- 30/06/2025
Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? (2024)
When Gaddafi declared his intention to 'disinfect' Benghazi, Obama faced a dilemma, having previously told the younger Arab generation 'you, more than anyone, have the ability to remake this world'.
When Gaddafi declared his intention to 'disinfect' Benghazi, Obama faced a dilemma, having previously told the younger Arab generation 'you, more than anyone, have the ability to remake this world'.
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00:00I had come down to Washington after the 9-11 attacks because I wanted to be
00:08involved in foreign policy and how we responded to this. I ended up getting to
00:13work on these two enormous projects that kind of did an autopsy on 9-11, the 9-11
00:20Commission, and then the Iraq War, the Iraq Study Group. So the twin catastrophes
00:25really of American foreign policy in the early 2000s, I had this front-row seat
00:30in my 20s. And I got progressively angry as I was participating in these because
00:37the scale of the incompetence of the Iraq War, I had trouble almost getting my
00:45mind around it, right? And the fact that all these people that I had kind of grown
00:51up thinking that these people knew better what to do in the world. Hillary
00:55Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, all voted for this complete and utter disaster. So
01:04then comes Barack Obama. He had been against the war in Iraq. He basically
01:11predicted everything that was going to happen. And beyond that, he represented to
01:16me generational change. And so as soon as Obama came on the scene in 2004, I thought,
01:20well, this is the guy who can, who can turn over a new page.
01:32The Western world has been freed of the evil forces.
01:36We're the nation that liberated continents, concentration camps, and the death camps
01:41still bear witness that evil is real and must be opposed. Decent people must never remain
01:48silent and inactive in times of moral crisis. The torch has been passed to a new generation
01:54to a new generation of Americans unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights
02:03to which this nation has always been committed. It is easy to say never again, but much harder to make it so.
02:12The Northern nation has made the advancement of human rights and dignity so central to its foreign policy.
02:17Because it's central to who we are as Americans.
02:21America truly is the world's indispensable nation.
02:25The one indispensable nation in world affairs.
02:28A shining city on a hill where all things are possible.
02:33We can make a difference. And we will do it. We are Americans.
02:40Never forget. Never again.
02:43When I first met Barack Obama, it was my book, A Problem From Hell, I guess, that had caused him to reach out.
03:04It was just a great meeting of the minds.
03:09I was curious about what he thought about the use of force because he had spoken out against the Iraq War.
03:16But I wondered when he drew the distinction between dumb wars and other kinds of wars, necessary wars,
03:23I wondered what side of the line Bosnia would fall or Rwanda would fall.
03:30What most moved Barack Obama, of course, was the war in Iraq.
03:34And it was the human consequences for two sets of actors.
03:37I mean, first, the U.S. troops who he was watching come home in coffins or come home amputated.
03:44And then, of course, the Iraqis themselves who suffered so terribly by virtue of this bungled war.
03:50So with that as his impetus, he then looks and he reads my book and he thinks, oh, okay, and this is a systemic issue, right?
03:59In that the welfare of humans is just too rarely absent from decision-making discussions. And that has to change.
04:09People of the world, will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?
04:21Will we give meaning to the words never again in Darfur?
04:26People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time.
04:41He was new. He was young. And he was coming into national politics with a kind of very hopeful view.
04:54And it's hard to spend time with him and not share that feeling. It's very infectious.
04:59Tonight, tonight, tonight I say to the people of America, this moment, this election, is our chance to keep the American promise alive.
05:14We have breaking news. We now estimate that Senator Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.
05:35This is a historic moment.
05:44I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear.
05:49Obama came in, I think, with a sincere interest in trying to restart, try to show a different face in particular to the Arab and Islamic world.
06:01Iraq and Afghanistan cast a large shadow over American foreign policy over the new administration at the beginning of 2009.
06:08I think he wanted to demonstrate that he was going to try to approach this region in a way that was different from at least the image that the Bush 43 administration had developed.
06:20President Obama's highly anticipated speech in Cairo.
06:23President Obama's historic speech to the Muslim world.
06:26Offering a friendly hand.
06:27...to reach out to the Muslim world.
06:29I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.
06:41One based on mutual respect.
06:44America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, but I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things.
06:56The ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed.
07:03These are not just American ideas.
07:05They are human rights.
07:07And that is why we will support them everywhere.
07:12And I want to particularly say this to young people.
07:15You, more than anyone, have the ability to reimagine the world.
07:21To remake this world.
07:29Thank you very much.
07:42Less than 18 months later, young Arabs began to remake their world.
07:50In a backwater town of southern Tunisia, a 26-year-old vegetable peddler named Mohamed Bouazizi had grown furious at government corruption.
08:00He pushed his cart in front of the mayor's office, doused his clothes with lighter fluid, and set himself on fire.
08:07The match was easy struck, killed him, and plunged the entire region into flames.
