Khaddaffi (not sure about spelling) was a friend of France just a few years before he got killed. He was even invited to put his tent in the gardens of the Élysée by newly elected president Sarkozy, four years before. And back then, Khaddaffi was not especially a benevolent dictator.
And there are tons of counter examples. For example, Eritrea is recognized as one of the worst dictatorship in the world, and we have no troops over here to free the people of Eritrea.
I think there were two things that made a difference in Libya:
* Khaddafi ordered his soldiers to shoot non-violent protesters
* There was (as a result) an active rebellion against him that could use some support
There was no invasion by western forces, and I think the air support was mostly to stop Khaddafi from massacring his own people. I don't think western forces ever assisted in an attack; it was fairly limited and mostly denied Khaddafi the advantage of his air force.
A thumb on the scale to tip the balance between Khaddafi and the rebels, basically.
And in fact, Syria is not so different, although the involvement is on a much larger scale. It's still mostly various rebel factions that do the actual fighting. Iraq, by contrast, was a full scale invasion, and one based on a lie.
I'm not saying that makes Libya and Syria completely justified, but it's clearly a different case than Iraq, and much easier to justify, if you accept the legitimacy of the rebels.
Both in Syria and Lybia you had quite a few special forces on the ground and some of the war lords / Kurdish militia got equipment and funding through western intelligence agencies. In the case of the Syrian civil war you could follow the factions and who they were supported by in real time on a google map somewhere.
He did weed out people he considered his enemies, but he did give people free education, a banking system that was more client friendly (in terms of loans etc) and I understand free utilities.
I was of the understanding that the invasion was to increase France's political clout in North Africa, to avoid Ghaddafi's plan of unifying Africa under a gold standard (Gold Dinar) and most importantly to sell oil under the aforementioned currency.
Given his name isn’t really written in the Latin alphabet (“معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي”, according to Wikipedia), all these variations are equally [in]correct.
The reports that Ghaddafi was massacring people were rumors and were widely publicised when Genevieve Garrigos (Head of Amnesty International) appeared on French TV to report it.
6 months later, the same head of Amnesty International claimed that they had sent in investigators between Feb and July, and those investigators found no evidence that Ghaddafi had hired mercenaries to attack civilians.
Of course that was too late. The French/UK/US operation had already begun well before the investigation took place, and they weren't interested in evidence.
There are a couple dozen vile governments all over the world doing terrible things to their people at any given time. That alone doesn't explain why France is so aggressively interested in keeping the US in the Syria conflict. That same exact justification that you just mentioned applied equally to Iraq, Saddam had massacred and brutalized his own people for a long time.
You don't see France egging on the US to get militarily involved in Venezuela for example. What's going on there is a human disaster of a similar scale as Syria, with the Maduro dictatorship brutalizing and starving the people, and millions fleeing the country. There is rarely a shortage of civil wars and other assorted internal conflicts to get involved in around the world. So why is France specifically so amped up to keep the US in Syria?
Iraq wasn't in the state of unrest at the time of invasion, although yes, in principle Saddam was as murderous dictator as the other two. Arab spring would most decidedly have flared up his Iraq as well.
Venezuela crisis is not anywhere on the scale of outright war in Syria and Libya. It is also well outside the reach of feasible French force projection. France however is involved in a number of conflicts elsewhere in francophone Africa, relatively low profile as the interventions have stabilizing effect.
With Libya and Syria we also had as close to A/B test in history as we get. What if we interfere in a massacre, and what if we watch from the sidelines in exchange for deal with Iran? The answer is apparently two orders of magnitude more deaths, displacement and human suffering.
It's about the refugees. Many EU countries lack basic decency and risk to destroy EU because of Syrian refugees.
Solving the crisis there is indirectly one of the interests of the EU. The current situation also strengthens the position of Russia in the Middle East which is not in European interest.
Disclaimer: I'm from Germany. We have a shift to the right in most EU countries. One of the reasons the Britains left the EU was the refugee crisis - populists used this to scare the voters. This concept was also very successful to get votes in Germany with AfD (alternative party for Germany, right-wing).
Would love to hear other opinions instead of getting downvotes.
The countries most upset by refugees, are those who have the least. This has also been the case in the UK (communities who hate immigrants and want less don’t have any) and from what I’ve seen of German voting patterns in recent elections.
The fear of them has been amplified, but I don’t believe the actual refugees are the problem.
And, in case you’re wondering about me mixing up refugees and migrants, part of the problem in the UK is that angry people can’t tell them apart, so I don’t actually know which they’re really objecting to.
> I don’t believe the actual refugees are the problem.
I don't think so, too. The underlying problem is growing inequality of wealth and opportunities. The very far right-wing people fear that the refugees will worsen their situation (and many are simply xenophobic, too).
I think it's a shame that there is no differentiation between these problems of inequality and helping people who get attacked by their own government. It seems that many people here in Europe don't understand that it's our duty to help people who get killed in their home countries (by our own moral standards).
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France (and other European nations) care about the Syrian conflict because of the fear that more refugees will seek shelter in the EU (most European countries could handle this, but they won't do it because they aren't humanitarian which is pretty sad to see). Bringing peace to Syria is therefore a critical part of EU's solution to this (another wave of refugees would seriously risk the EU because the people here seem to have lost their connection to humanism - we could easily handle it if we want to). I have a hunch that I got downvotes because people interpreted my opinion as being contra refugees, but I'm actually telling the opposite. The problem is that many European countries (i.e. people) have decided that it's not their problem when people are in life-threatening situations and die while trying to get into those countries.
