USAID

The name Samantha Powers, is in the news because she was in charge of the USAID but many recall that she along with Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice who convinced President Obama to overthrow Qaddafi in Libya. Five years later Obama admitted that intervening in Libya was his worst mistake. The three women convinced him by saying the US made a mistake by not intervening in Rwanda and they could not let that happen again. Under the guise of humanitarian intervention, they planned Regime change. The Washington Post reports that a troika of female advisers–Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power–are, by and large, responsible for persuading President Obama– against the advice of Robert Gates and other members of the military establishment–that bombing Libya is a good idea. Power has condemned American foreign policy for failing to intervene sufficiently to avert genocidal wars, particularly in Bosnia and Rwanda. Bill Clinton has himself said that his biggest regret was not intervening in Rwanda to stop the carnage. The “responsibility to protect” was the name given to this doctrine of intervention. In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure as it not only did not evolve into a democracy but became a failed state where both al-Qaida and ISIS were given a safe haven to grow and develop. “Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Gadhafi did during his last decade in power, Libya [began to serve] as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the U.N., and fueling Syria’s civil war.”