"Qaddafi's death proves that Obama was right:"

[cbelt3]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opin...-was-right
"The death of Qaddafi isn't just a victory for Libya. It validates Obama's and NATO's intervention – as opposed to the bitter ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. "

- - -
CSM editorial. I find myself in gentle agreement with it. I think the Iraq and Afghanistan 'bitter ventures' are a wildly different class of conflicts, but the international cooperative approach is a hallmark reminiscent of George H. Bush. Iraq would have ended up much different if the international community had supported the nascent Iraqi revolution after Gulf War I, rather than merely establishing a 'no fly zone' which had no positive results.

Then again, the NATO strategy (establish a no fly and no convoy zone) was helpful, but also had to be modified to be the defacto air force for the rebellion. So we were the rebellion's direct ally.

[$tevie]

I'm still uncomfortable with going into foreign countries and influencing their fates, regardless of how it's handled. I can't decide how I feel about this.

[cbelt3]

$tevie-
It's a global world. Unrest spreads. Moamar had no problems bringing his brand of terror into the US and Europe in the past. Think of it as 'the broken window effect' on a global scale.

[$tevie]

Part of me agrees 100%. And part of me does not.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

cbelt3 wrote:
It's a global world. Unrest spreads.

Going to tie OWS with Lybia? :devil:

[cbelt3]

nah, I'm thinking "World Police". Of course that was puppets..

[bazookaman]

$tevie wrote:
I'm still uncomfortable with going into foreign countries and influencing their fates, regardless of how it's handled. I can't decide how I feel about this.

We broke the Prime Directive!

[mattkime]

we influence whether we choose to or not.

[Black]

I like to think the impetus to get involved in Libya was not so much about the chance to get rid of Ghaddafi, but that it seemed clear at that time that there would be be large scale execution of anyone involved in the resistance.

[Carnos Jax]

Perhaps a lot of what's going on is a charade (in the sense I know things r not always what they appear)...

...but, as I understand it, the reason we intervened to the extent we did in Libya was once Qaddafi started using his military on a large scale against the civilian population.

It was along those lines we (in my impression) legitimized the Bosnia-Kosovo intervention.

If this is purely the case, I can 'buy' it.