Here’s something I sent to the Evening Standard – not sure if they used any of it:

Perhaps the most difficult moral and legal question of our time is this one: “who is my neighbour?”

 

Domestic law has moved a long way from an earlier tradition that what went on behind closed doors was not the business of anyone who did not live there. Abuse a person or an animal in your own home and the law will bear down on you, from an ever greater height. The European Union now has policies on domestic violence.

 

Yet at the international level the older rule still holds: a state is sovereign, and other states must not ‘interfere’ in its internal affairs, however outlandish those affairs might be, without that state’s consent. That rule has been qualified in recent years by an emerging idea of a ‘responsibility to protect’: if a state can’t or won’t protect its own people from crimes against humanity, other states may use various measures – including ultimately force – to intervene to try to change the situation for the better.

 

As people round the world acquire the tools to film and broadcast events on the Internet, ideas of neighbourliness are transformed. Journalist Claud Cockburn once famously coined the ‘world’s most boring headline’: "Small Earthquake in Chile. Not many Dead." Now earthquakes anywhere on the planet are the least boring phenomena imaginable, as startling images of their inexorable destruction can be watched live by us all.

 

Japan’s latest earthquake comes from a country with top-class technology, so the tsunami of seawater is closely followed by a tsunami of ghastly media footage. The Japanese people become our neighbours. Offers of help pour in from around the world, even though for most purposes Japan is large and strong enough to manage on its own.

 

Meanwhile in Libya another human disaster is unfolding, as Gaddafi tries to wipe out resistance to his rule. The death-toll there could easily exceed the losses in Japan. In Libya’s case the disaster will be purely man-made, yet world opinion is quite likely to avert its eyes, recoiling from the sheer intensity of Gaddafi’s terrorism and embarrassed at its own dithering.

 

It’s possible to imagine another, arguably more rational world. One in which we respond when we control our own destiny and can choose between right and wrong. We could shrug our shoulders when unavoidable natural disasters happen, but pile in fast and strong whenever human suffering is caused by human wickedness.

 

Even then our interventions may come far too late, if the local criminal regimes lock down internet access and make sure that their cruelty takes place behind closed doors.

 

Sorry, Libyans and North Koreans and Yemenis. Your muffled screams are just not enough. You’re my neighbour only if I can sit back and watch your suffering on TV. And even if I do watch, it may be a bit too, er, complicated to do anything to help you.

The Libya case exceeds anything I have seen in my lifetime. Since WW2 we have been able to look to the USA for some sort of clear global leadership and engagement. OK, sometimes we liked the outcome and sometimes we didn’t. But the fact of that engagement and leadership set a certain tone and intellectual framework.

Now, under President Obama, all that has suddenly vanished, like a switch being turned off.

But he’s not asleep on the job. No sirree. He’s "muscling past the red-siren headlines" of Libya and Japan to focus on … education! 

This important new prioritisation is baffling other people brought up in a different tradition:

The Government’s frustration over the lack of a clear lead from the White House threatens to cast a pall over transatlantic relations over coming months. David Cameron briefly betrayed his frustration in the Commons yesterday over the diplomatic delays as Muammar Gaddafi’s forces seize back land held by the rebel forces.

He said: "Of course there are a wide range of views in the UN. But I would urge others to take the right steps so that actually we show some leadership on this issue and make sure we get rid of this regime."

As negotiations dragged on last week over no-fly zones, Alain Juppe, the French Foreign minister, protested: "The Americans haven’t yet defined their position on Libya." Privately Britain shares his irritation over the US stance, shared by Mr Obama’s domestic political opponents.

The senior Senate Republican, Lindsey Graham, said: "If he does not act decisively in Libya, I believe history will show that the Obama administration owned the results of the Gaddafi regime from 2011 forward," he said. "Their refusal to act will go down as one of the great mistakes in American foreign-policy history and will have dire consequences for our own national security in the years to come."

So, question. Is Obama really as bad as he seems? Or as David Frum eloquently puts it, does he actually want Gaddafi to win?

As happened in Iraq in 1991, the world is acquiescing in the brutal suppression of a popular uprising by an Arab dictator. Will this violently reasserted dictatorship be "stable"? If those data on Libyan suicide bombers are correct, then Gaddafi’s dictatorship has bred Islamic resistance. Will more violence intensify Libya’s Islamification? And since no regime lasts for ever, what will Europe face across the Mediterranean when the regime does finally go?  

… Libya is Obama’s Iraq in reverse. The fighting may end faster when the dictator survives. But the consequences may reveal themselves as no less ugly, no less large, and no less enduring.

Are you a Dictator in Distress? Fear no more! Obama is sending you some tough messages:

2. Do not worry if the U.S. president says you must “step down” and “leave.” It is only his personal opinion.

3. To ensure that the president does not focus unduly on your war, schedule it while he is preoccupied with other matters: a Motown concert, a conference on bullying, his golf game, and finalizing his Final Four picks.

4. Declare that the opposition is not “organic.” The president will not assist a non-organic revolution. If the revolution is organic, do not worry: an organic revolution is by definition one he does not need to assist. Either way, you’re fine.

Is the US position now finally changing in favour of intervention to help the ‘rebels’? All eyes on the UN – and in particular the willingness of the ‘West’ to assert the right to ‘do something’ – perhaps fairly safe in the suspicion that Russia/China will veto it?

This of course makes general political sense:

Washington is insisting that any military action would have to be authorised by the security council and be carried out by an international coalition, including Arab states.

Barack Obama has been cautious over calls for a no-fly zone, which the Pentagon has described as a step tantamount to war.

But the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, told reporters that the turning point was the Arab League’s support over the weekend for a no-fly zone over Libya.

"That was an extraordinary statement," Clinton said, noting that Arab nations were asking the UN security council to take action "against one of their own".

Note, though, the creepy new anti-universalist human rights principle that we all do nothing to help stop massacres in eg the Arab world unless Arabs too join in. The corollary of which is that Arabs can massacre each other without end if they want to keep it all as their private business.

Huge civilisational issues are churning away here, right under our noses. If (when?) Gaddafi moves in to crush Bengazi, our fine leaders will all have ringside seats in a colossal crime against humanity.