The heart of his argument, in this op ed, is these three paragraphs:
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 — not to mention Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.
We may as well plead guilty. We are inconsistent. There’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? Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none?
I am a Quaker, but I supported this intervention on humanitarian grounds, as I wrote here.
Kristof offers some cogent arguments, which people should read. I have some more of my own.
Libya is not the only place where humanitarian intervention would be useful. The ongoing war in the Congo has been incredibly destructive. Cote d'Ivoire potentially could turn very disastrous. Neither is a place where the simple application of air power could easily stop a potential slaughter - tanks and artillery and ammunition dumps can be destroyed without necessarily creating mass casualties as "collateral damage."
Kristof makes several important points in his piece, including that after Vietnam this country was traumatized on the use of force overseas, and that the difficulties of both Iraq and Afghanistan make us that much more reluctant to support intervention. But all three of those represented boots on the ground, which he does not advocate here, nor should it really be necessary. I have already noted what effects air power can have in this situation. Further, as David Ignatius writes in today's Washington Post, Gaddafi is rapidly running out of money, this is putting pressure on his regime, and some of those close to him are as a result both of the money shortage and the application of force seeking to find their own escape routes.
Qaddafi (the spelling Kristof uses - the G beginning is what Ignatius used) is likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court. In the meantime, what we are doing, as Kristof notes,
may help put teeth into the emerging doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” — a landmark notion in international law that countries must intervene to prevent mass atrocities. And that might help avert the next Rwanda or the next Darfur.
The argument here is that the world may finally learn how, through the United Nations, it can make clear a willingness to intervene to protect, having demonstrated it in Libya, and POTENTIALLY deter some future possibilities of mass atrocities.
Some. Not all. After all, four nations besides us have the veto power, and we cannot assume they will be willing simply not to vote. Further, not all situations will be as amenable to application of somewhat limited force as a means of protecting lives.
At some point the world is going to have to decide how important it is to stand up to tyrants early. It has a history of failing to do so. Economic reasons sometimes lead nations that should know better to cut deals. So did geopolitical concerns during the Cold War.
We may not be able to successfully intervene in every case. Kristof also responds to those who argue about the lack of an exit strategy that "plans made in conference rooms rarely survive the first shot anyway." For those who were critical of the intervention in Kosovo as not being effective, he reminds us that after 11 weeks "it abruptly succeeded and largely put an end to the slaughter there."
We do not yet know the outcome in Libya. We do know that were Qaddafi to have succeeded in destroying Benghazi it would have emboldened other tyrants currently under pressure to use massive force to suppress their opponents. Surely we wish to discourage that outcome if at all possible.
I suspect that the criticisms of the administration come from two sources. First, there are those who as political opponents simply do not want Obama to have any success in any endeavor, in the hopes of weakening him and perhaps defeating him in 19 months. On our side of the political divide, there are those who are purists on a number of issues, and there are those who are so turned off on other issues that they are no longer willing to support Obama on anything.
I am highly critical of this administration. During the campaign I was told by a high ranking campaign official that they paid attention to what i wrote about education. Now I suspect they no longer want to hear my voice, because I am so critical of the administration's education policy. Either later today or tomorrow I will post another piece that is likely to infuriate them.
That I am critical on some issues does not mean I will not support the administration when I believe it is correct. I believe it was correct to intervene to stop the imminent slaughter in Benghazi, just as it was correct to eventually send clear signals to Mubarak that he needed to step down.
Kristof asks, Is It Better to Save No One? Of course not. Where we can make a meaningful humanitarian difference, how can we do otherwise?
Would it better were there no armies, no need for armies, no fear of those who might use force to suppress and to harm? What a wonderful hypothetical! But this is reality, a reality of tens of thousands of lives.
Now if the administration would only recognize that what certain economic actors in this country are doing is creating just as great a humanitarian crisis. But that's a topic for another time.