To want us to butt out of Libya's business

[bupcakesandcunting]

I know there are reasons for why we probably can't or for why were are obliged to "help" but I have a bad feeling about this. I feel like we're poking at a hornet's nest with this one and we're going to get stung.

AIBU to wish that we could just keep out of this? Can any clever MNers with more knowledge talk about why we are obliged to help/what the consequences will be if we don't stop with the no-fly zone? I read that the Arab Leaague are a bit at us already and I don't think we should be annoying them, really. The whole thing worries me quite a bit :(

baggedandtagged that's why they've said they're not going to sit on their hands any more.. the UN, US, UK etc were badly stung after Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Agree with it or not you can see the dilemma. Intervene and be accused of meddling to protect oil interests, don't intervene and be accused of failing to act when a genocide takes place (as it will, think what you like of the situation, but Gaddafi is murderous brute)

I don't know why the Arab League can't do the bombing, if they are right behind the resolution. We have sold them all enough planes over the years. Or Italy. It was their colony, back in the good ol' days.

At some point we need to realise that the UK and the USA can not sustain getting involved in skirmishes outside the western hemisphere. Let the Arab world sort their own backyard out, and at least when there is a legitimate revolution in a north African country, it can not be said that "western powers" were behind it.

Thanks for answering my question Hecate (and not sounding defensive either!) Some interesting points there. I've lived in the horn of Africa for a few years (not there now), including Kenya, so have a few localised opinions too.

However, I disagree with the argument that we can't cooperate and benefit from dictatorships for years, then turn on them. Because in the UK our government changes, on average, every 10 years. So it's not this lot that armed the Taliban, or bought oil from Saddam, or colonised Zimbabwe, or went to war in Iraq etc etc. Although of course parliamentary careers are longer than governmental ones, and the line of history runs throughout.

So there is nothing wrong with, and everything right with, our government (and I'm categorically NOT a Tory or Lib Dem!!) trying to do the right thing now, and hopefully from now onwards.
Ok yes, I'm an optimist. But I have been there and do work in this kind of stuff, and I think the only way to make this world better is be optimistic. (Plus fair trade, use less oil, buy less sweatshop shit).

Although the arms industry is a massive and intrinsically linked other issue that really would benefit from WikiLeaks-style forced transparency. I can't hear any whistleblowers coming out of BAE yet though...

"Would any of you stand by and watch someone be murdered if you were strong and powerful enough to intervene and stop it?"

Short answer - no.

I agree with everything that Hecate said in her post at 14.20, though.

Thanks, but there's nothing to be defensive about. This is not personal, we are simply exchanging our opinions on an issue.

I would love to be an optimist too. But as far as I can see, an optimist is constantly disappointed.

The issue is not is it right or wrong, it is that intervention is selective and always has been. people are dying in Yemen. People are dying in somalia. how many hundreds of thousands died in rwanda? people are dying in bahrain.

If it is wrong, it is wrong all the time. wrong across the board. not wrong if you have oil or wrong if you are not our mate.

So you either intervene whenever people are being slaughtered, or never. when you pick and choose, people will always look to see why you chose iraq and not yemen. why you chose libya and not bahrain.

I think as well as oil which is one factor a major consideration is that Gaddafi has exported problems to other parts of the world for years (unlike Mugabe for example). As well as financing IRA terrorism he is said to have ordered the assassination of the Saudi King. He is not liked by the Arabs at all (DH is Algerian). Part of the issue for the other Arab leaders is that he attracts negative attention from the West at a time when they want closer ties.

Having seen some horrific footage on Al Jazeera (courtesy of DH) I have little doubt that Gaddafi would have bombed Bengazi to rubble so I don't think we should stand by. I don't particularly like us intervening but I don't feel we could do nothing.

where did IRA go fundraising?

America.

where is the capital of terrorism atm?

somalia.

pick n choose

pick n choose

Hecate why Iraq not Yeman or Libya not Bahrain, good question. I think part of the answer is the question of degree. I could see a lot of leaders saying there is a big difference between someone dying when a demonstration is being broken up (after all Ian Tomlinson died after a police action at the G20 in London)and sending in tanks and warplanes to bomb your cities. Neither scenario is acceptable but if your aim is to protect civilians then there probably needs to be a certain level of threat before intervention in the affairs of another state can be justified.

800,000 people were slaughtered in rwanda. I think that warranted intervention.

people are dying every day in these countries.

Do you have any idea how many people have been murdered in somalia?

In terms of libya and bahrain - in terms of percentage of the population it is probably the same.

one of them is our friend, the other isn't.

I think (think - I'm by no means an expert) the difference between say Somalia and Zimbabwe is that so far the regimes haven't undertaken mass killing, they haven't take overtly aggressive action such as bombing their civilians. I think that's become the benchmark as to when you step in. Of course corruption, torture, supression of opposition and the means they use to suppress that opposition are never acceptible, but I think having been so badly stung with Iraq and Afghanistan, and also (though in a different way) over Yugoslavia and Rwanda the US and allies are cautious of being seem as effecting regime change in these places without blantant evidence of large scale crimes against humanity. Doesn't make it right of course, and we are all totally right to morally outraged that the US et al can intervene in Libya but not Somalia.

