Pacific Free Press: Will Gaddafi's Massacre Revive the "Humanitarian Intervention" Doctrine?

[pampango]

http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1-/8149-will-gaddafis-massacre-revive-the-qhumanitarian-interventionq-doctrine.html

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is working its way back into the news. The doomed Gaddafi's determination to punish the citizens of Libya "to the last bullet" has afforded this hibernating notion of humanitarian intervention an early Spring, and promises joint international military action will soon be brought in to bring down the tyrant.

In a prepared statement from the Security Council, Brazilian Ambassador to the UN, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti reminded the Gaddafi regime of its duty to the people, saying; "The Security Council and top United Nations officials today urge the Libyan Government to immediately end its violent crackdown on protesters and to meet its responsibility to protect its population."

R2P is a principle that is the product of years of behind the scenes diplomatic manoeuvring. Simply stated, R2P asserts; with sovereignty comes responsibility, the responsibility to protect the well-being of the populace over which a given body claims authority. Where that responsibility is abrogated, as is clearly the case in Libya at this hour, the responsibility must be taken up by an outside party.

The problem with the notion of war as an expression of humanitarian necessity is its long history of misuse. The "good" war is a central tenet of all imperial narratives; from Hannibal to Hitler, the powerful have assumed high-mindedness and used the language of universalism to mask their ambitions for extraterritorial plunder.

R2P was designed to curb that skepticism, providing a codified set of circumstances where foreign nations can supercede sovereign rights, and is meant to rebrand "humanitarian intervention," so discredited by NATO's not so humane destruction of life, limb, and much of the civilian infrastructure of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990's.