Ross Douthat follows up his column on Monday with a really well-argued blog post discussing our obligations in Libya:
It isn't that we have no obligations to Libyans now: As the dominant power in the globe, we have some responsibility for furthering peace and order just about everywhere on earth. But just as you have certain obligations to your brother or cousin's or neighbor's child, but a far greater responsibility for a child that you adopt, so a great power's obligations increase when it assumes an active role in the politics of another country — and so do the responsibilities it bears for any subsequent disasters. Which is, in turn, a good reason to be wary of taking on too many of those obligations in the first place.
This reminds me a bit of Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule -- Douthat argues that whatever our obligations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. hasn't broken Libya yet.
But as Mark Goldberg points out, the U.S. already has moral obligations to the people of Bahrain, given that it is a U.S. client state. Unlike in Libya, where the U.S. does not yet bear any direct responsibility for what's happening there, in Bahrain the authorities have initiated a brutal crackdown with the aid of other U.S. allies in the region:
It is worth noting here just how bad the United States must look in the eyes of a protest movement seeking to shake off an oppressive political system. The United States seems unwilling or unable to convince Bahrain's al-Khalifa family to open up the political system. Meanwhile, the United States has stood by the monarch, even as Bahrain’s ruling family simply ignored the advice of the United States Defense Secretary.
You basically have a situation right now where one American ally is asking other American allies in the Gulf to use their American weapons to help suppress a revolt.
Bahrain's location, sectarian makeup, and the presence of the 5th Fleet have contributed to a situation where the U.S. is basically gritting its teeth and supporting a brutal Sunni monarchy at the expense of Shiite dissidents, an outcome Iran is already seeking to take advantage of.
The situation in Libya has the attention of opinion writers largely I think because of the shape of the story -- in an indigenous uprising against a brutal dictator -- is familiar and lends itself to easy moralizing about the U.S. needing to be a beacon of freedom unto the world. But as Goldberg points out, U.S. fingerprints are all over the situation in Bahrain, in a way they aren't in Libya, and as a result, they may have much more far-reaching consequences.
