The international community had two options.

It could pretend that it saw nothing. It could refuse to hear the SOS that the Libyan people, in near unanimity, were sending. In so doing, it could reinforce the Libyans’ feeling that the West was the natural ally of tyrants. And, as in Darfur and Rwanda, as it soon would do in Syria, it could allow the war to reach the end of its terrible logic, exacting, week after week, tens of thousands of deaths.

Or it could hear that SOS. It could reject the scheduled massacre and, in so doing, send for the first time a message of hope to a rebellious Arab people: “You may or may not succeed. You are going to make what you will and what you can of this revolution, to which we are giving you a few keys. But it is not for us in the West to decide that some people are made for democracy whereas others are not.” And, in so saying, the West could intervene to help topple one of the most enduring and blood-thirsty dictatorships on the planet.

Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, and Barack Obama made the second choice.