Clinton on Libya Intervention: ‘This Was the President’s Decision’

ROSKAM: “They were pushing back. But you overcame those objections. But then you had another big obstacle, didn’t you? That was the White House itself. There were senior voices within the White House that were opposed to military action: Vice President Biden, Department of Defense, Secretary Gates, the National Security Council and so forth. But you persuaded President Obama to intervene militarily, isn’t that right?”
CLINTON: “Congressman, I think it’s important to point out, there were many in the State Department who believed it was very much in America’s interests and in furtherance of our values to protect the Libyan people, to join with our European allies and our Arab partners. The ambassador who had had to did he withdrawn from Libya because of direct attacks, or direct threats to his physical safety, but who knew Libya very well, Ambassador Kurtz, was a strong advocate for doing what we could to assist the Europeans and the Arabs. It’s fair to say there were concerns and there were varying opinions about what to do, how to do it and the like. At the end of the day, this was the president’s decision. And all of us fed in our views. I did not favor it until I had done, as I said, done the due diligence speaking with not just people within our government and within the governments of all of the other nations who were urging us to assist them, but also meeting in person with the gentleman who had assumed a lead role in the transitional national council. So it is of course fair to say this is a difficult decision. I wouldn’t sit here and say otherwise. And there were varying points of view about it. At the end of the day, in large measure, because of the strong appeals from our European allies, the Arab League passing resolution urging that the United States and NATO join with them, those were unprecedented requests. And we did decide and recommending to the president there was a way to do it. The president I think very clearly had a limited instruction about how to proceed. And the first planes that flew were French planes. And I think what the United States provided was some of our unique capacity. But the bulk of the work militarily was done by Europeans and Arabs.”