Standing Athwart Adventurism Yelling Stop
Stephen Chapman of the Chicago Sun on Liberian folly:
But as we’ve learned in Iraq, the best-laid plans often go astray. How, then, can we be so confident that getting out of Liberia, a place we know much less about, will be as easy as getting in? The assumption is that because of our historic ties to the country, founded in the 19th century as a refuge for freed American slaves, we’d be greeted as liberators, and that we could impose peace because everyone is tired of fighting.
But intervening on that assumption doesn’t require a mere leap of faith. It’s more like a pole vault.
Chapman notes that certain quarters denounce any reluctance to commit troops to Liberia as stemming from racism. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the enthusiasm for this type of adventure is often driven by racism - by a blithe conviction that these swarthy little foreigners with their tribes and factions and weapons cannot possibly be serious about their own goals, and that it will be a simple matter for the Great White Fathers and Mothers to put them in Time Out and then get them to behave. Don’t go there.
