Corpses On Our Doorstep, Palast on Liberia

[G_j]

http://tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8462

Corpses At Our Doorstep
Greg Palast

"The photos of corpses in the streets of Liberia's capital and news reports with those words so familiar in the New World Order -- 'warlord,' 'civil war,' 'warring tribes' -- prompt a gut response in both the U.S. public and U.S. government, 'Let's get in the helicopters and just get the heck out.' The easiest, obvious policy is to let Liberia die."

Those words, which I wrote to the U.S. State Department eight years ago, could have been written today. All that's changed since then is the name of the president and the names of the dead.

In 1995, at the request of prominent Liberians, I took an unofficial delegation to convey that nation's plea to provide material and U.S. Marines to support a peacekeeping force from other West African states. Then, as now, visions of another Somalia, of another Black Hawk Down, led to our government's deadly hesitation.

This week, as mortar shells burst inside refugee centers, Liberians dropped the bodies of their parents, friends and one headless child at the doorstep of the American Embassy -- a ghoulish but apt protest. They are the grim reminders of our culpability in the killings, which goes much deeper than the Clinton and Bush administrations' policy of benign neglect.

Reporters never fail to mention that former American slaves founded Liberia, yet have passed over more recent history: The administration of Ronald Reagan armed the first berserker to seize power in Liberia, setting in motion the current civil war.


..more..

[G_j]

1. I learned a bit of history here

on a situation I knew nothing about. :kick: