Via Glenn Reynolds, James Morrow: Bush's actions speak louder than his words
But Bush is doing more than simply dispensing taxpayer dollars and touching down in African capitals to feel the locals' pain, as Clinton did in 1998. He is also considering sending American troops to stabilise war-torn Liberia - a move that, when taken with his other money-where-his-mouth-is enthusiasms for helping Africa and Africans, provides a revealing look at Bush's moral and political compass and where US foreign policy is heading.
In [Afghanistan and Iraq], Bush saw that the US had a clear, vital interest in regime change. Yet in Liberia, there are no terrorist cells nor petroleum reserves lurking beneath the surface. (This may be why Bush's potential violation of whatever sovereignty the rebel-infested Liberia has left has not stirred demonstrations around the globe. Somehow banners reading "No blood for palm oil" lack revolutionary panache.)
So why bother risking American lives in a potential replay of the 1993 Somalia disaster?
First, experts believe that, unlike in Somalia, US troops would have an easy time of it. In fact, demonstrators in the capital, Monrovia, regularly picket the US embassy waving the Stars and Stripes, begging for US intervention. And in the internecine battles between various rebel groups in the country, only the US is considered an honest, neutral broker; while other countries, such as France, have a long and continuing record of military intervention in Africa, their behaviour is widely regarded on the continent as heavy-handed, self-interested and bordering on the neo-colonial.
A successful action would fit into the Bush administration's evolving view of the global system in which the US (along with any other willing nations or organisations, including the UN) is permitted to insert itself into "failed states" whose governments, if they exist at all, fail to comply with existing norms.
The notion that if the US can save lives somewhere, it ought to do so, rather than surrender power to international talking shops that settle for easy, feel-good solutions that do nothing to help ordinary people, has clearly taken hold in the White House.
And it is this that upsets the elite Bush-hating class more than anything else: unlike 99 per cent of professional politicians, and certainly his predecessor, the man does what he says he will do, whether it is saving Iraqis from a genocidal maniac or ordinary Africans from disease and civil war.
Those on the Left who are driven mad by the man they derisively call "Dubya" and his use of US power should stop to consider their prejudices - and the alternatives. If they truly care about people, they might find that Bush isn't so scary after all.
I really feel bad about quoting so much of this article, but I just liked it so much 
Tuesday, July 8, 2003
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