David Peterson passed along the following article [read it in full below]. In it, Lord Paddy Ashdown, who was the West’s High Representative in Bosnia, expresses his deep satisfaction with NATO’s bombing of Libya. Ashdown states:

Many of us, me included, feared that, after the Iraq debacle, the multilateral system might never be able to be used again for good ends. But it has been — and triumphantly.

Gaddafi’s rule didn’t pose any threat to Western interests. Instead, his impending downfall offered a tremendous opportunity to the West. One of them, arguably the most important, was that It would help revive the military ”humanitarianism” that Lord Ashdown and numerous other Western elites (rightly) feared had been badly discredited in recent years.  Militarism does not only allow the West to rule the world by force. It is also massive transfer of wealth to rich – one that diverts funds away from things that elites despise like raising the living standards (and therefore the expectations and bargaining power ) of their own people.  Western elites are therefore always on the prowl for opportunities to bomb someone.

Ashdown implores people to look a NATO’s bombing (in Libya and wherever else they next chose to do it) in the correct manner:

Measure success by the horrors we prevent, rather than the elegance of the outcome.

Incredibly, a good number of Leftists did look at the Libya exactly the way Lord Ashdown advised. Many leftists were moved to support NATO's bombings because they thought the situation in Benghazi months ago was so dire, the possibility of a massacre so high, that the idea of "doing something" to avert that possibility seemed extremely convincing.

The arguments in favor of NATO's bombing were often posed in a way that ignored the consequences beyond what would happen in Benghazi months ago – as if Gaddafi, and not the NATO powers, were the only danger.

Iraq should have taught us not to focus myopically on where powerful tell us to focus, to look at their blood soaked track record and to consider ALL the probable consequences of their violence. One of those consequences is made painfully obvious by Lord Ashdown’s article. Any military “success” for NATO will facilitate future violence. Some of us may recall the back slapping that took place in 1991 when the US and its “coalition” kicked Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait. Should we have to remind anyone of the long term consequences of that “success”?

Propaganda is a powerful thing. It appears many (westerners in particular) who consider themselves anti-imperialists don't really get how dangerous and criminal their own governments are.

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The Times
August 26, 2011
Ray-Bans and pick-ups: this is the future; Iraq-style intervention is over. The messy Libyan version will be our model from now on
Paddy Ashdown
 
'If you love sausages and respect the law, take care to watch neither of them being made." There are worse starting points than Mark Twain's aphorism for those trying to understand what's happening in Libya.

The overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi has been messy and is likely to get more so. For those used to watching armoured columns streaming in triumphant order across the desert to depose a dictator and pull down his statues, it doesn't look very impressive. But this is what the future probably looks like. Better get used to it.

Like it or not, the ramshackle rebel army is, with the support of the Nato-based coalition, creating a new way of intervening and giving strength to a new strand of international law. Farewell Gladstonian liberal intervention with its gunboats; hello people's liberal intervention with its Ray-Bans, T-shirts and hastily converted pick-ups.

Of course, Libya isn't over yet. The last days of Gaddafi could be just as messy as the long days that led to his downfall. He is more than mad enough — and self-declared martyr enough — to do something foolish at the end. But even if the battle ends soon and cleanly, the peace that follows is likely to be just as confused and chaotic as the conflict. How could it be otherwise? We have intervened to prevent a massacre and let the Libyan people shape their own peace, rather than to seek to impose ours — something which, by the way, we ourselves weren't very good at.

So, as we watch the National Transitional Council struggle to build a government (security should be its first priority), it would be in order to remember with humility that when we tried to do the same thing in Baghdad we didn't exactly make a roaring success of it — or in Kabul either. Or, indeed, in many places where we have tried to create a Western peace after a foreign conflict.

We should now do all that we can to help the rebels to bring about order and government in Libya. But we will need to do so with understanding and patience. Better for the mistakes that will inevitably be made to be local ones, rather than our mistakes that they have to pay for, as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 1997, before the Kosovo war started, I was in the little Albanian villages south of Pristina being bombarded by the main battle units of the Serb Army. The following day I met one of the Serb artillery commanders and found that he was more worried about being indicted by what was then the infant Yugoslav war crimes tribunal than he was of Nato's bombs.

The point about law is that it exists not just to deliver justice after the event but also to govern behaviour beforehand. After Kosovo, the world summit of 2005 gave form to a new international legal concept: the responsibility to protect (R2P for short). This asserted that, under international law, there ought to be an obligation (note "ought" and "obligation") on a government to protect its people, not abuse them. Many of us thought R2P would never be more than a piece of well-meaning rhetoric. But Libya has given R2P both form and precedent.

How R2P is carried forward post Libya will also not be smooth or free of contradictions. R2P will be applied with force in places where it can be — Libya for example; but not be so applied in others, where it can't be — Syria probably. But then this was true of classic liberal interventionism too. We did it in Iraq and Afghanistan because we could, but not in Chechnya or Zimbabwe, because we couldn't. In the untidy age ahead, one of our mantras is likely to be: "Just because you can't do everything does not mean you shouldn't do anything." In this way, international law is no different from most other bodies of jurisprudence.
International law does not spring from a single pen or a single piece of paper; it evolves over time confusingly, inelegantly and often in contradictory fashion. Libya has placed us slap-bang in the middle of that messy process.
Many of us, me included, feared that, after the Iraq debacle, the multilateral system might never be able to be used again for good ends. But it has been — and triumphantly.

So now, thanks to Libya, we have three international intervention options to choose from. We could abandon the notion altogether, recognising that we can't make a success of it and shouldn't try. In this case the next turbulent decades will be much more dangerous, as power shifts in a world that is increasingly unstable, interdependent and equipped with weapons of mass destruction.

Or we could continue to intervene as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan: exclusively Western coalitions; massive Western troop deployments; a cavalier attitude to international law; shock and awe; a quick victory followed by the long, slow, flawed attempt to impose our systems on other countries at the point of a bayonet.

Now Libya has offered us a third option. Support R2P with force where it's possible. Find other means where it isn't. Assemble a coalition wider than the West. Obtain the backing of international law. Accept that this means constraints on military action during the conflict and on our ability to influence the outcome afterwards. Measure success by the horrors we prevent, rather than the elegance of the outcome. Recognise the importance of regional powers. Act not to impose our will, but to give the local population the freedom to exercise theirs. Understand that this may well be disorderly — and perhaps sometimes worse. And remember that it hasn't been much less so when we have tried to do it ourselves.
Will this be comfortable to watch? No. But it's probably as good as we'll get. Better get used to it.
  
 

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