The so-called 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine is a cynical variation of the 'humanitarian intervention' con-job employed by the same U$ and NATO military bureaucrats in an attempt to justify their invasion of the former Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia, whose peoples and highly-prized natural resources are today being effectively exploited by U$ and Western European (notably German) corporations. The same con-job was also successfully employed to 'protect' Kurdish and Muslim religious minorities in Iraq against Saddam's 'socialist' policies ... not to mention oil supplies and American military bases.

NATO has done the job the UN should have done - if the UN was not so gutless and so bound down by veto holders. If the UN Security Council cannot embrace a majority vote in good conscience and without risking dissolution (even if this has to be by a mandated say 70% majority) what real hope is there for true world peace and security?

Time will tell whether the removal of the Libyan despot will prove truly beneficial to the populace and to mid-east relations. Let us hope it may result in a strong democracy, and thence pave the way for more peaceful means to achieve popular political reform in other troubled regions. Perhaps this NATO action will give other despots cause to reform or quit. I hope this may be the case, and that reform and humanitarian development may stretch fully across the globe.

Someone has to take the lead and the UN is the logical authority to do so. There remains much to be done to achieve equity, prosperity and justice for all humanity. Hail a revised and strengthened UN!

"Hail a revised and strengthened UN!"

I think you've got something there Saltpetre.

Yes. Something should be done about those imperialistic despots - Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/24/libyas-imperial-hijacking-threat-arab-revolution

In fact, don't you think it'd be better expressed as "Seig Heil! Hail a revised and strengthened UN!"

Don't you think that's got a much better "ring" to it Saltpetre?

"NATO has done the job the UN should have done - if the UN was not so gutless and so bound down by veto holders."

Where have you been Saltpetre? - Nato have done the job their paymasters funded them to do, the UN having been very effectively made in-effective years ago through a cynical process of corporatization and economic dependence upon its trans-national corporate 'sponsors' when its single largest donor state (the U$A) refused to pay its annual contribution for several years in a row. This 'strategic initiative' was put into effect after the UN failed to satisify U$ demands intended to protect or advance strategic U$ politico-economic interests in various parts of the globe.

If the UN is 'gutless', it is because 1) it has been gutted by being starved of adequate funding and 2) the veto power of the U$A on the Security Council, whose six permanent members also happen to include France and Great Britain ... all three of whom have high dependence upon or "interests" in Middle East oil, including the significant deposits of high quality oil found in Libya.

I wonder if anyone see,s the human condition? It seems to me that a-lot of our time is devoted in saving what we cant help. Libya is a third world society, like many, and all knows that if or should we interwar with what we all know, maybe most disagree with the idea, that the doctrine all see, is the understandings of interfering, indoctrinating, complicating, and most would see the western world more of a pain, than a solution to the currant problems that happens when the three worlds collides, which time has a nonacceptance of main-stream thinking's.

Another case of help the world think as one, or the catch-up and wait and see what happens.

7 billion people?....plus....and growing..

Iam going to love watching this one, as it plays out.

Responsibility!........Thats a very good question.

Shakespeare said it well in saying....."To be...or not to be.....that is the question."

We must never forget our rankings in todays world.

Helping maybe the wrong thing.......but the true humanitarians think other wise.

Spy.V.spy

What's your point Kevin Boreham?

Obama thank God is a different U.S leader then Bush, hence a different kind of NATO due to the argued course and influence.

How could there be a change in any part of the world where the West plays to elite puppets, faceless regimes run by secret forces, propaganda and dictators who not only kill their own citizens but promote terrorism at the same time sapping Trillions of Western investment?

To do or not to do....

So far, the war in Libya has been among the few more so transparent actions of NATO. What is to happen now will be up to the people of Libya as they turn their anger at one and other toward rebuilding their country from community up. The rest of the world can only do so much. One wishes the Arab nations themselves could clean-up their act and put people before their hold on oil profit over the guise of religion and narrow ignited misleading divisions, propagations of their faith.

The world cannot afford these continued wars. As we stand by watching painfully the bloodshed in Syria, the famine in Africa and the poverty everywhere. The GFC backlash will continue to put stress on our capacity to assist.

While I cant stand war, I credit the way the world looked again at the "Responsibility to Protect'. Bush almost destroyed, the meaning of this principal. Everyday I wonder what world would we have today if Bush's action's had not occurred. For the most the world has lost much of its innocence. A clumsy thing to say but a point meant as a focus on what the over-arching security has cost us all today. The cost and fear. Our numbed indifference toward the wellbeing of others? The growth in terrorism is what we appear to be left with ... and there's perhaps no turning back. This trend in humanity has escalated the stress on all world borders and so the trade of crime. Hardly sustain-able!

Civil society will not ever be the same, less we each heed why foot-work counts.

http://www.miacat.com/