Libyan rebels in Benghazi celebrate UN's historic no-fly zone vote

[Apeman81]

What is the reason for U.S. military intervention in the internal politics of a sovereign nation?

[RickSp]

What is the reason for U.S. military intervention in the internal politics of a sovereign nation?

The official reason is to prevent the massacre of civilians. Whether that is a good enough reason is open to debate. It is a far better reason than to invade a country searching for fictitious WMD.

I am amused how Newt called Obama inept for not imposing a no-fly zone and now condemns him for imposing a no-fly zone. I'd vote for Newt as a rodeo clown. The man is certainly qualified.

Newt Attacks Obama For Bombing Libya Weeks After Demanding Obama Bomb Libya

[Apeman81]

The official reason is to prevent the massacre of civilians. Whether that is a good enough reason is open to debate.

So let's forget the sidebar fodder and concentrate on the central issue. What is the justification of this action and does it meet muster?

I answer no. The matter is entirely internal in nature. I do not see precedent for this action. It certainly does not stem from U.N. efforts to stop massacres in Darfur, Sudan, and Rwanda.

So why here and why now?

[rmnunez]

Exclusively internal matters can justify external intervention when grave enough. When Slobodan Milisevic engaged in ethnic cleansing the US and NATO intervened, when nobody went to Rwanda during the Hutu-Tutsi slaughter everyone condemned the passivity of the US. If there are countries with the means to intervene and they can apply them when needed, if the humanitarian threat is significant, there is an obligation to intervene.

[rmnunez]

NATO will assume command of operations in Libya within a few days, their headquarters will be in Naples, Turkey has agreed. France destroyed a Libyan jet in Misrata for violating the no-fly zone.

[Apeman81]

Exclusively internal matters can justify external intervention when grave enough. When Slobodan Milisevic engaged in ethnic cleansing the US and NATO intervened, when nobody went to Rwanda during the Hutu-Tutsi slaughter everyone condemned the passivity of the US. If there are countries with the means to intervene and they can apply them when needed, if the humanitarian threat is significant, there is an obligation to intervene.

I know what has been done in the past. I ak what justification is being used now.

I further ask for an explanation of said justification to include limitations.

Or can the U.N. make note of any level of civil unrest within a soverign nation and "mandate" external military action against one side of the unrest?

When does the U.N. go from being a neutral observer to picking a side and attacking?

[rmnunez]

Someone in the Security Council raises the issue (I think it was jointly proposed by Lebanon, Spain and others). The proponent submits a proposed Resolution, they negotiate terms, remove ambiguities, add specifics and then it gets voted on. Look at the Resolutions (1970 and 1973) for details, preambulatory clauses beginning with "whereas" give the justifications, operational clauses numbered below spell out what is to be done.

[Apeman81]

Someone in the Security Council raises the issue (I think it was jointly proposed by Lebanon, Spain and others). The proponent submits a proposed Resolution, they negotiate terms, remove ambiguities, add specifics and then it gets voted on. Look at the Resolutions (1970 and 1973) for details, preambulatory clauses beginning with "whereas" give the justifications, operational clauses numbered below spell out what is to be done.

Thus the U.N. can make note of any level of civil unrest within a soverign nation and "mandate" external military action against one side of the unrest?

[Thanatos]

Its an issue for another thread, but there is this underlying, latent, subtle not quite evident notion that sometimes is blurred by ultra patriotism which seems to suggest a notion of racial supremacy among the more conservative United Statians.

There is that class or economic status element which typically associates a more diverse population at the lower levels of the economy, while conservatives tend to be more affluent and usually these are well-established elites of paler pigmentation. The lefties tend to be a more inclusive variety which favours the dowtrodden and disenfranchised, so they are more embracing and diverse.

It's strange to see you saying that, but race is rather far away from the thread title. Save for some other thread.

[do not respond]

[RickSp]

So let's forget the sidebar fodder and concentrate on the central issue. What is the justification of this action and does it meet muster?

