Is supporting the Libyan rebellion in the vital interest of the United States?
Posted at 5:00 AM on March 18, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(32 Comments)
Filed under: International affairs, Politics/Government, Security
A vote by the U.N. Security Council cleared the way Thursday for the United States and its allies to begin military intervention in Libya. Today's Question: Is supporting the Libyan rebellion in the vital interest of the United States?
Comments (32)
"Seems to be a girl thing to make the world a better place."
You got a problem with that?
Peaceful resistance does not always prevail. In fact, force usually wins. Most freedom has to be fought for. Peaceful resistance is a great way to die for your cause, but killing your oppressor is the more successful way to obtain freedom.
The Libyans deserve freedom every bit as much as the Egyptians do, but they are instead going to get an even more brutal crackdown. A lot of limbs are going to be broken in a lot of secret police cells before this is over. I can blame the revolutionaries for starting a war without having much in the way of weapons, and even less in the way of strategy and tactics, but I can't blame them for trying. I can definitely blame Europe and America for blatantly stalling while they waited to see who was going to prevail.
This is an Arab problem, and Arabs should come up with a solution, rather than volunteer America for the job. America has given the Saudis and the Egyptians more than enough hardware and training to do the job. Now would be a good time to put it all to good use.
Seems to be a girl thing to make the world a better place.
@Sue de nim -
Thanks for the response. The question is then "does the ends justify the means?"
Of course a victory by Hitler would have been unthinkable. (WWII is known by many as the last "good" war.)
Of course, Qaddafi's killing his own people and his support of terrorism is horrible.
But I've been to a couple of wars. Revolutions that I believed in.
I learned that regardless of the rightness of the cause, the actual carrying out of war - as human behavior rather than an abstract concept - is never moral or ethical, whether or not the end results are preferable to the intolerable pre-war situation, or logical suppositions as to what would have happened had the moral and ethical people not decided to take up arms.
Innocent women and children and old people and the earth ALWAYS bear the brunt of suffering in war. (The military refers to their suffering as "collateral damage".)
And war too frequently turns moral and ethical people who choose to take up arms into the killers of those innocents. (The rate of ptsd among US troops is tragically high.)
So I guess while my mind and emotions say "kill the bastards",
something deeper and wiser within me has got to believe that there must be a better way.
Jim, I don't completely agree with your first point ("While intentions may be, War is never moral or ethical"). The main counter-examples would be revolutions to throw off tyrants, and defending against military aggressors. War is never good, but sometimes it is less bad than acquiescing to a worse outcome. Fighting WWII was less bad than letting Hitler win, for instance.
Third time's a charm, right? Just like the last war, we'll pay for it by giving
the rich a tax cut.
@ Sue de nim - well said.
1) While intentions may be, War is never moral or ethical.
2) it's almost always about money/the distribution of material resources= The Market.
While I prefer your warm optimism, and wish that there was a nonviolent way to help Libyan civilians ( we know little to nothing about the opposition movement), Greg sadly cites cold reality.
Another cold reality is that in any military action civilians always suffer in much greater numbers than the armed combatants, and that actions always have unintended consequences.
Any call to arms that ignores those facts is naive at best and mendacious at worst.
Posted by Jim Shapiro.
I do not know. Who are they?
We've been in enough wars in the middle east. Can't afford anymore. Let Europe and the Arab countries take over. They're more financially capable than the U.S. We have too many problems here at home right now.
How do we know this is an egalatarian movement and not Islamist. The current dictator was a long time supporter of the PLO and engaged in terrorism. But is the replacement another anti-woman and religiously intolerant cadre?
Absolutely not. The U.S. should begin withdrawing troops from its present wars and not intervene in a military way in another area.
I wouldn't say it's in the vital interest but we should do what we can to support the opposition to Ghadaffi short of actually going to war. This is something that can be done without making some long term commitment. Enforcing a no fly zone would require disabling a certain amount of his military capability and might shift the momentum back to the opposition. I'm afraid we might have waited too long though which is understandable though as it would be unwise to rush to a decision like this without considering all possible options and outcomes.
Greg, I hope I'm misunderstanding you, because it sounds like you're arguing that we should intervene militarily in Libya to keep the market stable. If so, it's a sad commentary on the state of our national soul that The Market is such an overriding factor in what should be a moral and ethical decision. We're treating the Economy like a god that we need to appease in order to gain its blessing.
Yes. We are connected globally, look at what happened when we turned our backs on Afghanistan after ousting the Soviets—9-11 .
In one sense - we are vitally interested. (1) Modern communictations make us instantly aware of changes in the status of business and political outcomes from this conflict and our market reacts to it. (2) Just-in-time supply chain manufacturing is dependent on conservative capitol sources having confidence (3) Libyan-Sweet crude is the optimum petroleum source for jet fuel. It takes four timeas as much "unsweet" Saudi crude to make the same amount of jet fuel. That pulls oil from other uses. (4) The recovering world economy is so tightly integrated - betwwen fiancial market confidence and just-in-time supply chain systems that .... what used to be little ripples are now big waves. This is the future - unless we find a way to decouple from the interlocks of world market finance, confidence and fuel commodities.
The irony is, we are at least partly responsible for the problem in Libya. If our economy weren't so dependent on petroleum, Gadhafi wouldn't have so much power. With every gallon of gasoline we put in our cars, we become more compliciit in the oppressions being perpetrated by Gadhafi and his ilk. Since we're partly to blame, does that mean we're partly responsible for cleaning up the mess? Maybe so.
