President Obama reveals his ‘worst mistake as president’
As President Barack Obama nears the end of his final year in the White House, he’s been doing some reflection about the highs and lows of his presidency. In his first sit-down interview with Fox News since 2014, Obama admitted what he believes his “worst mistake” was during his administration.
“Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya,” Obama told Chris Wallace during Sunday’s interview.
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After NATO forces intervened and helped in the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the intervention was declared a success in getting rid of the country’s dictator. Then NATO forces withdrew and different rebel factions began fighting each other, leaving no central government. It was this chaos and lack of a clear future, Obama admitted, that helped to destabilize the country and pave the way for ISIS extremism in the area.
“The degree of tribal division in Libya was greater than our analysts had expected,” Obama admitted. “And our ability to have any kind of structure there that we could interact with and start training and start providing resources broke down very quickly.”
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Still, while the president shouldered part of the responsibility for the events that transpired, he also pointed out he expected more support from Europe after the overthrow.
“When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong, there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”
