There is a difference to Iraq
These threads don't seem to be created by the staff any more, so hope you don't mind if I do. There's just one small point I wanted to add to this...
The important difference between Libya and Iraq is that this time, there is a UN mandate.
What upset the international community about America's invasion of Iraq was not so much that the US wanted to preventively overthrow a dictatorship. The problem was that when the UN didn't agree to this idea, America just gave them the finger and essentially said "if you don't do what we want, then we're just doing it on our own".
I believe it is perfectly fine and even essential that stable nations help shaping democracies in less developed countries (of course only if this actually represents the wish of the population there). But this has to happen on an international consensus base, represented by the UN. What America did with Iraq was to undermine this concept and instead reverted to a cold war world order, in which a nation big enough can basically do anything it wants.
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