It is exactly the moral equivalent. Hitler is not. Hitler invaded other countries. We didn't fight Hitler because he was killing Jews. We attacked him because he was attacking allies. Which ally did Gaddafi attack? We're not fighting Gaddafi because he's killing his people. We didn't care at all about genocide in Darfur. There have been plenty of opportunities for the US to use its military might to prevent government genocide and we have not taken any of them. This is about US financial interests alone.
Where did I say Gaddafi had "attacked" anyone outside of his own country? Stop moving goal posts all around. We don't have to "care" about Darfur as some bizarre prerequisite to stopping Gaddafi from bombing his own people.
And we don't get oil from Libya, but some parts of europe do, so it is not about "our" financial interests, atleast so far as oil is concerned.
Nice parlor trick. I know the quote. That situation is not this situation. Gaddafi has not been attacking his citizens until we encouraged the Egyptians which encouraged the Libyans.
So England, France and Italy can't help prevent Gaddafi from attacking his own people because "we encouraged the Egyptians"??
How does THAT justify what Gaddafi is doing -- and if IT DOESN'T justify it, then why SHOULDN'T Gaddafi be stopped?
I despise Gaddafi as much as any American might but the US cannot go around destroying civilizations to ensure our access to the world's oil. Look at Iraq. Has it worked out well for us to overthrow a Mid-Eastern dictator? Is the world a safer place? Are we winning the war on freedom otherwise known as the war on terror? Well, yes we are defeating freedom but we're not doing anything to reduce terrorism.
A good thing, how? It makes the world safer? Makes the Mid-East more stable? Or just because it's the moral thing to do? Well, you can't claim morality in this short term situation while completely ignoring genocide in other places.
We aare not destroying civilizations. You impute far too much power to us, and we're only just nominally in charge of what is happening in Libya. We're not "defeating" freedom. Thats utter BS from out of the heart of Moveon.com.
If we don't settle what's going on in Iraq, we may very well leave the place more unstable than it is -- and that region has never been really stable in a looong time.
" ... you can't claim morality in this short term situation while completely ignoring genocide in other places." 
So I take it you're saying that unless we can make the whole world genocide free we can't stop any genocide or killings anywhere? You have GOT to be kidding me.
You don't even want to stop this "genocide." You want the world to allow it to continue unabated. What the ***** kind of "morality" is
that?
