troops to libera now!
ehollo
Why aren't we there? I was not against invading Iraq, althougth I am
disturbed by the lack of specific intelligence and the missing WMDs becuase
it compromises our reputation. Hoever, here, there is a clear, humanitarian
need. Isn't the argument for saving this country the same arguments people
are retroactivily making for the liberating of Iraq?
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July 30, 2003
Oh, if Only the G.I.'s Would Come Marching In
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
ONROVIA, Liberia - Before he became a priest, Michael K. Francis
wanted to be a soldier. A G.I., to be precise, one of those American boys in
uniform whom he admired so much as a little boy. They came marching up the
streets of Monrovia during World War II singing "When the Saints Come
Marching In."
Now Liberia's Roman Catholic archbishop and an outspoken voice for
peace, he stood up from his chair one day not long ago and belted out a
verse. He laughed at the memory.
That distant memory goes a long way to explain the craving of
Liberians for American intervention as well as their dismay at any
comparison with Somalia, that iconic African theater of anarchy and symbol
of peacekeeping perils.
Many people in the world look for an outside hand more powerful than
their own petty despots to come to fix their problems. But there are few, in
the minds of Liberians, to whom the idea of America is so mythic, the ties
so deep, and the case for American help more compelling.
Liberia was created by the United States with a peculiar alliance of
slaveholders and abolitionists in the anxious decades before emancipation
and founded on the ideals of American-style democracy.
In truth, for much of its history, it functioned as a plantation
society, where the high-caste descendants of freed slaves ruled over the
"Africans" and held an abiding loyalty to America, from whose rib their
nation was formed.
Consider the frayed oil painting that still hangs on a wall in the now
shuttered National Museum on Broad Street, in Monrovia's ravaged downtown.
It is a historical montage featuring William Tolbert, the Liberian president
from 1971 to 1980, seated in the company of J. J. Roberts, the founding
president of the republic, along with two famous Americans: Abraham Lincoln
and John F. Kennedy.
Consider the elation when a small team of American soldiers landed
here in early July to conduct what they called a "humanitarian assessment."
Liberians poured into the streets to thank their lucky stars. "Eh, marine,
we like you, oh, marine!" they sang.
Consider, too, the spectacle of the weeping men and women who came to
lay their dead before the gates of the American Embassy on July 21. That
morning, as part of the third rebel attack on the city, a mortar shell had
fallen on an encampment of displaced people across the street from the
embassy, killing nearly two dozen civilians.
The living came to display their dead. They came in rage at what they
saw as American indifference. And they came as though to remind the
Americans of the creation myth that was given this land 150 years ago. "The
love of liberty brought us here," reads the slogan on the Liberian seal,
courtesy of the Americans who founded the republic in 1847.
But Liberian expectations have been built around more than just the
idea of America. During World War II, Liberia joined the United States in
declaring war against Germany - a principal Liberian trading partner at the
time.
Later, the country provided Firestone with the world's largest rubber
plantation, aiding American dominance in the auto industry.
Liberia served as a solid partner to the United States in the cold war
years. It supported American resolutions at the United Nations and provided
a home for a Voice of America radio tower, an indispensable weapon of the
cultural cold war.
So, the archbishop and others argue today, it is high time for a
payback. "Because of our relationship," the archbishop maintained. "And
because of what we did."
Finally, the American explanation for its invasion of Iraq, where
illegal weapons have yet to be found, has raised expectations all its own.
It baffles Liberians that American soldiers would interfere where they are
not wanted, and stay away from where they are.
"Mr. President, you have repeatedly said that the civilized world
cannot sit idle while dictators and rebel groups brutalize innocent people,"
wrote George Kun, 27, a Liberian who went to the United States as a refugee
in 1996, in an open letter to Mr. Bush.
These expectations, however deeply held, fly in the face of American
inaction for over a decade. The United States had a chance to nip the
Liberian mayhem in the bud 13 years ago, Liberians note, when Charles G.
Taylor, the president that Mr. Bush now demands step aside, began his
guerrilla insurrection.
Then, as now, Washington (at the time, Mr. Bush's father was in
office) ordered American troops to park off the Liberian coast, and
encouraged a West African peacekeeping force. The warship with 2,500
American troops bobbed in the water for several months before turning back.
The Liberian war continued for six more years.
The West African peacekeepers became a part of the problem: they
looted and allowed the sitting president to be captured and executed by a
particularly vicious rebel leader named Prince Johnson. The entire ordeal
was videotaped. (It is one of the reasons why the world does not hear much
about an "African solution" to the current problem.)
Once again, there is talk of Washington intervening. Liberians wonder
if they are watching a replay.
The myth of the American G.I. notwithstanding, what difference would
an American intervention make? Is there any guarantee that if American
soldiers come, the warring factions will put down their guns?
The short answer is no. The only guarantee, it seems, is that without
intervention from somewhere more misery lies ahead.
Relief workers told the American team that landed in early July that
things would get much worse unless security could be established. They did.
Two weeks later came the third and most sustained rebel attack on the
capital.
Since then, a waiter at the hotel where many foreign journalists stay
lost his grandmother and three members of his family in a mortar attack.
Three weeks before, his sister died of cholera. He told his story in passing
one morning as he served pancakes for breakfast.
Liberia is about the only country in West Africa where you can get
pancakes for breakfast. It is among the enduring legacies of its peculiar
relationship to the United States.
