The people that live in those countries, the warlords they support, the wars they fight, the human atrocities they commit, their ethnically motivated conflicts, are never their fault, we are supposed to treat them as infants when it comes to all the shortcomings of their actions.
The pattern is: There is a dictator that is oppressing his people, we feel bad about it and want them to be able to have democracy. We overthrow the dictator, and then things get complicated and we walk away, leaving the place in civil war and ruin.
Often the problem is that the only reason it's a country at all is that some guy in London drew a line on a map a couple of hundred years ago, and the borders do not reflect ethnic or religious loyalties. In this post colonial situation, often the only thing holding the country together was the violence of the dictator. We then swoop in with fighter jets and maybe even ground troops, maybe stick around a while to run a few elections, but generally without the understanding of what's left of the power structure in the country.
This is precisely what happened in Libya, and after Iraq and Afghanistan it's shameful that we just continue to do the same thing. Bomb Gaddafi and let the chips fall where they may, which turns out to be years long civil war.
If you want to look for a relatively successful model of U.S. intervention, it's what we did in Yugoslavia. Just recognize that the country doesn't have enough holding it together to be a functioning democracy, break it up along ethnic lines, institute democracy in the statelets, and then let them all join the EU when they're ready.
Wouldn't the diversity give them strength?
I’m actually in favour in smaller nation states and redrawing lines as a solution to the failures of centralized mega states and old world borders, such as lack of representation and cultural differences which cause policy conflicts (the smaller stuff, not just violence which is atypical in most places). Plus smaller states = way more experimentation, which the US states were supposed to be with Federalism but has had that slowly taken away.
But that’s another story which doesn’t help explain the contradictions of this common explanation used selectively in Africa.
If democracy is instituted, and the ruling group was a minority, there will be resentment on the side of the majority for past treatment, and resentment on the side of the formerly ruling minority for their diminished status. This has a tendency to boil over into civil war.
This is exactly what happened in Yugoslavia, and we solved it by breaking up the country, and it has been fairly peaceful for twenty years. The main place where there are still problems is in Bosnia, and specifically because we left Bosnia together and the Bosnian Serbs want out.
I agree with you that many countries had flawed leadership to begin with it's not really the case with many others(i.e much of the middle east). Removing the government of another country by military force and destroying the social and physical infrastructure is the direct reason for the current situation. Arming various extremist groups does not help either. As we know Al-Qaeda was armed and trained by the U.S in the first place.
Why did US invade Iraq? We know it's for the oil now but at least it should have had the decency to provide security/safety transition to a democracy in exchange for their resources. Not to mention that US vets their leaders/administration. They are not infants but have little choice in the face of the world's most powerful country/countries.
That's why I believe the world starts loosing its faith in the West. The latest interventions brought nothing good.
Why did Iraq invade Kuwait? Start a fight with a US ally and then complain when the US intervenes.
The pretext of invasions were different though. Busch said it was because Saddam was evil and had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was more decent in its allegations and said Kuwait was stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling.
Btw Saddam Hussein regime was "created" by the US and the UK...
Unfortunately some politicians are harming the way we feel about each other for the sake of their own game.
EU is already rejecting many refugees. It’s not like someone that makes it to the shore is going to stay without a good reason.
That’s not just a good solution to this problem.
The comment was about perpetually blaming the EU/US for whatever bad happens in 3rd world countries.