A core lunacy to Dems' foreign policy (good one from Krauthammer)

Houston Chronicle ^ | 6/10/03 | Charles Krauthammer

[Wolfstar]

It was the left that led the opposition to war in Iraq. Now it is the left that is most strenuous in urging intervention in Liberia. Curious.

No blood for oil, it seems, but blood for Liberia. And let us not automatically assume that Liberia will be an immaculate intervention. Sure, we may get lucky and suffer no casualties. But Liberia has three warring parties, tons of guns and legions of desperate fighters. Yet pressure is inexorably building to send American troops to enforce a peace.

[Wolfstar]

This is Krauthammer at his hard-hitting, well-reasoned best. (I searched all three ways the FR search-engine provides and didn't find the article posted, which was a surprise since there are plenty of sharp-eyed FReepers who are usually quick to post excellent material like this.)

[Wolfstar]

For your ping list if you find the article worthy.

[Support Free Republic]

See that good looking dude on the left? He's got FAR BETTER THINGS to do than conduct Freepathons! Come on, let's get this thing over with.

[Paul Atreides]

Does anyone honestly believe that if, God Forbid, Albore had succeeded in stealing the presidency, and had done exactly as W has done, that any of the Dims or the media would be trying to make his actions into a quagmire?

[Prodigal Son]

Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States.

You know, it's good that he puts it so clearly here. I was arguing with a disruptor the other day who more or less stated it exactly that way. This is the way the lefties think. That poster argued that we should intervene in Liberia precisely because we would get nothing out of it. I found this insane. But this author obviously understands the liberals and their mindset.

Good post.

[propertius]

"In terms of brutality, systematic repression, number of killings, relish for torture, sum total of human misery caused, Charles Taylor is a piker next to Saddam Hussein."

Now I'm not necessarily backing the argument for U.S. intervention in Liberia, although there is a case to be made for an international mission. And if the precedent has been set for Western powers to lead forces in their former African spheres of influence, there is perhaps something of an obligation. Britain led the force to Sierra Leone, just like France leads the force in Ivory Coast.

But that is off the point. I take issue with Krauthammer's point above. The indictment of the UN Special Court, backed up by considerable evidence, shows that Taylor was the motivating force of the horribly bloodthirsty war in Sierra Leone. Half a million were killed, more, many of them children, had their arms severed and their tongues chopped off. He's also repsonsible for the deaths of at least 300,000 people in Liberia. Ten percent of the population. He is the only leader I can think off who has, under the literal interpretation of the word, decimated his people. Up to half of his population, 1.5 million people, are refugees. He is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands in Guinea and Ivory Coast. He has personally tortured to death scores of political opponents. Weekly, people are dragged out of prison and into the Executive Mansion, where taylor, surrounded by Zoes (witch doctors), hacks off their ears, legs and genitals, disembowels them, drinks their blood and eventually eats their innards to give him magic protection from his many enemies.

A piker next to Saddam Hussein. Taylor has killed close to one million people. Maybe Saddam was worse, but not much worse. Anyway, comparisons in this case are odious. A monster is a monster is a monster. I'm sorry, Krauthammer should do a bit of research before opening his inkpot.

And before you accuse me of being a namby-pamby lib. I'm not. I backed the war in Iraq 100 percent, mainly for humanitarian reasons. I'd like to see the Americans and the Brits take out a few other bad guys as well...

[Wolfstar]

Precisely! The Leftist cabal is nothing if not hypocritical.

[KC_Conspirator]

What is it that makes liberals like Dean, preening their humanitarianism, so antiwar in Iraq and so pro-intervention in Liberia?

I'll go one step further - its liberal guilt that motiveates them. Liberals scream rascism at Krauthammer and his likes who are skeptical of intervention in Liberia. They claim they don't want to help "blacks". The reverse is actually true - liberals don't intervene unless its to assuage their idiotic guilt and it is them who is rascist because they want to help those who are black. The only caveat is when there is a democrat in office where all the current caterwauling we see disappears because they are hypocrites as well.

That being said, I am for intervention in Liberia.

[Burkeman1]

No blood for oil, it seems, but blood for Liberia.

I wish the war in Iraq was about oil- that- at least- would be a tangible reason.

[Wolfstar]

The truth is that the Left categorizes the human race in a zoological sort of way, meaning that they make "pets" out of certain groups of people. Freed Iraqis are not among the Left's pet groups, whereas people both of and decended from sub-Saharan African tribes are so "favored."

President Bush talks about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" in reference to schools. Perhaps we FReepers should introduce a new phrase into the lexicon: "the soft slavery of Leftist race-think."

[JimSEA]

I agree with you. It will be a very dangerous thing to do as chaos is the norm there, but the alternative is to give France and the UN the moral high ground they clearly do not merit.

[livius]

I don't think we should go in, because I don't think we could control the outcome. Iraq was a much more developed country, and even in Iraq, we're having problems getting the die-hard Baathists and fundamentalist Muslims to calm down.

