Timothy Garton Ash considers the question:
You see your neighbour's two-year-old daughter being savaged by his rottweiler. What do you do? If you are able to, you jump over the fence and beat the dog off with a stout stick, or shoot it with your gun. You may take a special interest in the little girl's future from then on, but she doesn't become your daughter, you don't "own" her. No more does the west "own" Libya just because it made a limited, justified intervention there.
(Photo: A member of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) shows journalists remnants of arms and unexploded weaponry being collected as part of an NTC campaign in Tajura, about 30 kms east of Tripoli, on November 16, 2011. In Benghazi, officers and soldiers from the former Libyan regime gathered on November 15 to name a new military chief and relaunch a national army, but the attempt ended in quarrelling amid widespread divisions. By Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images.)
The Dish 
