That 'massacre' in Benghazi: A response to David Bosco

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Friday, April 8, 2011 - 2:30 PM Share

Over in another corner of the FP media juggernaut, David Bosco has challenged my claim that the humanitarian case for imminent intervention in Libya was weak. According to President Obama, the United States and its allies had to intervene because Qaddafi's forces were about to conduct a massacre that "would stain the conscience of the world." He said there would be "violence on a horrific scale." Drawing on some recent commentary by political scientist Alan Kuperman and journalist Stephen Chapman, I questioned this assumption and said the risk of such a massacre was slight. Bosco challenges me in turn, and says that my assessment is an "epic overreach."

To be clear, I do think rebel lives would have been lost had Qaddafi's force taken Benghazi, and I have no doubt that the Libyan dictator would have dealt harshly with the rebel leaders and anyone who fought to the bitter end. In other words, I'm pretty sure his forces would have murdered some of the rebels and probably some innocent civilians too.  But the president seems to have been convinced that Qaddafi was about to unleash genuine mass killings of perhaps as many as 100,000 people, in a city of roughly 650,000 (remember his pointed reference to Benghazi being nearly the size of Charlotte?). Thus, the president's rhetoric strongly implied that tens of thousands of innocent bystanders were about to be ruthlessly slaughtered. That same image was reinforced by media references to the "lessons of Rwanda" that supposedly had shaped the views of some of Obama's advisors.

Yet as I noted in my piece, there were no large-scale massacres in the other cities that the loyalists had recaptured. It is easy to believe that Qaddafi would have gone after the rebel leaders and diehard followers -- whom he undoubtedly regards as traitors -- but turning Benghazi into a ghost town filled with corpses was probably not in his own interest.

Obviously, one can argue that any substantial loss of life is worth preventing, and that the United States and NATO were justified in intervening even if the number of people at risk was fairly small. Reasonable people can disagree about what level of human suffering is required before intervention is warranted, but the ultimate decision will always depend on a weighing of anticipated costs and benefits. By offering the most extreme forecast of what might have happened had we not intervened, President Obama was trying to tip the scale and make the benefits of his action look as large as possible. That's his prerogative, of course, but that doesn't mean we have to accept his assessment with our eyes closed.

And let's not forget that there are costs here, and not just to the rebel forces that NATO seems to keep hitting by mistake. Military operations are not cheap, and we may have to do a lot more if  regime change remains our objective. We may also be helping create a stalemate that will ultimately cost more Libyan lives than would have been lost in Benghazi, though there's no way to know that yet. We don't know how this operation will affect NATO's cohesion going forward, or what other problems may get neglected because the U.S. government is partly distracted by events in an otherwise minor power. So if Obama and his team did inflate the magnitude of the humanitarian danger that a rebel defeat would have created, then the real benefits of the decision to intervene are more modest and the cost-benefit calculus tips back the other way.

Where I agree with Bosco is his concluding point about the inherent ambiguity of the entire term "humanitarian crisis" and the desirability of firmer criteria and evidentiary standards when launching preventive humanitarian action. But I doubt it is possible to devise meaningful and political binding rules to guide future decisions, because they will always be context-dependent (i.e., we're more likely to act if we're not bogged down elsewhere), and because presidential decisions are also likely to be shaped by idiosyncratic factors, such as which advisors currently have their ear. And as the case of French president Nicolas Sarkozy suggests, enthusiasm for intervention may reflect domestic political woes, foreign policy embarrassments, and other extraneous elements. So while it would be nice to have a clear standard for when to get in and when to stay out, my guess is that such decisions will remain haphazard.  

In other words, I can't tell you where or when the U.S. will intervene for humanitarian purposes. But as long as my "Five Reasons" remain intact, it's a safe bet that we will, and more often than we should.

EXPLORE:ARAB WORLD, MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA, FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE, HUMAN RIGHTS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, LIBYA, MILITARY, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, OBAMA'S LIBYA SPEECH, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
 

MRPOLITISHQ

8:47 PM ET

April 8, 2011

Error?

The 'my claim' link isn't working. It points to":
ttp://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/04/03/top_five_reasons_we_keep_fighting_all_these_wars

when it should be pointing to"
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/04/03/top_five_reasons_we_keep_fighting_all_these_wars

 

BANDOLERO

5:31 AM ET

April 9, 2011

A sixth reason

From my point of view, there is a sixth and from my point of view the most serious reason: a damn bad job of the US mass media, which almost abandoned critical journalism.

It's not only the obvious things like that Robert Gates said he had no credibe information that the Libyan government used fighter jets to attack unarmed or lightly armed protesters, but both, Obama and Clinton, justified the US war action against Libya - among others - with exactly that allegation. So where are the media taking up the obvious contradiction and asking very ough questions for evidence of the presidential allegation?

The example shown above may be eyecatching, but the problem in US journalism and mass media goes much deeper. Whenever there is a conflict and things heat up, American media tend to take up a cheerleader position for one side, labeling them the good guys. So instead of balanced reporting the pulic gets the "good side" portrayed in a most possible good way, and the "bad side" in a most possible bad way.

