The UN and other countries should interfere militarily in Libya.

1) You say that my point on human rights violations is "excellent". You say it is not the issue at hand. But the issue at hand is whether human rights violations justify, or even make it a duty to intervene. To claim that yes, they do in this case, you first need to establish an objective rule, by which to decide such a case. You have not done so. Moving on to your argument that the Libyan leadership is committing genocide. Here, you have not in fact refuted my argument. I asked you to identify the "national, ethnical, racial or religious group" [1] (your source) that is being targeted. You have not, you have simply identified "people". You say quite rightly that people are being targeted for exercising their inalienable right to free speech. Unfortunately, this does not match the definition of genocide you have put forward yourself. You have not yet provided proof for your assertion that the Libyan leadership is committing genocide, nor have you specified why their human rights violations (which I do not deny they are guilty of) justify a foreign attack on the country (which is what military intervention is by definition). 2) Why should we not judge potential future actions on the experience we have from similar earlier? That seems to be counter-intuitive. Of course Afghanistan is not the exact same as Libya nor could it ever be. But the fact that a military intervention in an internal political dispute subsequently requires a potentially infinite occupation is nevertheless an important lesson learned from it. And it was not only learned in Afghanistan, either; the ongoing war in Iraq has shown the very same dynamic. From a more historic perspective, one could even cite the Vietnam War as an example. In short, it has been proven time and again that a serious intervention results in almost perpetual asymmetric warfare. And no one gains anything from such a situation. As I have already shown using the example of Afghanistan, people die on both sides of such a conflict; but even more so among the innocent civilian bystanders - the exact people you assert you want to help. If I may, I will expand this argument a little further: conveniently for my argument, Gaddafi has recently threatened to join Al-Quaeda's "holy war" if the West intervenes. [2] [3] This makes the situation even more parallel with Iraq and Afghanistan. 3) Since I have already necessarily discussed the humanitarian catastrophe an intervention would bring with it in Point 2, I hope you will allow me to make an additional point here. The point I want to make is that, while initially it may have been that, the rebellion is not anymore just a popular uprising to remove the dictator Gaddafi. It has now turned into an internal political power struggle. The reason I am saying so is this: Gaddafi had, about a week ago, actually offered to step down as dictator and leave the country. In essence, he offered a conditional surrender. [4] [5] However, the rebel leaders rejected this. [6] The reason, as reported in my source article, is the "honor" of Gaddafi and of his victims. While I personally sympathize with this stance, any obligations towards the Libyan rebellion the international community may have had became void when it rejected Gaddafi's surrender. The only valid concern, then, is for the bystanding civilian population. I still believe that experience shows that they are better off with an internal rebellion than the kind of destruction outside military force would bring with them. __________ [1] http://www.hrweb.org... [2] http://mideastposts.com... [3] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com... [4] http://www.aawsat.com... [5] http://www.dailymail.co.uk... [6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com...