What is more important: going to war for a good reason(s), or waging war effectively?

There is no data explaining people’s opinions, as far as I know. In fact, I don’t even know if it is true that people do support this action.

Assuming they do, my crystal ball says there are several reasons. On is that our involvement is limited. We are supporting the rebels who are fighting for truth, justice and the american Libyan way. Gaddafi is such an asshole. Plus, he’s crazy. We will not be involved in a ground war. We like to shoot at things and make big booms!

I wouldn’t write off the fake WMD threat so quickly. When we were initially going into Iraq, it seemed to me the outcry was against the feeling that we were being totally lied to and manipulated, not a general pacifist outcry against war/intervening in other countries.

The problem with Iraq was that Bush et al. did some handwaving about WMDs, everyone who was paying attention said, “WTF are you talking about!?” and then he did some handwaving about the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, as you pointed out, the international community was very reluctant to endorse action against Iraq, so it really seemed like a small group of oil barons had simply decided to go to war no matter what the rest of the planet thought to kill some brown people and make a quick buck.

It makes sense to me that thoughtful people have difficulty taking a stance on an issue like removing a very unpopular dictator. War sucks, but so does cruelty, so it seems entirely reasonable to examine these situations on a case by case basis and sometimes come to different conclusions about whether it’s appropriate to intervene.

I agree with @nikipedia. I might be a bit more if an isolationist, though.

The choices in the question are not mutually exclusive.

The details seem to ask a slightly different question.

So in response, Libya is a more palatable target for a lot of reasons.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s once said of the Free World’s relationship to the USSR ”...interfere as much as you can. We beg you to come and interfere.”
A big difference between Iraq and Libya is that Libyans are begging for intervention. Iraquis did not, and were thus bulldozed by invaders, whether or not the invaders were justified.
(I can argue both sides of that question)

Plus Iraq had a 500, 000 man army, Libya 50 000.

Libya’s population is about 20% of that of Iraq.

Even though there are no Western soldiers on the ground, logistics and supply would be simpler in Libya.

And, as you said, there is support from Arab countries, many of which are very nervous that these local uprisings might coalesce into something bigger.

Simply a more attractive target.

The traditional and emerging industrial powers, which are maneuvering to control the oil, are not going to ignore any opportunity to enlarge their footprint in the Middle East. This is another opportunity.

First, I disagree with your premise.

We are not trying to remove Quaddafi. That is not the goal. The President has said that Quaddafi is not a target of the bombing.

We are trying to stop the wholesale slaughter of Libyans who are simply engag9ing in protests.

That is very different from the Iraq war which Bush pursued simply for his ego using trumped up excuses about WMD and with no plan for what to do after he removed the dictator and with no major impetus or movement from the people for change.

@marinelife The rebellion in Libya may have started as simple protests, but it morphed into a full scale armed rebellion before the US got involved.

@WestRiverrat Yeah, so? Do you think that the government has the right to crush the rebelling populace? There would be no US if that were true.

Just saying armed rebellion is not the same as simple protests. Libya has the right to restore order. Gaddafi would not have gone to the extremes he did no one would be trying to oust him now.

I think that if you are going to go to war at all, it is essential to have both going for you.

If you are going to wage war, it is essential that you have the people behind you. Without the willingness of the population to do what it takes to win, the other things don’t matter.

We went into Iraq on phony claims and fought with poor strategy, which I don’t think improved the situation at all because they went from being killed by Saddam Hussein to being killed by al-Qaeda. Going into Libya, we’ve improved that mistake of targeting a man, who while cruel, kept out the larger threat of a large organization of known terrorists. Our goal for Libya is, to the best of my knowledge, helping the people help themselves. Instead of going in and killing Qadaffi, we’re protecting them and suffocating his reign over them.
Our mistake in Iraq was doing too much, it appears Obama has not let that happen again. War is not a good thing, it only makes more issues, but Gadaffi is a madman and needs to be stopped by something more than kind words of reason.

a) Shock and awe came from the air.

b) When do we go to war for good reasons? When do we wage war effectively? Especially regarding the latter, isn’t the name of the game anymore to draw it out as long as possible?

c) This series of articles mostly focuses on Tunisia, but concludes with a question appropriate to all of the related political upheavals, which is ”The real question is whether or not this ‘transition’ will bring about true freedom and true democracy, or if it will retain “neoliberal freedom and democracy”, which amounts to a kind of democratic despotism, in which democracy becomes simply about voting between rival factions of elites who all serve the same foreign imperial interests. Could Tunisia potentially witness a populist democracy, like those that have spread across Latin America? Or will it succumb to the American brand of democracy?”

After the Halabja poison gas attack in 1988 in Iraq, killing or injuring more than 10,000 innocent people, the UN Security Council should have passed a Libyan-style resolution although it’s questionable whether the Arab League would have supported this. But I’m sure the liberals in the US and Europe would have been in favor of this. I certainly would have. In 2002 it was about WMDs which many thought no longer existed. And it was about a full-scale war with ground troops without a green light from the UN, quite different from what we see in Libya right now. It has to be the Libyans who might or might not overthrow Gaddafi. This is why liberals support the approach.

@kevbo, shock and awe was not just an air campaign. We also sent companies of Marines with the initial invasion on land using heavy artillery. The doctrine refers to overwhelming use of force, not just air power (though obviously air power is very overwhelming).

And I agree with @WestRiverrat that the Libyans are not peaceful protesters. They were, but then they turned into a violent rebellion. You can argue that it was Qadaffi who instigated this change with his brutal crackdown (much more brutal than other crackdowns in the region), but still… we’re not dealing with nonviolent hippies on the rebel side.

The Egyptian demonstrators had the military to protect them. The Libyans didn’t.