CHARLES PRITCHARD
Staff Writer
The media and its audience have a habit of immediately forgetting about something after a short amount of time.
Questions are asked, outrage is created and it all gets swept under the rug after a few months; bigger and better stories then grab the public’s attention.
One of the things that has been forgotten, more likely than not, is the Humanitarian Crisis in Libya and the Gaddafi regime.
Back in 2011, when Hillary Rodham Clinton was still Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, the phrase “humanitarian crisis” was thrown around repeatedly. It was also Clinton’s main battle cry and call for boots on the ground in Libya.
Four years later, The Washington Posµ has reminded us of this conflict and shed some new light on the situation. Published on their website, The Washington Post has made available to the public a number of tapes that show what was really going on.
Though, Clinton herself brought the Libyan Civil War to everyone’s attention when she spoke with ABC News.
“Imagine we were sitting here and Benghazi had been overrun,” said Clinton on ABC News. “A city of 700,000 people and tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered.”
Her warnings of another genocide, like that of Rwanda, did not hold much water to other defense officials and politicians’ concerns, like those from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Administration Mike Mullen.
Now, secret tapes, recordings and evidence have been brought to the forefront. Former Ohio Democrat House Representative Dennis Kucinich was one of a handful of people who actually opened up diplomatic channels with the Gadhafi regime in an attempt to smooth over hostilities.
Saif Gaddafi, son to the now deposed de facto leader and deceased Muammar Gaddafi, talked to Kucinich in 2011 and said, “It’s like the WMDs [Weapons of Mass Destruction] and Iraq. Libyan airplanes bombing demonstrators, Libyan airplanes bombing districts in Tripoli, Libyan army killed thousands, etc., etc.”
Kucinich asked how this conflict could be stopped and smoothed over, but Saif Gaddafi went on to point a finger at NATO, saying, “NATO is fueling the conflict everyday. The NATO has their own agenda. I will send you the tapes, the NATO tapes. Every day they put weapons and ammunition in the hands of these terrorists … And they [NATO] are putting ships and planes there and they are bombing us, they are bombing us everyday … Yesterday they killed three civilians today in Tripoli, in the center of the city. Why? For what reason?”
Professor Raymond Rushboldt of Fredonia tried to shed some light on the situation as to why this is occurring, especially with such little and faulty intel.
“The long American policy of foreign involvement with Libya goes back to the Reagan Administration, back in the 1980s as I remember … the notion of Gaddafi and what the American role in regime change, since that’s really what we’re talking about here and how to sway public opinion.”
And what easier way to sway public opinion than to bring up something as horrifying as a genocide? Or WMD’s? Or chemical weapons?
“Is it legitimate information or not so legitimate information? Do we have to say that there are all these humanitarian crises going on? Well, we can’t really say what we really want to do, and that is regime change,” Rushboldt said.
It’s hard for one to see what might really be going on, but former CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said in his book, “Worthy Fights,” that the end-game of Libya was those two words again: regime change.
The Pentagon officials — ready to offer an olive branch, pull out and let Gaddafi step down — fall under suspicion when the State Department turns down the offer and continues on the offensive, all the while talking about the impending genocide.
In the end though, the public will forget about this in the next month; some new scandal or show will sweep away their attention, and they will move on as if nothing happened.
However, 2016 is right around the bend and it is no surprise or secret that Clinton will, more likely than not, be throwing her hat into the next presidential election, despite the Libya/Beghazi scandal.
We rarely do see politicians pay for any real crimes; people like Republican Senator Trey Radel get busted for cocaine, receive a slap on the wrist and claim, “I’m going to seek treatment.”
When asked if he believes any consequences will ever come to Clinton over Libya, Rushboldt shrugs.
“The only way we can make [them] face consequences is not to vote for them,” said Rushboldt.