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Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Council Has Spoken!!


The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week, carved eternally in the records of cyberspace.

One thing many people have been asking is why Libya? Why now? And who benefits? This week's winner, New Zeal, took a look at the motivation for this war in terms of a new, internationalist doctrine promulgated by the UN and the Obama Administration and the Soros connection in his fine piece, "Responsibility to Protect" - The End of National Sovereignty As We Know It? Here's a slice:

Glenn Beck has explained President Obama's decision to attack Libya in terms of the United Nations' "Responsibility to Protect Doctrine"

Mr Beck is right.

According to Radio Free Europe
Those who justify the Libyan intervention on humanitarian grounds draw much of their logic from a concept which has dramatically gained ground over recent decades. The concept is known as "R2P," shorthand for the world's "Responsibility to Protect" civilians.
But what does this catchy little phrase mean? Where did it come from? What are its implications?

The United Nations reported in July 2009;
The Obama administration is supporting moves to implement an U.N. doctrine calling for collective military action to halt genocide. In a week-long debate on implementing the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, the U.S. joined a majority of U.N. countries, including Russia and China, in supporting implementation of the policy. The doctrine itself was approved in 2005 by more than 150 states including the U.S.
The doctrine specifies that diplomatic options such as internal conflict resolution, sanctions, and prosecution by the International Criminal Court, should be used first. If they don't work, then a multi-national force approved by the Security Council would be deployed.
In other words, if the United Nations does not approve of a certain government's behavior, and that government's leaders will not respond to sanctions and the threat of prosecution, they will be attacked militarily.

We had a tie this week between two must read entries in our non-Council category. One was Michael Yon's harsh critique of a sensationalist piece on Afghanistan entitled Calling BULLSHIT on Rolling Stone and the other was a fascinating piece on the cultural dilemma between the West and the Islamic world called Saving 1 Billion People from Themselves .

As is mandated in these circumstances, I broke the tie. While I thoroughly enjoyed Yon's snark, Sultan Knish's piece embraced some deeper questions and got my nod for this week.

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners



Non-Council Winners



See you next week!



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