Libya

Obviously any comment on the news in Libya would be out of date almost at once. Just today, for example, I see Qaddafi is claiming deposing him would be a win for al-Qaeda and the US is now considering arming the rebels rather than just providing air cover. So instead let’s talk about general principles and some of the arguments circulating on the topic of intervention.
•If you oppose intervention, you obviously don’t care about democracy in the Arab world or all the innocent people Qaddafi is butchering.
This one’s bullshit. By this logic, any time we don’t intervene in anything, it’s proof we don’t care. The people advocating for a Libyan intervene aren’t proposing protecting protesters in Yemen or overthrowing Saudi Arabia’s repressive theocracy; we’re not fighting to stop what may become genocide in the Ivory Coast, so presumably they’re as they accuse Libyan-intervention critics of being.
•We can’t intervene everywhere, so we have to go in where we can.
A more reasonable position, but flawed, because it doesn’t explain where the place we decide We Can is Libya. Why not the Ivory Coast or Yemen (Saudi Arabia, given the inflammatory aspects of us occupying the Mecca and Medina regions, would be a No We Can’t in most situations)? Or Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe has been oppressing his political enemies for years?
Looked at in that light, the argument this is a noble humanitarian endeavor is harder to sustain. Probable reasons include Libya’s oil and that Qaddafi has been on our shit list for years (in contrast to allies Yemen and Egypt, where it seems we’re letting things play out as they will), despite being officially rehabilitated a few years ago when he dropped his WMD program.
•The lack of a clear end game isn’t an issue: We had one in Iraq and look how that turned out. Improvising as we go along is better policy.
I’ve read variations of this argument in a couple of places, and I don’t think it holds up. Sure, things frequently don’t turn out the way we expect, but that’s all the more reason for saying thus far and no farther, to avoid getting sucked in further as we keep doing, over and over. Heck, since they rarely turn out better than we expect, it’s a good reason not to go in at all.
It’s worth keeping in mind that no matter how we do this, it’s not going to be a bloodless intervention, and some of that blood will be civilians, the people we’re supposedly protecting (as discussed on slacktivist). Some of it will be our own people. And at this point, we don’t know for sure that the rebels won’t turn out to be as big a problem as the Afghan mujahedeen became) or how our intervention may change things. As the blogger Hilzoy once put it, violence is not a short cut to your destination; it changes the place you end up. Ditto intervention.
Finally, while it’s easy to talk about “we go in when we can,” I honestly don’t think we can. I mean come on: We have local governments replacing asphalt roads with gravel and closing libraries; in Washington, they’re debating slashing Social Security, the EPA and Planned Parenthood (admittedly, these are more political agenda items than sound budgeting decisions). But pouring money into a new military venture which we certainly don’t have to fight—that’s a-OK?
The arguments for intervention do not, I think, hold up.