Short quote, long piece

Libya and the Left | The Point Magazine: In late March of 2011, a massacre was averted—not just any ordinary massacre, mind you. For had Qaddafi and his forces managed to crush the Libyan rebellion in what was then its stronghold, Benghazi, the aftershocks would have reverberated well beyond eastern Libya. As Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch wrote, “Qaddafi’s victory—alongside Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s fall—would have signaled to other authoritarian governments from Syria to Saudi Arabia to China that if you negotiate with protesters you lose, but if you kill them you win.” Qaddafi’s defeat seemed to send a message to American politicians and media instead. Contrasting Obama’s handling of Libya with Clinton’s handling of the Balkans, Malinowski observed that “Presidents get more credit for stopping atrocities after they begin than for preventing them before they get out of hand.”