the skeptic

Friday, July 11
 
TNR's Ryan Lizza catches the Taylor-Terrorist Connection meme:
Name the following despot: In 1991, he invaded a neighboring country, where his men committed wholesale looting and massive atrocities. In 1998, he personally met with a senior Al Qaeda operative now listed as one of the FBI's 25 "Most Wanted" terrorists. He is the single greatest threat to the stability of one of the most important oil-producing regions in the world. Saddam Hussein? No, Charles Taylor of Liberia.
[...]
Liberia's links to Al Qaeda, in other words, are far more well-documented than Iraq's. And, yet, they have never been cited by anyone in the Bush administration.
Update: Whoops, here's the link.


 
Dean and foreign policy:
Furthermore, Dean's opposition on Iraq does not mean he is opposed to the overseas deployment of U.S. forces. He has been refreshingly candid in advocating a more active nation-building role for the United States, and has advocated sending more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan for that purpose. This week he strongly supported the deployment of U.S. peacekeeping forces to Liberia as part of a multilateral intervention.
[...]
The second distinction is that Dean sounds more protectionist than most of his rivals on international economic issues. In November 2002 he argued that "our free trade policies have also had the effect of hollowing out our industrial capacity, and most worrisome, undermining our own middle class." Ignoring for the moment whether or not the statement is true (it's not), linking domestic hardships to the global economy is classic populism--the kind of stance that should sound familiar to Gephardt supporters. Dean likewise echoes Gephardt in expressing fears of a race to the bottom in labor and environmental standards. In his official announcement speech he spoke of a "profound fear and distrust of multinational corporations."
Well, you take the good with the bad, right?


 
Nothing to see here, move along.


Thursday, July 10
 
African newspapers take on Bush. Not as good or bad as you might expect.


Tuesday, July 8
 
On Liberia

The Head Heeb chimes in:
In addition to fomenting unrest all over West Africa, there are credible reports that Taylor has laundered money and sheltered terrorists for al Qaeda. Not to mention that if Liberia falls into Somali-style anarchy, terrorists will be able to hide there exactly as they do in Somalia. The United States certainly does have an interest in Liberian stability - enough of one, I think, to justify intervention even absent humanitarian grounds.
The Neocon Vision of Humanitarian Intervention?

Here's the important grafs:
The following words are from the mouth of Rumsfeld himself, as first reported in the Los Angeles Times: "I am interested in the idea of our leading, or contributing to in some way, a cadre of people in the world who would like to participate in peacekeeping or peacemaking."
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A global peacekeeping force led by the United States might be the perfect way to reconcile neocon rhetoric and reality.
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[T]he problem up until now is not that the United States hasn't dictated too much, but that it hasn't dictated enough. Afghanistan, where the absence of a robust stabilization force has undermined Hamid Karzai's control of Kabul (to say nothing of the rest of the country) is perhaps the best-known example. Likewise, it's tough to argue that places like the Liberia and Congo, where the United States has dragged its feet endlessly or preferred not to get involved at all, wouldn't be better off after an American-led intervention.
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According to the Los Angeles Times report, the proposed force would be under American leadership and separate from the NATO command structure. It wouldn't be under the auspices of the United Nations either, so a French veto couldn't prevent the force from being deployed.
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Rumseld's proposal would have all the advantages of a truly multilateral peacekeeping force. Its multinational composition would create foreign troops trained in civil-military relations and human-rights norms appropriate to a democratic state. One can easily imagine the troops who've served in a prestigious global peacekeeping force going on to influential positions in the militaries, and perhaps the governments, of their home countries. But it confers additional advantages. For example, one wing of the force could, as the Hoover Institution's Peter Schweizer has suggested, be reserved for foreigners who eventually hope to become U.S. citizens, much like the French Foreign Legion. The U.S. military could thus gain the critical foreign language skills it needs on the cheap.

Right now, this all probably sounds utopian--a little like a U.N. standing army, a notion that's now about as quaint as Esperanto. Rumsfeld is apparently thinking of a force of 10,000 or 20,000 troops, which sounds small in light of the outsized ambitions outlined here. Still, it's a start. It would be the clearest demonstration yet that Wolfowitzian idealists put their money where their mouth is.
Interesting idea... but, the skeptic doubts it will ever happen.