From MSNBC:
Thousands of angry Liberians stood outside the embassy asking when U.S. troops would come to protect them. Refugees hurled rocks at an NBC News crew that approached the scene, demanding to know whether reporter Michael Davie was American. Davie, who is in Monrovia on assignment for MSNBC’s “National Geographic Explorer,” is Australian.
“People are dying!” a refugee yelled. “They can’t come in to rescue us?” Relief workers made similar pleas. “We need international peacekeepers here now, not in one or two months’ time,” said Sam Nagbe of Oxfam. “People here are really suffering but as long as the fighting continues we are unable to help them. The U.S. must commit troops now and end this waiting game that is costing lives.”
Why doesn’t the U.N. do it? Or even better how about having the thousand or so peaceniks form a wall in Liberia. After all, those peacemongers were more than willing to attack U.S. policemen who are much better armed than a bunch of Liberian bandits.
[…] One man held up a hastily scrawled sign: “Today G. Bush kill Liberia people.”
Liberians are killing the Liberia people–and the reason is failure to adopt the hallmark of American culture– individualism–in favor of tribalism, a species of collectivism.
Bush has said any deployment of U.S. troops is conditional on the departure of Taylor, a former warlord indicted for war crimes in Sierra Leone, where he supported a brutal rebel movement. Taylor launched Liberia’s last civil war in 1989, emerging in 1996 as the strongest warlord. He was elected president the following year, and now faces rebels who include former rivals from the earlier war. Taylor’s enemies hold about two-thirds of Liberia. The fighting has its roots in tribal hatreds inflamed by a civil war in the 1990s in which at least 200,000 people died.
Suggested Reading:
Foreign Policy and Self-Interest: Liberia Campaign Would Be a Moral Crime
A foreign policy based solely on America’s self-interest is not simply practical, but *moral*–which is why any “humanitarian” mission, such as the proposed campaign in Liberia, is a moral crime.