Originally Posted by GySgt Not true. Africa is transitioning.

Originally Posted by bub lol, a nice word for "stagnation"

Originally Posted by bub Aid money goes to corrupted leaders who buy mercedes and guns.

Originally Posted by YamoMabus The answer to the African question unfortunately is the US military. ---snip--- The answer is recolonization and one day this WILL occur, bet on it.

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New coup for you,

Although one could rightly assert that myriad internal conflicts in remote parts of the world are of peripheral interest to the United States, among other nations, genocide is a wholly different matter.

'End of history' proclamations of a new, permanent, democratic order or assertions that things are now fundamentally different than they were in the past, have usually translated in a discounting, if not dismissal, of past risks. Such assumptions have proved inaccurate time and again in the historic experience.

The problem is that human nature has remained essentially the same as it was when humans evolved into their present state. Human nature has demonstrated a tendency to go to excess in markets, politics, and war.

The difference between the West and some other regions at this point in time, is that the West presently has strong institutions that can mitigate the threat of the worst of human nature. Nevertheless, if the West and others begin to tolerate genocide, the moral bar against genocide would erode. As that happens, such complacency would weaken the vibrancy of the institutions that protect against genocide and suffocate the will to resist those who might well have such ambitions.

Given the gravity of genocide, genocide is one risk I do not believe the West or others should take, even if its probability of occurrence seems relatively remote at present. Good people everywhere have a duty to remember the past if they are to guard against a repetition of history's most horrific experiences and sometimes sacrifice is necessary to fulfill that basic responsibility.

In my opinion, Elie Wiesel had it right in his Nobel lecture in which he declared:

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world. We may be powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by declaring our solidarity with one prisoner, we indict all jailers. None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims. I began with the story of the Besht. And, like the Besht, mankind needs to remember more than ever. Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent. Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other.

It should be noted that the only foreign policy school(s) that decisively reject any kind of intervention in cases of genocide are the isolationist/non-interventionist schools. Even as Europe struggled against growing Nazi aggression and increasing reports of Nazi atrocities, the isolationists fought tenaciously to preclude U.S. assistance to Europe.

Make no mistake, even as the isolationists were intellectually unable to recognize the grave threat a Hitler-dominated world would have presented, those who understood the role of the balance of power and especially those who were subjected to Nazi barbarism or under attack by Nazi Germany knew all too well its horrific implications.

In the end, even as one might be able to make the plausible argument that intervention (which need not be military) to stop genocide might prove "unworkable," it would be interesting to know under what moral or ethical standard such an effort, be it protest, some form of non-military coercion, or even military intervention, would be "wrong."