It is a shame... if I were in command , things would be different... :

Boils down to a few shameful facts IMHO :

After 40 years of a harsh dictatorship without the least minimum of human dignity, the Brave People from Lybia decided to claim what is theirs :

Their Country, their right to Self Determination, their Freedom, their right to share the wealth of their territory.

They have tried so by several peaceful ways, without much success, or mr Muhammar's agreement so far...

So they picked the only way available to fullfill their righteous claims...

So what happened...?!

Muhammar used the Army, and the Air Force to slaughter their own people... and what do other nations do...??!!

They just turn around and whistle... pretending nothing is happening...


Does anybody even immagine what will happen to those few Brave people once their revolution is crushed...?

... but it does not matter... it is not good for the business... and Goverments have Business with Muhammar Khadaffi, head of state of Lybia, regardless of the fact that he is a cruel dictator... ( Dictators with businesses, and oil, and money and stuff are never cruel, BTW... )

If i were an admiral with a task force in the Mediterranean, i would probably ( read CERTAINLY ) face a court martial, but believe me, i would FSCK up the whole of Lybian air force to prevent them from using Fighters to bomb civilians...

Nobody will give them a hand... and yet their fight is brave and right...

You are letting the news media's villain du jour grab too much of your attention.

For 40 years, Lybia's dictatorship has never been quite evil enough to be even in the ten worst in the world.

During their short time in the UN Human Rights council, they weren't even close to the worst human rights violator in the human rights council.

Wonderful concept as long as you are totally ignorant of history.

The world has a long history of people rebelling against bad government. With exceptions so rare they aren't statistically significant, the result of rebelling against a bad government is a worse government.

The USA is the result of rebelling against a not particularly bad government in order to achieve (until recently) a better government. That was a strange exception. That is not what history tells you to expect from revolution.

I wish the people of Lybia the best of luck in their quest for better government. But I don't expect they will get it.

I'm sure it is within the power of the USA or any one of a few other world powers to destroy the current government of Lybia to let its people try to find an alternative. But I don't think that would be good idea. Even if we could fix things, the morality of that interference is questionable. But we aren't going to (maybe can't) follow all the way through to effective nation building. Without that, we just create a power vacuum that necessarily will be filled by the most ruthless contender.

The people of Lybia might well have the strength to destroy their current government and create for themselves that power vacuum, that will be filled by the most ruthless contender. That is sad. That is also not for us to try to encourage nor prevent nor manage. We don't know how to do it right, so we should stay out.

No dictator exists alone. He is one man, but one man heading a government that supports him. The bad government is the whole, not the man.

Not at all. They shout and scream and make a big fuss and pretend something significant changed between the time they put Lybia on the Human rights council and the time they took it off. They pretend to be surprised. They pretend it is unusual. They protect all the other evil governments by making a big fuss and pretending Lybia is worst (well second worst; They can never stop repeating the big lie that Israel is evil).

I'm sure glad you're not.

I'm very sad the USA is currently led by an idiot making statements about Lybia he won't and shouldn't back up.

Your claim is correct, still, i believe that given an opportunity of change, a positive change MAY happen, while without that opportunity, it simply WON'T happen...

So is the Morality of admitting Muhammar Kadaffi's presence as a member of international organizations, or maintain ANY kind of commercial relations with him/his country...

so why was Casstro's Cuba or Kim's DPRK different from Khadaffi's Lybia...? is it the Oil, or the wealth of his interests abroad...?

You seemed to be the one saying they're different. I think they're largely the same.

Why should foreign powers overthrow Khadaffi? Should they overthrow Castro and Kim as well? Do you think you've named three of the worst? (Maybe Kim is up there with worst of the worst. I wouldn't put Khadaffi or Castro there).

Maybe China is worst of all. Should we pretend not to see evil unless it is weak enough for us to attack?

That point of view is the reason I'm so baffled that some competent engineers can be liberals. A competent engineer looking at a flawed complex system and thinking about an unsound change, understands that almost every direction from a complex system is worse. Among a universe of possible changes to a complex system there are the tiny minority that will make things better. You need to know what you're doing to have any hope of improvement. A liberal looking at a flawed complex social system says it's bad therefor changing it is good.

