Reply #34: Yea, I don't think its ok based simply on one group desiring it.

[phleshdef]

But if said group is in the middle of possibly facing genocidal consequences, thats a different story.

Going back to the Kurds and Iraq, if we could have/would have stopped Saddam AS he was carrying out the genocidal actions against the kurds that he carried out, there is no way in the world I would have been against taking that action at that moment. The key difference here is taking action at the time that it matter to prevent the massive deaths from ever occurring versus going in to punish a leader for genocidal activity AFTER its already been done. If we are going to take action, we should do it when we can save lives, not after the lives are already lost, then its just vindictiveness and thats not very helpful.

Also you just said "One could very easily argue that the Kurds were far more abused by Saddam than the Libyan rebels have been by Qaddafi to date."

And I say, YES, thats the point. We don't want the Libyan rebels to end up suffering that way or worse, thats why we took action during the fact and not after the fact. Its a very fine line, I realize.