Kristof asks Is It Better to Save No One?
The heart of his argument, in this op ed, is these three paragraphs:
Critics argue that we are inconsistent, even hypocritical, in our military interventions. After all, we intervened promptly this time in a country with oil, while we have largely ignored Ivory Coast and Darfur — not to mention Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.We may as well plead guilty. We are inconsistent. There’s no doubt that we cherry-pick our humanitarian interventions.
But just because we allowed Rwandans or Darfuris to be massacred, does it really follow that to be consistent we should allow Libyans to be massacred as well? Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none?
I am a Quaker, but I supported this intervention on humanitarian grounds, as I wrote here.
Kristof offers some cogent arguments, which people should read. I have some more of my own.