A veritable consensus has been formed regarding the Libya intervention: it went very, very badly. The civilized of that country fled long ago, running from the chaos that followed US-led airstrikes. Hillary, along with Obama, is rightly being blamed for her hand in instigating the entire debacle, yet some are giving her a pass for at least trying. Daniel Larison of The American Conservative discusses one such writer who thinks everyone is just coming down too hard on poor Hillary because, god, she at least tried to do something! Larison rightly exposes the illogic of such a sentiment:
“As far as the U.S. and its allies are concerned, there are almost always more risks in taking “action” (i.e., using force, arming rebels, etc.) than there is choosing not to do so. In almost every case, it is the smarter and safer play not to start an unnecessary war and not to send more weapons into a conflict, and one should be willing to court the dangers that come with those decisions very rarely. There usually aren’t “risks in both directions” for the U.S., and so the relevant questions are: is the risk worth taking, and if so why? The “get caught trying” mentality takes for granted that the greater danger is in avoiding unnecessary conflicts, and for that reason someone like Clinton always sees an excuse to intervene.”
But the chance to spend billions, ram through new legislation, and look good doing it in the eyes of the world (at least for awhile), prove to be far too great a temptation for the Hillarys of the world. And, of course, the take-away for Obama was that he didn’t intervene enough. Convenient, but an all-too-common moral learned from interventions, either abroad in the form of war, or domestically in the form of regulation, bail-outs, or “stimulus”. The problem is the intervention that paves the way for greater intervention. That initial intervention that creates the chaos that makes it far too easy to get the ball rolling for round two. Iraq is a perfect example. 9/11 created a climate of opinion that paved the way for the 2003 invasion. The ensuing chaos ensured the excuse would be there to grease the skids for an endless stream of weapons, soldiers, and trillions of dollars pouring into an interventionist black hole.
Interventionism begets chaos begets interventionism begets…
