Michael Brendan Dougherty expects Clinton to continue escaping public scrutiny for her role in the Libyan intervention:

My prediction is that absent Paul winning the nomination, Clinton will never again face a tough question about Libya. But as a matter of honesty for our nation, and justice for the people of Libya, she owes us her answers.

Dougherty’s prediction is almost certainly right. That isn’t just because most likely Republican candidates supported the war and can’t credibly criticize Clinton on Libya. There is a general aversion in our country to holding policymakers accountable for obvious failure, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Leading defenders of the Iraq war continue to speak for the GOP, and supporters of the Iraq war continue to have significant influence in the Democratic Party. Clinton’s preeminence within her party is just the most glaring example of this. If there has been virtually no accountability for the Iraq war, which was a disaster and failure on a far larger scale than the Libyan war, why should we expect the disaster of the Libyan war to create a serious political problem for its backers years later?

Most of Clinton’s Republican opponents wouldn’t even know how to start to use Libya against her, and Democratic challengers she might face that could credibly challenge her on this issue are hard to find. There is also significant resistance in Washington to admit that the U.S. and its allies wrecked Libya by taking military action. The strong bias in favor of action in response to foreign crises doesn’t allow most members of either party to fault U.S. policy for being too meddlesome. As far as a lot of our foreign policy pundits and professionals are concerned, the only thing that the U.S. can really get wrong is when it doesn’t do “enough.” Indeed, most supporters of the Libyan war will deny that Western intervention is to blame for Libya’s current state. They will point at the country’s woes and say, “This is what happens when you reject nation-building.” Perversely, most Libyan war supporters think they can get credit for the war’s “success” (i.e., killing Gaddafi) while pinning them blame for Libya’s chaos on everyone that never wanted to intervene in the first place.

The lack of accountability for the Libyan war is in some ways more dangerous for the U.S. and the rest of the world. It would be much easier to repeat something like the Libyan war because it is still considered by its supporters to be an example of how to do a “good” and “cheap” intervention, and presumably the Libyan war will be cited in future debates as an intervention that “worked.” As long as there are very few or no American casualties, some future administration will be able to wage a similarly illegal war and get away with it. There’s a depressingly good chance that this administration will be led by Clinton.