Bitter Scibe in the comments to the last post asks a good question.
Regarding Libya, why don't we pay more than lip service to moral principles for a change and act (or not) depending on whether it's the right thing to do?
I'm not personally convinced either way. But if I were in a position to decide, and I were truly convinced that grounding Gaddahfi's air force would cripple him, I'd have a hard time sitting on my hands.
I guess I have two levels of answers. First, I'm not sure that the no-fly thing woud work in these specific circumstances.
But the main reason I'm uneasy about the US doing anything militarily in that part of the world is that everyone calling for military intervention right now, and anyone likely to be in charge of such intervention right now, has a long history of being totally bugshit wrong about anything to do with war.
I don't like or trust anyone who would actually be in charge of the bombs.
For me, bluntly, that's what it comes down to.
And of course note how blithely the hawks blow off the price tag, which these same people don't for anything else. This leads me to suspect that whatever the agenda is, it ain't Freedom.