The UN Human Rights council is so fundamentally immoral an organization, that I see no reason to care that Lybia was a member. I'm very upset that the USA now gives the UN Human Rights council a level of dignity it has never deserved.

Complex systems designed/analyzed by engineers are deterministic in their nature...

Stochastic/Probabilistic systems are not amenable to design, only to analysis IMHO, one establishes probabilities of transition between states in each subsystem of a GIVEN ( already existing, yet to be analyzed ) system, and establishes its global behaviour on the long run...

Deterministic systems can be designed/synthesised to have some pre-specified behaviour, provided they do not exhibit chaotic behavior...

A Nation is a system not prone to Design... it is Probablilistic/stochastic in its behaviour, it may exhibit chaotic behavior, depending on initial conditions...

Therefore, within one's complete ignorance to establish the trends for a sane design in such a non-deterministic system, i think that some "random shake" is a valuable means of optimization... don't you agree...?

I haven't got the time to make much of a response until this afternoon (it's 9am here at the moment) but I wanted to say that I partially agree with both of you and that I partially disagree with both of you also.

@johnsfine, I don't live in the US but I know plenty of people who do and may disagree with your assessment of the current leadership. I think using this topic to make your point about President Obama is belittling to the people of Libya.

@Alexvader, The western world, of which I am a part, has a lot to answer for of that there is no doubt. However we cannot, as Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, show up in every field of battle. There comes a time when people have to consider their actions and take responsibility for them. This is, unfortunately, one of those times. I do think that imposing a No Fly Zone over Libyan air space is the right thing to do and I believe this because the rebels asked for it and stated they did not want any other help. If they asked for it and then wanted us to finish the job they started then I would think otherwise but from the beginning they took responsibility and I admire them for it.

I am surprised the Arab League isn't being more pro-active but that's another issue altogether. Last point for now, I am glad Israel is being quiet, the West has vowed to help defend Israel and we are way over stretched at the moment so we could not do it well enough if this turned against them.

That would make the engineering simulation software I work on a lot easier to develop, except it would also eliminate much of the market for that software.

Quantum theory says that even if you have perfect complete information, nothing is actually deterministic.

But that usually isn't relevant to making decisions about systems. Usually, the lack of information or understanding makes the system seem to be non deterministic. I don't see that as fundamentally different between designed systems and non designed systems.

In complete ignorance, the probability of anything is 50%. Either it happens or it doesn't.

But we aren't completely ignorant of history. So we aren't completely ignorant of the behavior of social systems.

No.

How many humans per square mile did all the random shakes of evolution manage to support before they were killing each other and/or starving. Civilization does better (not well, on the standard of avoiding killing and starving. But better).

Simulating something is way different from synthesizing something

Beyond the scales of quantum decoherence, ( macroscopic, finite time ) some systems can be analyzed my deterministic methods

Agreed...

Why should Israel care which evil government rules Lybia (the current one vs. whoever is ruthless enough to win the power vacuum if the current one falls). If they did care, why would they be stupid enough to express an opinion. Lybia (and most of the world) has a populace that has been propagandized their whole lives to hate Israel. So if Israel expressed an opinion, that automatically gives support to the other side.

Why didn't Obama understand the same is true (even if to a much lessor extent) of the USA. His "Khadafi must go” statement did only harm. For those who might support Khadafi, it gives both the need and the justification for using more violence to support Khadafi.

Obama's moral template in this is Carter. Why do so few people remember even the history they lived through? Ruhollah Khomeini came to power only because of help from Jimmy Carter. Historians may tell a different story, but watching events as they unfolded left no doubt. Iran is not only among the most powerful examples of revolution against bad government producing far worse, but also an example of the expected outcome of Obama's dabbling in Lybia. Jimmy Carter gave Iran to Khomeini, so whom did Khomeini hate the most? Carter of course! A new ruthless dictatorship needs someone external to really really hate. Sometimes Israel just isn't big enough to fit that role. I'm sure the more Obama does to help create a new Islamist dictatorship in Lybia, the more they will say they hate him and America.

