Libyan Uprising - Page 33

But see, you're more so making arguments on why it's not in our best interest. Maybe it's not from an economic standpoint or even a political standpoint, but from a moral standpoint, let's say for some reason the U.S. feels that morally it's the "best choice" to intervene, even if it hurts them economically and politically (I'm really sorry if you think I'm going on too many stretches here, if you don't think it's worth responding to, that's fine, I just often view situations in hypotheticals).

So looking at the issue - you say to be realistic, an international coalition would be comprised mostly of the U.S. Then under this scenario, if no one else significantly backs up the coalition, then we don't intervene? Because that's what the U.S. foreign policy has shifted to according to the article - intervene under the prerequisite that other nations also join the coalition, including Libya's border countries. If we can't make it happen, then we can't make it happen, and we won't intervene in Libya because of failure to get the backing of the rest of the world. In short, the U.S. stated what they would like to do about the situation, the international community disagreed, and the U.S. consequently didn't intervene, unlike the Iraqi situation with Bush, which would actually help change our image (I presume?) from our current negative foreign policy reputation of "doing whatever the fuck we want," to instead "the U.S. is respecting the decision of the U.N. and choosing not to follow through with what it would like to do."

Is it really that bad to say "we'll go in if we can get a ton of support. If we can't, at least we tried to do the moralistic thing, but in the end we realize that it wasn't something the international community wants to do, and we'll respect that."?

The article indeed says it would go beyond a no-fly zone if we did intervene, most likely. However, as I stated before, if we weren't doing it alone, it would be much less stress on our military. Also, unlike the current Iraq war blunder, the first Gulf War which DID have the approval from the U.N. and had an international coalition like what I was saying. Thus, even while we did a large majority of the actual warfare, because we had the support from the international community about our intervention, the total costs of the war became near negligible, as countries that didn't want to pledge military support instead directly funded the operation. The first Gulf War was almost free (and I use that word lightly because of course it devoted time, manpower, resources, lives, etc. but in terms of finances).

You can say we aren't responsible for Libya in particular, but the U.S. as a nation has been one to support the dictators even when it was clear to us that they were oppressive towards their people. Apparently Libya, in particular, from what I've gained in this thread is more of a result of Europe than the U.S. (prob why France is so eager to jump in?), but nonetheless it's not as if we haven't tried to prop up oppressive governments for our own benefit, and consequently situations we see arising are either directly or indirectly a result of the first world supporting oppression in the third world, which in turn benefits the first world (oh God, I'm starting to question my generally conservative viewpoint as I sound like a treehugger!).

Also, from the numerous articles I've been reading, apparently the number of pro-Gaddafi supporters is quite small. He just has "his" population in line, is all. It's all fear at this point, they were protesting in Gaddafi controlled cities until they were getting shot.

Even with North Korea, I believe it can become a moral issue that has the United States at fault (of course, not soley, in no way would I suggest the NK government isn't at fault). But when we look back and analyze the effects our sanctions have on other countries, they usually are simply either effective or ineffective. I would say ineffective sanctions are like what we have with North Korea and had with Iraq. Sanctions that don't even hurt the government, but cause the people as a whole to suffer. The Iraqi government used to and the North Korean government still does respond to these sanctions by merely pulling more resources from the people in order to attempt to maintain their own status of living. Both countries managed to successfully portray to their people that it was the United States fault for their economic troubles, and an article I recently read stated that Saddam managed to use the sanctions to actually increase his public approval rating. With NK, we are hurting the people far more than we are actually hurting their government; while we are not necessarily contributing (as I don't believe we are) but are instead failing to act these innocents from starving by the hundreds of thousands, when we easily could at little cost to us, I believe we become involved in a moral situation. No, we're not obligated to help these people, it's not our problem. But in a time where globalization has permeated into society wherever you turn, and countries have become more and more interdependent upon each other, I simply believe the "it's not our problem" approach is painting us as a cold-hearted, selfish country indifferent to other people's suffering in the world.

PS. Sorry for slightly offtopic, a lot of it does pertain to being ontopic except the slight tangents towards the end... shit happens when you're on adderal and decide to take a study break . Oh, and apology accepted, it wasn't necessarily just your post but just the combined response of everyone being a little negative. No worries though!