Grow up – we’re not going to intervene in Libya and shouldn’t

Eunomia » Staying Out of Libya (II)

Quite a few Westerners are beside themselves that our governments aren’t doing enough to overthrow Gaddafi, but Libyan rebels have so far been doing an exceptional job of taking over most of the other major cities of the country without outside help. Gaddafi’s reliance on foreign mercenaries suggests that he knows he cannot count on very many people in his country to defend his rule. There is a growing chorus of voices that insist that the Libyan rebels need outside help, but all of this rests on the assumption that it is the rebels that will be facing destruction absent outside support. Westerners are preoccupied with what they think they should have done in Rwanda, and they remain badly misinformed about what they did in Kosovo, and both of these are clouding judgments on what to do now.

At least from what I can see, it is just as likely that Gaddafi and his remaining supporters are on the losing end of this fight, and outside support could easily pave the way for massacres of regime loyalists and those mistakenly believed to be regime loyalists by the rebels. Maybe no one is very concerned about this result, but it’s not something that can be entirely ignored when we’re talking about tying ourselves to the cause of the rebels. It goes without saying that almost all Western analysts and pundits know very little about Libyan rebels or what it is, besides Gaddafi’s overthrow, that they will want when the war is over. It would be typical if anti-regime forces have a lot of old scores to settle, and tipping the balance in their favor (which is what interventionists are arguing that we do) will make it easier for them to do that. That outcome might happen anyway without outside intervention, but I don’t see why Western governments would want to take an active part in it.