Obama’s Biggest Mistake Isn’t Libya. It’s Syria.

President Barack Obama said Sunday that his biggest mistake as president was failing to plan for the day after the fall of the Qaddafi regime in Libya. But as bad as Libya looks today, Syria is faring far worse, in part because of the Obama administration’s failings -- which the president has not yet acknowledged.

On Libya, Obama regrets not staying engaged “after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” It’s worth noting that at the time, the White House was proud of the approach it took during the 2011 Libya intervention, which centered around sharing the burden with European allies, avoiding the deployment of U.S. ground troops, and leaving the toppling of Qaddafi as well as the political and physical reconstruction to Libyans.