Something I wonder peoples opinions on is why the US is going into liberia to help them calm things and for humanitarian assistance, but the UN is nowhere in sight to help. But they want to be the center of Iraqi rebuiling but did not want to help get to the point of rebuilding. Maybe I am to young to understand the world but humanitarian aide is a big job for the UN and needed greatly in Liberia. Also any opinions on why Bush is going to pour $20 billion per year into that country when ours is in the hole and majorly unemployed at the moment.
Do you have a cite for the $20 billion/year figure? That seems absurdly high; it would make Liberia a larger recipient of US aid than Israel or Egypt many times over.
Without wanting to turn this into a larger debate about foreign aid, that aid isn’t just charity. It’s designed to build nations that are more economically and militarily self-sufficient - and, of course, friendly to the United States. We aren’t just giving it away out of the goodness of our hearts, and we certainly aren’t on the losing end of any bargain - we wouldn’t devote any of our budget to foreign aid at all if there wasn’t plenty in it for us.
I also doubt that our nation is “in the hole” compared to the nations of West Africa.
I’m still not sure that the United States should intervene in Liberia. Nevertheless, I see an important difference between the situation there and the situation in pre-war Iraq.
Prior to the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was largely contained. His last act of overt foreign aggression was the 1990-1991 Gulf War, in which he was resoundingly and justly defeated. Since that time, he had essentially been crippled by economic sanctions and intermittent US/UK military activity. There was certainly the potential for him to become a significant threat again if this containment regime ever ended, but while it lasted Baghdad seems to have been rather impotent. The status quo ante bellum, while far from perfect, was stable.
Liberia’s Charles Taylor, on the other hand, is far from contained. In the past year alone he has been directly responsible for a civil war in Cote d’Ivoire, previously one of the most stable countries in West Africa (and the source of most of the world’s cocoa). Before that he was responsible for brutal civil wars in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and, of course, Liberia. At the moment, cease-fires are holding in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Cote d’Ivoire, but they remain fragile. Left unchecked, the Liberian situation threatens to sow chaos through a large swath of West Africa.
Even more troubling from a purely American point of view, this chaos threatens the very West African economies (Cote d’Ivoire, to use the most obvious example) that have attracted large amounts of Western investment due to their previous reputations for stability.
Would you care for some chocolate?
Do you have a cite for the $20 billion/year figure? That seems absurdly high; it would make Liberia a larger recipient of US aid than Israel or Egypt many times over.
Without wanting to turn this into a larger debate about foreign aid, that aid isn’t just charity. It’s designed to build nations that are more economically and militarily self-sufficient - and, of course, friendly to the United States. We aren’t just giving it away out of the goodness of our hearts, and we certainly aren’t on the losing end of any bargain - we wouldn’t devote any of our budget to foreign aid at all if there wasn’t plenty in it for us.
I also doubt that our nation is “in the hole” compared to the nations of West Africa.
I’m still not sure that the United States should intervene in Liberia. Nevertheless, I see an important difference between the situation there and the situation in pre-war Iraq.
Prior to the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was largely contained. His last act of overt foreign aggression was the 1990-1991 Gulf War, in which he was resoundingly and justly defeated. Since that time, he had essentially been crippled by economic sanctions and intermittent US/UK military activity. There was certainly the potential for him to become a significant threat again if this containment regime ever ended, but while it lasted Baghdad seems to have been rather impotent. The status quo ante bellum, while far from perfect, was stable.
Liberia’s Charles Taylor, on the other hand, is far from contained. In the past year alone he has been directly responsible for a civil war in Cote d’Ivoire, previously one of the most stable countries in West Africa (and the source of most of the world’s cocoa). Before that he was responsible for brutal civil wars in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and, of course, Liberia. At the moment, cease-fires are holding in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Cote d’Ivoire, but they remain fragile. Left unchecked, the Liberian situation threatens to sow chaos through a large swath of West Africa.
Even more troubling from a purely American point of view, this chaos threatens the very West African economies (Cote d’Ivoire, to use the most obvious example) that had attracted large amounts of Western investment due to their previous reputations for stability.
Would you care for some chocolate?
Well, I got the info from the O’Reilly Factor on FNC, he named off a list of what the aid is for, I remember the biggest majority was for education. The big talk was about AIDS and that is one of the reasons Bush is helping out there. I can’t find the transcript on his website so Ill look other news websites to try to find if they reported it, If you can find any figures of your own please let me know. I appreciate the background you gave me.
Oh, you’re welcome. Of course, everything I wrote is just my own very un-expert observation, so by all means take it with a grain of salt.
I think the O’Reilly figure you heard quoted was probably for total US aid to Africa. That makes a lot more sense, especially considering that Bush has pledged $15 billion to fight African AIDS.
so far I have found these…
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030707/5301671s.htm
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/afr030708.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3055050.stm
These make reference to a plan he already laidout that envolved $15 billion in combatting AIDS over so many years, plus $5-10 billion for aidbut they are different from what I heard. But then again I watched it at 1 am so I could have miss heard him
Ivory Coast? France is really big there, right? Hey, that reminds me–what worldwide commodity uses enormous amounts of slave labor? Cacao farming!