One of the problems with taking Taylor out is that his opposition is not only divided, but includes a very dangerous Islamic fundamentalist wing that wants to impose Islam on Liberia (and all of Africa). We don't want to end up doing another Bosnia, supporting people who are actually our enemies in the long run, so that they can take over Liberia and use it as another staging ground to attack us.

[Stopislamnow]

Africa is so aids infested that there is absolutely nothing we could do will help those people there.

Intervention there will be a exercise in futility and result in more American loss of life, needlessly, since no matter what, these tribal savages will continue to war no matter what we do.

They have always warred. It's not about education, it's not about food aid, which, since ours is genetically enhanced, they don't even want, it's not about being underdeveloped, or even about being poor.

Poor people have been hunting and farming and surviving for a few odd tens of thousand of years.

They're bloody savages, and nothing we can do will help them.

Africa is basically, over.

Don't call me a heartless bastard or a cynic. I've seen it firsthand in Somalia and I try to keep with events there.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Uganda is winning the war against AIDS, Bush has mentioned that while in Africa, and in the SOTU speech. Uganda's plan is working, and it is really simple, it's based upon responsibility and abstinence, not on condoms. Spreading this program throughout Africa would work. Remember, AIDS in Africa is primarily spread by sexual intercourse and in mother-child transmition at birth.

[lainde]

Yes it is a hellhole...Exactly why the interest of the Islamofascists...China also has it's foot in the door.

[LiteKeeper]

bump

[propertius]

I'm afriad that it's a myth that Uganda is winning the war against AIDS. It's as bad as ever there. It has been proven that UNAIDS and UNICEF have doctored the figures to try to make Uganda a showcase because the East African country has so closely followed UN advice and three-pronged strategy of Abstinence, faithfulness and contraception. Condoms are more easily available in Uganda than anywhere else in Africa and are also distributed to children in schools. Shocked staff at UNICEF battling AIDS in Uganda have told me that these figures are completely untrue. There was also a very good examination of this in the British medical journal The Lancet which scrutinized the figures and showed them to be false.

[ricpic]

I would be willing to bet that, at a minimum, 70% of Americans want to have nothing to do with Africa. No treasure down the drain. No soldiers put in harms way.

And yet it's a certainty that we're going in. Some democracy.

[raybbr]

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has launched a review of all research linking AIDS and medical injections, possibly laying the groundwork for changes in how the legislation's $15 billion in funding is distributed. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a member of the Senate's health panel, requested the review after he turned up a WHO report listing four separate studies that find dirty needles responsible for 8, 15, 41 and 45 percent of exposures in sub-Saharan Africa. The report, dated Dec. 19, 2002, concludes that "the lowest attributable fraction calculated on the basis of the data provided by the authors (8 percent) exceeds our 2.5 percent modeled attributable fraction, suggesting that our estimate is conservative."

From this story in the Monterey Herald.

Why should we support a continent of drug addicts. These people have no desire to survive nor do they fear the consequences of having AIDS infected children. After almost a decade of "education" they still don't care. Why should we?

I have read several different stories on how AIDs is calculated. They come up with the highest numbers possible to get more money.

[raybbr]

Not only that, but:

The World Health Organisation published the following definition of AIDS that was exclusively applicable to developing countries. (3)

Tabel 1: WHO AIDS Definition (1986) for adults in developing countries (3): Major signs: - weight loss 10% - chronic diarrhoea 1 month - fever 1 month (intermittent or constant) Minor signs: - cough for > 1 month - generalized itching - recurrent herpes zoster - oro-pharyngeal candidiasis - chronic progressive and disseminated herpes simplex infection - generalized lymphadenopathy

Exclusion criteria: - cancer - severe malnutrition - other recognized causes

AIDS is defined by the existance of: - at least 2 major signs and - at least 1 minor sign and - in absence of any exclusion criteria or - in a patient with generalized Kaposi's sarcoma or - in a patient with cryptococcal meningitis

Under this, someone is declared to be suffering from AIDS if they have had, for example, diarrhoea for more than a month, pronounced weight loss and coughing or general itching and no other cause can be ascertained with available means. On this definition an HIV test is expressly not necessary, and shortage of funds means that one is still only rarely carried out today. And on the Ugandan health ministry's registration form for people with AIDS the possibility of an HIV test is not even mentioned. This means that AIDS, the illness that in the words of Professor Luc Montagnier, the man who discovered HIV, "has no typical symptoms", is being diagnosed in developing countries exclusively on the basis of symptoms. (7) The symptoms called for are not exactly rare in a country with twenty years of systematic destruction behind it. So it is not really surprising that, as a result, Uganda has been declared as the country with the highest AIDS rate.

This is from: Here.

Note that no blood test is required by the WHO to diagnose someone as having aids. There is all kinds of info available suggesting that a high percentage of people diagnosed with aids have malaria. It's all about money. How much can they scam from us.

Also, I might be wrong about the previous post. Upon further investigation I find that most of the needles in the previous article are about medicinal injections and the lack of education among health care givers in Africa. It doesn't make that clear in the Monterey Herald article. I just assumed that negligent use of needle was due to drug use.