And Libya goes on...

[JMA]

Hi Ray just to single out one point at this time.

If you opine that ‘motivation for an intervention is sound but the method of the intervention is poor or unsuccessful , and find cause for ‘humanitarian assistance’, and also feel that one has to be pragmatic over morality, what is your blueprint/ roadmap? Go gung ho as in Iraq, be labelled ‘neo colonialist and imperialist’ and then have another lament on the hands?

The linkage is not sound.

My first point was simply that if the intervention fails it should not throw the motivation behind the intervention itself into doubt. For example the US humanitarian intervention into Somalia was well intentioned and IMO justified and necessary. That the aim got lost and it all ended in tears should not (and does not in my mind) lead to the advisability of such humanitarian interventions being questioned thereafter. Thats it, that's all on that point.

As to the second point. Sadly it is a reality that countries dependent upon oil imports often need to compromise their integrity and trade with some very evil and unsavory states to satisfy that need. Nothing more, nothing less.

If it wasn't for oil or WMD I can't think of why the US led the "willing" into Iraq. Of Afghanistan apart from the obvious need to strike out after 9/11 can't think why they backed Karzai and are still there. All very strange.

But in terms of the law of unintended consequences what 9/11 aimed to achieve was apparently to "wake the American people up" ended up with the US bankrupting itself through its response. A self inflicted wound if there ever was one.