We make wars to control energy sources, trade routes, etc. The west as happily puts a dictator in place of a democratic government when it's in their interest (or the best interest of the men in power and their supports).
It's very clear how this played out in Libya, for instance, if you read the leaked Hillary Clinton emails. [0]
If you were around during that time, you should know that for most people, the justifications being bandied around were much less "offensively transparent" at the time. Just look at public opinion, headlines, etc. - opposition to intervention was a massive minority opinion. Most people believed about the WMDs, etc.
Now, opinion has shifted quite substantially - so why is it surprising that people are skeptical of intervention?
Personally, as a citizen of the US, I would fight tooth & nail against any deployment of troops over this. In no way am I confident fewer people would die or be harmed with intervention.
I can't see how you'd interpret that as anything except an act of war. That doesn't seem like an offensively transparent excuse to me. Certainly in comparison to "My fortune cookie said they might have WMDs" or whatever the line was two decades ago that was apparently good enough for the US.
I'd say "what does it take, a literal invasion?" but that already happened in Crimea.
I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I just don't understand why so many trillions of dollars around the world are being spent on military power that just sits by and watches dictatorships kidnap protestors from other countries and execute them.
Having grown up in the early 2000s and seen some offensively transparent excuses to start military invasions, surely this is a far more justifiable reason for conflict. Is everyone just waiting for Lukashenko and Putin to die and hoping that their successors won't be as maniacal?