Phantasms from the 1990s are upon us: no-fly zones; the rhetoric of humanitarian war in Washington, Europe and the UN; guarantees that no US ground troops will be deployed; an air war which alone cannot decisively affect earthbound events
President Obama swung for ringing tones in his statement on Libya, condemning idleness in the face of merciless tyrants who brutally assault innocents.
In the legal codes through which the international community acknowledges so untoward a happening as war, the UN resolved to protect civilians and create a cordon sanitaire around the blighted country.
But it was all a faraway echo from the Yugoslav heyday of believing people could be bombed for humanitarian effect.
The language of liberal war may still flow as easily in the West as Libya's sweet crude, but even the true believers are running on fumes on this one.
Few critics have even bothered to point out the obvious selectivity. Obama meant no idling before this particular tyrant, while the UN Security Council offered the beatific state of protected innocence to some Libyans only, not to Syrians, Yemenis, Palestinians or Bahrainis, much less those suffering in the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe or elsewhere.
Nonetheless the idea of liberal war, of the use of force for humanitarian objectives, continues to cloud opinion and profoundly informs the official terms of debate, in international forums and especially in Western Europe. It also shapes the character of coalition operations over Libya.
Denying war, the art of euphemisms
Liberal war is so useful, particularly to 'good Europeans', because it denies it is war. It is a no-fly zone protecting human rights!
