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It's OK if it is a rescue mission for U.S. citizens.

But NO 'nation building'. Africa is a hopeless case.

Agreed-- rescue is one thing, straightening out their problems is another.

The recent bloodletting would have particularly appalled Liberia's founders. Early in the 19th century, the American Colonization Society began to purchase slaves in an idealistic program to set them free and return them to Africa. Freed men and women founded the Liberian capital of Monrovia (named for U.S. President Monroe) in 1822 and kept in close contact with the U.S. In 1926, Firestone, the U.S. rubber company, established the world's largest rubber plantation in Liberia, and the country became economically dependent on the U.S. Iron ore, first mined in 1951, later replaced rubber as the most important source of foreign exchange.

Even from the time of its founding, however, the country's political situation was troublesome. The people of the 16 tribes who live in the interior constituted the majority of the population but never enjoyed a political status commensurate with their numbers. Power rested with the few Americo-Liberians whose ancestors had come from the U.S. In 1980, tensions boiled over -- rebel army personnel staged a gruesome predawn coup that left the president dead. Government officials were executed before TV cameras on the orders of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, who assumed leadership of the country. The new government soon proved little different from the one it had replaced -- repression and corruption continued unabated. Civil war erupted in 1990, and Doe met the same fate as the president he had deposed.

The war was sent nearly half of Liberia's population fleeing to neighboring nations or overseas, from which many still have not returned. The war nominally ended with the election of President Charles Taylor, the most resilient of the rebel warlords. But Taylor's government, too, is notorious for human rights violations and corruption. Western nations have distanced themselves from Taylor, in part because he has allied himself with Libya's Muammar Qaddafi. Meanwhile, unrest and occasional fighting have continued in Liberia, sometimes spilling over the borders with Sierra Leone and Guinea.

I don't think external nation building works, no matter what century.

It's OK if it is a rescue mission for U.S. citizens.

I thought we rescued our people out of there a few years ago.

Amen. Rescue yes, nation building, no.

But we are caving into international pressure. It's not like there aren't a bunch of countries around Liberia, nor Europe, around to hel out.