08:17In the first of the cascading uprisings that became the Arab Spring, thousands of Tunisians descended on government ministries, bearing signs declaring, yes we can.
08:27After less than a month, dictator Zayn al-Abidin bin Ali, 23 years in power, fled to Saudi Arabia.
08:38Less than two weeks later, four Egyptians had set themselves on fire.
08:42Millions of protesters had taken to the streets and set up vast resistance camps in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
08:54This is real. This is real. I did not believe that this was going to happen ever.
08:59We've already won. Even if there's surprises this time, we're still going to win.
09:02Hosni Mubarak, in power for almost three decades, and long the United States' most important Arab ally, was forced to leave office.
09:11In what seemed no time at all, Libyans had taken to the streets, challenging their long-time dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.
09:22Thousands gather near Albaida main mosque in northeastern Libya.
09:34Protesters, outside a police station in Benghazi.
09:37In Benghazi, that is Libya's second largest city.
09:42In Benghazi, an ongoing battle, more chaos and the sound of light.
09:47If it's an internal or an external conspiracy, we'll erase it. If it's a military conspiracy, we'll erase it.
09:56We'll erase it by the Libyan people and the Libyan tribes who gather together in one army to liberate every Libyan inch from the enemies.
10:08When Libya started to go, it was one of these places we just hadn't spent much time on Libya.
10:13So, there was a lot of shifting of intelligence assets, there was a lot of information gathering about what is really going on here, and where is it going to go?
10:22We didn't have a core of expertise, we didn't have a lot of diplomats who had served there. Libya was still a relatively remote and closed country to Americans.
10:37So, we relied very much on what we were hearing from our allies and partners. We were relying on what we were hearing from the press.
10:44We were relying on what we were hearing from the press.
10:45We were forcing the opposition to withdraw further into the heart.
10:50More than the alien people are deaf.
10:52Told Al Jazeera of what they call a massacre on Saturday.
10:56Qadhafi's forces are definitely moving forward now. We're behind the turn of the press.
10:59Amid the fighting and revolutionary fervor, many of these reports were little more than rumors and wildly exaggerated gossip.
11:07Often, they came from Libyans who were eager for the West to intervene.
11:12What is happening there is a massacre?
11:14There are large-scale deaths. They are women. They are children. They're not fighters.
11:19We are very afraid. I am talking to Mr. Obama. Please help us.
11:29Qadhafi had been a villain for the West for a quarter century.
11:34In April 1986, Libyan intelligence planted a bomb in a Berlin nightclub frequented by American servicemen.
11:42Three people were killed and 229 injured.
11:46President Ronald Reagan retaliated by bombing Tripoli, killing Qadhafi's young son, and just missing the Libyan leader himself.
11:59Libyan intelligence struck back by planting a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
12:08With his wild rhetoric, outlandish costumes, and unhinged behavior,
12:18Muammar Gadhafi had become the model of the out-of-control mad dog Middle Eastern terrorist.
12:23After the attacks of September 11th, the Libyans handed over elements of their nuclear program to the Americans and relations slowly began to improve.
12:33Still, to most Americans, the name, Gadhafi, meant mass murderer.
12:40Who had al-Qadhafi? Who had al-Qadhafi? Who had al-Qadhafi? Who had al-Qadhafi?
12:45The United States and the entire world continues to be outraged by the appalling violence against the Libyan people.
12:52The violence must stop.
12:54If part of what President Obama brought into office was a real appreciation of the idea that we can't narrow our choices between doing nothing and sending in the Marines,
13:14Libya in the early weeks was an exemplar of how, I think, how to lead the world, frankly.
13:21What resources do we devote that are going to be affected?
13:25Because what the meetings in the Situation Room looked like were the President himself banging the table and saying,
13:30OK, what tools do we have? What are our levers?
13:33The Treasury Department coming forward and saying, OK, he's got $30 billion plus in New York banks.
13:39We could freeze his $30 billion. OK, who are the individuals around him who are responsible for this brutality against civilians that's being exacted right now?
13:49OK, intelligence community. A list.
13:50A list. You know, for an issue of mass atrocities to get elevated and to generate robust, swift action, it was incredible.
14:01But then the problem is he just keeps attacking his people.
14:05Just and so here you've done everything right.
14:08Every non-military tool in the toolbox has been deployed and they are not working.
14:14It's been a wild 24 hours in Libya.
14:18Walmart Gaddafi has made it clear he's not going without a fight.
14:22And there were some fierce fights as he tried to take back parts of eastern Libya from the rebels.
14:26Forces literally running from the scene because they say in recent days Gaddafi has been using air superiority, ground superiority.
14:33And they say they definitely need help.
14:34One opposition fighter described a massacre.
14:37It's terrible that the situation is actually slaughtered.
14:39While injuries from the gun battle filled the local hospital.
14:44It's a massacre right now, it's a massacre.
14:46How can you people just watch us getting killed?
