The Left should have supported the Libyan intervention

My opponent makes four points, which I will address in turn before moving on to my argument in chief. 1) The intervention had multilateral support (unlike Iraq) This contention is not so much an argument why the left should have supported the Libyan intervention as a preemptive refutation of a reason they might not have. Since I will not be arguing this reason, there is no need to address my opponent’s refutation of an imagined argument. I will not address this point further. 2) The intervention was legally & morally just I obviously am going to disagree on this point. In my argument below, I will outline why I believe intervention was not moral. Here I will simply address the points my opponent raised. Under R2P, violations of sovereignty are justifiable only in response to four circumstances: genocide, ethnic-cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. None of these conditions were met in Libya. Clearly genocide does not apply as Qaddafi was not seeking to eliminate a particular race, or people from the earth. His actions were entirely confined to Arabs within his own borders. Ethnic-cleansing also does not apply, while there may have been a tribal element to which cities supported Qaddafi, security forces were targeting protestors and not engaged in a systematic attempt to eliminate the tribes in question. Crimes against humanity are defined by the Rome Statute as “They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy). ”[1] The Libya uprising was clearly a sporadic event not a long-term government policy. Finally, since there was no war prior to foreign intervention, how can there have been war crimes? If indeed, R2P justified foreign intervention, why did we not intervene in Bahrain, Yemen, or Syria? The answer is that R2P didn’t justify it, and Western intervention in Libya was motivated by selfish economic purposes. 3) Lefties aren't always against intervention The fact that a particular “lefty” became an establishment politician in Germany, and consequently support another economically motivated war in Kosovo, is completely irrelevant to the proposition. 4) There was no other humane or practical alternative My opponent presents several false choices. Whether there would have been a “massacre” is a point we can debate. Had the tanks arrived in Benghazi, probably a few people would have been killed but then order would have been restored. I’ll grant that it would not have been a fair, or just order, but the argument that hundreds of thousands of people were about to be wiped out is plainly silly. The Arab League is quite capable of taking action. Saudi Arabia spends over 11% of its GDP on military[2]. The fact that they chose not to act should be telling. For some reason Western powers are more willing to kill Arabs in the name of “Arab freedom” than Arabs are. Counter Argument The Libya intervention was an economically driven statest war designed to advance the interest of Western capitalists. Qaddafi had been an international pariah for decades[3]. Libya produces 1.5M barres of oil per day and that level could be considerably higher[4]. The intervention was designed to remove from an oil rich country a dictator who does not serve the interests of Western oil companies. This is a fairly common thing to do for a Western military. The U. S. did it in Iraq (twice), in Iran, and in Venezuela. On the other hand, we support dictators who act favorably to Western oil interests such as in Iraq (earlier), Iran (later), Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and now Syria. Once the dust settled from the allied bombing in Libya, Western oil companies wasted no time rushing in to un-nationalize the Libyan oil resources. A greed driven war that supports powerful interests in Western capitalist countries is exactly the sort of intervention that the Left should oppose. References [1] . http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] . http://www.google.com... [3] . http://www.bloomberg.com... [4] . https://www.cia.gov... [5] . http://www.nytimes.com...