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I do apologize for the mix-up in my earlier attempt at
e-mailing you the following New York Times OP-ED article
from CNN's website
(http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/07/29/nyt.kristof/index.html).
 The tool for e-mailing articles from the site did not
work as I thought it would.  Do forgive me.  I have copied
and pasted the article below.

- Wilmot

*******************************************************


Hearing Liberia's Pleas
By Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 Posted: 7:09 AM EDT (1109 GMT)

The bankruptcy of America's policy toward Africa is
evident now in Liberia, a lovely and passionately
pro-American country with dazzling white beaches, swaying
palms, the greenback for currency — plus 200,000 deaths
from unending war, and mass rape that spreads AIDS.

President Bush initially seemed to engage Africa in a way
that President Bill Clinton and other predecessors had
failed to do. To his great credit, Mr. Bush pushed hard to
end Sudan's civil war. He announced a $15 billion
initiative to fight AIDS. He visited Africa and has been
responsive to the famine raging in Ethiopia.

Yet while it's too early to be sure, it looks as if Mr.
Bush's Africa policy may be no more than a symbolic one,
full of ringing sound bites and hollow pledges. Mr. Bush
refused to ask Congress for funds to pay fully for his
AIDS program. And his Africa trip had a check-the-box
quality, suggesting it was more about domestic politics
than Africa itself.

Worst of all, with Monrovia (named for James Monroe) now
collapsing into killing and cholera, Mr. Bush has sent a
symbolic presence to the waters off Monrovia for possible
deployment later.

Africa needs a lot of things, but symbols aren't high on
the list. Liberian children are not being slaughtered
offshore, but on the ground, and that's where troops are
needed. Sending troops to Liberian waters is a waffle, a
gesture that saves no lives. After 9/11, Mr. Bush
displayed leadership, moral clarity and decisiveness in
sending troops to Afghanistan; today, Africa desperately
needs those same qualities.

"Dithering only makes it worse," notes Ken Menkhaus, an
Africa expert at Davidson College, arguing for
intervention. "If we don't do it, it'll fester and blow
up."

To be sure, the Pentagon's concerns are reasonable and go
like this: Remember Somalia! It's easy to get into these
countries, difficult to get out. There's no peace to keep,
and we're already overdeployed and short on troops. Sure,
the slaughter in Liberia is tragic, but it doesn't affect
us. The harsh reality is that our hands are too full to
rescue a distant people determined to murder one another.

These are not silly arguments, but they can be addressed.
Military interventions are always risky, but success looks
relatively promising in Liberia. All Liberian factions say
they want us on the ground, and ordinary Liberians have
been pleading for Mr. Bush to send troops.

Would anybody shoot at us? Probably, but in neighboring
Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, local fighters melted away
rather than take on European troops. The ragtag Liberian
militias, bereft of popular support, would probably
collapse even more quickly.

I argued against invading Iraq, but Liberia presents a
much more compelling case for intervention. The difference
is not that Saddam slaughtered at most 1 percent of his
population over the last 14 years, while Liberian warfare
has killed more than 6 percent of its population so far.
Nor is it that rescuing Liberia would bolster our
international stature rather than devastate it.

No, the crucial differences lie elsewhere. First, Liberia
has an urgency to it that Iraq did not: people are being
hacked apart daily in Liberia, and if we do nothing, the
conflict may spread across West Africa. Second, success
can be more easily accomplished in Liberia, using just 1
or 2 percent of the number of troops we have in Iraq,
mostly because Liberians desperately want us to intervene.

Liberia's warfare has already infected Sierra Leone,
Guinea and Ivory Coast, costing perhaps a half-million
lives in all since Charles Taylor grabbed Liberia in 1989.
Just as the Rwandan crisis (and Mr. Clinton's failure to
respond decisively) led to a catastrophe across central
Africa that has cost more than four million lives so far,
Liberia's civil war could lead to upheaval across West
Africa.

Is U.S. national security at stake in Liberia? Indirectly,
yes, for failed states anywhere can threaten us.

A collapsed West Africa could become, like the Taliban's
Afghanistan, a haven for terrorists and narcotics, as well
as a sanctuary for infectious diseases. Illegal immigrants
would pour by the millions out of West Africa into Europe
and America. In today's world, as John Donne never wrote,
no nation is an island.

Other nations have stepped up to the plate after the
collapse of countries where they have a special
responsibility: Britain in Sierra Leone, France in Ivory
Coast, Australia in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.
Now it's our turn.

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