One of the justifications liberals use for intervening in Libya is a humanitarian concern. “My view is that there are times in American history … we look back and we see we should use military force to try and defend people who can’t defend themselves,” is how Representative Anthony Weiner put it. “If we are a powerful country one of the ways we use our power is for good. What’s the purpose of being a powerful country if we are not using it to defend people?”
That’s a legitimate, if incomplete, argument. But what’s worth reflecting on are those on the left who advocate intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds but who were (and remain) fierce critics of the Iraq war. As bad as Colonel Qaddafi is — and he’s a malevolent figure to be sure — his criminal acts belong in a lesser category than Saddam Hussein’s. If one takes his reign in toto, Saddam ranks with Pol Pot and several others as one of the cruelest and most sadistic dictators in the post-World War II era.
Saddam’s atrocious human rights record doesn’t necessarily mean the war against him was wise; it simply means that those arguing for acting against Qaddafi on humanitarian grounds might want to review the former Iraqi leader’s record once again. If the argument for intervening in Libya is at its core humanitarian, then the case for intervention in Iraq was five-fold what it is in Libya. And whether those on the left admit it or not, Iraq ended up being a war of liberation. A dictator of unusual ruthlessness is gone. Iraq is now a functioning (if fragile and imperfect) democracy.
Was the Iraq war worth American blood and treasure? Thoughtful people continue to disagree on that matter. But seen through the prism of human rights and humanitarianism, the case to act against Saddam was, and remains, significantly stronger than the case to act against Qaddafi. If those on the left are going to use a moral standard to judge military interventions then they, like all of us, should apply it in a reasonably consistent way.
[...] today I quoted the words of Representative Anthony Weiner, who said, “My view is that there are [...]
[...] Hussein, for whom the argument on humanitarian grounds was much much stronger than for Qaddafi. As Pete Wehner puts it, Was the Iraq war worth American blood and treasure? Thoughtful people continue to disagree [...]