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[Bouchart]

Sweden has been downgraded from Neutral Good to True Neutral.

As far as I'm hearing, most of the Libyan people don't want intervention at this point, either. Their attitude appears to be, "F**k all y'all bitches. We made it this far without your help, when we could have used it. Now when we got him on the ropes, you wanna come in at the end and take credit and use that as an excuse to tell us what to do after the smoke clears? F**k that. Stay home, we got this."

Unarmed protesters in Tripoli might differ, but the comments from the Benghazi provisional government honestly seem to be that they do not want or need outside intervention at this time.

Yeah, no one in power, anywhere, cares enough to waste the massive amounts of resources deploying troops would cost, not to mention risking the lives of their own people and equipment, even if they were able to scramble enough of them to do anything within a week (I'm sure there are some situations where they could scramble them fast enough, but those fall into the cases where military analysts have sat down and come up with as many possible emergency situations as seem feasible, along with plans of action to deal with them, and I'm also sure that "two bit dictator attacking his own people, with absolutely nothing to do with any of our assets or interests involved" is not one of them). Military action takes careful planning and logistical juggling. The situation in Libya has been going on for just over a week, and after the first couple of days it was obvious the revolutionaries would prevail. That's not enough time for anyone to intervene, even if they felt it was worth it.

This.  Also Libya doesn't have that much strategic importance to the rest of the world.  Iran and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, will probably see foreign intervention very quickly if the government is in danger of collapsing there.

[ChairmanPoo]

Maybe it's better if there is no intervention. This way the people of Lybia claim their goverment without owing to any foreign power.

[olemars]

Best options are to send in emergency humanitarian aid, and maybe discreetly feeding the revolutionaries some intelligence data and helping them with communications.

[Duuvian]

Best options are to send in emergency humanitarian aid, and maybe discreetly feeding the revolutionaries some intelligence data and helping them with communications.

Yeah, I'd say so. The western governments should help however they can short of military force.

[DJ]

Yeah, military intervention would do more harm than good. Engineering corps should be sent in to help the Benghazi government rebuild when the dust settles, though.

[Nikov]

Bah. As much as I want to, even I can't advocate so much as one measly Hellfire missile. But I wouldn't send engineers either, since they're soldiers with guns just the same. Nor aid, since you just depress the economy. The best thing to do is stay hands-off until the new government takes specific requests, then stamp everything with "Aid From United States at Libyan Request. You don't want to flood the country with rice because you only piss off the farmers.

[Ampersand]

I think the best thing that we could possibly hope for is that some state makes the first step of officially recognizing the provisional Government in Benghazi as the Legitimate government of the state for now, and opening up diplomatic channels with them openly such that these requests for aid, or declinations of aid, can be made in a transparent way.

I am fairly confident that, regardless of what is being said openly, there are already talks going on.

[DJ]

Yeah, the international community should definitely recognise the Benghazi government as the legitimate government of Libya.

[RedKing]

I doubt you'll see a formal recognition of the Benghazi government until Qaddafi either resigns or is killed. Bastard that he is, he's still technically the legimitate ruler of Libya.

[Bouchart]

I doubt you'll see a formal recognition of the Benghazi government until Qaddafi either resigns or is killed. Bastard that he is, he's still technically the legimitate ruler of Libya.

Is there any well-recognized leader of the Benghazi government?  The interesting thing about the rebellions in Tusnisia, Egypt and Libya is that you can't give a name or a face to the new governments.

[DJ]

I wouldn't say that a coup is exactly legitimate method of taking power.

[Bouchart]

I wouldn't say that a coup is exactly legitimate method of taking power.

Well, you have to start somewhere.

[Nikov]

I wouldn't say that a coup is exactly legitimate method of taking power.

Well, you have to start somewhere.

Now at risk of explaining the joke, you know how Quaddaffi got his job, right?

[RedKing]

I wouldn't say that a coup is exactly legitimate method of taking power.

There's 6000 years of leaders taking power through coups that would disagree with you. Legitimacy lies in what you can control and who you can get to agree with you, not in your moral basis for power.

[DJ]

In that case the Benghazi government looks a lot more legitimate than Gadaffi right now, so I don't see why they couldn't get recognized as Libya's one true government.