One of the many tragedies of the Iraq War was that the Bush administration presented it as a humanitarian venture when in fact not a single established humanitarian organization supported the intervention. The International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch, for instance, both argued that the War could not been as a humanitarian venture.

Again we are seeing calls for some sort of humanitarian intervention, in Libya this time. From my former colleague Job Henning to columnist Charles Krauthammer, the U.S. is being called upon to arm the rebels, establish a no-fly zone, or something in between.

Since the humanitarian argument was used so cynically in Iraq in 2003, it’s worth checking in with what the humanitarian groups are actually saying this time around. The results are not what one might think.

Let’s start with the most aggressive: The Genocide Intervention Network has been the lead group calling for the “[e]stablishment of a no-fly zone by willing countries, with the express aim of preventing continued operation of Libyan military aircraft if attacks against civilians continue.” GIN’s position might seem counterintuitive given that nobody claims genocide is taking place in Libya, but the organization’s goal is to stop genocides before they begin. Once the genocide begins, time is already lost.

Only slightly less interventionist is the International Crisis Group. Notably, it says that “forceful measures” – sanctioned by the UN Security Council and the Arab League and African Union—might become necessary to stop the “full-blown civil war.” The ICG’s position is very different from its position on Iraq, when the organization’s president said in March 2003 that the situation in Iraq did not merit an invasion. Still, the ICG thinks “nothing should be allowed to preempt or preclude the urgent search for a political solution” in Libya. At this time, “Western calls for military intervention of one kind or another are perilous and potentially counter-productive.”

And yet, it is significant that ICG’s former president Gareth Evans—who was president in 2003—wrote in the Financial Times that with regards to Libya “it is the responsibility of the international community to provide [basic security], if necessary–should peaceful means be inadequate–by taking timely and decisive collective action through the United Nations Security Council.” ICG’s relative hawkishness on the issue is important, both because it is highly respected and rarely insistent on military solutions. The left-wing Nation magazine has been surprised and troubled by the International Crisis Group’s positions, for instance.

Now to the firmly anti-US-intervention organizations: Amnesty International welcomed news reports in late February of the African Union’s plans to send a mission to Libya. No mention has been made of NATO, UN, or US no-fly zones, however. For its part, Human Rights Watch has called for the regime in Libya to allow relief aid in and refugees out (good luck with that!), but has conspicuously avoided advocating outside military intervention. Unlike other NGOs, HRW does take positions on wars, and so its silence essentially means it is stalwartly against military action.

The latest news is that aid groups are having trouble delivering supplies inside Libya, unsurprisingly. Perhaps if that keeps up, more humanitarian NGOs will call for intervention inside that country. Until then, the scorecard shows mixed enthusiasm for military action among the actual humanitarians.

Ouch. Sorry about the pun in the title.

But it happens to be true. Little noticed was a potentially significant piece of news, as a representative of the Arab League told French Foreign Minister Alan Juppe that the League would, in fact, support a no-fly zone over Libya. On the surface, it seems a big deal: autocrats across the Middle East and North Africa are standing on the side of oppressed peoples in the face of their murderous leader.

In the search for international legitimacy, securing the Arab League’s endorsement, not to mention ones from the Organization of Islamic Conference and Gulf Cooperation Council, should go some distance, even if those organizations essentially draw on membership from the same states.

Then you ask yourself: Whoa. So WHY are Middle East leaders now standing with the masses? Strongmen throughout the region continue to resist protesters’ wishes, so why side with them on this?

Certainly, one reason is that Qaddafi definitively crossed a line into war. Strongmen the region over may be interested in maintaining a tight grip on power, but the protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Libya may have concretized the lengths to which the region’s unelected leaders are willing to go. The Mubaraks of the region will muffle press, stifle political organizations, restrict Western-sponsored NGOs, and arrest and beat their opponents, but as we’ve clearly seen from Tunis to Cairo, they are not willing to descend their countries into war to hold on to power.

The B-side could be more calculated. Are regional leaders looking to use their “solidarity” with the masses as a mechanism to defuse their own domestic opposition? Did they really have a choice? And what’s the benefit of opposing one anyway?

The next questions become increasingly uncomfortable: Now that there is a sense of Arab legitimacy behind a no-fly zone, what’s next?

