I am surprised that so far no one has brought up what the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine really entails. As a basic prerequisite to the doctrine, there is the assumption that a nation's sovereignty is no longer an absolute right.
In the case of Libya (or Egypt, or others) even a passive degree of interventionism leading to the overthrow of a nation's leader means the basic assumption that we (or the UN) as the world's police department assumed people of Libya would be better off under some other management. Sometimes we directly pick that management, sometimes not. Either way they eventually become a problem yet again causing a cycle. Looking at the current mess in relation to the OP, it begs the question were they better off before under Gaddafi? But with others, like Egypt or even Iraq, we can see in the wake of our policy the problems in the region as a whole. Who is really better off and at what cost?
Our problem is the attitude of the doctrine has the unfortunate but realized consequence of militarism in a general sense, it is not exclusive to neoconservativism. It is almost bipartisan in our two party system of using this doctrine as a means to an ends. Just a fact of our imperialistic sense of looking at world concerns with an attitude of western ideologies being forced onto cultures that do not quite have the aptitude for them.
If the international community (code word for US or UN lead intentions) has the inherent responsibility to protect any nation's population from "genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing" (or any other general term) then that inherently means no one's borders are secure. We have given ourselves a moral high ground license to invade any nation at will so long as someone, even after the fact, suggests a reason to intervene. Evidence is not even necessary and there is little to no checks and balances to the doctrine. Never formalized yet used with such frequency. This attitude transcends economic or trade sanctions to inflict change, this is military interventionism at the ready and used too frequently.
This is all going to eventually have a three fold cost. The obvious first, the fiscal costs of monitoring and then militarily acting on the world stage. Secondary will be the continued strain on our military resources operating in a constant state of looking for the next nation to... "help"... like Libya. Third will be a continued degrade of world attitude towards the US. The responsibility to protect doctrine is then more than realized militarism. It is also arrogant ideology infliction upon the world and opportunism for a supporting military industrial complex.
That makes it neither patriotic or moral, just an excuse given the fallout from this doctrine we clearly see across the region in question. And worse, it adds to our confusing and hypocritical foreign policy that a significant portion of the world already looks at very poorly.