Ivory Coast

[JMA]

It's not negligent, because it's not the responsibility or the obligation of the world, the UN, or Ecowas, or of any country, to prevent civil war in the Ivory Coast, or anywhere else. The world has never assigned anyone the role of Superman, nor would the world ever tolerate anyone being appointed to that role, because everyone knows that anyone appointed to that role would use the position to advance their own interests.

Is negligence and incompetence responsible for not freeing the North Koreans or Burmese or Zimbabweans from capricious tyranny? For allowing the anarchic destruction of Somalia or the mess in the DRC? Easy enough to go on... the world's probably in better shape now than it's been in my lifetime, but there's no shortage of merde floating around in the pool. If so, whose incompetence and negligence? Easy enough to point the finger and say that somebody (somebody else, naturally) ought to fix all the mess, and easy enough to accuse those who don't of negligence, incompetence, degeneracy, etc, but in real, practical terms, it is not anyone's responsibility to clean up the rest of the world, and any government that tried to take the job on would be betraying its responsibility to its own people.

Great powers and empires don't generllly crumble because they fail to assert themselves abroad. They crumble because they over assert themselves, try to do too much, waste their resources on fights that do not serve their interests. Whatever desire the US, France, and Britain have to play Superman and Save The World has to be balanced against the reality that intervening in other people's problems is not their responsibility, is expensive, quickly becomes unpopular with the voters and around the world, easily creates adverse unintended consequences, and in the past has generally not advanced their interests.

You don't have a clue do you.

We sit with the result of the US, France, Britain, Russia, China trying to exert themselves globally. Now we have the interesting phenomenon of the US having been a major part of screwing a lot of stuff are now wanting to walk away saying it is no longer their problem. The one voice of sense out of the US is from Stan who says that the US should at least try to fix what they have been part of creating.

The "OK so we screwed it all up but are still going to walk away" people are from this everything is negotiable mindset I speak about. Not nice people. While I am not surprised the Arabs are taking to the street to bring about change I remain amazed the US people are not taking to the streets.

It should be noted that it is the P5 (those with UNSC veto) that are the main culprits in all this. They screwed it all up and seem to want to keep it that way. The AU also wants to use its power to keep all the thugs and murderers (the heads of state of member countries) in power as a giant "crime ring" of sorts - the Mafia has nothing on this crowd.