The consequence of this lack of empathy for the designated "enemy" is a lack of public knowledge on the view of the enemy. So for example, how many people know the story told from the point of view from a genuine supporter of the Libyan government?

To get a rough impression of how the view from the other side may look like, have a look here:

Hidden behind propaganda a giant crime against Libya is fact

For those, who don’t follow Libyan news, be promised, you will be surprised, how this war looks like from the perspective of the other side.

And I tend to say, it's not only a problem with the conflict in Libya. The very same might well be true with the conflict in Afghanistan. How many people of the American public know, what conditions the Taliban have laid out for a peace deal and stop fighting? Hint: it seems to have a lot to do with the US desire to have permanent bases in Afghanistan. I wouldn't say I'ld neccessarily totally agree with the Taliban position, but why isn't there any public discussion in the US about whether the peace conditions laid out by the Taliban are acceptable or not? I tend to say, it's because nobody is informed at all.

And so it's for almost any other conflict in the world I know. From Tibet to Korea, from Cuba to Iran. The US public is just very badly informed on the point of view of the enemy. I would say, that looks like a systematic and catastrophic failure of US mass media to act as a watchdog for the public interest.

 

STEVEM

2:01 PM ET

April 9, 2011

Obama is Clueless

You know an important subtext of this is that Barack Obama has little innate intuition and he just ain't that smart - about anything.

Obama is a glib George W Bush without the twang.

 

MARGARET STEINFELS

6:22 PM ET

April 9, 2011

Iraq

Off topic: What do you make of Gates's offer to keep US troops in Iraq and the apparent (or at least public) "no thanks," of Maliki and Sadr forces marching about it on Saturday (4/9). What's up with this?

 

BANDOLERO

3:30 AM ET

April 10, 2011

US defeated

Malikis Badr militia, which is now trained by the US, was founded in Tehran. It's loyal to Tehran.

Sadrs militia is loyal to Kerbala, and when the US waged war against Kerbala, Sadr went to Qom and since, his militia is loyal to Tehran.

So, Badr-Sadr is a Tehran coalition. It got power in Iraq. US is defeated.

The same story now happens in Libya.

 

RENJIN

7:14 AM ET

April 11, 2011

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A BALANCED VIEW

3:32 AM ET

April 12, 2011

This is simply the right thing to do, and it can be done quickly

This is simply the right thing to do. It will also help the US' Image.

Furthermore, after all of this, there would be no going back with Gadaffi. We would be much better off seeing him and his sons taken out and dealing with the government that replaces them.

This will not cost much and will not take long. It should be done for all these reasons and more.

 

NICHOLAS WIBBERLEY

1:32 PM ET

April 12, 2011

Meddling

Human rights is another ambiguous abstraction everyone thinks they understand but cannot uniformly define. Further confusions arise because the US and its acolytes insist on being sole arbiters of violations. Finally we have the selective exploitation of human rights for political reasons, and it is this latter, particularly in the Middle East of late, that is emboldening voices to point out the emperor is unclothed. There are many good reasons for being naked but few for claiming to be dressed the while.

Reuters reports China calling on the US cut it, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/10/us-china-usa-rights-idUSTRE7382EH20110410 and once this breach is opened, others will follow until what was presumably intended to strengthen the US internationally may actually weaken it, particularly when accompanied by what appears to be dithering from the State Department.

 

TERROH8ER

6:10 AM ET

April 17, 2011

I agree

I've been saying this from the beginning. Gaddafi is very eccentric and authoritarian, but there's no reason to think he would intentionally slaughter civilians in Benghazi. This is a civil war, and it is accepted that, when you enter into a war, you are making yourself a legitimate target. I also find it bizarre that the media is portraying him as a rapist because one woman alleges that she was raped. This is very unfortunate, but US soldiers have been convicted of rape in modern times as well, and we wouldn't say George W Bush was instructing soldiers to use rape as a weapon of war.

I can't help but imagine that this is about Israel. Egypt has now fallen into the hands of it's people, so we want to have a country nearby to serve as a military base in the event that Egypt elects someone willing to stand up for the Palestinians. Gaddafi is an easy target because he is unpopular.

This has been anything but a humanitarian mission. This has been clear from the beginning,

 

MATT PETA

3:29 PM ET

May 8, 2011

Whenever there is a conflict

Whenever there is a conflict and things heat up, American media tend to take up a cheerleader position for one side, labeling them the good guys. So instead of balanced reporting the pulic gets the "good side" portrayed in a most possible stavkove kancelarie good way, and the "bad side" in a most possible bad way.The consequence of this lack of empathy for the designated "enemy" is a lack of public knowledge on the view of the enemy. So for example, how many people know the story told from the point of view from a genuine supporter of the Libyan government?How many people of the American public know, what conditions the Taliban have laid out for abwin peace deal and stop fighting? Hint: it seems to have a lot to do with the US desire to have permanent bases in Afghanistan. I wouldn't say I'ld neccessarily totally agree with the Taliban position, but why isn't there any public discussion in the US about whether the peace conditions laid out by the Taliban are acceptable or not?

 

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

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