Now we’re seeing another phase of this come to light. The guns run to arm al Qaeda in Libya for the purpose of overthrowing Muammar Gadhafi and burnishing Obama and Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy credential have shown up in Afghanistan.

In today’s New York Post, carelessly distributed US weapons are linked to the loss of US aircraft in Afghanistan:

The Obama administration isn’t only giving the Taliban back its commanders — it’s giving them weapons. Miliary records and sources reveal that on July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile.

…

Lodged in the right nacelle, they found one fragment that contained an entire serial number.

The investigation took time. Arms were twisted, noses put out of joint. But when the results came back, they were stunning: The Stinger tracked back to a lot that had been signed out by the CIA recently, not during the anti-Soviet ­jihad.

…

My sources in the US Special Operations community believe the Stinger fired against the Chinook was part of the same lot the CIA turned over to the ­Qataris in early 2011, weapons Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department intended for anti-Khadafy forces in Libya. They believe the Qataris delivered between 50 and 60 of those same Stingers to the Taliban in early 2012, and an additional 200 SA-24 Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.

No one should be surprised by the criminal cluelessness of the Obama regime.

At the time the weapons were transferred, Obama and Hillary were seeking to redefine US intervention from expensive leadership (like Iraq) to war-on-the-cheap. The idea being that a handful of fairly low risk airstrikes or drone missile attacks, in concert with a local resistance, could topple a hostile regime, where mere diplomacy could not. Of course, the local resistance would be so grateful for the aid that they would swear off beheadings and jihad and become Jeffersonian democrats. The so-called Arab Spring became a proving ground for this irresponsible doctrine.

However, in the case of Libya it was obvious very early that our local resistance was, in fact, an offshoot of al Qaeda.

That Stinger missiles were supplied to al-Qaeda via the government of Qatar (which, by the way, has accepted custody of the five Taliban leaders released by the Obama regime) is very well established.

When the US consulate at Benghazi was sacked, we know that our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, was leading an effort to round up the stray Stinger missiles and Glen Doherty, also killed in that attack, was part of the field team.

The blowback from this ill-conceived policy continues. Not only are those Stinger missiles on the loose in Africa and the Middle East, Libya is now a major al-Qaeda safe haven and source for jihadi fighters seeking to turn Syria into yet another al-Qaeda stronghold:

In August 2013, Israel National News reported on Ansar al Sharia training camps in Libya that were actively training and exporting fighters for the jihad in Syria. Evidence indicated that the Libyan training camps were in operation as early as April 2012, months before Ansar al Sharia’s deadly attack on the US mission in Benghazi, and that they involved coordination with Tunisian facilitators who assisted in preparing the jihadists to fight in Syria. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Libyan fighters are thought to have traveled to Syria to fight with rebel groups. Many of these Libyans are believed to be fighting with the ISIS or the Al Nusrah Front. Abd al Mahdi al Harati, a deputy of Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the former emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, led 6,000 fighters in a brigade known as Liwa al Ummah for six months in 2012. The unit was comprised primarily of Syrian fighters, but included a large contingent of Libyans, Sudanese, Palestinians, Egyptians, and Arabs.

When Mr. Gowdy’s Benghazi committee convenes, he should use it as an opportunity to explore how our policy in Libya has led to widespread destabilization in Africa.