14:52The people of the people of the people of the people of the people of the people of the people of the people of the people of the people of the people of the people.
15:05I thought he meant it.
15:07I thought he intended to launch a genocidal assault.
15:13We know that he was a leader who had no regard for his own people.
15:20So I had every reason to believe that he was going to do what he said he would do.
15:24President Obama was worried.
15:32We had 150,000 troops in Iraq.
15:35We had almost over 100,000 in Afghanistan.
15:39I think he felt the country was tired of the wars we were in.
15:42And to suddenly now have Libya break out and the possibility that we would again be enmeshed in another war in the Middle East just was something he just did not want to see happen.
15:56The United States acting alone would be stepping into a situation whose consequences are unforeseeable.
16:07It's easy for people to say, do this, do that.
16:10And then they turn and say, OK, U.S., go do it.
16:13You had said that you want to see Gaddafi leave power, leave office.
16:20Are you prepared to use any means necessary in the United States government to make that happen?
16:24Any time I send the United States forces into a potentially hostile situation, there are risks involved.
16:31But let me be as clear as I can about the desired outcome from our perspective, and that is that Gaddafi stepped down.
16:42Obama had proclaimed his desired outcome.
16:46But would he be able to persuade the world to protect Libyans from their own army?
16:51The United Nations had taken on itself in 2005 a responsibility to protect, a global commitment to protect civilians from grave harm.
17:04The crisis in Libya would be its first real-world test.
17:08R2P, as it was known, directed that when a government failed to protect its own citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the world must take collective action to protect them.
17:28The commitment was born in blood after the international community had done little to stop genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan.
17:39Since the five major powers had a veto in the Security Council, their disagreements often prevented collective action.
17:47This time, the international community seemed prepared to act.
17:53Regardless of any president, we want to protect the civilian population in Libya.
17:59Secretary Clinton went to the Elysée Palace and sat down one-on-one with Nicolas Sarkozy.
18:10He was extremely agitated about what was happening and what might happen in Benghazi and about the absolute, unshakable, undeniable need for France and the United States and the United Kingdom to go do something about it right away.
18:26And he basically said to Secretary Clinton, even if you choose not to go, we're going.
18:34The French and the British viewed Libya as a direct threat to them.
18:38I think the Europeans were afraid, as they had good reason to be, we now know, from waves of migrants.
18:44The French and the Italians were worried about control over the oil fields because they had stakes in those oil fields.
18:52In Libya, at the moment, it's a tragedy.
18:55Mr. Gaddafi must leave.
18:59There's no ambiguity in the matter.
19:02Colonel Gaddafi must go.
19:03His regime is illegitimate.
19:05What it is doing to his people is completely unacceptable.
19:08In nearby Benghazi, reports of casualties running high.
19:13The city's hospitals seemed overwhelmed and more are still coming.
19:18Colonel Gaddafi's forces are pushing east.
19:20They seem unstoppable.
19:22Preparing to take back with brutal forces.
19:25Territory lost in recent days.
19:27The regime claims that within two days, these troops would be in Benghazi.
19:31The road to Benghazi now lies before them.
19:40The ancient city of Benghazi, Libya's second largest, had been the birthplace of the rebellion,
19:46and of the main opposition group, the National Transitional Council.
19:51For Gaddafi, Benghazi was the beating heart of the rebellion.
19:55To hold onto power, he had to pluck out that heart.
20:01The time pressure was enormous.
20:07Military intervention is a very hard call for a president to make.
20:12Here, we started that process thinking,
20:17we've got some time to be able to execute this.
20:20And then town after town fell.
20:22Fast. Really fast.
20:25Within days.
20:26And days in the life of a presidential decision to use military force is an instant.
20:32He was knocking on the doorstep of Benghazi.
20:39We were witnessing the fact that there was obviously increased pressure being placed on Benghazi,
20:45including the deployment of additional forces toward it.
20:47And it was largely a defenseless city with scores of defenseless women and children.
20:57And throughout the course of the week, the president demanded that his National Security Council debate policy options.
21:03What happens on March 15th is that the president convenes his National Security Cabinet and a few backbenchers like myself.
21:17And he is being set up to weigh in on something that the British and the French are pushing, which is a no fly zone.
21:24And that's basically going to be the sum total of the meeting to weigh in on whether or not there should be a no fly zone.
21:31The president opens up the meeting and he's not in a good mood.
21:36I remember the meeting very clearly.
21:40The meeting begins with a briefing from the intelligence community.
21:44And there's a map in front of everybody.
21:45And there's a dot on the map, Benghazi.
21:50And then you can see the progression of Gaddafi's forces.
21:54And they're in a town called Ajabiya.
21:56And it is explained to us that this is kind of the last stop on the way to Benghazi.
22:00And from this position, they can cut off the city and then move in and just, Gaddafi said, they're going to go door to door and kill people like rats.
22:07The president says, OK, so you want me to weigh in on this no fly zone that the British and the French are pushing.
22:15So roughly what portion of attacks are being carried out by air?
22:21Briefer, negligible, sir.
22:24So he's like, seriously?
22:27They're moving on the ground here, you know, so we can be flying planes up in the air, but like they'll just go into Benghazi and kill everybody.
22:33And so Obama's like, well, we're not even debating this.
22:37And I remember, you know, going around the table and Obama's literally asking people, should I take action to save these people in the city that we all know are going to be killed?
22:49Or should I not?
22:51And I've never been in a meeting that was that definitive.
22:58I argued against intervening.
22:59The main concern was that it was a set of responsibilities that were beyond what I thought was prudent, given the other demands on the United States at the time.
23:16I thought we should avoid another military conflict.
23:21Secretary Gates, Robert Gates, was probably the most persuasive of skepticism that Libya was not in a core U.S. national interest and that the danger of intervening in Libya was something that could metastasize into something that would be very hard to get under control.
23:42One of the things that I tried to get on the table and keep out there is how does this end? Where is this going? What's the strategic intent here? My view is we never got to that.
23:55Most of the principles, the cabinet secretaries, the vice president, were not in favor of intervention in Libya. And principally, the arguments came down to, you can't tell me with certainty how this plays out. You can't tell me what will happen to Gaddafi and if he goes as a result of any of this, if what follows him will be better.
24:18We did have Arab support, not just rhetoric, but commitments for military assets and action. And our major allies in Europe historically are always asking them to support us, but now they were asking us to support them.
24:38I remember I could feel it working its way around to me and I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to make a case here.
24:44And my argument was essentially, if you don't do this and these people all get massacred, how will you explain this?
24:52I mean, how can we tell the world everybody was ready to act and we knew it was going to happen and it's happening right in front of our eyes?
24:59And what would it say about our credibility and the international community's credibility if we don't act in this circumstance with all these forces aligned?
25:05It really went to the fact that we had a unique situation, that there was a responsibility, but also an opportunity to demonstrate that the international community could act effectively to stop atrocities, could do it in a way that was grounded in international law.
25:20And the failure to take action would contribute potentially to the further unraveling of the international system that the United States has spent seven decades trying to build.
25:33And at that point, he asked, can someone tell me what happens when a town falls? What happens to the people in the town?
25:46And no, I can't think of a president in my lifetime who would have asked that question.
25:51And he asked what it would actually take to prevent Qaddafi from taking Benghazi.
25:57I want real options, not this, as he put it, half-assed no-fly zone.
26:02It was late in the afternoon or into the evening and President Obama had a dinner that night, coincidentally with his top military commanders from around the world.
26:09So he said, I'm going to go to this dinner and we're going to reconvene here in the Situation Room after my dinner and I expect to have better options.
26:21People came back with options.
26:24And the thing I remember most about the meeting was that people presented options and the president ultimately picked something that was not an option on the table.
26:33He crafted his own option.
26:35And basically he said, look, I am interested in protecting civilians.
26:40Let's get a UN Security Council resolution that actually authorizes action to protect civilians.
26:47He described this decision to me as kind of a 51-49 call in his mind.
26:56He completely understood the arguments against it.
26:59He had to weigh both sets of arguments and he decided to do it.
27:04This is the hardest part.
27:07If you don't intervene, people will get killed.
27:10If you do intervene, people will get killed.
27:13And you're making these judgments that, you know, human beings in some ways are ill-equipped to make.
27:21And that is a tough thing to carry around.
27:26Today, the Security Council has responded to the Libyan people's cry for help.
27:36This council's purpose is clear.
27:39To protect innocent civilians.
27:43The critical question was how Russia and China would vote.
27:48The two great powers almost always opposed international intervention in sovereign states.
27:54Would they veto the resolution and stop the Security Council in its tracks?
27:59In Benghazi on the big jumbo screens, they broadcast the Security Council vote as it was happening.
28:06And we, meanwhile, had the screen on, and the screen itself was a split screen,
28:11which was Ambassador Rice in the Security Council,
28:15and then the people in Benghazi watching Ambassador Rice and everybody else in the Security Council.
28:21When you watch the people in Benghazi and think about it from their perspective,
28:25it was almost as though they felt that the question being posed was,
28:28do you want to save these people?
28:30We're about to see exactly how many countries are abstaining on this vote.
28:34There we see China abstaining, Russia abstaining,
28:38two permanent members who elected not to use their veto.
28:41And here comes the vote total.
28:43All necessary measures to protect the civilian population
28:47as Qaddafi's forces move in on Benghazi.
28:51It was like knowing that you're going to the gallows
28:53and then suddenly getting a pardon.
28:55The United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Arab states
29:08agree that a ceasefire must be implemented immediately.
29:12If Qaddafi does not comply with the resolution,
29:15the international community will impose consequences.
29:24The President had said, go do this. That's it.
29:27You have to stop Qaddafi's forces.
