In late March, I wrote a piece about the international community's intervention in Libya as Qaddafi, a dictator for almost 40 years, ordered his troops to advance to the protester's stronghold of Benghazi. Hoping to stop nothing less than a massacre with the possibility of genocide, the U.S. and many European nations pushed for action.
The decision outraged some who denounced it as another Western advancement into an oil rich country. Others, like myself defended the resolution for many reasons however, one stood out above the rest: it was our moral obligation to intervene.
Through a Security Council Resolution a coalition of nations intervened, stopped, and helped push back the Libyan army from the protesters' capital in the east of the country. The no-fly zone was included in the resolution after many reports that the Libyan Airforce was being used to crush protesters. As a result, the protesters and fighters celebrated and today constantly make pleas that they need international support to establish a democratic state.
In the case of this conflict, it is difficult to get solid death toll numbers of civilians because of the fighting as well as government/coalition propoganda, however, I wouldn't doubt that they are in the hundreds. The rising death toll is commonly cited by anti-interventionists as proof that the use of force backfired; rather than Qaddafi killing Libyans, we are. For supporters like myself, it is difficult to guestimate the number of possible deaths had we not intervened. Benghazi has tens of thousands of people living in it with the overwhelming majority of them standing against their dictator. An invasion of the city could easily have killed several thousand in the first few weeks.
That being said, we now have a real world example of what happens if we don't intervene: Syria (and Bahrain for the record). Granted that Syria's regional dynamics are far more complex than that of Libya, protesters there are being killed as the death toll rises over 2400. Interestingly enough, the fact that Bashar Al-Assad's father killed 10 thousand people the last time they rose up against him, seems to have completely gone over the heads of most.
With such deaths, the international community is only beginning to come together and work out a resolution on Syria. It is unlikely to have military involvement since the political capital isn't there, and Bashar is still popular in some areas of the country. For non-military international resolutions to work, a country must be greatly ingrained in the global economic environment; Syria isn't. We will have to wait and see the details of such a resolution, however, it is unlikely to be very effective.
How exactly does morality tie into this? Easy. Sitting aside and watching thousands of people being killed, while not taking action, is inherently immoral. Hence the intervention in Libya can be judged as moral. Staying quiet on the crackdown in Bahrain is disgusting, while spewing meaningless words and press releases on Syria by governments is not right.
We can debate how to fund such interventions, however, morality should never be undermined because of our unwillingness to pay the proper price. I've already addressed many of the arguments months ago in a previous post and many still apply today.
Syria gives us a relatively good preview of would have happened in Libya, except we should maximize it ten fold since Benghazi has more people in it than some of the rebelling Syrian cities and there is more widespread discontent with Qaddafi's rule. Juxtaposing it next to the 10 thousand killed several decades before in Syria would give us a more accurate, and dreadful understanding of what our intervention avoided. Today, the same anti-interventionists of Libya are outraged at the fatal quiet nature of the international community. Their shouting is only dwindled by the hypocrisy that is shouting along with them. The fighting continues in Libya and protests are growing in Syria. Preventative measures are always the best choice when it comes to the lives of our fellow man. Let's not fail to prevent another thousand from dying.
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