The Left should have supported the Libyan intervention

1) The intervention had multilateral support (unlike Iraq) One of the popular criticisms from the Left of the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq was the fact it was unilateral. [. http://news.bbc.co.uk...] The US did not have the approval of the UN, or even the approval of some fellow western democracies like France. Those who claim the Iraq War was "illegal" would now be hypocritical to deny the legitimacy of a multilateral mission that was UN approved. The fact that the Libyan people requested outside intervention and were gracious to NATO for doing so, should not be overlooked. [. http://www.aljazeera.com...] Popular Libyan support, Arab League approval, and NATO's withdrawal at the end of the mission, should all cause anyone to pause before uttering the word "imperialism". [. http://www.theatlantic.com...] The Left should support this kind of intervention because it was multilateral and humanitarian, not unilateral and "imperialist". 2) The intervention was legally and morally just "[S]ince there was no war prior to foreign intervention, how can there have been war crimes? " This is completely false. The armed rebellion started in February 2011. The UN voted to authorize a "No-fly Zone" on March 17, 2011. NATO started boming on March 19, 2011. [. http://www.guardian.co.uk...] The rebels had taken control of Eastern Libya and had pockets of resistance in the West, including the city of Misrata. [. http://en.wikipedia.org...] Qaddafi then began his blitzkrieg campaign on the rebel controlled areas of Libya. There is no other appropriate term for this but civil war. And Indeed that war began before the UN voted to intervene in it. Since the civil war was a war, the news reports I liked to in this section of my 2nd round argument would be reports of Qaddafi's war crimes. War crime investigations show evidence that many of those crimes were ordered from the top of the chain of command. Qaddafi had reportedly told his troops that "It is absolutely forbidden for supply cars, fuel and other services to enter the city of Misrata from all gates and checkpoints" which would starve Misrata's population during the four month siege, and ordered that the "blue sea turned red" with the blood of the inhabitants. [. http://www.guardian.co.uk...] The UN resolution approving the No-fly Zone gave "attacks against civilians" and "crimes against humanity" as the rationale for intervention and condemned the Qaddafi regime and Pro-Qaddafi militias as the perpetrators. It also authorized "all necessary measures to protect civilians". [. http://www.un.org...] This is textbook R2P. "If indeed, R2P justified foreign intervention, why did we not intervene in Bahrain, Yemen, or Syria? " Indeed R2P is an ideal that sometimes fails to be applied due to political, geographic, and military reasons. Russia and China are politically preventing action on Syria for example. But this all or nothing argument is just another way of saying nothing. Just because we can't save everyone everywhere doesn't mean we shouldn't bother saving anyone at all. This argument is often disingenuous since those who make it are unlikely to support military interventions in all these countries at once. The consensus on the Left was that letting Rwanda happen was a grave mistake. Should this be a mistake we continue to make? If not then the Left should have supported this intervention. 3) Lefties aren't always against intervention My opponent marginalizes my point to "a particular "lefty". The point I was trying to make was that the Left isn't always "Anti-War" (supported WWII). Nor did it always consider foreign interventions as bad (Leftists from around the western world volunteered to fight fascism in Spain during it's civil war). I also pointed out that the case for humanitarian intervention in Kosovo came from the Left (Fischer, Bernard Kouchner, Bill Clinton, and others). Exactly what of economic value did tiny Kosovo have? 4) No other alternative The problem with averting disaster is that it allows people like yourself to say "i'm not so sure". Look at what Qaddafi did before. His tanks would've destroyed Benghazi within days. NATO and the US are the only ones who could have mobilized forces in time to make any difference. Counter to your counter: The US already had an oil relationship with Qaddafi, in fact oil companies lobbied on his behalf against the intervention. [. http://goo.gl...] If this was really about oil the US would be pro-stability (pro-Qaddafi), not for the instability of regime change and the uncertainty of a new government.