Two issues continue to cycle through commentary and analysis of the UN-mandated intervention in Libya — the inconsistency of international community taking action there and not elsewhere, and what the West’s “exit strategy” is given the apparent stalemate that has developed between Gaddafi’s mercenary and loyalist forces and the outgunned rebels backed by external airpower.

There has been much criticism of the fact that the international community decided to intervene in Libya but, has so far chosen not to take action to stop mass murders in the Ivory Coast, beyond an existing UN peacekeeping mission. Critics have also asked why there has been no consideration of intervention in Yemen, where the slaughter of protesters by forces of US ally President Al Saleh continue, or in Bahrain, where Saudi “intervention” has seen the murder of more protesters.

The usual tropes of condemnation of western foreign policy — racism, and oil — have been invoked. But plainly, in Libya, the continuation of the Gaddafi regime was the most likely guarantee of oil supply, rather than supporting those rebelling against him. And western intervention on the side of Arabs seeking freedom is an almost complete reversal of the West’s traditional policy of backing regional dictators, predicated on stereotypes about Arab people and their capacity to embrace democracy.

The failure to intervene elsewhere does not undermine the rationale for, or raise questions about the motive of, the intervention in Libya. In the case of Libya, the international community was faced with a stark choice about whether to act to prevent a mass slaughter by a monstrous dictator. Even China, whose government has a contemptible and sickening human rights record, could not bring itself to prevent action against Gaddafi. That the international community has failed to make the same choice elsewhere is to be condemned, but it in no way reflects on the moral authority it exercises in Libya.

Foreign policy realists also lament that there is no clear “exit strategy” for Libya. But this is not Iraq, or Afghanistan. There are no western combat troops on the ground. Assumptions that western action is needed to end the stalemate between Gaddadi’s butchers and the rebels ignore the reality that this is not about imposing democracy on a defeated country, but about preventing the slaughter of civilians. It must be left to the Libyan rebels to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. It may take time, and it may be bloody, but the alternative of the West walking away and leaving Libya to the mercy of its dictator, or of trying to artificially engineer an outcome, are both far worse.