Gurdur

ROFL ROFL ROFL !
Your ignorance is showing yet again !
British and (most of all) French troops have long been active in peace-keeping missions in West Africa.
Does the misinformed whining never stop ?

__________________

For all others:

If the USA does send in troops into Liberia, do not expect anything good to come of it.
The only intervention that would really count in Liberia would a massive, country-wide intervention, with simultaneous massive rebuilding of national infrastructure.
That is precisely the mission most possible interveners would not feel they can afford, and the USA would most likely not want to do.

If USA troops went into Liberia, they would most likely be small in number, be restricted to the coastal city and a couple of mineral mines, and be targets. The worst of all possible worlds --- Somalia all over again.

Anti-Creedance Front

Ha ha ha ha! You got there before me!

As for sending troops to Liberia, I am developing an increasingly isolationist stance. I don't think the U.S. should quit the U.N, but Peacekeepers should be sent to Liberia, not more of our troops. And I started to see the Republicans' argument when I saw Liberians carrying signs saying "US help us!" and threatening to go on hunger strikes if we didn't send troops. I am one to believe that sending more troops will never make any situation much better, just escalate it.

Bush should think of this like a Risk game (if he does indeed think). When you have all your troops scattered around the globe, anyone can easily hit you where you're weak. I don't believe we face a really big national threat, as we are pretty much the most successful country in the world, but there's no reason to be using our troops like pawns on a chessboard. They have lives, and lives will surely be lost.

I care about the Liberian conflict, but I don't think sending our troops into the middle of a rabid firefight between rebel factions is going to help much. I think we should send Pat Robertson, Terry What's-Her-Name, and their jackass CBN newscaster in there to "negotiate". Then again, after reading about Charles Taylor, he seems to be a ruthless conman. What other American citizen would move to an African country to rule as dictator? That's pretty corrupt.

Sakpo

To repeat, Britain and France have both been involved for quite some time in the affairs of their former colonies in west Africa, including dangerous military involvement. To be specific, the British have been in Sierra Leone (former British colony), French troops have been in Ivory Coast (former French colony), and both are also in Congo now (which was a former Belgian colony in southern Africa). I don't know much about this, there could well be plenty more.

Edit:

By the way, could anyone reccomend a good resource to learn about Charles Taylor? Preferably online. I know all about his actions in Liberia, but his history is a mystery to me. When he speaks he sounds like an Afro American who's feigning a slight bit of an African accent... and I think I read somewhere that he used to pump gas in Boston? Is he really an American (like someone here just said) ? Thanks.

Lamunus

And really, Europeans make up more than twice the number of peacekeepers around the world compared to the Americans, and half of all those in the world (with 1/12 of the population). Fair enough, you wouldn't want to be on the same side as Europe in a war, but peacekeeping is something we excel at. Admittedly it's not nearly as exciting as all that cluster bomb dropping, but we're much better at it. We're more willing to lose soldiers lives to keep the peace for millions, for example, and besides most people resent US involvement as it is such a great power. You can hardly resent Belgian military power (unless you're Luxembourg.)

Lamunus

jman0904

Ha. Looks like everyone's getting a piece of this one.

We are NOT sending troops, as of yet (And I doubt we ever will). There were rumors circulating the news community that the White House may be, not are, but may be considering military support for Liberia.
In the Rwanda Massacres (1991 I believe), Bush The Elder was completely apathetic to the plight of the refugees and sent in minimal soldiers, not for peace, but rather to guard the evacuation effort for US and some European citizens. Then he just let the rebels and partisans carve themselves to pieces and damned be those caught in the middle.
England and France have been involved extensively in their former colonies as a peacekeeping force, and are working to stabilise their respective regions. The policy of the U.S. in recent past regarding Africa has to intervene only when we stand to gain, and when we bungle something (More often than not: Somalia case in point), the stories either never see the light of day or end up as justification for NOT assisting in the future. Most likely we will "Profess a desire and hope that the freedom loving citizens of Liberia come through this time of struggle and strife, and stay strong", then give them the diplomatic finger and turn a deaf ear.