First up is the question of whether it is the proper remedy for the cure. My colleague Will Marshall argued last week that a no-fly zone “would entail high political costs while yielding uncertain military returns.” And while Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings believed a no-fly zone was “eminently doable”, it “might not accomplish its goals of fending off Qadhafi’s brutes and foreign mercenaries, since their major weapons do not appear to be airplanes.”

Since those writings, there are mixed reports on the extent of pro-Qadhafi air raids. Report after report detail that he’s using them more extensively near the oil terminal at Ras Lanouf. Though Ivo Daalder, the American ambassador to NATO said there’s been a fall in air activity in recentdays, reiterating questions about a zone’s usefulness. Watch this space.

Britain and France are working to prepare a UN Security Council Resolution, and NATO will begin considering one on Thursday.  Both entities say that they are considering the no-fly zone as a contingency should the situation warrant it, and British Foreign Minister William Hague has insisted that there be a “clear, legal basis”, implying the value of an explicit UN resolution.  That continues to be a difficult proposition given resistance from the likes of China and Russia, but there is a glimmer of hope — China has left open the possibility of undefined “action beyond sanctions.”

Where does that leave us? More evaluation, essentially. If a no-fly zone proves to be an effective tool that advances the rebels’ cause, it remains critical that the United Nations grant it a mandate. It would most likely be conducted by NATO, but it would be helpful if at least one Arab nation participated to avoid giving it too much of a Western imprimatur.

As an unregenerate liberal interventionist, I believe America should aid Libyan rebels fighting to rid their country of Muammar Qaddafi.  But for all the attention a no fly zone has received, there are better ways to even the odds in this so far unequal contest.

The impulse to “do something” as Qaddafi’s planes and foreign mercenaries attack rebel-held towns is understandable. But at this point, imposing a no fly zone would entail high political costs while yielding uncertain military returns.

A key question, of course, is who would impose it? Given the likely opposition of Russia and China, the U.S. Security Council won’t authorize a no fly zone. Europe, as usual, is brimming with moral outrage but can’t muster the consensus to hand the job to NATO.

U.S. military authorities are scarcely enthusiastic. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Congress this week that imposing a no fly zone is a lot harder than it sounds. For one thing, it’s basically an act of war that requires that U.S. forces first attack and destroy Libya’s extensive air defense systems. For another, it would mean shifting aircraft and surveillance assets from the war in Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.

What really spooks U.S. officials is the spectacle of America, already engaged in two Middle East conflicts, launching yet another military attack on an Arab country. That could instantly change the Libyan narrative, shifting the world’s focus from ordinary Libyans’ valiant struggle for freedom to U.S. actions and motives. It could rekindle suspicions in the region that the United States is bent on imposing democracy on Muslim nations, undoing the Obama administration’s painstaking efforts to refurbish America’s image in the Middle East. In the worst case scenario, it could draw in jihadists and regional provocateurs hoping to lure the United States in a grinding and prolonged civil conflict.

Above all, Washington should avoid any step that might break the momentum of the popular upheavals now erupting across the Arab world. These bottom-up revolts hold out the best hope for democratic change that the people of the Middle East can believe in.

The best outcome for all concerned, of course, would be for the Libyan rebels to topple Qaddafi by themselves, with little or no outside help. That may not be in the cards.

The rebels, a mixture of lightly armed but highly motivated civilians and military defectors, so far seem to have stood up well to Qaddafi’s professional security forces and mercenaries. Take that assessment with a grain of salt, however, as this piece in the Guardian argues that much of the international narrative may be skewed by rebel sources. While the regime has lost control of eastern Libya, few observers believe that rebel forces can crack Qaddafi’s redoubt in Tripoli and the west, where he also enjoys support from his tribe.

A military stalemate thus may be the likeliest scenario. Since the real fighting is on the ground, a no fly zone might not have much impact. Says Jeffrey White, a military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies:

Most of the attention so far has been on establishing no-fly zones, but these may be inadequate to deal with Qadhafi’s remaining forces. The regime’s key instruments are ground units, so no-drive zones or airstrikes would likely be needed to truly curtail its ability to move against the opposition.

So what should the United States and other leading powers do now? One answer is to intensify international and regional diplomacy aimed at isolating Qaddafi and his henchmen. Another is to get food and medical supplies to Libyan rebels and refugees. It’s also imperative to get a more accurate assessment of what’s really going on in Libya.

If the tide of battle shifts decisively in Qaddafi’s favor, the United States should be willing to provide the rebels with arms and intelligence. It is true that they are a disparate lot, that we know little about their aims once Qaddafi is gone (they may not know either), and that their ranks probably include Islamist groups.

