Well, I was going to go off soon now that I finished watching the first two episodes of MLP, actually, but...right, an amateur's discussion of international discourse.
"Right" is a tricky thing when it comes to international politics. Nominally, international politics are governed by realpolitik. Gaddafi, so long as he kept his nation under control and out of the affairs of his neighbours in a blatantly hostile (and thereby destabilizing) manner, or at least as long as he wasn't
caught doing so, was a tolerated presence, who was too much trouble to remove. Now, however, the situation has changed in many ways. The first, and most obvious issue, is that Libya is no longer stable, and instability in North Africa is, by extension, a potential threat to Italy - whether the arguments on North African boat people crossing the Mediterre are sound is a different matter, so long as it is perceived as such. Another issue is that our present administration does not enjoy realpolitik at all; Obama is fundamentally an idealist, or perhaps an ideologue would be a better term in this context. The people of Libya agitate for freedom, and America stands for freedom, so America stands by the people.
Gadhafi, moreover, has acted decisively in attempting to counter this threat, and in doing so has alienated the entire international community. There are things that, domestically, are just not done, and calling in the Air Force to strafe protesters in your own capital is one of these things. Qadhafi's previous connections to various terrorist bombings, most famously the Lockerbie Bombing (where a Boeing 747 was destroyed by a bomb on board over Lockerbie, killing all onboard and another 11 in the town), while not proven at the time due to diplomatic exigencies (read: Labour folded faster than an origami grand master) had never really endeared Qaddafi to the West, but if his actions had proved successful in quashing the protests, it may have gone without comment. Unfortunately, he has also lost control of the eastern half of his nation, most of his army, and almost every tribe in the nation save his own. Effectively, at this point, all he commands is the Air Force (excepting the bits that defected to Italy, Malta, or the rebels), his own tribe, and a very large amount of foreign mercenaries even more desperate than he is. Internationally, Khaddafi is a pariah, and domestically, he is besieged and at genuine risk of overthrow. In the simplest terms, both idealism and realpolitik suggest that intervention is actually a reasonable course of action in order, respectively, to spread the ideals of liberal democracy and to endear ourselves to the new powers that may well overrun Libya. However, this does not get into the international "rights" of such a thing.
To a degree, the feasibility of unilateral intervention is also because one of the cornerstones of foreign policy since the end of the Second World War, the bipolar world split between two untouchable superpowers manoeuvring in the Third World, has been shaken twice with the outright fall of one power in 1991 and what was perceived as a brutal attack on the other a decade later, and the world is still reorienting itself to the concept of a global policeman unfettered by rivals and temporarily shaken from its traditional isolationism. To be honest, the modern system of inalienable nation-states with absolute internal sovereignty, not to be infringed upon, is actually a very recent concept, and one that functions best so long as there is no reason to infringe upon the sovereignty of others. The concept of such sovereignty has existed in the West since the Treaty of Westphalia, specifically its agreements on the absolute right of a ruler to define the religious nature of his own country, but in practice, there have only been limited attempts to specifically delineate and enforce this concept as an idea beyond the occasions of practical realpolitik (read: "when it's convenient for me"). The two most famous examples of this would be the League of Nations and the United Nations, both of which were designed primarily to serve as permanent forums of diplomatic exchange rather than as enforcers of murky concepts of "international law," in the hopes that such a forum, always guaranteed to be open and active, would help avoid the failures in communication, misunderstandings, and outright secrecy that helped lead to the First World War. In fact, even after Westphalia, nations have traditionally been encouraged to aggressively defend their own interests in friendly or client nations, from the Wars of Succession for Austria and Spain in the 18th centuries, to the partitions of Poland in the wake of their government and military reformations, to the Congressional system of post-Napoleonic Europe and the concepts of gunboat diplomacy and imperialism, to the Cold War puppets and bastions of democracy/Communism propped up at the point of the bayonet, the consequences of which we are still dealing with today (such as dear Kadafi). The idea that a nation has the right to manage its own affairs, no matter how chaotic the situation gets, was frequently bandied about more as an excuse for disengagement rather than a genuine political platform for international discourse for much of history, and it's only due to the chaotic and, frankly, difficult nature of such engagements in recent history that it has gained traction as an ideal in its own right.
This particular suggestion is not entirely without precedent, however. A year after the Persian Gulf War, in 1992, the U.S. designated two no-fly zones over the north and south of the nation, and the British and Americans intervened to enforce these rigorously. Not coincidentally, these were also the Kurdish and Shia strongholds that were rising up in rebellion at the time. The Gulf War mandate, coming as it did with the fall of the Soviet Union, was limited by the political reality of the time to a simple police action to liberate Kuwait. There was no political will, in the U.S. or Europe, for an extended liberation and reconstruction of Iraq as a functioning democracy, and to attempt to do so would risk an end to the Soviet Union's collapse as it used "Western Imperialism" on its southern flank as a rallying cry, or even worse, would tie up their armies in a new Vietnam just as the Soviet Union went militant. This fear turned out to be warranted, considering that the hardliners would attempt a coup in Moscow just six months after the Gulf War ended and the UN withdrew in 1991, and there were very serious fears about the Russian bear starting something, first in Germany, then in Poland, the Baltic states, and Ukraine even after the collapse. Designating these no-fly zones allowed the U.S. to support the rebels with a wink and nod, without actually devoting any ground troops or material assistance. Unfortunately, as the precedent also demonstrated, there's no substitute for boots on the ground, as both rebellions were crushed, and Saddam remained in power for another decade.
Oh, and you don't really need to worry about misspelling the name of Muammar Al Gathafi, he of many names. ABC apparently identified 112 possible spellings of Moammar El-Gadhafi's name, so really, you could probably really mangle his name before hitting an incorrect spelling.
And with that, I'm going to read back on the four pages I missed writing this, then go to sleep.
Originally Posted by Gare
"I thought I told you to stay away from my magic frame!"
and stuff.
