A big question floating around the Internet in the western world today is this: How can we help Libya?
This being the season of Lent for most of those in the West, the first and most obvious answer is to pray for them. Beyond that, however, our options are a choice between bad and worse. It would be bad, terrible even, for the rebels to be crushed by an oil-funded autocrat with imported troops. Oh, wait, that's Bahrain. As Mark Mardell and The Conservative Wahoo point out, there is no compelling national interest for the US or any Western country to take the risks associated with, effectively, breaking a country with no transition plan in place, a history (and presumably culture) of involvement in a variety of anti-western groups and
at time when neither the United States nor Europe are in a position militarily or financially to take on rebuilding yet another country.
Instead, we citizens of the US especially can take a somewhat longer view of the Arab Spring and help our fellow humans lead pie-friendlier lives.
Step 1: Ride a bike (or telecommute, carpool, use transit or walk) more and drive less. The resource that pays for most of the autocracy in the world is oil. The less of it we buy, the more governments will have to rely on their own people's productivity which, in turns, means their governments will have to care about their well-being.
Step 2: Tell your Congressman to support domestic drilling for oil and gas. Not because it will do a bit for energy independence, but if our way of life demands that someone bear a resource curse, justice demands that we do so too. If seeing how nasty (link for the pictures more than the text) that is encourages people to consider sustainable alternatives in places where there is also money and incentives to invest, so much the better.
Step 3: Tell your Congressmen to bloody well pass a budget for FY11 and sign on to something like the play approved by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The dollar's reserve status has become our own resource curse, and if we want to have a military that can credibly deter threats to peace in the future and respond to natural disasters it is vital.