I answer no. The matter is entirely internal in nature. I do not see precedent for this action. It certainly does not stem from U.N. efforts to stop massacres in Darfur, Sudan, and Rwanda.

So why here and why now?

OK so your argument is that massacre in Darfur, Sudan and Rwanda is bad and warrants UN action but massacre in Libya is OK an the UN should look the other way?

All I know is that the Republican drumbeat was for a no-fly zone and now they are condemning it. Not a sidebar issue. Just rank hypocrisy and gutter politics.

I too have mixed feelings about the mission but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt in the short term.

[rmnunez]

Thus the U.N. can make note of any level of civil unrest within a soverign nation and "mandate" external military action against one side of the unrest?

Not quite, it requires a majority in the Security Council and no veto from any Permanent Member.

[rmnunez]

The US-led attacks against an autocrat in oil-rich Libya have opened the Obama administration to questions about why it's holding back from more robust support for opposition forces challenging other dictators.

I don't think "US-led" is the best way to describe the military action against Khaddafy. Something besides oil wealth and autocracy is necessary to trigger intervention.

What is the difference, some have asked, between the situation in Libya and the uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria and even sub-Saharan African nations such as Ivory Coast?

The Libyan situation differs from the unrest in all the other Muslim countries in a major way, only Khaddafy confronts an armed insurgency, Muslim autocrats elsewhere face restive protestors who may throw rocks, paint graffitti, camp out in the main square and chant anti-government slogans.

The bombardment by Washington and its allies of the air defenses and troops of Moammar Gadhafi, unquestionably an international pariah, was motivated by a desire to prevent a possible slaughter of rebels fighting to end his erratic 42-year reign. There's hope among US and allied leaders that the anti-government forces will move toward democracy as they appear to be after revolutions in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

The slaughter of rebels was more than a mere 'possibility', it was very likely, near certain. Khaddafy said he would, he has slaughtered whole towns when he thought they sympathised with the opposition. When the French led the enforcement of the UN's Resolutions, Khaddafy's forces had the insurgents at their last bastion within range, they were bombarding Bengazi and he brought in hundreds of African mercenaries who were veterans experienced in the most savage conflicts in Subsaharan Africa. It is reasonable to expect everyone in Bengazi would have been brutally killed, Khaddafy said he would go house to house and show no mercy.

But the military intervention begs many questions and illustrates once again the stark inconsistences in an American foreign policy that tries to balance democratic ideals against pragmatic national interests.

What "pragmatic national interests"? Is this a euphemism for 'oil greed'? The US wasn't getting any from Libya, Khaddafy's buyers were in Europe, oil greed could have motivated them.

The easy but unsatisfactory answer is that the UN called for action against Libya as did that nation's neighbors in the Arab League. And the UN also is already deeply involved in Ivory Coast where the internationally recognized president is calling for UN peacekeepers to use force against incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who has attacked civilians and refuses to cede power.

Just because they are obvious doesn't mean these are dismissable considerations.

Mark Quarterman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Obama was engaged in the "art of the possible" in Libya. "The ability to reach a consensus on action in Libya, in the face of potential crimes against humanity," he said in a recent commentary, "is not illegitimate simply because a similar consensus cannot be reached in other circumstances."

Quarterman is right, one should look at the differences to see why crimes against humanity only sometimes justify intervention, and consider other factors besides oil wealth.

Nicholas R. Burns, a Harvard professor who was in the upper reaches of State Department decision making for much of the past two decades, said Obama had no choice. "With Benghazi being overrun by Gadhafi, the president had to use force," he said. "It has been done effectively. It saved those people and gave new life to the rebels."

Burns is right too, this had to be done right away, as I noted it was almost too late. It also had to be done with combat jets using precission munitions after extensive air defences had been completely knocked out.

But why not act on behalf of anti-government forces that have come under attack as they challenge entrenched autocracies in Yemen and Bahrain?

Because they are not in an armed insurgency, their government is not surrounding restive communities with tanks and bombarding them with air force and artillery?

