Reply #9: Quite true

[PurityOfEssence]

I also concur with the other poster that the thread-starter wasn't necessarily agreeing with the article, but then again, certainly didn't point this out.

By my reading of Resolution 1973, it seems like it's just fine to deploy even real-live sizable foreign armies, just as long as they don't stay there after the cessation of hostilities. The wording is rather broad and written to literally have tanks driven through it.

Much as I'm thoroughly opposed to this illegal intervention (illegal for the U.S. by its own laws, not necessarily for the other participants) the written resolution is pretty much a carte blanche, and certainly open to question. By the standard definition, a force of occupation is a foreign presence that continues after the fighting is over, and this little brouhaha is just made for quibbling, since fighting is liable to continue for awhile.

Once Qaddafi leaves, is killed or allowed some position, that would be the point when it would become an occupation, unless the loyalists continue to resist.

What an ugly episode; it's shameful to its mendacious core.