Many international relations commentators are heralding the Western bombing of Libya as marking a return to the 1990s era of humanitarian intervention. The debate is largely over whether this return is to be welcomed or regretted. But a return of the moral or ethical understandings of the humanitarian interventionist 1990s is not a possibility.

Revolutionary change is hard to understand, but it is even harder to predict. Whatever transpires in Libya, political tectonic waves are shifting. In the coming years, Cairo will rediscover its stature and voice; the Arab world’s sectarian cold war will move into a dangerous period; and aspirant democrats will search for models of their own, first Turkey, but perhaps eventually, Egypt.

Gaddafi has long had form as a murderer. Neither Britain nor America have forgotten his role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. With intervention, the West sends a clear message to all Arabs and those who rule over them whether despots or occupying states. To stand with those who want democracy can only ever be the right thing to do. As Tony Blair has said, the case for western intervention is as strong now as it has ever been.

Politicians rarely talk about progress as if they had been infected by the postmodern critique of Enlightenment but they do talk about “moving forward” without any indication of the meaning of forward or backward. Political theory attempts to clarify the reasons conservatives wish to conserve some practice or institution and radicals wish to reform some practices and “move forward.”

History has placed two peoples, both with legitimate claims, in competition for the same land. The brutality of the Murders at Itamar is a reminder that the conflict on the West Bank, indeed the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians in all of its aspects, should be understood as a secular, rather than a religious, event.