UK Guardian: The difference with Libya

[pampango]

Unlike Bahrain or Yemen, the scale and nature of the Gaddafi regime's actions have impelled the UN's 'responsibility to protect'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/23/libya-bahrain-yemen-un-responsibility-protect

Why not bomb Bahrain? Why not declare a no-fly zone over Yemen? Such questions are aired increasingly on the internet – implying that in the light of all the popular uprisings in the Middle East and the authorities' attempts to suppress them, military intervention in Libya is a case of double standards.

So, while it's important to let people determine their own future, there's a conflicting pressure to get involved when lives and human rights are at stake.

In an effort to clarify the position, the UN's 2005 world summit established an international norm known as "responsiblity to protect" (set out here in paragraphs 138 and 139):

"Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means."

"Responsibility to protect" was specifically cited in the two recent security council resolutions (1970 and 1973) relating to Libya. Under the rules of R2P, military intervention is a last resort – and the way that is interpreted will always be coloured to some extent by the political interests of security council members. Even so, there is a reasonable argument that the scale and nature of the Libyan regime's action justified intervention in a way that the actions of other Arab regimes (so far) have not.

There is a further argument that Libya was a test case: if R2P was ignored on this occasion the whole principle of protecting civilian populations would have been seriously weakened, if not rendered totally worthless.

This is not to suggest that intervening in Libya was necessarily a good idea militarily or politically. As Jonathan Freedland says, the trouble with it is not "the abstract principle but the concrete practice". There will always be debates about the implementation and questions about whether the number of deaths would have been higher or lower if Libyans had been left to their own devices. Either way, though, it deserves to be recognised as an intervention based on principle and not as the "petro-imperialist" plot that Gaddafi claims it to be.

[aquart]

1. It's both. More than one thing can be true at a time.

And conflicting, opposite things can both be true, can ALL be true at the same time. I don't know why people keep insisting on either/or. Most of life is not one thing or the other, it's one thing AND the other.

[EFerrari]

2. Imho, the question being dodged in this situation is

can any conscious person trust the same actors who wantonly destroyed Iraq and who are still feeding on the carcass.

Can any loose association of those same actors be trusted to respect human life more than their bottomless greed?

I think the answer has to be "no".

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Still, it was French airplanes that bombed Gaddafi's tanks

and their hands are clean from Iraq. And France has taken the lead in supporting the rebels - recognising them, introducing the UN resolution (along with the UK and Lebanon). And there's been a change of government in the UK, and the US for that matter, since Iraq. So, since the actors are somewhat different, shouldn't we be evaluating this on its own merits, rather than a different situation involving different governments?

[EFerrari]

5. Are the actors different? Hasn't France been arming Gaddafi

and isn't the French cabal still up to their eyebrows in other corrupt "projects" like Haiti? The British PM decided to tour the region in the company of arms dealers just as Libya was heating up.

This situation isn't Iraq and it should be evaluated on its own terms. But the actors aren't substantially different, no. Right down to the Pentagon that our own president is relying on. Obama is not Bush but the infrastructure of power in this country has not changed a whit since the election.

[Iterate]

6. How would you determine trustworthy actors?

Maybe it's too late for this application of the law. The question itself hasn't been dodged, it's in many discussions even back to the original proposals.

Up to this time, the protection of a group depended upon having a tough ally or patron or ethnic cousin. If you didn't have that protection you were toast, and it was certainly arbitrary, inconsistent, and sometimes greed-based.

Not there's a law that protects. So do we create a UN force, capable, powerful, and disinterested? Not many nations want that and more than a few wouldn't tolerate. Maybe it's only those nations within the continental boundaries which would do the enforcement. That one looks like a path to disaster.

Maybe those nations which have not committed atrocities in the past 100 years would be candidates on the enforcer list. It would be a short list, and would be contentious in itself.

It's a core question. Who's trustworthy?

[joshcryer]

10. No. Thankfully they're not the same actors.

They have completely different rules of engagement. They have completely different strategies. They have a completely different terrain.

It's not Iraq or Afghanistan.

[Iterate]

4. Thanks for keeping this issue at the top

of things to think about. I know it doesn't always generate a lot of discussion, and it's not a good topic for one line replies, but seeing it mentioned often helps us integrate it into our thinking at all sorts of levels.

[bobbolink]

7. Another HUGE difference: Iraq did not organize a popular revolt, nor did it petition the UN

for help.

The Libyans have done both.

And for the bonus round.... the Iraqis didn't great the coalition forces with flowers... the Libyans have.

It is often said that Generals are always fighting the last war. In this case, it is armchair "progressives" who are fighting the last war, and refusing to see the differences.

[Iterate]

8. I've been thinking the same thing all day,

the part about fighting the last war that is. In all fairness, all I could think of is that most of our fellow progressives have been so busy doing battle on the local front, like Madison, that the sudden emergence of this new struggle has caught them off guard, especially if they haven't seen the beginning of the conflict.

I just wish that more people would acknowledge that it's the same struggle, exactly the same struggle, and that if Libyan people can be protected and reclaim their nation, it's an aid for Americans to do the same.

When I saw the early footage of Benghazi organizing, or the early non-violent protesters, I saw the progressives I've known, doing just the same.

[bobbolink]

9. You make an excellent point... these struggles ARE connected....as is poverty.

And you see the similarity with that, too.... poverty is the step-child of Democrats and "progressives". Or, more correctly now.. the abused child.

I do remember the anger that Libya bounced "Madison off the news cycle". Now that you mention that, I remember seeing that posted here.

"When I saw the early footage of Benghazi organizing, or the early non-violent protesters, I saw the progressives I've known, doing just the same."

That's an astute observation. I also think it is connected that Madison didn't recognize poverty, and still just speaks about "the middleclass", and is turning its back on Libya.

Thanks... you have really make a good parallel here! :yourock: