So in we went.

At this point I've heard compelling arguments from both sides. Off the top of my head, I'd be fascinated to hear Daniel Cohn-Bendit debate Simon Jenkins on the question.

There's those who want to draw lessons from Iraq, those who'd sooner look to Bosnia, and all the various other precedents that've been mobilised to support a particular course of action, or inaction. When we can't seem to agree which history it is that we do not want to repeat, taking a clear moral position becomes tricky.

In such morally ambiguous situations, one feels small. I certainly do, and so this post isn't meant to be a political "prise de position" based on which stance is more ethical. But on that note - quick parenthesis - although I wouldnt align myself with it completely, perhaps it's worth recalling Chomsky's view of Obama. It may sound cynical but to me it's an alarming reminder of fears voiced by some back in 2008 that under the Obama administration "regime change" and power politics would be rebranded and acquire a renewed legitimacy after the Bush era. Just in passing.

Actually, I'd rather keep my distances and comment instead on a particular aspect of the semantics of the coverage and the debate, such as it comes across to me, at least.

At the same time as European nations are intervening and putting the lives of some of their own citizens at risk for the people of North Africa - this is occuring.

Is it contradictory that navy ships sent to help the rebels are also blocking escaping boats, or that democratic countries that happen to be in the south of Europe allow immigrants to drown at paddling distance from their shores? I think so.

It seems that the situation in Libya is one of at least two pivotal events currently unfolding in the world informed by this syndrome.

In the case of Libya, I think this work of mental abstraction operates in a somewhat incoherent way. If we see people in collective terms then there's two big sets - the heroic figures of the revolution - the protestors risking everything fighting for freedom, who are admired, as opposed to the hordes of asylum-seekers whom we fear and dread.

The process of abstraction which turns individuals into statistics or "illegalises" them, is encouraged and even made inevitable by the political language that characterises the debate about immigration. Like all discourses, it is far from innocuous, but I'd say this one is particularly corrosive.

In her article "Welcome to Britain: the cultural politics of asylum", Imogen Tyler makes a number of very important points about the rhetoric surrounding immigration. The popularisation and banalisation of the term "asylum seeker", as essentially a synonym for a scrounger or a criminal, has been encouraged by mainstream political parties and taken up by most of the media. The worst xenophobic discourses (found in tabloids largely) depict the asylum-seeker as a dehumanised, undifferentiated foreign mass or influx.

The figure of the asylum-seeker invokes the "non-status" of a person who has not been recognised as a refugee - someone who is literally pending recognition. Tyler argues that "inscribing the category of asylum-seeker in British law through the enactment of a series of punitive asylum laws has enabled the British government to manoeuvre around the rights of the refugee as prescribed by international law."

This discourse then identifies and excludes individuals as asylum-seekers on the one hand, and secures the imaginary borders of nations and shores up a normative fantasy of national identity on the other. It also conveniently obscures all the complexity of the phenomenon.

Interestingly, Tyler also speaks of the tension that exists between the urgency of staking a political claim (on behalf of asylum-seekers, for example) and the need to reflect critically on the language in which those claims are made. In other words, although the way politicians and NGOs formulate their arguments and responses may be to some extent complicit with the xenophobic discourses, sometimes the humanitarian urgency is such that there is little time to reconfigure the terms of the debate. I think this is pertinent to the case of Libya where, while the critical thinkers are reflecting sociologically about the terms of the debate, Gadaffi is busy massacring his people. Dilemma.

So I won't denounce the intervention. I will save my condemnations for Marine Le Pen, who went to Lampedusa last week. It's a bit like if Bruno Gollnisch went to visit Auschwitz. It's like when Nicolas Sarkozy went to Turkey. It's an insult. A calculated, cynical insult, designed to impress domestic audiences and win brownie points with voters at home. Incidentally the most conservative, reactionary, racist breed of voters.

The fact that people respond to major catastrophes in the manner described by Chakrabortty means that so often, international crises are met by domestic responses. This seems to me the way that many responded to the nuclear crisis in Japan. In Libya, there is a disconnect between the two responses. It does not add up to declare unflinching support for citizens in a country and yet treat those fleeing danger as potential criminals. We need to connect the dots, and fast.

(UPDATE: This article is very insightful about the way Italy in particular frames the question of immigration in terms of security and criminality, requiring a military rather than humanitarian response)