29:30And that became the concentration of power, of air power in particular,
29:35more than anywhere else.
29:37We needed to make sure that they didn't get to Benghazi.
29:44US F-15 and F-16 fighter jets have flown dozens of sorties
29:47alongside British, French, and Danish jets.
29:50The Italians and Spanish are providing...
29:52It's absolutely right for Britain and the international community
29:54to try and protect people.
29:56And what I want to see us is stepping up the pressure.
29:58Not mission creep, but stepping up the pressure.
30:00The US does not plan to be involved in the lead for long.
30:03They want to hand over and transition in a matter of a few days.
30:06France and Britain are going to be taking the lead on the airstrikes.
30:09The President of France is the leader in putting this coalition together.
30:12I believe...
30:13That US reluctance to lead is evident.
30:16So the US remains in the back seat.
30:21President Obama felt quite strongly that this overall mission
30:27was ultimately more important for the European allies
30:31and that therefore the Europeans should carry
30:33a disproportionate share of the load.
30:38Cameron in the UK and Sarkozy in France were very active.
30:43They really leaned forward.
30:45It was very clear we were happy, myself included,
30:49to have NATO allies lead that.
30:52But the proportion of the military capability was the US.
30:59Easy targets are running out fast.
31:01And for the European members of NATO,
31:03so is the cash to pay for more weapons.
31:05That means there'll be more pressure on the US to take up the slack.
31:09We're the big boy on the block.
31:11You know, we bring the best equipment.
31:13We bring the best training.
31:14We bring the best force to bear.
31:17Others, you know, are operating,
31:20but they're operating on a short leash.
31:22The Europeans ran out of ammunition.
31:24So to keep them in the forefront,
31:27the US had to rush a massive resupply
31:31of these precision-guided munitions for the F-16s.
31:36When the French ran out of munitions,
31:37since they didn't have the same technology on airplanes,
31:40they had to kind of fade into the background
31:42as a fairly minor participant in the bombing campaign.
31:51Basically, you managed in two weeks
31:53to stop him marching from Gaza.
31:54Why did it continue afterwards?
31:56These things, they have a momentum and an inertia.
32:01It was very clear that was the main mission,
32:04which was stop Gaddafi.
32:06And then the evolution of what happens after that
32:11wasn't overly clear.
32:13You didn't debate what will be the next thing to do,
32:15and after that, you didn't debate that?
32:17No.
32:18No.
32:21Experienced men against you?
32:23How?
32:24It wasn't like we didn't put it on the table.
32:26They weren't interested.
32:28The biggest thing that, in retrospect, the US got wrong
32:35was we never precisely defined
32:38what civilian protection meant.
32:41After the immediate threat is taken care of,
32:45what's next?
32:47And so we saw the campaign slowly evolve,
32:51literally running out of things to hit.
32:55The rebels began to use NATO as their air force,
33:00and so there was some measure of mission creep.
33:03That clearly was not in the UN Security Council resolution.
33:06But the more Gaddafi dug in,
33:08the more the change had to happen sooner rather than later.
33:15What had begun as a humanitarian mission
33:18to protect civilians had quickly become an intervention
33:21on one side of a war whose outcome was far from certain.
33:24Even after decades of watching fiascos unfold in Somalia,
33:29Afghanistan, and Iraq,
33:31policymakers had failed to answer the central strategic question
33:36before they intervened in Libya.
33:39How can you stop the bloodshed if you don't resolve
33:43the underlying conflict?
33:45How do you intervene to stop Gaddafi without removing Gaddafi?
33:50And if you do remove Gaddafi and destroy the political order he built,
33:56with what do you replace it?
33:59Even as these questions began to reveal themselves in the logic of events,
34:04Western leaders refused to acknowledge them.
34:07There are those who've suggested that we broaden our military mission
34:11beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people
34:14and do whatever it takes to bring down Gaddafi and usher in a new government.
34:20Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.
34:24The decision was taken to have a direct overture to the Gaddafi regime.
34:32There was a delegation that I was part of that went to Tunis
34:37and met secretly for a very memorable afternoon with senior members of Gaddafi's team
34:43to talk about what was going on.
34:46There was a lot of outrage and alarm on their side.
34:53They came across as very hurt.
34:55They seemed incredulous.
34:57What are you doing?
34:58The opposition is all al-Qaeda.
35:00You know, this is crazy.
35:01You should work with us.
35:02I mean, what we were trying to stress to them
35:04is that Gaddafi needed to step out of this process,
35:06that he lost legitimacy to lead Libya.
35:09I left that meeting convinced that it was probably going to end
35:15some kind of violent overthrow rather than a peaceful resolution.
35:21What is your sense of how much longer a conflict is likely to go on
35:26before Gaddafi leaves?
35:28I mean, three months, six months, a year?
35:30I wouldn't want to put a date on it.
35:32Did they expect it to last this long, the military involvement by NATO?
