There is no equivalency between Liberia and Iraq
July 22, 2003

So it's our fault.

Liberia's embattled President Charles Taylor over the weekend blamed the United States for the continuing bloodshed in his country because we haven't sent in troops to stop it. Others seem to agree. The Associated Press, for example, quoted a member of "Mr. Taylor's elite anti-terrorist unit" as telling reporters on the scene, "We hold George Bush responsible for this mess."

The European community has joined the United Nations and our own Congressional Black Caucus in demanding that Bush "do something" about the bloodshed in Liberia. That "something" would require us to send troops to Monrovia as "part" of an international peacekeeping force that would, in effect, occupy the place, keep the warring factions apart and begin the task of rebuilding the nation. Bush seems undecided about committing U.S. troops to the task but is thinking about it.

Meanwhile, he has dispatched a handful of Marines and an observer team to assess the situation.

The Europeans claim that because Liberia was formed as a haven for freed slaves in the 19th century, we have an obligation to straighten things out over there. The fact is, however, that the current mess cannot in any way be laid at the feet of the United States. It is virtually impossible to make any argument for intervention anchored in our nation's security interests.

I've spent time in Liberia, having done some work for a previous government there. I have met Taylor and many of those on different sides of the conflict, and I have watched with a good deal of sadness as his country has slipped into chaos. There are a lot of good people in that country, as in most, and they deserve better. But to suggest that the United States should put their nation and society back together for them or has the capability to do that is absurd.

Indeed, Taylor and his buddies know that if we come into Liberia to stabilize things there we will, in reality, become guarantors of a status quo that many Liberians reject and are fighting to change. Even if one assumes that Taylor will take up residence in Nigeria after we get there, his people will remain in charge. If he is toppled before we get there, things may not be much better, as there is no evidence whatever that those seeking his ouster are much better than he is.

Interestingly, many of those here and abroad who claim that Bush had no business taking on Saddam Hussein -- because in their minds the fact that we haven't found the weapons of mass destruction that virtually everyone believes he possessed or was in the process of acquiring proves that he was not a threat to the United States -- are demanding that he take on Taylor, who no one in their right mind thinks is a threat to us.

Indeed, they want us to take out Taylor simply because he's a bad guy who is responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of his fellow citizens, but they say we had no business intervening in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was doing the same thing on a grander scale and threatening to do far more. Is there something wrong with me or do I sense hypocrisy in the air?

The fact is that if one accepts the traditional view that the United States should operate not as a world policeman but rather a nation that resorts to force sparingly, and then only when its just interests are threatened, then the case against Iraq remains strong but against Liberia is well nigh nonexistent.

Politically, Liberia is not Iraq, but it might be Somalia. The American people have more common sense than most politicians believe and will support action with costs in lives and fortune when they believe that action is in our interests but not when they sense it is not. When U.S. soldiers were killed and humiliated in Somalia, the public demanded not that we retaliate but that our leaders explain just what it was they thought we were doing over there in the first place.

If Bush bows to the pressure on him to commit U.S. troops to a Liberian adventure at a time when we don't have the manpower to rotate home those men and women now in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, he will be making a mistake that will haunt us for years to come.