Obama Described Libya As A ‘S*** Show’ In 2016 Interview

On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump ignited a firestorm, which is sometimes described as a storm preceded by the S-word, for allegedly describing African and other countries as “s***holes.” His predecessor Barack Obama once called Libya, which is located in North Africa, a “s*** show,” although that comment apparently prompted zero media outrage.

As the Inquisitr explained in November 2017, Obama admitted that the aftermath of the 2011 military intervention in Libya that toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi was the worst mistake of his presidency. In an unstable environment there, there is no functioning government which observers say has led to a breeding ground for violence, corruption, and an open slave trade.

According to The Atlantic, a liberal publication which conducted a March 2016 interview with Obama, the 44th president used profanity to describe how things unraveled in Libya, which is now an enclave for the Islamic State terrorist group.

“‘So we actually executed this plan as well as I could have expected: We got a UN mandate, we built a coalition, it cost us $1 billion—which, when it comes to military operations, is very cheap. We averted large-scale civilian casualties, we prevented what almost surely would have been a prolonged and bloody civil conflict. And despite all that, Libya is a mess.’

“Mess is the president’s diplomatic term; privately, he calls Libya a ‘[s***] show,’ in part because it’s subsequently become an ISIS haven—one that he has already targeted with air strikes. It became a [s***] show, Obama believes, for reasons that had less to do with American incompetence than with the passivity of America’s allies and with the obdurate power of tribalism.”

Revisiting the interview, The Daily Caller noted that “The comments received little coverage when made public at the end of Obama’s term.”

Obama blamed the U.K. and France for taking their eye of the ball in Libya despite their relative adjacency to the North African country. He particularly chided ex-U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy for being distracted with other matters and perhaps taking a premature victory lap.

“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,” Obama added in the published interview. Critics of Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have blamed them, however, for the mess in Libya because they championed the military action.

Obama’s comments about his European counterparts did generate some headlines in the U.K. at the time.

Parenthetically, many supporters of President Trump vehemently opposed the bombing raid on the Syrian airbase last spring following poison gas attacks there. Undermining the forces of President Bashar Assad would wind up helping ISIS-backed rebels amidst a civil war where there are no good guys and thus creating another Middle East quagmire for the U.S., Trump’s America First backers believed. Thus far, the Tomahawk missile strike turned out to be a one-time event.

Although Trump’s alleged comments may have been undiplomatic at best, and have given rise to charges of racism, historians have chronicled how past presidents such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon often disparaged groups with profanity. Such remarks weren’t leaked to the media in real time, however.

In 2012, Rolling Stone magazine lauded Barack Obama for his “very vivid vocabulary,” adding that “Sometimes the dirty word is the most precise.”

Separately, Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam this past week described London as a “s***hole” because of its soaring crime rate.