"you see an old woman...."

I quote this commenter not to pick on him particularly but because this bogus metaphor is so common:

I see a frail old woman being assaulted by someone much smaller and less powerful than myself. I can easily intervene and prevent further suffering on her part, but I stay out of it because I don't want to interfere with her right of self-determination.

You are not the United States or its military. Libya is not an old woman. Morality does not translate through metaphor.

"Libya" is not a distinct entity. It is made up of many actors. An old woman has individual agency. A country has a vast sea of divergent opinions, intents, and interests. Whatever else is true in this metaphor, the old woman isn't hurt by me. In real life, Libyans-- "good," "bad," and every shade between-- will be killed by our aggression. Of all the self-congratulating bullshit narratives that have been totally undone by this intervention, none tells more about the American character than the return of the canard of war without civilian casualties, of war where only the "bad guys" are hurt. American ordnance will kill children in Libya. Libyan rebels are in the process of assaulting and murdering pro-Qaddafi loyalists. Squeeze that into your metaphor.

I beat up the person assaulting the old woman. He recovers, some day. I can use non-lethal force to save the old woman. If I got it wrong, somehow, the consequences are not permanent. There is no such thing as non-lethal military force, no matter how much you might want to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend. People who are knocked down in this war never get up. There's no such thing as a smart bomb. Children die. Innocents die. Grow up. Grow up.

Finally: in the metaphor, I choose to intervene or not intervene. I fight. I risk my physical health. I risk maiming or killing another human being. In this situation, with war on Libya? Nobody is asking me to actually fight. Nobody on the Internet is proposing that they themselves go to fight. They are instead asking me to do what they are doing, which is to write blog posts calling for military action from thousands of miles away. They risk nothing and sacrifice nothing, but as the metaphor shows, they are desperate to believe that they are achieving something in telling other people to go kill in Libya. "Liberal" hawks never fall out of love with the idea that telling other people to go fight and die is courageous and virtuous. And when they are done, they turn off their Macbooks and go to bed.

Funny thing about virtue: it comes only with sacrifice. Funny thing about courage: it comes only with personal, physical danger. Funny thing about righteousness: it never, ever operates by metaphor.