35:36Well, they had hoped that Gaddafi would be gone a long time ago.
35:40Early on in this process of trying to decide what to do about Gaddafi,
35:45we decided we would send an emissary.
35:50And the person I chose to be that emissary was Chris Stevens.
35:55He was optimistic that given enough support,
35:59there could be a significant payoff from working with the new Libyan leadership.
36:09It was in July at the Istanbul meeting of the contact group,
36:14all of the partners who were involved in this operation,
36:17that the decision was taken that basically, in practical terms, said,
36:22we're going to keep going until Gaddafi is gone.
36:28The objective was not to change the regime.
36:30The objective was not to get rid of Gaddafi.
36:34The objective was to stop him from murdering and slaughtering his own people.
36:38Once we engaged in that, this slippery slope got increasingly slippery.
36:45So in a way, the mission, which was to protect civilians, morphed into a regime change.
36:49It did.
36:50Yep.
37:01Underneath it all is a recognition that ultimately you're not going to change things without regime change.
37:07And that while you don't say it, the reality is that you know the only way you're going to achieve some kind of end here is to end the regime.
37:19Libya's only hope was to have some kind of stabilization force that could tamp down violence
37:48and engage in some kind of demobilization of the militias.
37:53Secretary Clinton posed the question very directly to the Europeans.
37:56You know, this is on your doorstep.
37:57What are you going to do about this?
37:58What role are you prepared to play?
38:00And European leaders from several different countries, from France and the UK, from Italy,
38:06all said, we intend to have a significant hand in the shaping of the aftermath of any military action.
38:15People in Britain salute your courage.
38:20And while we are proud of the role that we played to help, we know this was your revolution.
38:28President Obama negotiated with Prime Minister Cameron, President Sarkozy, that particularly in light of the United Nations authorization,
38:35he made very clear to them about his view that steps post-action will be as important to the successful outcome in Libya as anything we do to stop the attack on Benghazi.
38:50And he sought their assurance and they gave it to him that they would take the lead on post-action efforts in Libya.
38:57Unfortunately, they just were not in a position to deliver.
39:00There was a sense that because we had limited our role in the military intervention, we could then limit our role on the day after.
39:09And that, you know, others of our European partners or Arab players would step up.
39:15And that was probably an exaggeration of both their commitment and their capacity to do that.
39:20And the problem is when you're the United States, you can limit your military intervention, but you don't get the luxury of limiting your political responsibility for what comes after.
39:29For me, the key word is there was a sense, which is an assumption that the European will deal with the day after without really checking or making sure.
39:39Right. You know, there are too many assumptions which didn't intersect.
39:43The very complicated and difficult experience of Libya, it was a reminder of how complicated these societies are, how slippery the slippery slope was,
39:52and of the kind of responsibilities that you'd take on if there was another military intervention.
39:58One of the attitudes that crept into the White House was we've carried the lion's share of the burden in the intervention phase.
40:09Now we're going to hand the baton off to the Italians, the British, the French.
40:15It's a kind of nice idea.
40:17Truth is, as we saw on Ebola, as we saw on ISIS, as we saw on the climate agreement in Paris,
40:24if the United States was not leading, as much as people resented and as flawed as our leadership can be, it usually isn't happening.
40:33And this is a world that needs to change, frankly.
40:37The responsibility to protect is supposedly borne by the nations of the world.
40:42But while the impressive words were the international communities, the realities of power meant that the burden fell largely on the United States.
40:54The Europeans had been determined to act, but their powers were limited.
40:59As the bombing went on, and their ammunition quickly ran out, the Europeans deferred to the Americans.
41:06And when the burdens of post-war reconstruction became apparent, they largely did the same.
41:13But the Americans were embroiled in what seemed endless conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
41:20And they were weary of war.
41:24Both these conflicts had shown what would soon be proved again in Libya.
41:28That the United States had the power to destroy a political order.
41:32But little of the wisdom, patience, and national will required to rebuild one.
41:39Obama would call me in and get frustrated because, and I remember when Cameron and Sarkozy went and got kind of a hero's welcome in Libya.
41:54And he said they just couldn't do that.
41:57He expressed increasing frustration that anybody who says that the United States is not going to have to end up doing all this ourselves is not acknowledging what we're learning.
42:07Not just from history, but also from Libya, which is that everyone will say, sure, we'll do all these things.
42:13But on the back end, it was like, okay, what are the U.S. going to do to put this place back together again?
42:18Once that lid was taken off with his death, there was no doubt that you were going to have a lot of confusion and chaos as people jockeyed for positions.
42:32So the goal was to try to support leaders arising kind of naturally out of the opposition.
42:43I went to Libya, you know, weeks later.
42:45I was met by one of the tribes that had fought against Gaddafi.
42:49They all dressed in black.
42:51They were all heavily armed.
42:53But they were, quote, friendly toward us.
42:56And then I met with Jibril and others who were trying to piece together a government.
