Reply #11: Yay militarism! [View All]

[Vattel]

Those silly lefties, using Vietnam and Iraq as a basis for opposing military interventions. Surely the best way to save innocent lives is to take sides in a civil war. (end sarcasm)

Seriously, though, in the short term, what we and our European allies did in Libya did save innocent lives, and that is good. In the long term, who knows. If Libya ends up with a better government, then great. Past experience has made me very skeptical about the use of military force for anything other than simple self-defense. In a more rational world, people would realize that the most cost effective way to save innocent lives is almost always invest one's resources in humanitarian projects that don't require killing and all of the unintended consequences killing so often has.