"We can't be antiseptically consistent," Burns said. "The US has huge national security interests in those countries." And that's where the pragmatism over national security interests comes in.

I suppose "national security interests" isn't another euphemism for 'oil greed' in these cases since neither Bahrain nor Yemen have oil.

The US 5th Fleet base in Bahrain allows the US to project military power in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Indian Ocean. In Yemen, the long-time president works closely with Washington in the fight against al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula.

Nonetheless the US has condemned the violent repression and deaths of protestors in both Bahrain and Yemen.

Also at work are fears of Iran -in Bahrain and its mentor and neighbor Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer. The monarchies in both countries are deeply distrustful of their Shiite Muslim populations who are suspected of being under the influence of Iran. Arab nations dread an expansion of Iran's outsized political and military ambitions in the Gulf.

This situation is similar to that of Oman, Quatar and the UAE.

Burns, whose State Department tenure included the administration of President Bill Clinton, also recalls that many of the foreign policy decision makers now working for Obama have deep and troubling memories of the mass killings in Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo. Among that group are the former first lady and now Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and current UN Ambassador Susan Rice, a key Africa adviser for President Clinton.

Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo prompted humanitarian intervention against Serbia, but then there was a very real threat to neighbors with refugees streaming from the place. The Rwandan case was more sudden and it was more difficult to do anything since its far away from anyone capable of intervening effectively.

History argues forcefully that US intervention could have prevented the Rwanda massacres and limited the carnage in the Balkans. That would explain pressure Obama reportedly felt from both Hillary Clinton and Rice as the UN resolution for a no-fly zone and other action in Libyan started coming together last week.

Bosnia festered for years, the Europeans didn't want to get involved, gradually the stories of concentration camps, bombed marketplaces, mass rapes, desecrations and other atrocities shamed the Euers into grudgingly acquiescing.

Beyond that, the American relationship with Israel, Washington's closest Mideast ally, always hangs above US decision making in the region. Any final peace agreement among the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors depends heavily on both Saudi Arabia and Syria. Saudi endorsement of any peace plan would carry huge weight with other Arab nations.

I don't see how AIPAC and the Zionists would be interested in any of this. Though Israel is in the middle of this restive mess, the outcome is irrelevant. They realize there's no chance of Iranian-style theocracies emerging from any of these protests. Ousted rulers will be followed by either a similar tyrant or a more democratic and progressive one. It would be better if the latter, but helping bring about change doesn't guarantee what will follow.

That's especially important after the revolution that swept Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from power. He had served as a US proxy in attempts to arrange peace between Israel and the Palestinians and the wider Middle East.

True, and before Mubarak's ouster there were protesters who denounced his policies towards Israel. Now they seem more interested in political reform. What if the Muslim Brother was more active and influential, would a fearful Israel urge intervention or support for Mubarak? Obama supporter the dictator at first, then changed his tune, was that Israel's machination?

What's more, Syria is still seen (despite its close ties with Iran and its support for Hezbollah forces in Lebanon) as a potential peace partner. It is desperate to win back control of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 war. That reality keeps Damascus in play as one of the Arab rejectionist states that could be coaxed into a peace deal.

Does this mean the US wants Assad to stay, because he may bargain to get the Golan back? Is it expected a fundamentalist or progressive successor wouldn't?

Obama has worked assiduously since taking office to repair the US image in the world, an image that was badly damaged by Washington's invasion of Iraq and its long war to defeat the Taliban militancy and its al-Qaida allies in Afghanistan and in the border region with Pakistan.

I think perceptions of that damaged image vary with political ideology, the further to the left, the more damaged it seems.

As he stepped into the Libyan conflict in a major way, Obama was eager to keep America's profile as low as possible. He has routinely said, as has Clinton, that the operation in Libya would soon be ceded to NATO control. The White House has no interest in attaching itself deeply to yet another conflict in a Muslim country. News from The Associated Press

NATO will be in charge within a few days, but what is needed is leadership, the citizenship of the leader doesn't matter.