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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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December 3, 2015
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NYT,
Sputnik Agree with Hoekstra's 'Architects of Disaster'
by Pete Hoekstra
IPT News
December 3, 2015
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 The New York Times and the Russian state news agency
Sputnik agree with my new book, Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya,
which posits that President Obama's and former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's signature foreign policy achievement success is an abject
failure.
Who would have ever thought that the New York Times and a Russian
state-controlled media outlet would find common ground on such a
controversial subject?
Only Clinton – the eternal optimist who orchestrated Muammar Gaddafi's
murder and the inevitable Democratic nominee for president – continues to
believe in the triumph of the operation. She said in the most recent Democratic debate that "[W]e
didn't put a single boot on the ground, and Gaddafi was deposed. The
Libyans turned out for one of the most successful, fairest elections that
any Arab country has had. They elected moderate leaders."
In reality, the chaos and mayhem following the 2011 NATO/U.S.
intervention to depose Gaddafi has reached the point where ISIS has established a new base.
Sirte – located along Libya's Mediterranean coast – has become an actively managed colony of the central Islamic State.
It is crowded with foreign fighters from around the region, especially from
its caliphate in the former Syria and Iraq as NATO increases its military
and economic pressure there. The new location enables it to generate oil
revenue and plan terror attacks only 400 miles southeast of Sicily.
How can the West win against ISIS when U.S. leaders refuse to
acknowledge that which everyone around them recognizes as a catastrophe?
I wrote in Architects of Disaster that the current crisis
is the preordained consequence of the administration reversing decades of
bipartisan precedent in 2009 when it embraced such bad actors as the Muslim
Brotherhood, al-Qaida and Hamas – jihadist organizations with American
blood on their hands – with no preconditions.
President Barack Obama said in a 2007 interview that he believed that
the power of his personality would lead to jihadists laying down their
weapons once the U.S. helped them to remove their autocratic leaders.
Instead, radical Islamists rushed to fill the vacuums in such places as
Egypt, Yemen and Libya.
The opportunity for ISIS to move into Libya arose with two forces – a
fundamentalist Islamist government based in Tripoli and the internationally
recognized parliament in Tobruk – competing with each other for power
instead of battling extremist elements.
"In Libya, where a NATO bombing campaign helped overthrow Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi four years ago, there is no functional government,"
the New York Times reports. "Warring factions
are far more focused on fighting one another than on taking on the Islamic
State, and Libya's neighbors are all too weak or unstable to lead or even
host a military intervention."
ISIS has now moved many of its operations and personnel to Sirte –
having increased its presence from 200 fighters at the start of
the year to a force of 5,000 men – including administrators and
financiers. They are also learning to fly airplanes with at least one flight simulator.
"The group has already announced their plans to recruit foreign
fighters, and is calling them to travel to Libya instead of Syria," Sputnik reports. "According to residents and
activists from Sirte and Libyan military officials, recent weeks have
already seen a flood of foreign recruits and their families."
Left unchecked, an ISIS caliphate in Libya – only a boat ride away from
southern Europe – could become far worse than the current caliphate in the
Middle East. It will also create space for plotting for more attacks like
the current onslaught against Israelis, the bombed Russian civilian
aircraft in Sinai and the Paris massacre that left 130 innocent men, women
and children dead.
Pete Hoekstra is the Investigative Project on Terrorism's Shillman
Senior Fellow and the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
He is the author of "Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya."
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