Unarmed citizens being killed by their government pleading for help from the world.

[Xicano]

Oh I forgot they're not Libya so its "different".

Warning graphic video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5NQj4YEKSc

Pleads for help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaYvy8CPxwU

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. What policy path would you recommend?

No-intervention is all of them? Intervention in Bahrain as well? Curious.

[Xicano]

3. Listen to this guy and ask him that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geqTT14AXwE

[napoleon_in_rags]

6. I just wanted to know what YOU are for.

I see you are against the status quo, but I don't understand if you think we should intervene in Bahrain, or if we should just stay out of the whole thing: Libya, Bahrain, the rest.

[Xicano]

12. I've expressed my position many times, but, I have no problem expressing it again

First: There needs to be consistency because hypocrites have no credibility in the eyes of others.

Second: Military force is a blunt force of death and destruction, its not a police force. Using the military in police actions is like a police officer using a hand grenade to stop a criminal in a crowd.

Third: Who imbued us as the world's police? Did Libya or any of these countries attack us? No. So its not in our place to use our military blunt force on people not attacking the United States. I believe in the principles of the prime directive

[napoleon_in_rags]

14. Interesting... But I have to ask: what is the equivalent of being pre-warp?

I get that you're saying you're against intervention in smaller countries that don't present an existential threat to the US. But where do you draw the line?

[Xicano]

15. #3 in the previous post should answer that question.

If nobody has attacked us, where is our authority?

eom.

[napoleon_in_rags]

16. Can you actually stick to your guns on that?

I mean can you do a Google image search for the word "holocaust" and say that we shouldn't have intervened in WWII had the japanese not attacked? (Some historians say the Pearl Harbor attack was baited, retaliatory in nature for covert US actions)

[Xicano]

18. Yes I can stick to my guns on that.

First off we didn't go to war with Germany because of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Germany declared war on the United States first. Also, Germany had already sunk several American ships before Pearl Harbor happened. So you can't really ask the question as stated.

Also, Libya is a light year away from WWII in that Libya hasn't attacked another country. So to phrase your question correctly you would have to eliminate Germany attacking Poland, France, Great Britain, Russia and all the other countries they attacked. You just can't compare the two to make the point you're trying to make. Sorry but I believe your point to be a strawman argument.

[napoleon_in_rags]

20. "Germany declared war on the United States first." Huh?

My WWII timeline looks like this one here:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ww2time.htm

December 7, 1941 - Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor; Hitler issues the Night and Fog decree.

December 8, 1941 - United States and Britain declare war on Japan.

December 11, 1941 - Hitler declares war on the United States.

So sorry to you: You may believe my point to be a straw man argument, but I believe your facts are made out of straw. Good day to you sir. Hmmph.

[Xicano]

22. I think you may have misread my post.

Your timeline post is the same point I was making. I don't see the issue you're making.

Again, my point about Libya is a light year away from WWII and can't be compared because Libya hasn't attacked another country. So to phrase your question correctly you would have to eliminate Germany attacking Poland, France, Great Britain, Russia and all the other countries they attacked.

Libya is simply not the same thing and you just can't compare the two to make the point you're trying to make". Again, sorry but I believe your point to be a strawman argument because you just can't compare the two.

On top of that why does you point leave out our non intervention of other holocausts such as Stalin's holocaust, Mao Tse-tung's, Pol Pot's, Rwanda's, Sudan's, etc? I believe because they illustrate our non intervention doesn't reflect on us as being bad or heartless, because, again, we are not the world's police and are not bad or heartless for not acting like the world's police.

n/t

[napoleon_in_rags]

23. Look, I hear what you are saying.

The only Republican I have supported is Ron Paul, for his non-interventionist policy. Its MUCH saner than the Neocon stuff that has defined US policy in recent years, because of its consistency: People will know what to expect from the US. So I hear you, I respect that. But what's at play is questions about precisely what you are talking about with questions about the atrocities we DIDN'T act on... Not just bad things happening in nuclear armed States like Stalin's USSR that we couldn't change because it would start a nuclear war, but in places like Rwanda, where an intervention could have been done easily and saved hundreds of thousands of lives, but didn't happen. That's the ghost that haunts Bill & Hillary Clinton as well as the UN, and that's the Ghost that compelled the Libya decision. They don't want to stand by while innocent people are killed.

