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The real question is whether intervention would actually prevent this kind of violence. The US has had some pretty spectacular failures overseas (Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Afganistan) which should give anyone pause when advocating a regular policy of invading other countries. Perhaps invading Rwanda or Sudan would have stopped the violence there, but it's pretty hard to know how it would have actually turned out. The UN has had one of its largest deployments in the DRC, but it's still an extremely violent place and has the highest rate of rape in the world. I would be all for international interventions if they actually worked, but the evidence for that is limited at best.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

Places need to be able to stand on their own or crumble on their own.

I don't like being world police. but I also dont get upset that we only help places that are beneficial to the US. we deserve something for helping, policing is expensive economically and politically.

Haven't you spent the better part of two threads bashing for Obama doing exactly this?

RETIRED.
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No, i was bashing the media for hating bush for doing it then loving obama for doing it.

if we're GOING to do it, we deserve something for it, but that odesn't mean i want to do it.

That's not what he's doing. What he's doing is hedging his bets. If this goes south, he can pull the "I was just going along with the international community" card. If it goes well, it will have been his idea all along and he was just letting the French move in first for international unity or some other silliness.

I think we should have done this, and I'm glad we did. However, if we were going to do it, we shouldn't have waited for someone else to make the decision, or waited as long as we did to act. It reflects poorly on several people, the president in particular, that after years of "you can't act without doing x, y, and z," they're acting without doing x, y, and z. On one hand, I should be glad that the president's opinion has "evolved," on the other hand, it makes everything he says ring hollow.

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Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Of the places you listed, none of them were the fairly narrow situations I've been talking about. Vietnam was political, Somalia was aid to the famine stricken during a civil war (which we got too involved in), Iraq was a clusterfuck of reasons none of which was genocide, Afghanistan was a legitimate (in the eyes of most) invasion. I also wouldn't say Iraq and Afghanistan were spectacular failures, or even failures at all despite the very rough road they've been on (Unless you were talking about backing Iraq v Iran and Afghan v Soviets, but even in those cases they weren't the settings I was talking about).

I'm not advocating regularly invading countries. There are plenty of times when wars, civil and otherwise, play out without crimes against humanity. Even dictators should be generally left alone unless they pose an imminent threat or (In Libya's case) are clearly about to commit a war crime. Even the evidence of a war crime doesn't mean we invade. Iraq's gassing of the Kurds was classified as a genocide, but it was a one-time action. Invasion wouldn't have saved anyone's life and would have been the wrong response. Darfur and Rwanda went on for a while, long enough for us to intervene and make a difference.

Dvergar /
Quisling

The reason for the invasion isn't relevant to the point I'm making. Invading another country is difficult and often doesn't turn out the way military planners and politicians hoped. Attacking Iraq ended up destroying much of the country's infrastructure, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and nearly unleashing a civil war. It can only be considered a non-failure because the US moved the goalposts for success so far. Similarly with Afganistan, the coalition has been there for over 9 years and hasn't defeated or even crippled the Taliban, hasn't found Osama bin Laden, and hasn't resulted in a fair and democratic government taking over. Unless you think the US could have sent a few guys in to Rwanda or Sudan to tell everyone to knock it off and everyone would have listened to them, preventing a genocide in those cases is unlikely to have been a simple matter.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

I agree, it likely wouldn't have been a simple matter. I think Sudan and Rwanda had justifiable reasons to intervene and we had a moral obligation to do so.

Dvergar /
Quisling

Good thing he has a solid exit strategy...
Or that the coalition knows exactly who is in charge and when transfers of power will happen...
Or that the US airstrikes actually stopped the slaughter of civilians...
Or that he talked to congress beforehand...
Or that he was decisive in action...

people dont talk to congress anymore

Those are mostly acceptable points (not that I think anyone believed the airstrikes would put an immediate end to Qaddafi's firing on civilians) with one exception.

Turns out he doesn't have to talk to Congress, signed the War Powers Resolution. And the amusing bit is it's still unclear how constitutional it is to restrict the president in any way in his capacity as commander in chief of the armed forces.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

Would the War Powers Resolution require him to declare war? Not that I give a shit or think Obama did anything wrong by authorizing use of our fighters in a no-fly zone, merely playing devil's advocate.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

"War is politics by other means."

Every war is fundamentally political. All the more so when the issue is interventionism. Call it "enforcing the will of the people" or whatever you like but it's still political.

This isn't a genocide. This is merely us intervening for the sake of our vision for the country. That vision being (at least in theory) democracy doesn't make the intervention any more sensible or legitimate or likely to succeed.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

This is what I read and pretty much the entire right on this issue right now.

RETIRED.
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