by distributing automobiles, money and weapons for hired followers to drive around Tripoli and attack people showing signs of dissent.[182] In Tripoli, "death squads" of mercenaries and Revolutionary Committees members reportedly patrolled the streets and shot people who tried to take the dead off the streets or gather in groups.[183] The International Federation for Human Rights concluded on 24 February that Gaddafi was implementing a scorched earth strategy. The organization stated that "It is reasonable to fear that he has, in fact, decided to largely eliminate, wherever he still can, Libyan citizens who stood up against his regime and furthermore, to systematically and indiscriminately repress civilians. These acts can be characterized as crimes against humanity, as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court."[184]

> In May 2011, International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo estimated that 500–700 people were killed by security forces in February 2011, before the rebels took up arms. According to Moreno-Ocampo, "shooting at protesters was systematic".[185]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)

This was getting worse before NATO tried to intervene.

If you want to know what happens when the world does not interfere, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_killing_of_Bengali_intell...

[luckylion]

> If you want to know what happens when the world does not interfere, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_killing_of_Bengali_intell....

> Deaths 1,111

That's kind of the point. Was Gaddhafi a great guy? I don't think so. Was he in control? Yeah. Was Libya, and, by extension, the region stable with him in control? Yeah. Did we destabilize the region and create the circumstances for ISIS to flourish, open chattel slavery etc? Yeah. Was that predictable? Yeah, very much so.

I tend to see dictators like Gaddhafi more like a necessary evil. Kind of like an amputation to save the whole. Yes, it sucks losing your foot. But losing your life sucks a whole lot more. The NATO approach is ostensibly "we can't accept this patient losing a foot, and if the patient dies, then so be it, at least we tried to to do the right thing™".

It rarely works, and at some point I question whether the stated goal is really the intention or the -often witnessed- side-effects of regional destabilization, endless civil wars etc are the actual intended effect. That would change two things: a) the missions would be successful, explaining why we're repeating them with the same play book time and time again and b) we don't have to assume that the tens of thousands of analysts we're paying to analyze things and make smart plans are imbeciles, incapable of learning from the past.

[gamblor956]

I think you need to reread all of US history.

Hoover and Nixon committed worse privacy violations than Obama. Also, he never tried to invade Syria. And he didn't send the FBI after Trump, presidents don't have that authority.

[dependenttypes]

Not only did they brought Libya to ruin but they also gave arms to the radical Islamists that they ended up fighting later on. There was also the issue with ICE and the killer drones too. The only difference between a two-party system and a single-party system is the illusion of choice.