Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
I've been diametrically opposed to, for example, Bob's World for a long enough time, with numerous teats and tats, and no moderator has yet been involved. It just needs keeping the teats slightly concealed, or you get the ### stuff. This place wouldn't be very interesting without differences of opinion; just requires a bit of civility.

Winning an election and being placed in power are two different things. Maybe they shouldn't be, but they are.

Sometimes people have to fight to get where they want to go. Always been that way.

I think what you miss on the point of "understanding the issues" is that understanding intervention or the lack thereof is not just about "understanding the issues" in the countries where intervention is proposed. You also have to understand the issues in the countries that have to do the intervening, and I don't think you're looking at that side at all. There aren't many countries that have the capacity to intervene. All of them have economic problems and are accountable to populaces who aren't very interested in messing in other people's fights. All of them have found that past interventions have not generally advanced their interests and have often proven contrary to their interests.

For several decades now I've been dishing out advice to Westerners who come to Asia looking to save the place. It goes like this:

When you see people doing things that make no sense to you, don't assume that they are stupid, insane, or incompetent. Assume that there's something in the picture that you don't see

It works just as well in the opposite direction:

If you look at other countries and consistently see behaviour that seems ridiculous to you, don't assume that they are incompetent ditherers. Assume that there are other factors in their picture that you aren't aware of.

People who don't do what you think they should do aren't necessarily incompetent. They're just balancing your agenda with a lot of other agendas and priorities, many of which are a lot more important to them.

It would be wonderful in "the global community" or "the UN", or anybody other than the US could somehow escort Africa (or a dozen or so countries within Africa, before M-A comes and reminds me that they're all different) from point C to point G without passing through points D, E, and F along the way, but realistically it's not going to happen. Even if everyone on SWJ agreed that it should, it still wouldn't. Early intervention in particular is not going to happen: there's no multilateral decision-making process to support it and a general consensus has emerged that intervention should be a last resort, not a default reaction.

Like it or not, there is no global cop. Nobody wants the job or can afford the job, and taking that job isn't in anyone's interest.
In my response to you (the first in a while) I attempted to lay it out in the most simple terms using your terminology and what do I get in response?

A theoretical and philosophical piece which does not deal directly with the specifics.

As a kid I watched Superman in the comics fight for "truth, justice and the American Way" and over time (50 years) have observed how America has degenerated into a culture where everything is negotiable. A pretty lamentable state of affairs.

The first Principle of War is "the selection and maintenance of the aim" (the US just call it Objective). Now every Officer Cadet if asked what the aim for post election Ivory Coast should have been should have been able to produce something like this (or be given a train ticket home):

The aim is to ensure a peaceful transition of power to the newly elected President of the Ivory Coast.

Select the aim and then maintain it... difficult to do if you come from a culture where nothing is fixed and everything is negotiable.

If doing this exercise with 18/19 year old officer cadets one would then get into a discussion about the what ifs. What if the present incumbent refuses to step down? What if a section of the military mutinies? etc etc.

Presumably this was done by the UN peacekeeping forces and also the French forces in country although there is no evidence that they did this as there does not seem to have been any serious attempt to seek additional specialised ground forces to cater for the what ifs and worst case scenarios when things started to go pear shaped.

That the country was allowed to slip back into civil war is both negligent and incompetent and criminally negligent on behalf of ECOWAS, the AU, the UN and the world in general.

And I say to you that to allow the Ivory Coast to slip back into civil war so that they can gain the experience of fighting for political change with the attendant massive human cost is as outrageous in the post year 2010 era as it is ... (self imposed censorship)