I was very against the idea that the US (or NATO, or the US along with France and the UK) take action without being asked to do so because it would have given everyone the excuse to say that we're imperialists, cowboys, warmongers and the like and that we just enjoy bombing helpless countries.

The Arab League voting to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, and the UN Security Council vote, helped to change that. The fact that we are downplaying our involvement is also good.

At a purely humanitarian level, I am happy that we are supporting people who want to be free of Qaddhafi's dictatorship. I support our bombing of Libya and would support targeting Qaddhafi himself (ironically, he helped to give us the ability to do this without violating US law when he himself declared that he is not the leader of Libya). I think that we need to help the rebels liberate the rest of the country.

From the perspective of international relations, there are several troubling aspects to this situation:

1. China and Russia continually veto measures that would allow the use of force. What we conceded to in order to get their abstention in this matter is unclear. Russia at least was leaning in our direction because Russia portrays itself as a democracy - the Qaddhafi family was banned from entering Russia last week and they were taking other steps. However, China has shown, consistently, that it will support the most reprehensible dictators in the world. China doesn't pretend that it is a democracy, it doesn't even say it's trying to increase civil participation by its citizens. It kills them with tanks when they step out of line, just like Qaddhafi has been doing. The end result is that the UN doesn't function like it was meant to.

In fact, the UN has historically only functioned "properly" when undemocratic nations were absent or felt that they were internationally too weak to act. The defense of South Korea during the Korean War took place when the Soviets were boycotting the UN because Taiwan held China's seat, the 1991 Gulf War resolutions took place against the backdrop of a collapsing Soviet Union and China that was keeping a low profile following Tiananmen, and the 2001 resolutions after 9/11 took place against the backdrop of global disgust at a blatant attack on civilians and the knowledge that the US was going to do whatever it wanted to regardless. The slaughter of civilians by Qaddhafi now has forced Russia to permit action because to oppose it would go against the Medvedev platform of expanding freedom and make Russia look like an open dictatorship, and China doesn't want to be the lone dissenter.

However, we have to ask ourselves: do we want to keep the UN system? Does a dictatorship have the right to veto proposals made and consented to by the world's democracies? It's one thing to recognize that we need to talk to everyone, but it's another to allow dictatorships to wield power in international organizations like the UN.

2. What precedent have we set? Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, as is Oman. Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait are close to being absolute monarchies. The Yemeni, Sudanese and Syrian presidents are clearly dictators. Iran is run by a clique of murderous theocrats in a system that denies its people most freedoms. All of the countries named have seen some unrest following the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.

While I think the unrest is probably a good thing, ultimately (people seem disenchanted with political Islam, which has been the proximate cause of our problems with the Muslim world generally, and so have now moved beyond nationalism, socialism and Islamism to demand democracy, though perhaps more on a Turkish model than on an American one), now that we have intervened in Libya what do we do if we see the same thing happen in Syria, with rebels rising up, arming themselves and then being brutally crushed? Let's not forget that Bashar Assad's father, Hafez, brutally slaughtered most of the city of Hama back in the 1970s. If it starts to happen again, what do we do? What do we do if Lebanon resumes its civil war? How do we handle a Shia uprising in the oil-rich eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, which could be funded and encouraged by Tehran? What do we do about Bahrain, where Iranian influence is assumed?

By intervening, we have put ourselves in a bad situation because now others can request the same help. The other countries might not even be in the Middle East. Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire, even Kenya...

We need to go to great lengths to distinguish this situation from others that might crop up, and be ready to step in if another situation meets the criteria that we set for intervention.