But that means that if you drop a bomb one day on ten thousand people, the west will come and get you, but you can kill many more than that over a period of many years and have a situation where people disappear off the streets, get tortured if they speak out against you or simply get hacked to death in their own homes and nothing will happen to you.

I don't think that's a very fair policy, tbh.

Kill as many as you like, just not all on one day. Pace yourself.

I don't think it's quite so cut and dried Hecate.... Foreign affairs are ridiculously complicated, there are so many aspects we're just not privy to. I'm not giving the Govt carte blanche to bomb the regimes we think we need, and leave all the rest to kill their people. I'm as uncomfortable as everyone else with the idea of being involved in another war in the middle east (is it the middle east still, seeing as its Africa?), that's why the Americans are being so cagey.

I don't think the UN has all the answers, and I do think UN, and particularly the countries making up the Security Council, know all of their past mistakes and responsibilities for not stopping previous genocides and massacres.

The UN is very much in flux right now. As is our world. Nobody has written or agreed a fair policy by which we should conduct ourselves, although there are criteria to be met when intervention is mooted, as with Libya now.
All we have is a room where representatives of 192 countries will talk to each other - that's all the UN is.

Just because there are terrible regimes the world over repressing and murdering their people, it doesn't mean the UN shouldn't be acting now in Libya. But it is setting an example, demonstrating to these regimes that there can be consequences and showing critics it has teeth after all.

The young generation who are valiantly trying to change the shape of the Middle East to a democratic one are watching and seeing the UN as a positive force. I believe this is important. Otherwise these future leaders may not come to that room of 192 nations, sit down and talk with their neighbours.

Meanwhile the dictators of the world are watching Libya.
They may not be overnight democracies, but some autocratic leaders are making unheard-of concessions to their people's demands already, from sacking their prime ministers and cabinets, to setting a date for elections (which UN observers will hold them too) for the first time in decades... (See Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Sudan, to name a few).

"There are so many aspects we are not privy to"

ha. yes. my point exactly. [cynical]

I don't know. I can't bear the thought of sitting back and letting him just kill so many of his people though. He's such a total fucking bastard!

Always find it very difficult to accept UN resolutions such as this one in Libya after they stayed out of Rwanda during the genocide of millions of people.

But then Rwanda doesn't have anything "we" want or need

Hec, I don't know how I came to be so trusting

Exactly orm

But the UK, or France, or Italy or anyone else isn't just going to own Libya's oil - even if Gadaffi goes - we'll still pay a market rate for it just like everyone else.

All this 'it's just about oil' is quite simplistic and too easy. And in any case, if it was 'just about the oil' then we - every one of us who drives a car and uses power in the home at work, and buys cheap consumer goods made in poor countries - is to blame. Not the UN, and not our elected representatives.

But I don't think it is about the oil. I think it's about stopping a certain massacre, and also the UN showing it's learn from past, tragic, mistakes.
The UN isn't like God, unchanging and absolute. It is an ever-changing dynamic of people, younger generations coming in, older ones leaving.
Most of the people in charge during Rwanda in 1994 are retired. Apart from Gadaffi and his ilk, none of the world leaders were in power then either. And Ban Ki Moon was just a South Korean diplomat.

We're not going to own those oil reserves whatever we do.

I was just sketching out the scale of the financial motivation involved, when people talk about it "being all about the oil".

Interestingly, it may well transpire the West would end up partially or wholly owning Libyan oil reserves in 20-40 years.
I suspect that much of global affairs will revolve around a very large-scale oil-grab as the very finite nature of reserves comes into sharp focus and prices rise above about $250-300/bbl.
It may well get very "nasty".

That's why it is very much about oil.

Maybe you're right. maybe the governments of the USA and UK and assorted hangers-on are going to start jumping in to rescue all the people being brutalised by their own governments all over the world. Maybe I am horribly cynical and will owe them all a huge apology and massive bunches of flowers.

I'll wait with interest to see them jump in to help everyone who is currently living in terror with no interest at all from the rest of the world. I will be really really happy.

I think the proximity of Libya to Europe is a big factor.

I agree with Hecate - Intervention is very selective, and there is very much different rules for different groups.

The UN may be "currently aiding and abetting a home grown revolution", but just two years it was happy for Libya to sit on the UN security council (and has allowed Libya to do so 4 times now - many countries haven't been on it once).

I'm not sure on intervention, as I can never know all the facts, but I do think that the UN (and many countries within it individually) need to be pulled up on their roles in the atrocities that are currently going on and their obvious biases and blind sides.

they don't have enough money for a woman to have childcare whilst she has counselling after experiencing DV (not me btw) but they have enough for a war?!

If Libya descended into full-scale civil war, or started spreading hostilities north, east or west it could well drag Egypt and Tunisia with it, in which case not only would it destablise the Middle East and screw up the world's oil supplies but it would also bugger up major shipping routes all the way from Portugal to the Arabian Gulf. From the perspective of keeping Europe safe, fuelled and able to trade it makes a lot of sense to bomb Gaddafi.