The thread started about intervention in Lybia by unnamed power with a task force in the Mediterranean. You want a no fly zone. You just can't rationally debate that topic without a view on Obama's mistakes.

As for the people of Lybia, do I belittle them by thinking that regardless of who does the heavy lifting of rebelling against Khadafi, the most ruthless (so probably the extreme Islamists) will take the prize? Do I belittle them by thinking that any help the USA tries to give them will only make them hate us more? Probably. But don't worry, I don't just think that of Lybians or just think it of arabs. Most of the world is led around by propaganda. I read the news with intelligence. I read history with intelligence. I'm generally not impressed with the world media's choice for villain du jour.

Everybody has different understanding of "right" and "wrong" (caused crusades in the past), so "rightousness" is not a good reason to interfere with another country's internal conflict.

"May happen" doesn't mean "will happen".
If you were to interfere, it is possible that your actions will cause a negative change instead of positive change you were expecting, and this time you will be the one responsible for making things worse. The most reasonable approach would be to let them solve their conflict themselves.

The events in Lybia are part of a much bigger event that is encompassing the Arab world. The fact Israel is being quiet shows their leadership is being very careful considering some of its neighbours want it removed from the map.

I can't remember a US President who hasn't opened his mouth and let his guts rumble crap. Do you remember Ronald Reagan? Do you realise how much danger that guy put the world in with his "Evil Empire" comment? You are showing you dislike one side of American politics and are blind to the fallacies of the other.

And America wouldn't have had a war with Vietnam WITH Communist help IF America had simply helped Ho Chi Min when he asked for it, even if it was just moral help it would have made things easier. You comment on watching history unfold yet you seem to have no periferal vision.

Wow, your telling me I can't rationally debate a topic without a view on Obama's mistakes. What would you prefer Sarah Palin? She doesn't even know that South Korea is an Allie. She makes stupid comments about Russia. Please don't tell me only Jimmy Carter and Obama make mistakes in America. Remove the blinkers ok.

No one has asked the USA for any help, the world community has been asked for help but not the USA. I think, and this is just my personal opinion, that your focus on Obama and to a lesser extent America does show disrespect to the Libyan rebels. Up until this morning my time they asked for 1 thing and that was for a No Fly Zone over Libya. The Libyan rebels do not need the USA to enforce this, it would be nice if it helped but they do not need them, there is after all more to NATO than the USA.

Also if you read my post correctly, i.e. without blinkers, you would see that I am not in favour of western intervention as Iraq and Afghanistan show it does not work. A No Fly Zone is not a problem but an aerial, naval, or ground assault is a different matter altogether.

I don't think anyone can know for sure what is going on there. I suspect a black op by the Dark Lord Sauron. He needs wraiths to do his bidding for what is to come. I'm sure this will happen again and soon.

If the totalitarian governments of China, Iran, Libya, North Korea, etc. were benevolent, this world would be a much nicer, safer and cheaper place to live. Unfortunately, the U.N. will never, ever do anything meaningful to bring down these regimes. The United States really can't do anything alone; we have a bad reputation already, and a whole load of oil on the line. Even if all conditions were ideal, I don't think President Obama would do much anyway (being the globalist he is).

It's sad how human rights, which is what I believe to be the single most important issue in the world today, is neglected because of greed and ignorance. This man, Moammar Gadhafi, has single-handedly caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people over his 40-year reign. Now, he laughs, shooting them again, this time with weapons of war; knowing he is still winning at the game he's played for so long.

God help the Libyan people.

That's rather naive, and you can't guarantee that it will work this way.

It is said that road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I think that people should help themselves and turn their country into something better without help from outside - if they really want that.

It is quite obvious that my statement was an aspiration and not to be taken literally. No need for inflammatory rebuttals.

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
- Thomas Jefferson

They'll die trying.