A la carte humanitarian intervention, such as in Libya

The attacks on Libya risk a bloody stalemate and are a threat to the region. The alternative has to be a negotiated settlement


Very good article by Seumas Milne
in The Guardian

[...] Only a western solipsism that regards it as normal to be routinely invading other people's countries in the name of human rights protects Nato governments from serious challenge. [..] But on the other side of the Arab world, in western-armed Bahrain, security forces are right now staging night raids on opposition activists, house by house, and scores have gone missing as the dynastic despots carry out a bloody crackdown on the democratic movement. And last Friday more than 50 peaceful demonstrators were shot dead on the streets of Sana'a by government forces in western-backed Yemen.

Far from imposing a no-fly zone to bring the embattled Yemeni regime to heel, US special forces are operating across the country in support of the government. 

The point isn't just that western intervention in Libya is grossly hypocritical. It's that such double standards are an integral part of a mechanism of global power and domination that stifles hopes of any credible international system of human rights protection.

[..]

For the western powers, knocked off balance by the revolutionary Arab tide, intervention in the Libyan conflict offers both the chance to put themselves on the "right side of history" and to secure their oil interests in a deeply uncertain environment.