How can the United Nations' Sec. Counc. distinguish between protestors' blood from one country to another's?

Because protests there don’t disrupt oil exports so much. The U.S. feels it can’t afford to intervene in Syria. In contrast, I bet the higher ups think that they can’t afford not to intervene in Libya, in order to stabilize it as quickly as possible.

Word

Wordy word.

Ditto to my brother. I am of the opinion, this thread is too red for me and anything I say will be deleted. I think it sucks to be frank @seazen_. Word out.

EDIT: why do you keep posting in general? Word

@bkcunningham Because it’s a serious topic.

Sorry. Word in all caps. Seriously. I’m out of the serious thread. No offense.

Sad but true. Might technically be about what threatens international peace and security. Oil exports being disrupted causes more international problems. See Article 33.

An order of magnitude, possibly two orders of magnitude, more people have been killed in Libya than in Syria or any other country. 30,000 people have possibly died in Libya so far, and many more would have been killed in Benghazi and other cities if the UN didn’t intervene.

Qadaffi explicitly threatened to go house to house and kill protestors. No other dictator in the region has made anywhere near such a threat.

And frankly, I get pretty tired of people reducing complex international events to simple, one-word explanations. “Oil” is not a meaningful or correct answer for any decision to use military force against another country. I say this as a bleeding heart liberal who was completely opposed to the Iraq War. That war was not fought because of “OIL.” It was fought for many reasons, and many of those reasons were purely ideological. Bush really, truly believed that invading Iraq would help spread democracy.

In the case of Libya, it appears that the administration was genuinely motivated by a desire to prevent genocide, egged on in no small part by Samantha Power, Obama’s adviser on human rights and foreign policy.

Maybe oil wealth was a larger factor in the behind-the-scenes discussion of European Nato countries. Or maybe not.

The U.N. is only as powerful and influential as it’s most powerful and influential member nations want it to be. Don’t blame the U.N.

And one more thing: what do you think would happen if protestors in America or Europe mobbed entire city centers without any sort of permit and burned police stations? I have no doubt that after the police tear gas failed they would call out the national guard, and people would probably die.

I’m not defending Assad or any of the despots of the region; the protestors are absolutely on the right side of history. But it is unreasonable to expect the UN to de-legitimize sovereign countries’ ability to police themselves and control protests. I appreciate that it was a delicate balancing act in Libya; I actually opposed intervening at all in Libya because I think it sets a bad precedent that if you start an armed rebelliion against an unpopular dictator, the UN will bail you out. But then, Qadaffi’s response to the protests was much worse than other dictators.

@Qingu The US was dragged into the Libyan conflict, against the better instincts of Robert Gates. It was Cameron and Sarkozy who were the prime movers in getting action organised.

True, but it was the Arab League that tipped the scales.

And there was a legitimate UN resolution. I actually don’t have a problem with a “world police,” in theory, as long as it is legitimately backed by the international community. I think there is a place for using military force to prevent civilian massacres, and I would have supported doing so in Sudan and Rwanda (and looking back, did support what we did in Serbia).

I wouldn’t call Qadaffi’s threats in Libya “genocide,” but it was pretty clear that a lot of people would have died—a lot more would have died if we didn’t take out some of his military capabilities.