Nearly 1,500 people died this past week attempting to escape from the horrors of "post-liberation" Libya. Instead of recognizing the disaster they unleashed with the 2011 NATO attack, US and European leaders are seeking to find ways to force the Libyans to stay in a country increasingly dominated by ISIS and extremists. Intervention was the crime, but the real criminals go free.
Nearly 1,500 people died this past week attempting to escape from the horrors of "post-liberation" Libya. Instead of recognizing the disaster they unleashed with the 2011 NATO attack, US and European leaders are seeking to find ways to force the Libyans to stay in a country increasingly dominated by ISIS and extremists. Intervention was the crime, but the real criminals go free.
Nearly 1,500 people died this past week attempting to escape from the horrors of "post-liberation" Libya. Instead of recognizing the disaster they unleashed with the 2011 NATO attack, US and European leaders are seeking to find ways to force the Libyans to stay in a country increasingly dominated by ISIS and extremists. Intervention was the crime, but the real criminals go free.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams who is the Executive Director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
He is also a co-host of this program.
Daniel, good to have you with us again today.
Thank you.
Good.
There is a humanitarian crisis going on in the Mediterranean and it's well viewed by most Americans now of ships, boats sinking and people drowning and they're desperate.
It looks like this most recent episode, number 900, on a vessel that toppled because it was overly crowded.
Where are these people coming from?
What are they leaving?
Are they left this place called Libya that we've had our successful revolution and turned it into a democratic country?
Just where are they coming from?
Well, that's exactly the case.
And there have always been migrants who try to come to Europe from Africa.
So this is nothing absolutely new, but it's the pace, it's the level of people escaping and the level of desperation of people in Libya who are just absolutely desperate to get out of this place that's gone into the hands of ISIS, al-Qaeda, various extremist groups.
And so you have hundreds, thousands of people desperate to get over.
But what caused it was the chaos that was caused by the 2011 U.S., NATO, France, U.K. bombing of Libya.
And they told us that it was part of the Arab Spring.
Gaddafi was now our enemy again, although he had recently been our ally.
We removed some sanctions.
But I was looking back and thinking, if you remember back then when the effort was going to demonize Gaddafi, not that he was a good guy, but you had to demonize him before you could attack.
He warned when they were saying this that, look, the people that you're supporting in Benghazi, these guys are Islamic extremists.
And of course, the media here and the administration said that just shows how bad he is.
He wants to prevent democracy.
Well, strangely enough, he's proven right.
And that's the tragedy that we see now in the Mediterranean.
You know, you would think this would wake the people up and say, why do we get involved?
We're doing all these wonderful things.
How many times now, and this is an additional example, have we gone into a country with the so-called good intentions, which ought to be questions, you know, whether it's Syria or Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, or even Egypt.
We go in and we say we're going to do good things.
Generally speaking, the winners have been our enemies.
You know, it opens the door to, you know, whether it's the Taliban in Afghanistan, whether it's Al-Qaeda in another country, and whether it's ISIS in another country or the Houthis in another country.
It just goes on and on that our involvement seems to make things worse.
It's to me so tragic that we can't get our information out because it's, you know, if I were back in Congress now, the continued process of trying to convince people to be a little bit more cautious about getting involved.
You know, I'd say one of my pet peeves, what particularly annoys me is when American Christians are supporting these moves, saying that it's going to help the people over there.
And I was just looking at a Daily Mail article from yesterday, I think it was, and there was a profile of these, they said Christian migrants are fleeing Libya and making this dangerous journey to escape ISIS.
So Christians, of course it's a tragedy when non-Christians are being killed too, but particularly in the U.S., which is by and large a Christian country who support these interventions, when you see that Christians are desperate to leave because of the conditions created by interventions that they support, I just find that particularly calling.
What about all of Iraq?
And, you know, Christians did better in Iraq before we went in.
It's the same old story.
But the other thing that bothers me is always authority.
Authority is important.
Where does the president get authority?
Whether it's assassinating American citizens or what?
Authority, if we concentrate on that, it could help.
But the American people seem to have given up on this, and they're willing to defer to a statement by one of our or any of our presidents who say, well, this is okay.
I don't need congressional authority.
I got it from the NATO and MEDATO or the United Nations.
Recently, it's been more NATO that has gotten us into trouble.
But I still hark back to somebody, not a libertarian, but he was from the old right, and that was Robert Taft.
And he, under those circumstances, immediately post-World War II, he says, let's stay out of this entangling alliance.
And he didn't even want us to join NATO.
And he made predictions that didn't seem to come true immediately, but it seems to be coming true more and more because we're involved and then we use it, though.
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It becomes our outfit to bring together England and France and a few others.
You support us.
And of course, I think money talks as well.
Sure, absolutely.
You know, I wanted to point out one final thing: that our friend Chris Rossini wrote a very good piece, and we had it up on our website too.
But he points out, you know, what is the European reaction?
If you remember, the intervention against Libya, the French and the Italians were really behind at first, and they were really the driving force.
And so, what is the reaction of Italy?
They say, oh, we have this terrible crisis, these people coming over.
So their solution is a naval blockade to keep the people from coming.
You know, just to build a prison to keep them in there.
It's just we've been involved.
Are there more refugees or less?
Of course, many, many more.
And it's a problem.
And unless we change our foreign policy and not let the European countries depend on us for our military and our money, believe me, this is going to continue until maybe a really, really big crisis is going to occur geopolitically as well as economically.