Somalia>Liberia, and the difference is?

eleemosynary, wow. we learn something every day.

Sofia wrote:

The mission was to remove Saddam Hussien from power. This was achieved.
The exit strategy is to leave Iraq, when they have a government in place.

What would the mission be in Liberia?

Remove Charles Taylor from power (and ship him to the ICC for crimes against humanity). In doing so, prevent him from destablising the entire region and supporting kindred guerrilla groups in neighbouring countries.
Leave Liberia, when they have a government in place.

Read "terrorists" for "guerrilas" and that whole paragraph might sound eerily familiar.

Its true, in Liberia you're dealing with a civil war instead of a dictatorship. Thats harder. The argument that in Liberia, there's no credible indigenous alternative to support only half holds up in the comparison - wasnt much to support in terms of political opposition inside Iraq (excepting Kurdistan), either.

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Craven
I read somewhere and I do not remember where that the US had gone to the UN and ask as part of the peacekeeping force they establish an international fighting force for just these situations. The UN turned the suggestion down. I can't verify the story but it is something that is sorely needed

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Quote:

Craven
More than anyone I'd like to see other nations take up some of the world's policing. If only for the reason that American donations of liberty are only made when it coincides with our national interests

Question is that different from any other nation in the world?

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Au,

If you can track it down I'd be interested. The US generally undermines UN attempts to create a stick of their own (with weak claims that the stick would be wielded against us for political reasons).

I think an UN force is sorely needed. I also think the US wants nothing to do with a UN that has authority. We have the authority and don't care to give it up.

We are undermining some great instititions the UN has proposed for fears taht it would concede some of our own authority.

It's a pity, entities like the ICC are a great idea. We should not fear them.

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au1929 wrote:

Quote:
Craven
More than anyone I'd like to see other nations take up some of the world's policing. If only for the reason that American donations of liberty are only made when it coincides with our national interests

Question is that different from any other nation in the world?

Not at all. The difference is that we like to act like we are the world's liberators. I bring up the distiction that we simply serve our own interests (just like anyone else) because I'm tired of the jingoistic claims that we have a moral high horse.

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owi wrote:

I think a main problem is that there are so many weapons in African countries. So why are there so many weapons in African countries and how can the people there afford to buy those weapons? Which nations or companies sell such an amount of weapons to Africa?

Now there's the 5 million dollar question ...

You never hear that one much when talk is of conflict prevention.

Last I read, some staggering overwhelming majority of arms sales was by (companies from) the very countries that then administer peace-keeping missions from the UN Security Council, to petch up after the arms-fuelled massacres - the US, France, Britain, Russia, and China. Not necessarily in that order. Surprise surprise.

Brazilian president "Lula" suggested at the G8 top in Evian to lever a new, international tax on arms sales, to deter this currently unfettered trade. The money would support a fund to fight hunger. Deafening silence ensued. Perhaps not surprisingly, since "Between them, [..] France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Japan, Canada, the UK and the United States [the countries that make up the G8] account for more than 85 percent of world arms sales"(link).

OK, a mostly American board is probably the wrong place to ask this, but most countries managed to put pretty strict gun laws into place to restrict and control the sale of guns in their own country. Why's the international arms trade such an exceptionally unregulated domain of free trade?

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Don't those countries also account for almost that much in terms of overall world trade?

Lula is an idealist but why not do that in Brazil first? Even Brazilian companies sell arms to disctators such as Saddam.

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Oh, for those who came to this thread without having been to the other one, first - lots of interesting info & opinions on Title Changed: Current news about Liberia.

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sofia

I just read that the administration now points to mass graves as justification for the war and Bush has also dropped the letters WMD from his speeches.

He talks instead of illegal weapons.

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nimh wrote:

"Between them, [..] France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Japan, Canada, the UK and the United States [the countries that make up the G8] account for more than 85 percent of world arms sales"

Is Spain really a member of the G8???

btw. i think this proposal of the Brasilian president is a good idea but in my opinion an international agreement which constricts the distribution of weapons to unstable countries would be better.

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Isn't it irony on a steaming platter?

All of Africa is in shambles politically and economically and yet the very reasons applied to Iraq suddenly become contradistinctive semantics when applied to Liberia.

