Peter Beinart is a thoughtful and intelligent liberal voice. After he took over The New Republic, I started reading it frequently. Now I think it has grown a lot more partisan, which I guess is its mission. But I am disappointed.
Exhibit A is Beinart's TRB this month: Ugly Stepfather. The whole thing is worth a read but the short version is that Beinart is upset that we're not enforcing order in Liberia, which is a de facto colony to him because they named their capitol after James Monroe.
But consider the view from Liberia. To the west is Sierra Leone. In 2000, with limb-amputating rebels converging on the capital, Britain sent 2,500 troops to save its former colony from catastrophe. Two years later, a democratically elected government rules a united country, 500,000 people have returned to their homes, the rebels have been vanquished, and a war-crimes tribunal pursues their leaders.
So Britain fixes Sierra Leone, and France is held up as a brave model in Côte d'Ivoire. While the bums in the Bush administration can't get their Wilsonianism up for petroleum-free-Liberia.
This bugs me on a few levels. The Côte d'Ivoire protection of our brave French allies is colonialism writ large. Sierra Leone was a bloodbath for many years. And I am really supposed to believe that the TNR crowd would be behind a military incursion into Liberia? To be fair, most of them were pretty hawkish in Iraq.
But I don't believe it. Beinart is whacking my pal, W, pure and simple. I came to expect a little better.
Posted by jk at June 13, 2003 08:12 AM