Battletard wrote:
Yeah, I don't give two shits and a flying fuck about 100 troops serving an advisory role with non-engagement orders unless fired upon.
"Unless..." In Africa, that's a pretty damn big "unless".
Also consider it this way. What's the cumulative price tag? Salaries, hazard pay, food, fuel, equipment, facilities, vehicles etc? Then ask, what else could be done with that kind of dough?
A drop in the bucket? Sure. But it's still a damn big drop.
Battletard wrote:
You're right, it's none of our business that this retard is just sending his minions all about the country raping and murdering people.
Africa needs an uprising? Really? You think a lot more people dying to do what we can do in a few weeks, if that..is worth it? Aestu, the great Humanitarian, and Internet Julius Caesar.
There is an old saying, "When you save a life, that life belongs to you."
The expression is metaphorical, not literal. In putting oneself in a position of moral responsibility, one faces the corollary obligation to contemplate the implications of said responsibility.
No one's going to deny that this cult is perpetrating horrible violence. This cult is able to perpetrate the violence because of a vacuum of political authority and security in Africa.
It is naive to believe that ending that violence is as simple as "scalpel and forceps" surgery - remove an offending object and get out. When you make the choice to get involved in a situation...you become a stakeholder in that situation...with your own interests, goals, values, your own assets and limitations. And you need to consider ALL the dynamics of the situation, not just the ones you happen to not like. That this violence is appalling to any decent person doesn't change the implications of the decision to get involved.
Can you GUARANTEE that by getting involved, you are truly paving the way for a better future for these people? After all, you're not changing or removing the realities that led to this situation in the first place, are you? Are you? Or are you truly willing to "take ownership" of the lives you have just saved - setting up a political system appropriate to the realities of their situation, ensuring the security of their people, creating a workable economy, mending differences between inimical groups in the country? No?
Then how can you be so sure that by getting involved - picking and pulling at their affairs - you are doing the right thing?
The situation exists for a simple reason: The Africans cannot manage their own security, and do not have responsible political institutions. Getting involved won't change that. Only the Africans can.
Now, say, you remove this cult. How long do you think it will be until someone else exploits the power vacuum all the same? Conversely, if the violence continues, how long will Africans tolerate it? Can you really be sure that by stopping the violence, you aren't also stopping the process by which a responsible homegrown government, capable of protecting its people, might emerge? After all, if you have the US Army ensuring the public safety, there's not much impetus for a homegrown solution, is there?
And what's our motive? The goodness of our hearts? Was it misanthropy that led us to get involved in Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, Judaea? Was it our own greed? Or was it that we were so arrogant as to think that we could foresee the consequences of our own well-intentioned actions?
In the here and now...is our ability to manage even our own society...our knowledge of even our own history...our mastery of even our own future...so absolute to justify such confidence in meddling in others' affairs?
If you cannot answer in the affirmative then you have no moral basis for trying to solve others' problems.
