Jesse Jackson: U.S. Is Racist Not to Wage War in Liberia

Newsmax.com ^ | 7-23-03 | Carl Limbacher

[Paul Atreides]

Isn't it fascinating how the same people who so strongly opposed U.S. intervention in Iraq want the exact same thing to happen in Liberia? The charade took a hilarious turn today when Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson piped up.

The Bush administration's reluctance to send more troops to the West African nation proves that race remains "a significant factor," he grumbled today.

"We are turning our backs on Liberia," he said. "Liberia remains a killing field on the back burner."

So why doesn't he go crying to his precious U.N.? And why don't the likes of France and Germany cure the ills of Liberia and the rest of the world?

Jesse, Jesse: Wage peace, not war.

[Paul Atreides]

Eat Rangel and get lost, Jesse!

[Republicus2001]

He's a first-class Clymer

[daddypatriot]

Isn't it a bit odd that Jesse Jackson never visits those African places where the shooting and dying are going on? Why doesn't he get off his sorry ... and get over there and tell them to cut it out. He is an abject coward who only shows up when the shooting stops and when police outnumber troublemakers. To hell with the bastard.

[Republicus2001]

err, actually wasn't he a booster and promoter of Chas. Taylor?

[ntnychik]

Yeah we're racist, we're racist. Everything we do is racist. After 35 or more years, Jesse's charges are just kind of losing their punch.

[journey7873]

Stay out the bushes.

[SouthParkRepublican]

”So why doesn't he go crying to his precious U.N.?”

And again the liberals, the French, the Germans, the UN all say the US must act. Just like the NK situation is a matter between the US and NK. No calls for a multi-lateral approach, no calls to draft a UN resolution. Clearly when there are no financial interests for these groups there is little sense of responsibility to help in the situation.

[Thebaddog]

I'd feel differently than I do about Jesse and the black leadership if they had come out for the victims of 911. They only care about the black part of the American population and only when it is convenient for them financially, IMO.

[JRjr]

Yep, he sure was. When Clinton appointed him "ambassador at large" to Africa, one of his first actions was to prop up Charles Taylor, and "legitimize" him and his regime. A job for which, he reportedly was paid handsomely in diamonds.

[Bedford Forrest]

A critical mass of those formerly quiescent spirochetes in Rebrend Jacksuhn's brain stem appears to have taken up new digs in his frontal lobes. Sometime soon he will start shrieking and drooling in public, just like Wangel [on the subject of the Uday/Qusay takedown, for example] has ever since they blew the attempted coup d' etat in Florida. That really crushed their bones, which is why so many of them are unhinged today and getting crazier all the time.

[sultan88]

Jesse Bump!!

[Temple Owl]

I think the Rev. Jackson should hurry to Liberia and straighten things out. He is well known for being able to go to faraway places to bring peace. Let us encourage him to go. But go unarmed and in peace and remember that guns kill.

[Paul Atreides]

It's a sure bet that Jesse sees a potential shakedown for some more mistress money in Libberia.

[skeeter]

Eat Rangel and get lost, Jesse!

Are you calling Jesse a CharlesRanglehole?

[Weimdog]

As the president and Pentagon ponder whether to send U.S. troops to Liberia, many Americans will be surprised to learn that the crisis there was in part the creation of a U.S. political leader who claims to champion Africans' right to self-governance: Jesse Jackson.

As President Clinton's special envoy for Democracy and Human rights in Africa, starting in October 1997, Jackson became the administration's point man for Africa.

It was Jackson who legitimized both Liberian strongman Charles Taylor and his protégé, the machete-wielding militia leader in neighboring Sierra Leone, Cpl. Foday Sankoh. The two hacked to death several hundred thousand citizens of their respective countries.

Jackson's involvement in the diamond wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone arguably caused tens of thousands of African children to be murdered, because his political support for ruthless killers masquerading as political leaders encouraged them to continue their mayhem

http://www.freespeech.com/archives/000551.html

The tragic story of Liberia's long spiraling descent into the inferno requires many more pages than a newspaper column can permit. I devote an entire chapter to it in "Shakedown," my unauthorized Jackson biography. But here are some lowlights:

* In May 1999, Jackson "kidnapped" President Laurent Kabbah of Sierra Leone, according to Kabbah advisers I interviewed, and flew him to neighboring Lome, Togo, where Jackson forced him to sign a cease-fire with rebel leader Foday Sankoy.

* That July, under the terms of a powersharing agreement which Jackson helped negotiate and which Kabbah vigorously resisted, Sankoh was released from house arrest, made a vice president in a new national unity government and put in charge of Sierra Leone's diamond mines.


* Sankoh then began smuggling out thousands of diamonds, many of which he sent to Charles Taylor in Liberia in exchange for weapons. Jackson repeatedly raised the issue of the illicit diamond trade and the clandestine arms supplies with Taylor, who simply denied the charges. Jackson never pressed him further.

* Jackson stayed in contact with Sankoh, phoning him repeatedly with words of encouragement. Braced by this support and funded by the diamond trade, Sankoh built up his Revolutionary United Front (RUF) forces, ignoring Jackson's pleas to disarm and give peace a chance. New fighting broke out in January 2000 in the hinterland. Jackson's cease-fire lasted less than six months.

* By May 2000, the fighting in Sierra Leone took on crisis proportions, when Sankoh's fighters murdered U.N. peacekeepers and took 500 of them hostage. Meanwhile, Liberia, which has no diamonds, reported that it had exported $300 million worth of diamonds the previous year.

* Jackson made one final attempt to halt the bloodshed in mid-May 2000, but was warned by the U.S. embassy in Freetown not to set foot in Sierra Leone because of widespread popular anger over his role in rehabilitating Sankoh, a known mass murderer. One local journalist wrote bitterly that the U.S. civil rights leader was better known in Africa as a "killer's rights" leader.

* Jackson's final contributions to the "peace process" were vain attempts to cajol Taylor to "negotiate" an end to the hostage crisis, since Taylor was the godfather of the RUF and Sankoh's arms and diamond broker.

* Arriving in Monrovia, Liberia, at the peak of the crisis, Jackson declared, "President Taylor has been doing a commendable job negotiating for the release of the hostages. All the hostages should be freed, and freed now. There is no basis for delay, there is no basis for negotiations."

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/162.htm

[Sparta]

When is Je$$e Jackass going to enlist?

[finnman69]

But, Jesse, this line just wont fly at an A.N.S.W.E.R. rally.

[zencycler]

The Bush administration's reluctance to send more troops to the West African nation proves that race remains "a significant factor," he grumbled today

OK, let's make Jesse happy and make sure we do this EQUALLY. Let's debate this for the next 14 months domestically, in the media, and at the UN before we FINALLY decide to take matters into our own hands and do something.

[Paul Atreides]

I'm telling Jesse to eat a big steaming pile of Rangel.