The thing that comes to mind in this conversation with you is the difference between the politics of SHOULD and the politics of COULD. America SHOULD stand against the oppression of all people, including those wrongly sent to gulags in the USSR, but America COULD have intervened in Rwanda without starting a nuclear war with another superpower, which it COULDN'T have done with USSR. The simple reality is that there are some fights we can easily win and some we can't. You have to see beyond the propaganda at some point and see that we aren't that much beyond these middle eastern countries like Libya, certainly not to the extent of "we have warp technology and they don't". Middle east dictators can deliver hundreds of millions plus pussy plus partial control of heroin supplies to Europe and The US to the scientists who give them top military technology...And in a rogue world with concepts of loyalty to nation dissolving in a global trade, that's a pretty powerful position to be in. In fact, looking at the US's almost frantic attempts to control the situation there, one gets the distinct impression of a chess player who just saw a "5 moves to checkmate" scenario his opponent holds but doesn't yet know, a situation he wants to get out of intensely. We are NOT in the high and mighty position of power as the worlds "only superpower" that the media would have you believe.

Here's the bottom line: I was crunching numbers recently and I saw the ethanol production and consumption in the US was following an exponential curve that would have 50% of our corn going to fuel in less than a decade. I hear that certain gas stations around town are putting more than the legal amount of ethanol in fuel to lower prices. I heard that the middle east riots were based on food prices, which had been effected by ethanol consumption through supply and demand (US being a major food exporter, as is Russia, but now its going to ethanol). WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL AND FOR SOME REASON THEY ARE TRYING TO COVER IT UP. And that's what this is all about. That oil props up the American "First world" way of life, and after its gone, we are no longer that big superpower, we are just like them, the camel people in the middle east. This is about desperate scrambling to prop up a way of life that is ultimately doomed.


So what I'm saying is that ULTIMATELY you are right: We can't be the world police, we can't keep on this way. But if you have any fantasies that ending the interventions will result in anything other than a total collapse of civilization in America as we know it, then you have another thing coming.

Good night.

[Xicano]

21. Now I have a question for you.

Google search for Stalin's holocaust. Not to minimize the atrocity of the Nazi holocaust, but, as you can see MORE people were murdered in Stalin's holocaust known as Stalin's purges. Are we bad for not intervening? Or are we bad for not intervening against Mao Tse-tung for doing similar? Or are we bad for not intervening against Pol Pot? Why no mention of those, or, Rwanda's genocide or Sudan's?

We are not the world's police and are not bad or heartless for not acting like the world's police.

[Xicano]

17. "What is the equivalent of being pre-warp?"

In Star Trek the 'Prime Directive' also refers to warp capable societies as well. Example: In the episode "Redemption" when civil war erupts in the Klingon Empire Pecard reminds Worf of the Prime Directive whereby Worf resigns his officer's commission to go fight in the war. The link below is the episode, but, I can't locate that scene. However you'll notice what happens in this video clip at point 0:55 to 1:50.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JL8JtBZcSY

[WinkyDink]

27. IOW, you posted about "pleas" to which you do not think we ought to have responded? YOUR POINT?

[joshcryer]

8. Agree, does the OP believe we should intervene in Bahrain or not?

[populistdriven]

19. not black and white like a freeper thinks, we greenlighted the slaugher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40vyXE9rqMY

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Cruise missles are expensive, they are reserved for protecting us

from $5 gal gas.

[aquart]

4. Right. Leave the Libyans to die. It's only fair.

But good to know someone around here would be agreeable to armed intervention of some kind. What kind would that be? Permanent occupation? Temporary? How do you propose to proceed?

BTW, who are your particular favorite candidates? I don't click on unexplained links. It's too smarmy a trick used for arguments that are already lost.

[Ramulux]

5. You just dont get it

The UN passed a resolution saying its OK to invade Libya, so obviously that changes everything. Apparently if the UN decides to declare war that means it is completely moral and legal and if you disagree that means you want the Libyan people to die.

Get with the times, this is the "new liberalism" where we accept our role as the police of the world. I suggest we invade N. Korea next.

[Union Scribe]

9. You forget that one of the main deciding factors in democracy-spreading

is if the 'bully' we're taking on is at least two feet shorter and a hundred pounds less than we are*. NK has nukes and a huge army. So their people can stuff it, lol.


(*not that we've been great at beating them, either)

[Amonester]

10. Link to the UN resolution saying "its OK to invade Libya"?

That statement is false.

