Quote Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost View Post
No, I don't - unless we consider it a principled obligation and apply it equally whenever there are significant breaches of human rights. Therefore, when we gear up to invade China to protect their civilians, we can add Libya to the list.
Well we can't invade China because we'll lose.

But it are practical considerations such as that that indeed mark the limit I would put on humanitarian intervention. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, we spread democracy as a matter of course. And we violently overthrow tyranny wherever there is a reasonable alternative, or whenever a situation is intolerable.
One can oust Gadaffi if the situation became desperate, although the better scenario is to leave it to market forces. He who, and that which, emerges victorious in Libya can subsequently reasonably be assumed to have a workable power base, for he wouldn't have won elsewise.



I blame Iraq for destroying the appetite for humanitarian intervention. And Kosovo. In the former a US administration hijacked and made a mockery of the wish to do good and to make sacrifices to spread democracy, sadly, right in America, the one country that is not completely cynical about these things. The latter was a case of aiding one evil against another. Not an unmitigated disaster, for both warring parties were separated, but still best to think about while holding one's nose.