On March 19, 2011, Great Britain, France and the United States began bombing Libya. The action had become necessary, the nato powers claimed, because Libya was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. The government of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was about to crush armed rebel forces based in the town of Benghazi and heavy casualties were expected. As justification, the Western powers cited u.n. Security Council Resolution 1973. Adopted a few hours before the start of the bombing, the resolution called on u.n. member states “to take all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” The resolution didn't actually say that such “measures” would include bombing, but there was never any doubt that this was how the Western powers would interpret their mandate.

Governments that a few years earlier had invaded Iraq in defiance of a u.n. refusal to authorize such an action now espoused humanitarianism and solemn compliance with u.n. resolutions. We had to act, President Obama explained in a televised address to the nation on March 28. If we had “waited one more day, Benghazi … could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.” The bombing mission had been undertaken solely in order to save lives. Regime change was most definitely not on the agenda: