Just posted a comment at The Huffington Post, “Russia’s European Game in Syria” – repeat of my plan, lol. The author of this fear-mongering piece is Bernard Henri Lévy, a French intellectual sort, who promoted intervention in Bosnia to prevent genocide and also in Libya, after talking to rebels in Benghazi, you know, that Libyan city of Jeffersonian democrats in the making (NOT), the likes of who killed our ambassador and three other Americans. Lévy’s Wikipedia entry offers this take:
In March 2011, he engaged in talks with Libyan rebels in Benghazi, and publicly promoted the international acknowledgement of the recently formed National Transitional Council.[23][24] Later that month, worried about the 2011 Libyan civil war, he prompted and then supported Nicolas Sarkozy‘s seeking to persuade Washington, and ultimately the United Nations, to intervene in Libya to prevent a massacre in Benghazi.
These Benghazi rebels are the likes of the type Madame Secretary Clinton wanted to protect from Gaddafi. Jack Cashill at the American Thinker wrote an excellent dissection of “Hillary’s Genocide Lie”, which debunks Monsieur Lévy’s genocide claims. Now, I have not gone to Benghazi and talked to the rebels there, but assuredly, our open source intelligence reporting indicates they are Islamist/Al Qaeda types, so I leave that to you to decide. Of course, Madame Secretary states lots of stuff that turns out to be lies, like she blamed the 2012 attack on our embassy in Benghazi on a YouTube video. Cashill writes:
In fact, Qaddafi did not attack peaceful protesters. The rebels started the violence, and Qaddafi responded. Barely six weeks after the rebellion started, Qaddafi had all but suppressed it at the cost of about one thousand lives. Then Obama authorized NATO intervention. That intervention prolonged the war seven months and cost roughly seven thousand more lives. At war’s end, rebels killed scores of the former enemy in reprisal killings and exiled some 30,000 black Africans.
During the insurrection, the Obama administration had been funneling money to Qatar to help arm Libyans rebels. As the Times reported more than a year after the fact, “The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.” After the fall of Qaddafi, these groups refused to disarm and continued to resist government authority.
In the midst of this mess, in early April 2011, American special representative Christopher Stevens arrived in Libya on board a Greek freighter. His job was to research the various groups involved in the Qaddafi opposition and report back to Washington. His bosses at State and in the White House would reward his loyalty and courage with the most disturbing lies of their relentlessly dishonest careers.
Needing to blame something for Stevens’ death other than the administration’s fatally befuddled foreign policy, Hillary Clinton sent a memo the very evening Stevens was murdered indicting “inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/hillarys_genocide_lie.html#ixzz3odvJYBi7
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So, let’s look at what we knew about Benghazi when Hillary opined about her fear of “genocide” in Libya and those poor rebels Monsieur Lévy talks about. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point acquired Al Qaeda records from Iraq in 2007, referred to as the Sinjar Records, captured by American troops in Iraq. These records provide important glimpses into al Baghdadi’s terrorist enterprise(Al Qaeda in Iraq, now the Islamic State) and while these records are just a glimpse, some interesting information on “foreign fighters” emerged. Those records show that:
Almost 19 percent of the fighters in the Sinjar Records came from Libya alone. Furthermore, Libya contributed far more fighters per capita than any other nationality in the Sinjar Records, including Saudi Arabia (pages 8-9)
and
The vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their hometown in the Sinjar Records resided in the country’s Northeast, particularly the coastal cities of Darnah 60.2% (53) and Benghazi 23.9% (21). (page 11)
You form your own conclusions, but I suggest you dig into the open source reporting and I assuredly would like the names of the rebels and their groups in Libya, whom Monsieur Lévy deemed as poor freedom fighters in Benghazi warranting US intervention to “prevent genocide”, as he and Madame Secretary claim. Her ability to ascertain reliable intelligence seems highly questionable.
Here’s the comment I posted at the Huffington Post (similar as my other comments posted at other sites, so just skip it, if you’re following my blog):
There’s this delusional trapped thinking that paralyzes so many of these academic strategic analysts, who only talk to other like-minded insular thinkers. No new ideas, no bold moves, just regurgitated, echo-chamber nonsense. So, try this on for size – if Assad falls, ISIS will seize control of all of Syria. This will be a seismic event for the “Caliphate” and IT will encourage more radical extremism, because nothing encourages followers more than being on a winning team. It motivates people to sign up.
Dennis Ross, Michael O’Hanlon, the Obama administration, and the neocon contingent in America argue the exact opposite. They say Assad staying will encourage more jihadists, but here’s the catch, the only way to avoid ISIS seizing control of all of Syria is for someone to fight ISIS and the Russians have put together an alliance to do that.
The reality on the ground determines the options available -a smart strategist should try to seize this opportunity for America to change course, talk to the Russians – work out a coordinated effort to defeat ISIS and guess what, if we act, a lot of the Arab leaders will gravitate toward the US alliance, because they will want to counter the Iranian influence. Balancing the push and pull from both sides of the Shia/Sunni divide will be easier to work out with the Russians than with the Shias and Sunnis frankly.
We do not need to become BFFs with Putin, but we must act and since Russia is acting, ISIS will retreat back into Iraq. We should prepare to cut them off at the pass and that means coordinating and informing the Russians and our ME allies of OUR PLANS. We maintain total control and decision-making over our decisions. The hand-wringers have no plan, only imaginary safe zones, Cold War era fear-mongering, and unreliable maps
(http://libertybellediaries.com… from the Institute for the Study of War, which feed the Obama narrative (LIES). The real threat to America is not Putin, it’s this administration and their strategic paralysis!
Saber-rattling about Stalin,Communism, and the Cold War gets us nowhere! Putin is propping up Assad. If Assad falls, ISIS will gain total control over Syria, while the West blabbers about war crimes. The only way to allow a political process or international pressure to impact Assad is for some stability to return to Syria and then let the good folks in Brussels rally the world to that cause. Putin might be inclined to sacrifice Assad if there’s a Russia-friendly regime in Syria to replace Assad. Syria has been a Russian client state for 40 years, so Syria remaining a Russian client state changes little. We’ve got humanitarian interventionist on one hand wailing about genocide and geopolitical Cold War era strategists having an apoplexy over Russian replacing the U.S. as the geopolitical world power in the region, yet neither side has any plan to deal with Syria if Assad falls – which will be another mess like Libya – another power vacuum, which radical jihadists are the only ones on the ground ready to fill.
We need to keep our eyes on REGIONAL STABILITY, which benefits everyone, except ISIS and other jihadist nutjobs. Power vacuums are a more immediate threat to American national security than Russian long-range grand strategy moves. With Obama and Kerry at the helm, we can not do anything about countering that, but we could make a strong strategic move to fight ISIS in Iraq, while Russia shakes that center of gravity in Syria. In the process, we might be able to redeem some American credibility with our allies in the region.
Let the Cold War die – look ahead and try to think of a different approach!
http://libertybellediaries.com
libertybelle diaries 