<Do you really want Charles Taylor in power?>
No, I do not want Charles Taylor in power.
Which is not the same thing as saying I want U.S. soldiers to do Regime Change and Nation Building in Liberia.
Regime Change, without effective Nation Building, in Liberia (or Iraq, or anywhere, it's a general principle), is futile. A waste of money, lives, and prestige. If we do regime change, but don't change the reasons why somebody like Charles Taylor came to power there, then someone very much like him will come to power, the day after U.S. soldiers leave.
From the 1840s, until Taylor killed it off, Liberia was a nation where freed slaves from America re-created the society of Jim Crow Alabama. The only difference was, in Liberia, those freed slaves assigned themselves the role of the whites in Alabama. They were 3% of the population, and they held a total monopoly on all political, military, and economic power. They ruled by force, and kept the other 97% of the population in a permanent state of poverty, ignorance, and powerlessness. That system (supported by the U.S. for 140 years) deserved to die.
If you want to see what the result of U.S. military intervention in Liberia will be, look at the example of Haiti. In Haiti, we have sent soldiers in, over and over, for the last 100 years. Every time, we go in with good intentions, lofty goals, and the results are nil. Liberal democracy has yet to take root. The U.S. marines are not the right tool for this job.
My position is that of Kant:
Message 19011639
Liberia will be a peaceful, prosperous democracy, when the Liberian people make it so. And nothing the U.S. marines can do, will bring that day any closer. |