Supporting the Libyan rebellion is not in the vital interest of the United States.
Should we allow innocent people to be killed? No. Is it the U.S. governments responsibility to protect people in other nations? No.
We primarily elect our government officials in the hopes they will make our lives better. Weather or not the rebels in Libya win or lose will have very little impact on the constituents who elect our government officials.
And to further illustrate my point, and much more eloquently, I might add.....:
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2011/03/libya-the-us-and-moral-imperative-to-intervene-militarily.html
Supporting freedom and democracy is always in the interest of the US. Not sure if that is exactly what's going on in Libya or not, but what we do know is that there is a dictator who still has American blood (Pan Am flight 103) on his hands in power and there is a stong movement to remove him. Why the hell wouldn't we support that? I agree with those posters that argue that it is the morally correct thing to do.
No.
Honestly the leader does need to be removed, especially if he is using Military weaponry on peasants with simple weapons (Slings, rocks, & foul language...).
But we can not afford to do anything. Its Europe who has most invested in their oil and greed is never a good reason to go to war.
We need a Charlie Wilson type.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson_%28Texas_politician%29
Nothing like a good Democrat to understand how to win a war.
F.D.Roosevelt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt
Widrow Wilson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson
Once again the US contemplates meddling in another Mid-East country. And once again, (if we do), we will repeat the same mistakes of Viet-Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan... Will we EVER learn from our history???
Even though the Arab League favors a no-fly zone, certainly Islamic fundamentalists will be outraged over a US/Western presence in yet another Arab country.
How long will it be before this no-fly zone proves ineffective and then what? Air strikes? A land invasion?
This is a huge mistake, as was going into Afghanistan and Iraq.
We will not be protecting anyone but the oil companies and the banksters!
Our country is bankrupt at -$76 trillion dollars; it will take a 77% increase in taxes to pay for what the banksters have got us into. QE1,2, and next 3, to QE(n), is going to drive food and fuel prices through the roof and double digit inflation by next year.
We cannot afford any more war!
It's impossible to say whether supporting Libay is in the vital interests of the US because those "vital interests" have not been defined.
What, exactly, is our vital interest in Libya?
If the answer is something to do with doing the right thing morally, that's OK, but then you have to apply the same standard elsewhere in the world. That part could be a problem.
If the answer is something to do with regional stability, then you have to say what reginonal stability looks like.
If the answer is something to do with democracy, well that's kind of like the morally right answer earlier; you'd have to apply the same standard elsewhere in the world.
You can't have a cohesive conversation about US vital interests without defining US vital interests.
So what are they? And, maybe more telling, what are they not?
No - it is not a vital interest, Having a stablized situation in Libya would be more of a vital interest but sometimes being pro-democracy and pro-stability are in conflict with one another.
It is about time! It may not be a vital interest but it is morally right.
It is in the vital interests of the US to be seen to be on the side of right, especially in the Middle East.
As such, supporting the more moral parties in this Libyan conflict is indeed in our vital interests.
The conflict in Libya is less of a rebellion than it is a backlash. The anti-Qadaffi's have no real organization, no structure, no plan. It is tough to see how our intervention could possibly help, except to keep some heads from getting caved in by an angry leader. If that alone is our objective, there are a few hundred additional hotspots where we should also get involved.
GaryF, first off, Mr Obama is not a world leader... He is a Country leader, granted the world is made up of countries, but in the end it is the US and the interests of the US he should be worrying about (which may or may not include basketball tournaments, need to double check the constitution on that... ;)
I feel like the US should provide support in a method similar to how every other country provides support in "our wars"... Technical support, we don't have soldiers to send into battle there, they are all tied up in Afghanistan, and Iraq (and even though we do still have a large standing force over here, we shouldn't send them.)
What we do probably still have plenty of is air support, couple apaches and predator drones to help establish a no fly zone... Not a big deal, we've already got a naval group deployed in the Mediterranean.
If we need ground troops, lets provide joint ops with our air force and European ground forces...
Over all though, it's Europe's back yard, not ours.
If the UN intervenes in Libya then the US must be willing to let other countries provide the military actions. Tough talk may work to stop the aggressive actions against protestors, but if the protestors become armed and dangerous the Libyan government must be able to stop the violence.
I would say this is time for Europe to step up to the plate, our hands are full. Italy, France, England, Germany, time to start doing some of the heavy lifting. The US can't do it all.
But then maybe the Europeans are afraid that they can't do it. If they try they will expose themselves as lame and worthless, as I might suspect.
Problem is, if you do this with Libya, what are the repercussions? With Egypt? With Iran? With Syria? With Saudi Arabia?
But that doesn't mean our absent President can't give the rebels a more vocal stance on helping the rebels so the world and people of Libya notices. But he's too busy with basketball tournaments.
What worries me is that Obama might "need a win" to help his failing last two years of his Presidency. He might want to go in to get a quick victory, which might help his re-election.
All I know is that right now too much is going on the world and we have a President that doesn't want to be a world leader.
"If Qaddafi emerges the victor in Libya, and resumes selling oil to the rest of the world, I will take that as proof that human nature is intrinsically evil."
You mean you don't think that's proven already?
Eight years after invading Iraq and ten years after Afghanistan. The U.S. military is stretched too thin to be intervening where it is clearly and justifiably needed. Besides, how are we going to pay for it? For the past ten years China has financed our two wars. Do fiscal conservatives have enough stomach to continue this trend? If Qaddafi emerges the victor in Libya, and resumes selling oil to the rest of the world, I will take that as proof that human nature is intrinsically evil.
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