In reading this thread, I finally understand the “thought process” of a Bush voter.
[nitpick]
Rwanda was never under French rule. It was a German colony (part of German East Africa) from 1884 through 1918, when it was given to Belgium as part of the Treaty of Versailles. The Belgians (who reinforced existing Tutsi/Hutu rivalries and issued racial identity cards) continued to govern it under a League of Nations mandate from 1923, then as a UN “trust territory” post-WW2 until independence in 1962.
[/nitpick]
So, it wasn’t really France’s battle to fight (although French troops did help evacuate foreign nationals in 1994, they didn’t do much to stop the inter-tribal violence). There was never any serious chance that Belgium would go in except uncer UN auspices; apart from anything else, there’s apparently considerable remaining anti-Belgian sentiment in that part of Africa.
It was the UN that really dropped the ball. The UN mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR ) was woefully undermanned and requested reinforcements when the genocide started in April 1994, but UN members were slow in committing more forces.
I don’t actually attach much blame to Clinton for the mishandling of the Rwandan genocide, except that perhaps he should have used more influence on the UN once the gravity of the situation became apparent. If the UN had requested direct US military intervention, I’d like to think that Clinton would have gone along. But it really was the UN’s ball to drop. They were already on the ground (albeit in too-small numbers) and should have sent reinforcements with a strong mandate to stop the genocide by force.
Still, 100 days is not a lot of time for an entity such as the UN to get even a moderately-sized force together and transported to East Africa.
Ignorance smashed! 
I always though France and Belgium were variant names for the same country – you know, like Holland and the Netherlands, or China and Japan.
:eek:
Isn’t the UN virtually an organization that…doesn’t seem to get much done at all? Isn’t the idea of a UN a great idea but it just seems to me that they are not living up to the idea of their potential.
Wow you are smart.
If I were to accept your assertion that Syria is knee-deep in Iraqi-made WMD, how is that a point in favour of the invasion? We’re as bad, if not worse, off if that’s the case.
Going on the alarmist pre-war statements (“the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud over one of our cities”), securing the WMD must have been a mlitary objective of the utmost importance. If the weapons are in Syria, it seems as if the invasion completely and utterly failed to remove that threat.
Am I to understand that Bush had the right idea, but the execution was botched?
Not so Fun Fact - there were actually those in the US military leadership who wanted to go in with much higher numbers. They have three things in common:
[ol]
[li]They were very likely right, although we’ll of course never know.[/li][li]Their assessment didn’t match that of Rumsfeld, who wanted to sell a cheap, easy and quick war.[/li][li]They’re looking for other work.[/li][/ol]
It’s a little late to clamor for higher deployment numbers - it was suggested back when it could have worked, but the Bush administration didn’t want to hear it.
To “crush our enemies into a fine dust,” our troops would have to attack the White House, which is against their oath.
Are we looking to be popular, or do we want to protect the United States and the lives of Americans?
You’re not going to be able to do both.
Maybe not, but you can do neither.
I suggest you ponder on the fact that the UN is not just the Security Council.
Furthermore, I would argue that to most effectively protect Americans, you do want to be in a situation where you are doing things that are reasonably popular with most other nations. Sure, we can’t have everybody like us but it is a lot better if those who really hate us are somewhat marginalized than if they have a lot of sympathy from others. It is particularly worrisome if a large number of people consider us to be betraying some of the very ideals we purport to support.
But the two intersect. Being popular means you don’t need to protect so much, since people won’t want to attack you. America crafting a name for itself as a good nation abroad would mean, shockingly, that people are less likely to want to attack it.
For example, a lot of people over here are considerably waryer of the special relationship the UK and US have. You didn’t even attack us. Yet, because of your lowered popularity, we’re considerably less likely to help you out in the future in some other war, short of you actually being invaded. Lower popularity = decreased ability to protect.
Certainly you’re right in saying that sometimes, you need to do the unpopular thing in order to protect people. That goes without saying, really. And popularity can’t cancel out protection altogether, since there’s always going to be someone that hates you. But it’s well worth trying to ensure popularity. May cost as much as war in cash, but generally somewhat less lives.
I am not sure that this is an accurate assessment. Following the WTC/Pentagon attacks, we had the sympathy of much of the world. “Enemies” as disparate as Libya and Iran were willing to work with us to contain al Qaida. (Recall that the Taliban was seriously despised in the Arab world and bin Laden had targeted any number of Muslim leaders for not being “Muslim enough.”) Had we concentrated on supporting the Northern Alliance in overthrowing the Taliban, then allowed them to “invite” us in to root out al Qaida, leaving Iraq to wither under the existing embargoes, we might have been able to pull together enough resources and assistance to actually crush al Qaida.
By haring off into Iraq, (pulling substantial numbers of our Middle-east knowledgable intelligence units out of Afghanistan), lying about WMD so transparently as to make us look like the worst sort of Soviet propagandists from the Cold War, cutting ourselves off from many nations who were friendly to us who recognized the Iraq invasion for the power grab it was, assigning an idiotic “Axis of Evil” label to Iran, (encouraging the theocrats to disenfranchise all the moderate and progressive parties in that coumtry), invading with one third the force sought by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so that once we had defeated the under-prepared Iraqi Army, we were then left with enormous unsecured borders and millions of disaffected, (but armed), Iraqis who would attack us for their own power grabs, while leaving a brewing civil war that would force refugees into Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, and other places, destabilizing those countries, we blew a very real opportunity to be, if not popular, respected while defending ourselves (employing the resources of all the countries we alienated) at the same time.
This must be a joke. Had we not attacked Iraq, nearly 3,900 more Americans would be alive, and the world would think better of us.
There’s one simple thing to say about the Bush administration. This is a group that started a war with an Arab secularist when we were being threatened by an Arabian religious fanatic.
This is like bombing Coretta Scott King’s house because you’ve been targeted by the Klu Klux Klan, when you yourself are a black man married to a white woman.
They were so full of themselves they attacked the enemy of their enemy, destroyed him, & gave power to their own actual enemies.
:rolleyes: I think that one’s been debunked about as thoroughly as it can be. Not that it won’t live on in liars’ e-mails.
But, that was (and sadly still is) real.
But, they should be increased, and far more than increased . . . so what is your point?
Increased to what? How high should they be? And how high is too high?