I guess then..........
Yoweri Museveni
Paul Kagame
Pierre Buyoya
Obasanjo & Mugabe are just nice little bonuses.
.....low and behold all but the last one were supported by the US.

Samuel Doe was happily supported until the US saw the flames rising wthin the country in 90...funny how the Clinton administration was well aware of the human rights problems associated with the ECOMOG intervention, including proxy support for certain warring factions that arguably lengthened the war, it was unwilling to be critical of ECOMOG abuses or condition its aid to the peacekeeping force on respect for human rights.

and still is.

But hey let's let everyone kill each other, right?
Rolling Eyes

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Another difference in Iraq and Liberia, as someone alluded to-- It is much more palatable to eject a dictator, than a popularly elected President. I'd think the world would throw much more of a hissy, if we were to negate the Liberians' choice of Taylor, and drag him off to a tribunal somewhere.

Walter--
Bush can't find his WMDs. Of course, he wants to point to something good that came out of the war. That doesn't change the reasons going in--but it makes it easier to swallow, for some.

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Sofia wrote:

Another difference in Iraq and Liberia, as someone alluded to-- It is much more palatable to eject a dictator, than a popularly elected President. I'd think the world would throw much more of a hissy, if we were to negate the Liberians' choice of Taylor, and drag him off to a tribunal somewhere.

Why, we had Milosevic "dragged off to a tribunal somewhere", didnt we? He had an arguably more significant electoral mandate than Taylor. Didnt cause much of an uproar in "the world" at all - nothing compared to the Iraq war.

(Actually, sorry, but there's just too great an irony in argueing that we can't intervene in Liberia like we did in Iraq because of how the world might react - 'the world' can't possibly be provoked any more starkly than it was with the war against Iraq ...)

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Yep. I half-heartedly threw that up, because the 'world' criticises us no matter what we do, IMO.

The world response isn't any reason not to get involved--but judging on the response to our intervention in Iraq--they would use the same criticisms against us in Liberia, as they did Iraq.

Why, in one--did they tell us to stay out, and the other, they are begging us to go in alone and take care of it?

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Because in one, they perceived ulterior motives and did not perceive the "threat" we cited.

In the other they see both Taylor AND the rebels asking for intervention and do not see a pretext for ulterior motives.

And nobody is begging us to go in alone. Anecdotal arguments are not well suited for geopolitics. The request was for the US to LEAD a team there.

We have not given an answer on this yet. If we had said no other nations might have felt the pressure.

I predict a halfhearted effort on our part that precludes pressure on anyone else to make an earnest effort.

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Also please take note that by no strech of the definition was the situation in Iraq as dire as it is in Liberia. It doesn't even compare.

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Again on mission and exit strategy:

The mission to remove Taylor from power is probably easier to achieve than it was to remove Saddam.

The 'exit strategy' - to put a government in place that does not pose a similar danger to its own citizens, regional stability, and hell, global security (think Taylor's Al-Qaeda ties) - is arguably harder to achieve, yes, though then again, how 'short-term' is it turning it out to be in Iraq?

Doesn't it involve a long-term involvement and presence there, too, as the government officials have been warning us lately? So is the comparison really that lopsided?

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I guess it only seems lopsided to me, and those who see the Iraq war as I do.

It goes back to the conditions of the cease fire of the first Gulf War--and the fact that Saddam didn't meet the cease fire agreement. This played a huge role in my reasoning that intervention was appropriate. As with Milosevich, military power used to affect ethnic cleansing is also appropriate reasoning to intervene.

Somalia and Liberia differ, to me, because what is going on there is internal civil war.

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Sofia,

The cease fire is indeed important. It's a form of a legal pretext.

Since the US did not fulfill their obligations under certain nuclear treaties should we be invaded?

But North Korea should right?

I completely fail to see your logic here. Ethnic cleansing is wrong but killing many more people (but without ethnic cleansing) is right?

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Hey, you A2K'ers -- let's not try an compete with the political doubletalk of this administation. They don't just speak out of both sides of their mouth but are able to use their nose, their ears and, need it be said, their ass.

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Somalia>Liberia, and the difference is?

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