Who Broke Libya? Chaos, Slavery, and Strife Abound

Writing at The American Conservative, managing editor Matt Purple points the finger squarely at the neocon cabal in both the Republican and Democrat parties. Today Libya, after a “humanitarian intervention” spear headed by Hillary Clinton and cheered on by neocon Republican senators, is a chaotic mess. There are at least two governments in the country, an ISIS insurgency, a thriving slave trade, and a porous border allowing human traffickers to take migrants from Libyan shores into Europe illegally. Purple wonders, with the possible appointment of Jr.-Neocon Senator Tom Cotton to the directorship of the CIA, how many more must suffer before the world reins in the neocons?

However extreme these beliefs might be, they’ve become the bedrock of D.C.’s foreign policy brain trust. Last year, the Washington Post profiled several members of what it termed the “foreign policy elite” and found “remarkable consensus,” with nearly everyone in agreement that America needed to be more militarily involved in the world, and particularly in Syria. The return of the slave trade to Libya is Exhibit A of why that unanimity is no longer sustainable, why it so often leaves nations worse than they were before. As the groupthink continues—as the neocon cat enters its next life and Tom Cotton’s name is bandied about for CIA director—the words of William F. Buckley should at some point be allowed to intrude: “Just as Woodrow Wilson was set on making the world safe for democracy, breeding instead Stalin and Hitler, we rail against despotism and breed public chaos.” How many more must suffer before we adjust for this error?

Read more here.