43:01But there was no government.
43:03There were no institutions.
43:05The institutions had been destroyed.
43:07There was no military.
43:09There was no court system.
43:11There was no institutional base where you could substitute one group of people for the old group and they could carry on.
43:21So the task was overwhelmingly challenging.
43:26What was not done right was the follow-up.
43:30As to what do we do now in order to bring together the different factions that existed in Libya and try to produce the stability that was important to do.
43:42Unfortunately, that plan was never really developed.
43:48The streets of Tripoli have a veneer of normality.
43:54But many, once again, are living with suspicion and fear.
43:58Post-conflict era at the moment, almost everyone owns a gun and various other types of weaponry.
44:04What are these?
44:05Well, we should have seen the warning signs sooner than we did.
44:08I remember going with Secretary Panetta on his visit to Libya.
44:12The capital was divided up into zones controlled by different competing militias with checkpoints.
44:19And there was this sort of amazing amnesia about the lessons of Iraq and of the Balkans.
44:28That unless you have a strong post-war strategy, things are going to unravel.
44:36Many of the rebels had fought with extremist Muslim groups, some affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
44:43Though these connections with transnational militant groups had been known before 2011, the implications for post-Qaddafi Libya seem to have largely been ignored.
44:57Documents released later suggest the Islamists were surveilling the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
45:06On Tuesday, September 11th, the 11th anniversary of the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington, they attacked.
45:16I was on the seventh floor of the State Department in a meeting with Secretary Clinton when a senior official came rushing into the room to say that our embassy was under attack.
45:26It was immediately heart-wrenching and awful.
45:31Then we got word that Chris Stevens, the ambassador, was missing.
45:36And we spent that night trying to figure out how to locate him and to get all of the rest of our personnel to safety.
45:45Just before 10 p.m., scores of militants from Ansar al-Sharia converged on the U.S. consulate complex in Benghazi.
45:52Shouting Allahu Akbar, the militants poured through the gate, attacking with small arms, grenades, RPGs, and mortars, and eventually set the main building on fire.
46:09By the time the attack was over, four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were dead.
46:16We know that he was targeted and the embassy was targeted.
46:30It was a terrible loss for the United States, but it was also a loss for the Libyan people.
46:34Today we bring home four Americans who gave their lives for our country and our values.
46:49The loss of our ambassador and the personnel who were there to protect our interests and protect him was one of the, I think, worst moments any of us experienced.
46:59And I think, yes, your human reaction is a sense of, honestly, a betrayal.
47:06That this notion that we had saved, protected, liberated a city and that some of its people turned on us was hard to digest.
47:20Did the administration ask himself what happened? Why?
47:23Oh, of course. I mean, there was an intense, ongoing, extraordinary process to understand who was responsible.
47:34And, unfortunately, Benghazi became a political football, which it never should have been.
47:42In Washington, what came to be known simply as Benghazi would become a major partisan political scandal.
47:53Republicans in Congress appointed a special select committee to investigate the incident and forced Hillary Clinton to testify before it for 11 hours.
48:02Had I been president at the time and I found that you did not read the cables from Benghazi, you did not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post.
48:12Well, Senator, the reason I'm here today is to answer questions the best I can.
48:15The so-called Benghazi scandal dragged on for more than three years, longer than the probes into the 9-11 attacks, Watergate, the Kennedy assassination, or Pearl Harbor.
48:29Though their final report ran to more than 800 pages, in the end, the Republicans never uncovered any significant wrongdoing by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
48:40I think you're talking about Washington, right?
48:41But the relentless hyping of Benghazi did succeed in bruising the former Secretary of State.
48:47As the Republican congressional leader bragged publicly, Clinton's numbers are dropping.
48:53Madam Secretary, I strongly disagree with your depiction of what we did after Gaddafi fell.
49:00We did not provide the security that was needed.
49:03We did not give them the kind of assistance that would have been necessary to help dismantle these militias that still to this day have been a challenge.
49:14I have to ask you. After what happened 10 years earlier in Iraq, and the consequences of removing a dictator, it seems that you didn't really think about the day after.
49:23And the same consequences that followed Iraq, followed Lima.
49:27Well, failed in the day after. Do you think it's the laws of physics that is in that, in that storyline, it's like, no matter what you do, this is going to be the result?
49:35No. But for sure, after the experience in Iraq, you should pay more attention to the day after.
49:41This is what I disagree with to a certain extent. I don't think it was a lack of thinking about what happens on the day after.
49:46I think it is one of the really messy consequences of getting engaged in military action like this is you unleash a chain of events that becomes very difficult to control.
49:57The planning that one might hope for from the U.S. government or Europeans or anyone to provide security to Libya ran into the brick wall of no outside boots on the ground in this country.
50:09The message, the consistent, coherent message from the Libyans is, we'll take care of ourselves on the security front.
50:16Did you think that they are capable of doing that?
