posted 07 July 2007 10:59 PM
I find myself wondering lately - in a world in which we in the West have opened up two new bleeding sores in Afghanistan and Iraq - whether it ever works ... whether it ever has made a situation better.
Of course, people will cite humanitarian cases. How shameful we did not intervene in Rwanda. Cambodia. But I do wonder if we had, would those countries have turned out better? We intervened in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia. Better?
I am coming around to the point of view that it would be far better for us in the West to just stop supporting terrible regimes than to use military force to topple them and impose something new. Keep the troops at home - always. Not that that will happen. Propping up dictatorships and odious regimes is precisely what we do so often. We only put the boots to them when they've offended us somehow. Hence the favored positions of Saudi Arabia or Israel in the circles of power of our countries.
I find I'm losing my faith in military or peacekeeping interventionism. Maybe it would be better to keep the troops at home rather than out meddling in the world?
From: Vancouver | Registered: Jun 2006
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