{"id":312098,"date":"2017-06-10T01:11:10","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T00:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-us-hand-in-the-libyansyrian-tragedies\/"},"modified":"2017-06-10T01:11:10","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T00:11:10","slug":"the-us-hand-in-the-libyansyrian-tragedies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-us-hand-in-the-libyansyrian-tragedies\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Hand in the Libyan\/Syrian Tragedies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> The Obama administration\u2019s \u201cregime change\u201d debacles in Libya and Syria are spreading terrorist violence into Europe, but they have inflicted vastly more bloodshed in those two tragic nations, writes Jonathan Marshall.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-23752\"\/>By Jonathan Marshall<\/p>\n<p>Police investigations and media reports have confirmed that two of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Western Europe \u2014 the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 people, and the May 2017 bombing of the arena in Manchester, England, which killed 23 \u2014 trace back to an Islamic State unit based in Libya known as Katibat al-Battar.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_20286\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-300x208.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-20286\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"208\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-300x208.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-768x533.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-160x111.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-20286\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-300x208.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"208\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-300x208.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-768x533.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b-160x111.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/6798041035_d41a8120f1_b.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at a United Nations Security Council Session on the situation in Syria at the United Nations in New York on Jan. 31, 2012. [State Department Photo]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Since those attacks, a number of analysts, myself included, have characterized them as a form of \u201cblowback\u201d from NATO\u2019s disastrous campaign to depose Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. By turning Libya into an anarchic staging ground for radical Islamist militants, that intervention set in motion the deadly export of terror back into Western Europe.<\/p>\n<p>But such a Eurocentric critique of NATO\u2019s intervention misses the far greater damage it wreaked on Syria, where nearly half a million people have died and at least 5 million refugees have had to flee their country since 2011. U.S., British and French leaders helped trigger one of the world\u2019s great modern catastrophes through their act of hubris in seeking another \u201cregime change\u201d \u2013 the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad \u2013 in Syria.<\/p>\n<p>A decade ago, Libya was a leading foe of radical jihadis, not a sanctuary for their international operations. A 2008 State Department memo noted that \u201cLibya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism.\u201d It gave the Gaddafi regime credit for \u201caggressively pursuing operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows,\u201d particularly by veterans of jihadist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>All that came to an end in 2011, when armed rebels, including disciplined members of al-Qaeda and Islamic State, enlisted NATO\u2019s help to topple&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/06\/09\/the-us-hand-in-the-libyansyrian-tragedies\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: The Obama administration\u2019s \u201cregime change\u201d debacles in Libya and Syria are spreading terrorist violence into Europe, but they have inflicted vastly more bloodshed in those two tragic nations, writes Jonathan Marshall. By Jonathan Marshall Police investigations and media reports have confirmed that two of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Western Europe \u2014 the coordinated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-312098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}