50:18No, no, they weren't. We knew they weren't. That's the point.
50:22So why leave?
50:23Well, you mean we should invade?
50:28I'm saying that if you know that they are not capable of that, the least...
50:33But then what? Like, just land on the beaches?
50:39Libya has become increasingly unstable, with rival militias engaged in some of the...
50:46Some say it's the worst violence in Libya since the revolution in 2011.
50:50They're showing new information of ISIS's conquest. The terrorist group now has an operational foothold in Libya.
50:56Do we have a strategy for Libya as we've watched ISIS establish, metastasize and grow?
51:03I am not aware of any overall grand strategy at this point.
51:06Frantic scenes across the Mediterranean, after their boat capsized 70 miles after leaving Libya.
51:14Mercenaries from a Russian paramilitary organization are fighting in Libya.
51:18The parliament in Accra has approved to deploy troops to Libya.
51:22What are the options to stabilizing Libya in an increasingly complex war?
51:26As the Libyan civil war dragged on, and grew ever more complex, the very rationale of the decision to intervene, to prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians in Benghazi, was cast in doubt.
51:42British parliamentary investigators reached a striking conclusion.
51:49In towns and cities on the road to Benghazi, Gaddafi's forces did not purposely kill non-combatants.
51:56And there was no real evidence that Gaddafi was planning to launch a massacre in Benghazi.
52:04As late as March 17th, Gaddafi announced to the rebels in Benghazi,
52:08throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Al Jabiya and other places did.
52:13They laid down their arms, and they are safe.
52:17I can't see there was any real evidence at that time that Gaddafi was preparing to launch a massacre against his own civilians.
52:23The Arab media played a very important role here, Jazeera in particular, but also Al Arabiya were reporting that Gaddafi was using airstrikes against people in Benghazi.
52:33I think it was really hamming everything up, and it turned out not to be true.
52:38The British inquiry concluded that Libyan expatriates overstated the threat to civilians in order to pressure the West to intervene.
52:46Many Western policymakers genuinely believed that Muammar Gaddafi would massacre civilians in Benghazi, the investigators wrote.
52:56But the scale of the threat was presented with unjustified certainty.
53:00U.S. intelligence officials described the intervention as an intelligence-like decision.
53:07In other words, the rebels were about to lose the war, so their friends abroad hyped the danger of a looming genocide
53:14in order to force the West to help them.
53:18With little real intelligence available to contradict the claims, and after the shame of what had happened in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur,
53:27the strategy worked perfectly.
53:29The world's sole superpower felt obliged to act to stop a massacre, a new Srebrenica, in Benghazi.
53:36But once again, what had seemed to be obvious parallels turned out to be inaccurate or misleading.
53:43And incredibly, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States intervened in Libya having done little planning for the aftermath.
53:52For the third time this century, the Americans removed a dictator and left chaos in their wake.
53:59Every single day I make decisions, and you know, you are working with probabilities.
54:08So in Libya, we did take out a dictator who was threatening his own people.
54:16As I've said before, I actually believe that was the right decision, but Libya is still a big problem and a mess.
54:23And I think we did not do as good of a job as we should have, and I didn't do as good of a job as I should have in thinking through the aftermath
54:32and how much work was going to be required in putting the pieces of that country back together again.
54:39We'd invaded, if you will, we'd intervened, and then we all left. Not just the U.S. Everybody left.
54:45And Colin Powell said this, you know, if you break it, you own it, and we broke it, and we didn't own it.
54:53What stunned me is having learned some version of that lesson in Iraq.
54:58We didn't do it in Libya. I mean, it stuns me to this day.
55:02And if there are two lessons or two examples of doing it wrong and look at the end results, Iraq is one and Libya was the other.
55:13Having watched what's unfolded in Libya since the intervention, it's hard not to second-guess doing it.
55:20But every time I say, you're right, we shouldn't have done it, I think, that can't be right. That can't be right.
55:27That against the shadow of the threat that Qaddafi posed to a large number of people, we had to be able to act and we were right to act.
55:37In the land of lousy options, it's my view that you have to at least consider the possibility that managing and hemming in a dictator with the occasional application of force to keep them from conducting genocide or mass atrocities or mass killings may not create a pretty picture at the end of the day, but that's the line we have to be able to defend.
56:00I think what we learn from Libya is that you always have to ask yourself about a slippery slope.
56:07You always have to ask yourself and convince yourself that you can handle the day after, or in many cases, the decade after.
56:15The outcome in Libya colors the way you think about Syria. I know that it did.
56:21And arguably, the failure of the day after in Libya had as much of an effect on the thinking of the administration and the president as even Iraq did.
56:30If, you know, is far away from the British by the Länder who was finally
56:50on the level of northernved NSA I'm missing from Italy, I'm sorry.
56:53But it's been so distinguished to take these two divers options, of course, that the two people
56:57had to stop and hold within the foarte IMMI data in Italy.
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