Is liberal imperialism OK if the French do it?

EU Observer reports that yesterday French Pres Nicolas Sarkozy told the press in Brussels that UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorising air strikes on Libya has created a new international "responsibility to protect."

Wow. Asked about the situation in Syria, he replied: 

Every ruler should understand, and especially every Arab ruler should understand that the reaction of the international community and of Europe will from this moment on each time be the same: we will be on the side of peaceful protesters who must not be repressed with violence.

In any democracy there can be demonstrations which can turn violent. But no democracy can accept that the army shoots live ammunition at protesters. This is the position of France and it does not change no matter what the country concerned.

Wow again. He rounded it off by saying that Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbago was next on the list of rulers whose armed forces need to be punished.

Leaving aside the pros and cons of the issue, can you even begin to imagine what the Bitchy Boys and the like would be ejaculating about this if either The One or the Boy Wonder had expressed these sentiments?

P.S. In Syria, Basher-al-Assad's Praetorian Guard has massacred protestors. That's A LOT of machine-gunfire. Now - about that "responsibility to protect" . . .

Sean Collins - arsehole for today

Don't know anything about this turkey, but his Spiked report from New York "Libya: how the West just made things worse" is as fine a piece of convoluted old-lefty argument ("reasoning" would give it too much merit) as one is likely to find.

Last night, the United Nations Security Council here in New York voted to authorise military action against the Libya regime led by Colonel Gaddafi. Far from rescuing the Libyan uprising, the resolution is a setback for the cause of democracy and self-determination. The authorisation, thanks to last-minute American pressure . . .

So; let me see if I've got this straight. Democracy and self-determination will be better served by sitting back and letting a mad dictator slaughter the people who have risen up in arms because they have no other means of expressing their will?

And - thanks to what? The article goes on to say (in a rare burst of accuracy) that the Obama administration has been extremely reluctant to get involved in yet another Arab imbroglio. That doesn't fool our Sean, though:

. . . the US approach has been cowardly. Obama has hidden behind the skirts of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Cameron, the Arab League and now the UN. It is one thing to put a stake in the ground and then call for others to join in. It is another to stay silent, let the others go out in front, and then decide to just go along for the ride. Whatever happened to the ‘unipolar world’ of undisputed American leadership?

What indeed? How can anyone except an old-school "Amerika is the source of all eevul"  leftist even try to combine the above two paragraphs in one argument? As I keep saying, leftist are too stupid to take seriously. I'm cross with Spiked for publishing this crap.