Lets face it - there's gonna be a lot of blood shed in Libya. Does anyone honestly believe that this intervention will prevent civil war and the deaths of civilians in fighting and acts of revenge by either side of the conflict? All this is doing is evening up the competition so the whole thing can drag on and the rebels may have a chance of winning.

And then what? Another Afghanistan? Has the Western world not yet noticed that these Arab types don't do Democracy well? Another Dictator will clamber to the top of the dung heap and the cycle will begin again.

Just let them get on with it - as long as they're only killing each other and the oil keeps coming, who cares!

It is not about humanitarian intervention. Gaddafi has lots of oil. It has to be secured for the West, especially France needs it desperately.

If Libya had no oil, the west would not care any more than with all the other African countries where all those massacres are taking place.

And if it was not about getting control over Libya's oil it would have been sufficient to destroy the 15 runways that Gaddafi has for his air force. That would have taken around 50 bombs and around 5 hours, and the no fly zone would have been installed.

To Sarah Joseph:

From your author description you are a lawyer...so a trained mind in removing all extraneous material to situation at hand and focusing on the relevant facts to extract, to come to a deduced conclusion...right...

so for starters: how did you_
1. Exclude UN as a tool of aggression, despite how it sell itself today...
2. exclude 'US government' as the most powerful force on earth today, disconnected from its 'people' it supposedly represent, so acting on its own interests, while using its power to give a face of respectability...look up the definition of 'facisim'...
3. and oil is not at the root of this...yeah oil to keep the US governments massive armed forces mobilized for one...
4. and when US government while allowing/keeping Iraq destabilized and so 'world common people' attention is distracted while its quietly training iraqi women and giving them jobs at all levels of Iraqi government and actively excluding men except selecting few as the 'face', exclude that Libya is not another social re-engineering of theirs(aka puppet regime)...
And on...
So lets hear how you excluded this, to decide if you are part of the problem or solution...

regards

sam

L.B. Loveday raises a mighty fine point: what reasonable purpose does abortion serve, other than the wanton slaughter of human beings, albeit yet to be born? They may be foetuses, but they are most definitely human, and as such ought to have their rights respected, no?

We in the 'civilized' west may one day rue the day abortion was ever allowed for it may well make us hostages to our own folly, irrationality, stupidity and inhumanity. Some western leaders may conceivably wind up having to defend their actions at the International Court of Justice in the Hague for crimes against humanity on a scale so monstrous as to dwarf anything ever before seen - or imagined.

I'd like to make a few points.

1) Gadafi is a tyrant who has no conpunction about committing acts of terrorism abroad - think Lockerbie 1988 for example. He warned the west that such attacks would be the result if the west interefered to protect the citizens of Libya.

He also has no qualms about cleansing those parts of his population who have defied him see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_Gaddafi#Political_repression and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_Gaddafi#Assassinations_abroad.

He warned the rebels in plain terms of the fates that awaited them"

"...Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them. In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear. "It's over ... We are coming tonight," he said. "You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets." The speech was broadcast on radio and television shortly after a defence ministry statement warned that any foreign military action would trigger counter-attacks and endanger all air and sea traffic in the Mediterranean region ..."

So what we know is that he was poised on the edge of benghazi after driving the rebels from all the way from the outskirts of Tripoli. Battalions of tanks and artillery were ready to begin pounding the city of 1 million. Casualties would have been massive.

Had we waited just one more day, gaddafi's troops would have been able to enter Benghazi - ending any posibility of preventing a massacre in the city. The allies could not engage in military intervention (without overwhelming civillian causlaties) once gaddafi's troops had entered Benghazi. Gaddafi himself recognized this which is why he called for the ceasfire, and then deliberately broke it.It was a last grasp for victory and to present a fait accompli to the global community.

It is also worth noting the Arab Leagues critical support for the intervention as well as the UN's decisive role in the outcome.

cont'

con't

Yes - there are other tyrants who are in Gaddafi's league. Although none are currently in the process of killing as many of their civillians as Gadafi. The 30 killed in Yemen do not compare to the 1000 deaths Gaddafi had already caused. And he was within 24 hours of attacking, with tanks, artillery, naval gunnery and fast jets, a city of 1 million people.

Yes - the world (including the west) has an interest in the free flow of oil in the gulf. Cheap energy is fundamental to our economies and we should not be asahmed (when comparing when, and when not to intervene in situations) to take note of our national interest. This is not to say that it should be the determining factor. It should not, but when allocating scarce resources, it is only right to also consider our own capacities and interest.

But neither of these points are reasons why we should not protect the civillians of Benghazi (who were adamant in their requests for protection from the international community). Rather than are cause to criticize our failures to protect in the past.

We did intervene in Yugolsalvia, unfortunately at a time when the left had so captured the debate on intervention, that a protection order from the UN was not enough to prevent the massacre of hundreds of thousands. It was the same situation in Rawanda. UN troops watched as the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsi. 800,000 killed in 100 days. As Kofi Anan put it"...The genocide in Rwanda should never, ever have happened. But it did. The international community failed Rwanda, and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret and abiding sorrow... " I would add shame to that collection.

A last point. Gaddafi was on the cusp of demonstrating to the dicators of the region that discussion and negotiation would lose you your rule, whereas violently suspressing your people was a certain method for clinging to power. This is not a result the global community could afford to allow.