We said after Srebrenica that we’d never again [allow a genocide to happen]; after Rwanda, never again; after the holocaust, never again. The fact is that Qadhafi’s forces were on the outskirts of Benghazi. He said himself he would go house to house and kill and murder people, If you had allowed Qadhafi to do that, it sends a signal to the other leaders in the Middle East, dictators and not, it’s okay to massacre your own people to stay in power.
This is historic times of enormous opportunity and proportions, and we should be doing whatever we can to not have brutal dictators remain in power without the commitment of U.S. ground troops in Libya or anyplace else.