[David__77]

24. That resolution allowing "all measures" or whatever.

Apparently the West thinks it allows anything. And no one will stop them except maybe the Libyans. It's hardly a false statement.

[14thColony]

33. All measures "to protect civilians and civilian populated areas"

It is somewhat disingenuous to take a small section of the whole out of context to try to make your point.

Here's what paragraph 4 of UNSC Res. 1973 actually says:

"Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory...(con't)"

Thus undermining your position that it "allows anything." Although I presume from your "or whatever" you hadn't actually read UNSC Res. 1973.

[David__77]

25. It's sad that it will take paying a price to change this dynamic.

It's all fun and games to many when it's push button murder from afar. But if the US really paid a price for it, like it did in Iraq, then I imagine many of the pro-war voices would fall silent.

[joshcryer]

7. Death toll in Bahrain is 100x less than Libya, they're not Libya, and it is different.

[sabrina 1]

11. Right, they're NOT Libya, they don't have oil. The Global Oil

Cartels are not interested in Yemen. Last week, Halliburton and BP among others who have huge contracts in Libya after much hard work as Qadaffi did make them beg for them, complained about the Sanctions 'interfering with our work in Libya' and asked that they be exempt from the sanctions. Shortly after those statements, the NFZ which had been decided against, was suddenly back on the table.

Billions of dollars of 'business contracts' are at stake in Libya. I hope for the sake of the Multi National Oil Corps that Libya gets a government, like the one we installed in Iraq, that doesn't have the crazy idea that Libya's resources belong to the Libyan people ... :sarcasm: just in case.

[joshcryer]

29. Lest we forget that you believe the revolutionaries are terrorist agents and Gaddafi is truthful.

[sabrina 1]

35. Don't you dare put words in my mouth. Your credibility

is shot because of your deceptive posts, such as this one.

I demand that you link to any post of mine that called the revolutionaries 'terrorists'. And an apology for that lie.

[sabrina 1]

36. Just as I thought, there is no such post.

Lying about DUers is as far as I know, against the rules here just FYI.

[Xicano]

13. And you'd be singing that same tune IF

Bahrain's death toll is what Libya's is now, and, Libya's death toll what 100x greater than that. Sorry but I don't buy your argument. Its not about numbers with you. Its about blindly supporting a Democratic President. Its about tribalism with you. No you say? Well it certainly isn't about people getting killed by their own government for merely protesting, else you wouldn't be saying what you've just said.

n/t

[joshcryer]

28. Yes, I most certainly would be "singing the same tune." I'd be calling for a UN intervention.

Damn straight I would be. It is about numbers. The deaths in Bahrain barely make a dent in the murder statistics. The UN isn't going to care. I would love if we had a global police that stopped anyone from being murdered for having political views contrary to their states. But we don't, do we? So we have to look to the UN, we have to have something. And the UN isn't likely to get involved until it escalates, as it did in Libya. Everyone here is arguing against a legitimate UN action. It's disgusting.

[WinkyDink]

26. So should we also ignore Libya?

[JCMach1]

30. Not only that the US has enought assets based in Bahrain to deman whatever

we want from the Gov.`

[pampango]

31. I hope using R2P to stop Gaddafi sets an example to be used elsewhere by the UN to protect civilians

Norway offers F-16 jet fighters to Libya mission

http://www.norwaypost.no/news/norway-offers-f-16-jet-fighters-to-libya-mission-24911.html

“Norway is prepared to provide up to six F-16 fighter aircraft to participate in the enforcement of Security Council resolution 1973,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said following the summit meeting in Paris on Saturday.

At the summit, Støre said that Norway strongly supports the historic resolution adopted by the Security Council two days ago. For the first time, the Security Council invokes the principle of Responsibility to Protect as the primary reason for authorizing the use of force against a Member State.

As a firm believer in this novel principle, and in the importance of an UN-led world order, Norway stands ready to contribute to its full implementation, through political, military and humanitarian means, the Prime Minister said.

"In addition to military contributions, Norway stands ready to help develop a broad and effective response, including economic sanctions, international legal action, and a well coordinated humanitarian assistance", Prime Minister Stoltenberg said in Paris.

One might prefer that the UN invoke the Responsibility to Protect in many countries more or less simultaneously, but in a practical sense that's not likely to happen. Perhaps getting the UN to invoke R2P for the first time will set a precedent that will help civilians in other countries in the long run.

