Quote Originally Posted by Seraph View Post
I apologize. I keep reading pro-intervention comments. I cannot comprehend how people can be pro-intervention, and ignore or dismiss the civilian casualties.

My logic may (or maybe not) be faulty, but my position is clear. I am completely against intervention, and completely against the civilian casualties. I am not embarrassed about my position at all, nor will I apologize for it.
OK, let me illustrate my objection to your hysterical reasoning by just firing your own words back at you:

Quote Originally Posted by A Hypothetical Anti-Seraph
I keep reading anti-intervention comments. I cannot comprehend how people can be anti-intervention, and ignore or dismiss the civilian casualties.

My logic may (or maybe not) be faulty, but my position is clear. I am completely in favour of intervention, and completely against the civilian casualties. I am not embarrassed about my position at all, nor will I apologize for it.
See, it's perfectly possible to be in favour of intervention for exactly the same reasons you claim to oppose it, and just as possible to state that position in completely idiotic terms by implying that anyone who disagrees with you is in favour of civilian casualties.

The fact is that there was already fighting in Libya before NATO started bombing Gadaffi's forces; there were already and would have continued to be many civilian casualties. The question was whether intervention would minimise the number, or cause even more. It's perfectly acceptable to conclude that intervention would be worse than letting the nascent civil war run its course and to oppose it on those grounds, but it's not acceptable to pretend that only intervention would have resulted in innocent deaths and therefore assert that anyone who supported it was happy about that and only supported the intervention out of grubby self-interest, which is essentially what you're doing.

You need to read more declassified documents from the CIA.
Why? Just because the US wanted rid of Gadaffi and made lots of plans to do so (you hardly need CIA documents to know that) it does not follow that they instigated or even manipulated the current uprising against him. Just because humanitarian concerns were a pretext to do what they wanted to do anyway it does not follow that those concerns weren't real, or valid.

Sure, it's possible that the US has been behind this from the start, but it's also possible (and I would say a hell of a lot more plausible) that they have simply taken advantage of a situation that developed organically.

Either you are for what is going or you are against it. Other possibilities might exist. Why not state your actual position? I have.
You are George Bush and I claim my £5.

OK, since you asked, I was against the intervention. I felt that the humanitarian case was weak, the objectives too vague, and the potential danger of making things even worse too great. You can cry me a river for the end of Gadaffi's rule though. Seeing him swing from a lamp post will be the one unambiguous good to come out of this, even if everything else is a disaster.

It's too early to tell whether or not I was correct, but so far I'm happy to admit it's gone much better than I feared it would. So far. I still think it's more likely to end in tears than not.