During MSNBC’s Democratic townhall in Illinois Monday night, former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said that “we didn’t lose a single person” in Libya.
During Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, terrorists attacked a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and killed four Americans, including Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.
“Is Libya perfect? It isn’t,” Clinton said. “But did they have two elections that were free and fair where they voted for moderates? Yes they did.”
Clinton went on to tout American military involvement in Libya and the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi as a decision that’s provided peace and stability for the Libyan people.
“Changing from a dictator who has hollowed out your country to something resembling a functioning state–and hopefully a more democratic one–doesn’t happen overnight,” she said. “We’ve got to continue to support the Libyan people to give them a chance. Because, otherwise, you see what’s happened in Syria with the consequences of millions of people flooding out of Syria, with more than 250,000 people killed, with terrorist groups like ISIS taking up a huge swath of territory.”
“Libya was a different kind of calculation,” she said. “We didn’t lose a single person.”
Clinton’s rosy picture of a peaceful and democratic Libya clashes with the real one that’s largely devolved into chaos following the Obama administration’s interference in the country. After the Benghazi attack, American efforts to help rebuild Libya after ousting Gaddafi didn’t continue as planned.
The country has spiraled into chaos, which terror groups like ISIS have taken advantage of to secure a stronghold. ISIS’s influence is so strong in Libya that fighters belonging to the terror group have begun to spill over into the neighboring country of Tunisia and border skirmishes between ISIS fighters in Libya and the Tunisian military have flared up.
Clinton is currently struggling to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination and is locked in a battle for delegates against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