And I can only assume that in your second statement you are referring to WWII (As that seems to be the usual cause for statements like that). Anyone else sound off on this as well.
For the first years (i.e, all but the last what, 1 1/2?), we let the Soviet Union and Germany Carve themselves up, while we left France and England as a nice little buffer zone to make sure we didn't have to worry about any Krauts puddle jumping over the pond. We lost less than 1 million soldiers in WWII (probably about 10% lost on Normandy alone). The USSR lost 10 million alone, fending off the German hordes, their army being carved up, ending up giving guns to civilians who could hit a painted target on a wall.
Allied Europe lost about that number (I am not sure at all on the combined totals for Europe casualties [excluding Germany and Italy], or each country's individual score. Help here would be appreciated) at least I am sure.
So really, I suppose it is safe to say that we didn't "Bail them out" at all. We joined in once we were sure we could win at minimal loss to our own soldiers. While the soldiers giving their lives' cause is not to be trivialized or marred, neither are the losses of Europe by stating "We bailed them out".
And claiming that they never want to get their hands dirty, and that we must always come to the rescue is one of the most uninformed and illogical statements I have yet to hear uttered on these forums.

Anti-Creedance Front

I just read about Bush "exploring all options" on Yahoo News and I HAD to sound off about it. He demands that the one thing that has to happen is Charles Taylor's stepping down and leaving of the country. And then the article went on to say in the 1980's Liberia served as a covert operations base for U.S. forces. Sound like anywhere we know?

It seems like Bush is going to regurgitate his words on Afghanistan into any military conflict we flirt with. He pulled this crap with Syria and Iran (who we didn't bomb), after he did use it to start wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Apparently now when Bush says he is "exploring all options", it means he's considering putting the one option he knows to use: military intervention. The College Republicans told me at our student strike that we had surely exhausted all options on Iraq. I don't know what the hell they consider "exhausting all options" after thinking it through, what, about a week? Bush continues to use his buzzwords and rhetoric, and it shows he's not one for creative solutions.

Sakpo

To be honest, I have no idea what was happening in Rwanda in 1991, but in 1994 during the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus it was Clinton who behaved in a remarkably similiar way to what you describe here (of course, in 1994 it wasn't so much a case of innocents getting caught in the middle of a civil war as an entire ethnic group being targeted for extermination).

Celsus

Don't forget that Liberia started out as a colony of freed slaves returning from America, hence the very American names of a lot of them (maybe even residual American accents? or he might have had some education in America). Sigh... I remember the good old days when Liberia was one West African country I really wanted to visit.

Joel

Vorkosigan

For the first years (i.e, all but the last what, 1 1/2?), we let the Soviet Union and Germany Carve themselves up, while we left France and England as a nice little buffer zone to make sure we didn't have to worry about any Krauts puddle jumping over the pond. We lost less than 1 million soldiers in WWII (probably about 10% lost on Normandy alone). The USSR lost 10 million alone, fending off the German hordes, their army being carved up, ending up giving guns to civilians who could hit a painted target on a wall. Allied Europe lost about that number (I am not sure at all on the combined totals for Europe casualties [excluding Germany and Italy], or each country's individual score. Help here would be appreciated) at least I am sure.
So really, I suppose it is safe to say that we didn't "Bail them out" at all. We joined in once we were sure we could win at minimal loss to our own soldiers.

Not quite true on several counts. First, we didn't join when we were sure we could win at minimal loss, but because the Germans declared war on us (at a time when the Nazi empire was at its height and looking very unbeatable). Second, the USSR may have lost ten million, thanks to its own stupid policy of supporting Germany by sending it raw materials, and allowing the Germans to construct weapons and conduct training there. The suffering of Russia was entirely self-inflicted; had Stalin followed a rational foreign policy, and a rational military policy, the Germans would have been soundly defeated early in their invasion by overwhelming numbers of well-equipped, trained, and led USSR troops.

Without US economic and military intervention, Germany almost certainly would have won the war. Does that mean we bailed them out? It's a nasty way of putting it, but the underlying claim is sound enough.

Well, in the PD maybe. Remember Douglas Bender

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

For info on Charles Taylor, and Liberia, try the news site AllAfrica.com. I get lots of great news there, and they have articles and views from everywhere.

Vorkosigan