[joshcryer]

32. +1, if only we had it for Rwanda and if only it was used in Burma.

[14thColony]

34. R2P has its genesis in the mea culpa following inaction in Rwanada

For once the world actually learned a lesson from something it failed to do and resolved to do its best to prevent it again.

But I've learned on DU that doing something is just as bad as doing nothing, and maybe worse. Unless of course we did nothing, in which case that would be worse than doing something.

The logic makes my head hurt.

[sabrina 1]

37. This talking point is making the rounds to gain support for this

war. Could you please post a link, as I've already asked for above, that backs up this claim?

The neocons said nothing about Rwanda in THEIR letter to the president demanding the U.S. get involved. So, who has said we are making up for Rwanda by bombing another oil rich country in the Arab World?

I thank you in advance.

[14thColony]

38. Sorry for the delay in responding

I am no doubt several time zones ahead of you (I'm in Africa) and hence only saw this today.

I think there's some confusion here. By "this talking point" I have to assume you mean my assertion that R2P has its origins in the international mea culpa after Rwanda? Because I never asserted that anyone in the U.S. was using the ghost of Rwanda to compel action in Libya, nor have I heard such a thing.

Nonetheless I would suggest that the R2P principle does apply in Libya, regardless of its genesis. To quote the UN position paper (first link below): "Responsibility to react, by responding appropriately to situations of massive human rights violations by, for example, imposing sanctions, bringing international prosecution; and, in extreme cases, intervening with military force." Although it's obviously subjective as to what "massive" means.

But if you're referring to the idea that R2P has its genesis primarily in the embarrassment felt by the world community post-Rwanda, that shouldn't be controversial. In fact the UN position paper on R2P (first link below) is titled "Lessons from Rwanada." The last link, to the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, begins with the sentence "The concept of the Responsibility to Protect was developed in response to the genocide in Rwanda and the deliberate targeting of civilians in Kosovo and Srebrenica."

So I would submit that the assertion that R2P has its origins in the Rwanda Genocide is pretty much beyond debate. The UN thinks so, Lt General Roméo Dallaire (UN commander in Rwanda) thinks so, and Canada thinks so, and those are just the ones I checked.

http://www.un.org/preventgenocide/rwanda/responsibility.shtml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/etc/protect.html
http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/crises/37-the-crisis-in-darfur/941-from-rwanda-to-darfur-never-again-or-never-say-never-again
http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/03/21_protect.shtml
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/glynberry/protect-resp-proteger.aspx?lang=eng

[sabrina 1]

39. Thank you for your response and for the links.

Yes, I was questioning the assertion that this mission has anything to do with the Rwanda situation.

Reading your quote from the UN, I am glad to see that lessons were learned. I remember the UN's non response to Rwanda.

However, we were told much the same thing about the War in Iraq. That is was to 'liberate the Iraqi people' from a brutal dictator who was torturing them and killing them etc. And anyone who opposed that war here was often met with accusation that they 'didn't care about the Iraqi people being tortured etc.'

My problem with this intervention in yet another oil producing country, if the claim is that they are only there for humanitarian reasons, these same countries, Britain, the U.S. especially, are themselves creating a huge humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan on a daily basis. Torture has become a policy in this country now with extraordinary rendition (we supposedly have more supervision) still in effect.

Trusting a claim by people whose own records on human rights is as dismal as theirs is, with the human rights of any other nation, strains credulity to be honest.

There is always an appeal to our better nature when this country decides to bomb another country but Iraq with so many dead and maimed and tortured civilians, not to mention Afghanistan, clearly has taught us that human rights are not exactly at the top of the list of any of the governments involved in this intervention.

Anyhow, I do appreciate very much your well sourced reply and no need to apologize for the delay.

[14thColony]

40. I do understand your position

And I have many of the same concerns you do. The question of "just war" dates back at least to St. Augustine's writing, and I fear we're no closer to an answer. But I think we can agree the vast majority of wars are unjust in purpose.

Nevertheless I believe that war, even if launched for the most self-serving of reasons, can have "just effects"; e.g., if (hypothetically) thousands of Libyans do not end up dying who would have died otherwise, then even if the purpose of the intervention was not just, was not one of the effects of the war just? I suppose the question is can justice result from an unjust act?

Best wishes to you.