President Barack Obama said the worst mistake of his presidency¹ was a lack of planning for the aftermath of the 2011 toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

 

贝拉克·奥巴马总统承认，其任期内所犯的最大错误就是，在2011年推翻利比亚独裁者穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲之前未能制定计划应对后果。

 

"Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya," he said in a Fox News interview aired Sunday.

 

This is not the first time in recent weeks he has talked about Libya and the NATO-led intervention² which resulted in Gadhafi's death in October of that year, months after NATO first intervened.

 

In a profile published last month in The Atlantic, the President told author Jeffrey Goldberg that British Prime Minister David Cameron became "distracted by a range of other things" after the operation.

 

Although Obama said he thinks the intervention went as well as it could, he views Libya today as a "mess."

 

In The Atlantic, Obama said he had more faith in Europeans "being invested in a follow-up" given their geographical³ "proximity⁴" and largely blames their inaction for the "mess."

 

Obama said in the Sunday interview that "saving the economy from a great depression" after the financial crisis in 2008 was his top White House accomplishment⁵.

 

And -- as he has before -- he said his best day in the White House was when health care reform passed.

 

He also recounted that his worst day in the White House was "the day we traveled up to Newtown after Sandy Hook" when 20 children, mostly first-graders, were killed on December 14, 2012 at an elementary school. He spoke⁶ at a local prayer vigil two days later.

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