While it is deplorable that policymakers apply their moral outrage selectively, in accordance with perceived national interests, that does not mean we should abandon the moral impulse altogether for the sake of consistency.
Libyan rebels seem to be allowing their prejudices to dictate who they’re arresting as Gaddafi loyalists.
Gaddafi may not be in a position to incite genocide, but he can approximate it with massacres.
The camera pans out on a dense sea of people pushing and shoving against one another, trying to work their way through the noisy crowd on the border between Libya and Tunisia. One lone voice narrates above the clamor: “The scene at the Libyan border is getting ugly,” he tells us and goes on to explain that these are migrant workers from Egypt who are attempting to flee the violence in Libya. “Expect more scenes like this in the days and weeks to come,” he declares in a somber tone, before the frame shifts to another dense sea of people, lying under blankets as the sand swirls about in the background.
Arab leaders are concerned about criticism for green-lighting Western military action in Libya, should it backfire.
In its threat to use force against the Libyan government, the international community put Muammar Gaddafi into what chess aficionados calls zugzwang. This clever gambit traps the opponent so that any move worsens his or her position. Thus, if Gaddafi continued to battle the opposition in Benghazi, several air forces were at the ready to bombard his army. And if the Libyan leader pursued a ceasefire and political negotiations, he risked a further outbreak of protests in Tripoli from an emboldened population. Along either path lay probable checkmate.
As Japan’s nuclear crisis deepened, Gaddafi revealed that he would cancel oil contracts with Europe and sign up instead the BRIC countries.
Following the vote at the UN Security Council, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States have embarked on military action against Gaddafi’s forces in Libya. They have been careful to include a few Arab states in this new coalition of the willing. But these three countries are the driving force behind the imposition of a no-fly zone and the attacks on the government’s military positions and forces. Yet among the permanent and non-permanent member of the Council who were asked to authorize “all necessary measures” to protect civilians rebelling against the regime, the BRIC powers of Brazil, Russia, India, and China were conspicuously absent.
However different the two, Libya could still end up like Iraq today: a nation deeply divided not by sect and language but by geography and tribe.
Unless the world is prepared to stand by and watch Libyans massacred, there is clearly a need for intervention.