Why our intervention in Libya is right

Ten days ago was the eight anniversary of the start of Iraq War. I was opposed to that war. I even joined the over a million others in marching against it - something I had never done before.

Now once again British planes are bombing an Islamic nations tanks, do I feel a sense of deja vu?

The simple truth is that I do not. I believe the actions of the coalition are essentially just. However this does not mean that I have changed my mind of the Iraq War. I still believe that was not morally justifiable.

There a 3 factors with regard to the Libyan conflict that were not evident in the Iraq conflict.

The first is the imminence of a humanitarian catastrophe. Had we not started bombing, Benghazi would have fallen and Gaddafi would have levelled the city. It is likely that the number of dead would dwarfed the death toll from the Japanese Tsunami. This was another Rwanda, another Srebrenicia, another Cambodia in the making. In Iraq the there was not the same immediate threat to vast numbers of civilians. I don't doubt Saddam was a terrible, evil dictator. But by 2003 he simply didn't have the capacity and ability to kill the amount people to qualify for a humanitarian catastrophe. Why is this concept important? quite simply war by it's very nature is horrific and will kill and cause damage that is greater most abuses of human rights. Only with an imminent humanitarian catastrophe can war prevent more damage than it will cause.

My second factor leads on from this point and that is the response is proportionate. We have essentially stopped Gaddafi from killing his subjects, but we haven't gone the whole hog and invaded or fired nuclear weapons, napalmed towns etc. So again we have limited the damage that war causes as far as possible to combatants. With Iraq, the response was not proportionate, the damage we caused; 700,000 dead (according to one report)years of civil war, the collapse of state infrastructure was not a proportionate response, as the good of removing Saddam was outweighed by cost of the action.

Finally the Libyan conflict has legal backing. Unlike Iraq, the UN has passed a resolution that sanctions hostilities. In Iraq there was no resolution, mainly because we had not reached the end of the diplomatic process, in Libya the diplomatic time frame was much shorter because of the imminent threat to Benghazi. In Iraq, weapons inspectors were still to report and then there could have been further movements towards forcing Saddam to comply with Human Rights law. Yet the invasion took place before legal backing had being obtained. Legality is important as the failure by the allies in Iraq to obey the will of the UN, undermined international law, potentially for generations. This assists those leaders who wish to break international law as they now have a powerful precedent and will argue if prosecuted that it is "victors (or western) justice" with some degree of justification.

In conclusion, this does not meant that the Libyan conflict will necesserley remain just, if we are causing more damage than we are stopping, or the UN decrees that we should stop then the conflict in my view would become unjust...time will tell.