The humanitarian intervention argument for Libya.
Ever since President Obama decided to intervene in Libya's civil war, proponents of humanitarian intervention have rebuffed critics of intervention on the grounds that just because the U.S. doesn't intervene everywhere human rights abuses occur does not mean it should never intervene anywhere. The New York Times' Nicolas Kristof has been a leading proponent of this argument:
'Critics argue that we are inconsistent, even hypocritical, in our military interventions. After all, we intervened promptly this time in a country with oil, while we have largely ignored Ivory Coast and Darfur â?? not to mention Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.We may as well plead guilty. We are inconsistent. Thereâ??s no doubt that we cherry-pick our humanitarian interventions.
But just because we allowed Rwandans or Darfuris to be massacred, does it really follow that to be consistent we should allow Libyans to be massacred as well? Isnâ??t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none?
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Sure, but this begs an important question: if we state up front that the U.S. cannot intervene everywhere human rights abuses occur then aren't we implicitly conceding that humanitarian motives aren't, actually, the main issue we're debating? In this case, it's insufficient to simply say the intervention 'saved lives' since a host of other important factors are at play. And from there it's a question not simply of saving lives but at what cost.
(AP Photo)