US wants to arm militants in Libya to fight ISIS

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-diplomat ... itics.html

Giving a bunch of guns to a government that has rival factions at war with each other with ISIS in the middle, what possibly could go wrong here? Obama's foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster, he's honestly worse than Bush in the way he has purposely destabilized the entire Middle East and North Africa since he has continued all his other policies.

What is that saying about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result bieng the definition of insanity?

The question is how many Americans will be killed by the arms we give them, not if Americans will be killed by them.

These weapons don't just stay in Libya either, they will filter into conflicts all over north and west Africa. Boko Haram benefited greatly from the fall of Gaddafi. Obama has made the world a much more dangerous unstable place.

Bring in the arms, do only american lives count ?

Hitting a mirror with a baseball bat repeatedly, shouldn't have meddled with the damn thing in the first place because it isn't going to form back together cohesively.

expect more of the same with Hillary Clinton, Libya is her baby

You'd think our government might have learned that this doesn't work from the many times similar things have been tried and failed already.

Of course if we do that, they'll just be the next ones to turn on us.

Lovely... time to give everyone some reasons to convert from Hinduism or any other -ism to Putinism.

So drop the other shoe, and make your point.

Arming the local Libyans is wrong-- as opposed to---- doing what?

As opposed to doing nothing, and letting ISIS take over? Is that what you are advocating?

Or are you saying "arming the locals is bad as opposed to: we Americans doing the fighting ourselves (invading, conquering, and occupying libya ourselves?).

Those are only three options imaginable:enable the locals to fight, do the fighting ourselves, or appeasing ISIS and letting ISIS take Libya.

Each one of those options is a disaster in the making.

There is no good option. All we can do is pick which disaster we prefer.

So which of the other two disasters do you prefer, and why?

You are foolish if you think sending weapons will solve this crisis, it's not an option worth any consideration because it is a policy that simply does not work and without fail comes back to haunt us. Putting weapons in these people's hands only means more bloodshed and more instability. ISIS won't take over Syria, they are taking advantage of a civil war that is already happening in the country and our picking side in a civil war that we can't begin to understand and have no business involving ourselves in. We should not of intervened against Gaddafi, that was an illegal war made out of a UN mandate for a "no fly zone" which also apparently means bombing the crap out of the government and giving weapons to Islamists.

The US can not fix Libya, we can't and it is not our responsibility anyways. No weapons for anyone, how about we stop buying the oil that fuels these conflicts? We can only make things worse.

As I understand ISIS isn't the biggest problem in Libya, it is lack of unity and other militias.

ISIS may become the biggest problem, becuase they can't unify and democracise.

Adding more arms, just means that those arms likely will end up in the wrong hands, as has already happened.

Yeah... We funded the Afghan Resistance in the 1980's, and gave them arms and training. --That turned out well, didn't it?

The forces opposing ISIS are probably just as bad if not worse the ISIS. The only likely benefit will be the profit returned.

Something that should be mentioned too is that I believe that the rival government in Tobruk led by General Khalifa Hafter are the main people fighting ISIS and Islamist militants whereas the UN recognized government in Tripoli is more Islamist in character. Russia, Egypt, China, and the UAE recognize the Tobruk government while Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan recognize the UN recognized Islamist government. There are many many militias in Libya, it's not one side fighting another and giving them weapons does not mean they will use those weapons to fight ISIS because just like in Libya these fighters are mercenaries and often times extremists themselves which is why they almost instantly lay down their weapons to ISIS.

There are Tuareg rebels who were allies of Gaddafi in the south of the country, the southern border of Libya is just a line on the map and just open Sahara desert otherwise so all the weapons we send to Libya will find themselves dispersed all over north, west, and east Africa and who knows how far it could go. Mali had government forces ejected from the north of the country by Tuareg rebels only for the Tuareg rebels to ejected al-Qaeda aligned Islamist extremists who wanted to impose strict sharia law on the country and were in the process of destroying the pre-Islamic antiquities at Timbuktu. These weapons found their way all the way down to Nigeria aiding the rise of Boko Haram. Tunisia is delicate, Egypt is delicate, Algeria is delicate, there are all countries on the Mediterranean that are very close to Europe so we are playing with very dangerous fire here. Intervening AGAIN in Libya would ensure decades of civil war and instability in Africa, it will bring millions of refugees more to Europe, and it will strengthen the hand of Islamic Extremism just as it has in Syria. Obama's foreign policy is worse than Bush, people don't understand how much damage this fool and his administration have done.

The US/Europe doesn't always work towards the interests of profit and oil. These policies aren't that smart.

Angola is a classic example they backed Savimbi a brutal guerilla who wanted to chuck the oil companies out, had he taken power. Cabinda gulf is the second biggest oil field in sub-saharan Africa and most of it is Chevron. That's is not even the full extent of the oil in the country. There is BP, Shell, Fina, Agip, and Total which has been in the country since 1953 and apparently out produces Chevron in Angola ATM.

All the war in Libya has been a major disruption as far Oil Companies are concerned and production has gone down. Whatever people may believe about Gaddafi nationaling oil and chucking the oil companys, the reality that this was hardly an option as he needed investment and technology he didn't have. He had supped from corruption with with western companies for a long time. I mean he could have gone with China perhaps, but he had few friends in the Gulf states. Going in past behaviour past the rhetoric he would have gone for the easiest option, which was Europe and there was ongoing involvement and negotiations prior. Despite his craziness he was not supid. This was all part of his negotiation strategy.