I heard they just went into another village and kidnapped 8 more girls. Sounds like its time to test our drones over Nigerian soil.
This I doubt very greatly.
That is because you know nothing about Africa.
The continent is more than your horror stories, and countries like the Ghana, the Côte d’Ivoire, the Senegal, the Botswana have made great progress in economic growth. Even Nigeria, in the south principally. It is the north, suffering from poverty corruption and drought that is in great trouble.
The highest levels of durable real economic growth are now happening in Africa, this is not the continent of your musicians famine conferences of 20 years ago.
Keep your drones to yourselves. We do not need you coming to Africa and blowing up village weddings because it is like a video game to kill the brown people.
SA’s worst problems are crime and AIDS; it’s doing OK otherwise.
I just wanted to put in that this is all over the news now and the US and other countries are sending in help.
Okay, yes, a lot of us are very ignorant about Africa.
But this is just about the most pig-ignorant thing you could conceivably have said about the U.S. It makes your accusation of anyone else’s ignorance pointless. It’s Moe calling Curly stupid, or Pol Pot calling Ma Kettle wicked.
You can ask the village inhabitants of Afghanistan and Pakistan if it is ‘pig ignorant.’ We have no reason to trust American operations will not be callous, blind and ignorant and blow up village gatherings, and even kill the girls. Keep your drone strikes to yourselves. You do not even know your reputation on this.
^
Are you sure you’re not simply stating you don’t want the Americans to interfere just because they can? I’m from an Asian country and some people here feel the way you do.
And of course it is not just in Asia, Yemen too, wedding slaughter. What is pig ignorant is Americans thinking their drones are clean and good. Keep them to yourselves, we do not need them in Africa.
Added: no I do not want their drones and the easy firing of missiles by Americans sitting in a camp playing like a video game. It breeds more hatreds. It is not ‘intervening because they can’ it is making actions that are assuaging their sense of morality without actually helping.
If they want to share intelligence from the satellites, very good. But they will add nothing positive to the real resolution by sending soldiers or firing missiles into villages.
This is also a Nigerian problem, and it is not the resources, for Nigeria is not so poor. No, it is the corruption in the Nigerian government.
Indeed, it is this same corruption and incompetence that created the conditions for Boko Haram. This combined with the desertification in the North.
Sending American drones and American forces, who will know nothing of the region and nothing of the peoples and nothing of the languages can only make excuses for the Boko Haram and do nothing positive in reality.
The intelligence from satellites that can help and embarrass the corrupt generals in Nigeria. that is better and useful
But it fits the typical American thinking I see all the time, to act like it is an Action Film they can solves in a two hour story arc, the quick resolutions.
So… fine. You don’t want American help.
But the Nigerian government is corrupt/incompetent/helpless.
Do you have an alternative proposal to “let Boko Haram continue kidnapping girls and selling them into slavery”?
Don’t think of it as drones. Think of it as people who did well in Physics class.
The most effective thing that the US could do is boycott Nigerian oil until the Nigerian government reformed. Of course, since this would involve the average American having to sacrifice something (Gas prices) for their morality, it won’t happen.
My proposal is that for the Africa to stand on its feet, it does so by standing on its feet and not via White Guilt and neo colonialist interventions.
the Nigerian govenrment is not helpless, it is corrupt. Let the Nigerians take care of their problems, and then the Nigerians will build their capacity to solve their problems.
If the Americans can provide the observational data from the satellites or the other means, then this is fine and then the Nigerians must take their responsibility to solve this.
Sending in the ignorant American troops to crash through the brush without any understanding of things will solve no thing at all, it will only give reason to the Boko Haram. Sending missiles from the comfortable chairs in the air conditioned facilities to blow up supposed Boko Harams will only again create sympathy by doing what you already do in the Yemen, in the Asian countries, in mistaking the traditional gatherings for the Boko Haram and killing at the weddings at the dances.
It is not up to the Americans to save the world.
What is the sense you see in boycotting the Nigerian oil? Do you think it is the Nigerian government kidnapping? Making Nigeria poorer is not going to help Nigeria have a better democracy.
US money buys oil, corrupt government uses the money to line their pockets instead of doing things like protecting school girls. Cutting off the flow of money to the corrupt officials may coerce them into doing their job.
Nigeria will not have more resources to do anything from a boycott that is senseless over something that the government was not involved in. This is a stupid idea, of yet more, as the phrase I learned here, White Knighting.
Nigeria is a democracy and it is by Nigerian action and Nigerian citizens that problems will be solved. Not by White Knighting from foreigners who have almost no idea about the country.
This forgets of course that if Americans do not buy then Chinese will so it is a senseless idea no matter what.
So no sooner do I finish sounding out an article, painstakingly tailored by CNN to a fifth-grade reading level, explaining why I, as a fat, lazy, stupid, entitled white American, should care about Nigerian schoolgirls being kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists, when you tell me I actually shouldn’t? And I’m supposed to just go back to watching The Real Housewives of Wherever and eating my bowl of triple bacon cheeseburgers?
What a confusing world. Hey, while you’re up, could you pass me the remote?
The entire thrust of this thread is about how the girls are kidnapped, and the Nigerian Government does not have the resources, or the “give-a-shit” to do anything about it. Your argument is that Nigeria should stand on its feet and take care of itself, which it obviously is not doing. You do not want help from others, and you say that the government is to corrupt to do anything. So what you are saying is that you are fine with the status quo. Maybe in the next election the people will stand up and elect a non-corrupt government. What are the chances of that? And what happens to these girls in the meantime?
I never said not to care. What I am saying is Africa is better off without the American drones and without the American troops. It is hard for the Americans to understand this it seems, but they are not wanted to rescue all the world from itself and they are not the savouirs of everyone.
If the Americans wish to give intelligence support to Nigeria and if there is embarassement to the government this is fine. But keep your drones and your troops to yourselves. It causes more harm than good and the problem of the Boko Haram will only be solved by the Nigerians, not by the Americans sending the drones or the troops.