So there's that saying, 'All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.' Well, that's downright depressing. How about flipping it around: Evil can be defeated if enough good people show courage.
Al Jazeera profiles two such heroic people in Libya. One man and one woman.
Narrator: One man makes his solitary protest in Benghazi's main square. It's the 17th of February and this warehouse manager knows the secret police headquarters are just around the corner.
Brave man: We saw it happen in Tunisia and Egypt so my friends and I decided to take action on that day. I went out in the morning at 9. No one else turned up so I thought I'd demonstrate on my own.
Narrator: His sign read: Peaceful protest, People want Freedom and Social Justice. With surveillance cameras and spies on every street corner, it wasn't long before the secret police moved in. He'd been arrested before, but one woman wasn't going to let that happen again.
Brave woman: The crowd was watching but were scared so I grabbed his hand and said, 'This is a hero.' I was saying come on, join him. They wanted to but were too scared. Then a car stopped and men got out with weapons. They tried to arrest him, so I said you can't take him. The policemen fired into the air and pushed me over. I grabbed his legs and said, 'If you want to take him, you'll have to take me too.'
Man: The intervention of that woman when the secret police tried to arrest me moved the whole crowd to act. She saved my life.
Narrator: Others weren't so lucky. This is where subversives were brought to be interrogated and tortured. We asked the guard what would have happened to a man holding a sign calling for freedom.
Guard: They would punish him first and they would have executed him.
Narrator: Files were kept here on anybody secret police deemed a troublemaker, even those who had just grown a beard. The guards believe hundreds of people died here under interrogation, and then their bodies were buried in the desert. Adel Hassi is now the commander of the Katiba brigade, with 500 rebel soldiers under him and another 800 still being trained. He owes his life to one woman. But Mariam says she's been waiting for over 40 years for someone to make the stand he made that day.
Such moral and physical courage has been on display across the Middle East. (The linked article highlights in gory detail why the Libyan regime has been referred to the International Criminal Court.) In Egypt, courage has displaced Mubarak and his sons from the palace into military detention. In Bahrain, it has been squashed by Gulf monarchs protecting their power. Mass protests in Yemen continue, while the death toll in Syria climbs. Another flash point looms in Iran as it hurtles toward legislative elections within a year's time.
In Libya, though, the world responded to Gadhafi's military onslaught with a 10-0 UNSC vote authorizing force to protect the fledgling democratic rebellion. The tyrant's response: "The UN Security Council has no mandate. We don't acknowledge their resolutions. If the world is crazy, we will be crazy too."
This cannot stand. When the nations of the world come together to confront a mass murderer, there is only one acceptable outcome. Global intervention must be a shared enterprise. It can never remedy all the world's problems concurrently and without double standards. But when global consensus stands behind brave people fighting for justice; when it defends the outgunned; and when it demands human rights be upheld, it strengthens the cause of human dignity everywhere.
Military intervention based on the responsibility to protect should only occur after diplomacy fails. It obviously must entail an actionable plan that saves more lives that it costs. (While the humanitarian arguments for the Iraq war were tangential, the invasion and occupation clearly failed this test.)
And yes, it must be followed with the dreaded nation building. Without helping to develop sustainable institutions and infrastructure to meet the needs and aspirations of the people being assisted, the goals of the intervention cannot be achieved. When it comes to Libya, we should be heartened that the international mission is championed by the UN secretary general, endorsed by the European Union, and supported by wealthy Arab nations. Just as the UN and global NGOs are currently deploying humanitarian aid and rescuing stranded migrants, they can be expected to facilitate a democratic transition with peacekeepers and election monitors.
Thank goodness we have a President who sees the United Nations as a partner and not an enemy.
President Obama won kudos here for framing the budget debate with a simple question: What kind of country do we want to live in? I believe in a country that stands with others in promoting human rights around the world.