Nonetheless, the rebels are determined to overthrow Qaddafi, which puts them clearly on the side of greater freedom and positive political change in Libya. And for now, that should be enough to merit America’s support.

The Middle East is a political outlier, the world’s least hospitable place for liberal democracy. But as popular demands for freedom spread virally across the region, they are illuminating a varied political landscape, not just monolithic tyranny.

Think of it as a continuum of despotism. On the “soft” end are Tunisia and Egypt, where longtime strongmen were ousted with surprising ease. Mostly nonviolent popular protests were sufficient to shove them into involuntary retirement.

On the “hard” end is Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. Unlike Hosni Mubarak or Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the self-anointed “Brother Leader” has shown no compunction about massacring his own people to hold onto power. While rebels are fighting back valiantly, it could take a hard shove from the outside world to topple hardcore tyrants like Qaddafi.

In any case, the popular uprisings are sorting out where the region’s countries fall along the autocratic continuum. It’s also shedding light on the conditions that make some countries more receptive to political change than others.

A month ago, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly “soft” about Mubarak and Ben Ali. They were essentially dictators who ruled by decree, clamped down hard on political opponents, routinely violated basic human rights, including torturing prisoners, and tolerated pervasive corruption and cronyism.

Yet, to invoke Jeanne Kirpatrick’s famous Cold War-era dichotomy, they were authoritarians rather than totalitarians. They depended on the tacit support of respected national institutions like the army, as well as governing and economic elites who preferred “stability” to the hazards of open political competition. When the uprisings made it clear that the heretofore voiceless masses had turned against the rulers, that support quickly evaporated and they had little choice but to step down.

In contrast, the megalomaniacal Qaddafi has ruled absolutely for 42 years. Rather than use Libya’s oil and gas wealth to develop and modernize the country’s economy, he funneled much of it into overseas intrigues, including several vicious civil conflicts in Africa. Libya remains a highly tribal society where national institutions (including the army), private markets and civil society – key building blocks for democracy – are weak.

In general, America’s friends and allies in the Middle East are mostly grouped toward the soft end of the despotic continuum, while our adversaries congregate at the hard end. This should surprise no one except for foreign policy “realists,” who reject the idea that the internal political structures of countries have any effect on their conduct abroad. Yet it can hardly be a coincidence that the least open societies and most illiberal regimes in the region – Libya, Syria, Iran, and Iraq before 2003 – are the most likely to foment terrorism, chase after nuclear weapons, reject Israel’s existence, and brutally oppress their own people.

That Syria hasn’t seen much unrest is surely related to the fact that it’s a thoroughly nasty police state run by hereditary dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose father, Hafez al-Assad, leveled the rebellious city of Hama in 1982, at the cost of over 17,000 lives. Iran’s Green Movement has managed a few small protests in solidarity with the Arab revolt, but has been mostly kept under wraps by the Islamic Republic’s thuggish security organs.

With the exception of Bahrain, the region’s monarchies also have dodged the revolutionary bullet – so far. Arab kings evidently enjoy a greater degree of legitimacy and popular acceptance than secular strongmen. King Abdullah II of Jordan and King Mohammed V of Morocco have proven adept at creating at least a façade of parliamentary rule and at displacing popular anger onto governments they can dismiss from time to time to appease public wrath. Nonetheless, Washington should nudge such “liberal autocracies” to go beyond cosmetic reforms, lest they be engulfed by the rising revolutionary tide.

The country that really has U.S. policy-makers holding their breath, of course, is Saudi Arabia. It falls somewhere in the middle of the autocratic continuum. On the one hand, they’ve been U.S. allies since FDR’s day, sit atop oil reserves vital to America’s auto-centric culture and share our interest in destroying al Qaeda. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is a run by a deeply illiberal monarchy that enforces Sharia law, uses its oil wealth to export Wahabbist fundamentalism, and relegates women to second-class status. The appearance of a serious pro-democracy movement there would force Americans to face these contradictions and rethink our close ties with the ruling family.

The Middle East’s variegated political landscape offers grounds for measured hope about prospects for liberal democracy. Political and economic freedom will likely advance fitfully and partially in some places, hardly at all in others. There will be slippage and backsliding. But there’s a striking opportunity for the United States to nudge its friends and allies further toward the “soft” end of the despotic continuum, and eventually off it altogether.