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Will America ever again be at peace? A new war always seems to start before the last one ends. The U.S. is bombing targets in Syria and sending troops back into Iraq. Yet Washington's involvement in Afghanistan persists as the administration slows the withdrawal of American forces.

Worse, pressure is building for the U.S. again to intervene in Libya. It took a decade before the sectarian flames fed by the invasion of Iraq lit the Islamic State. It took less than three years for the administration's intervention in Libya to blow up spectacularly. Observed Glenn Greenwald, "Libya has rapidly unraveled in much the way Iraq did following that invasion: swamped by militia rule, factional warfare, economic devastation, and complete lawlessness." The country of Libya has ceased to exist.

This debacle offers a clear lesson for American policymakers. But denizens of Washington never learn from the past. Indeed, Samantha Power, one of the most consistent advocates of a militarized foreign policy, complained that "one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons" from failed interventions. In her view the fact that America's constant wars have resulted in constant failures -- and constant pressure to intervene again to confront the new problems created -- is no reason to be more careful in the future.

Like many presidents in other conflicts, Barack Obama lied the American people into war. The administration presented the issue as one of humanitarian intervention, to save the people of Benghazi from slaughter. Moammar Khadafy, administration officials claimed, threatened murder and mayhem if he recaptured the city.

Ironically, for decades the West did not take his rants seriously -- only when they thought it to their advantage did the U.S. and Europe react. Although he was a nasty character, he had slaughtered no one when his forces reclaimed other territory. In Benghazi, he only threatened those who had taken up arms against him. In fact, the allies never believed their rhetoric. They immediately shifted their objective from civilian protection to regime change, providing just enough military support to upend the balance of forces but not enough to quickly oust him. The world's greatest alliance allowed the low-tech civil war to burn for months, killing thousands. Some humanitarian operation.

Still, the chief advocates of what has come to be called Hillary's war claimed success. Anne-Marie Slaughter, formerly with the Obama State Department, authored a celebratory Financial Times article entitled "Why Libya skeptics were proved badly wrong." Even before the fighting ended she was selling the conflict: "it clearly can be in the U.S. and the West's strategic interest to help social revolutions fighting for the values we espouse and proclaim." The New York Times ran a "news analysis" entitled: "U.S. Tactics in Libya May Be a Model for Other Efforts." Power then was silent about the danger of overdrawing lessons from the Libyan war.

The War Lobby imagined a beautiful democratic future. Slaughter cited the fact that "The National Transitional Council has a draft constitutional charter that is impressive in scope, aspirations and detail -- including 37 articles on rights, freedoms and governance arrangements." What more could be necessary?

Alas, Libya was an artificial nation. Khadafy held it together through personal rule, not a strong state. When he died political structure vanished. Khadafy was brutally executed; revenge killings and torture were common; black African workers were blamed for the old regime and abused. Khadafy's arsenals were looted, with weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, flowing outward. The country split apart geographically, ethnically, ideologically, and theologically.

Libya quickly went from disappointment to mess to catastrophe. Wrote the Economist:

Libya has two rival governments, two parliaments, two sets of competing claims to run the central bank and the national oil company, no functioning national police or army, and an array of militias that terrorize the country's six million citizens, plunder what remains of the country's wealth, ruin what little is left of its infrastructure, and torture and kill wherever they are in the ascendency.

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American People Should Hold War Lobby Accountable for ...