Obama Selects Samantha Power to Chair Atrocities Prevention Board | TheBlaze.com

Obama Selects Samantha Power to Chair Atrocities Prevention Board | TheBlaze.com:

I know, I know, Glenn Beck yadda yadda yadda crying crazypants. You're wrong, but that's another post. There is a woman who happens to be influential in the administration, Samantha Power, that promotes a concept called 'Responsibility To Protect.' 'Responsibility To Protect' means that the US and other nations/organizations must militarily intervene to stop genocides, ethnic cleansing and atrocities. She was the voice in the administration that started the ball moving on our military intervention in Libya, where we removed a cowed dictator in order to allow Islamists to take power while Obama broke the War Powers Act. The US has troops in Uganda as part of an effort to track down the warlord Kony as part of the Responsibility To Protect.

The idea of 'R2P' is a nice-sounding and feel-good one but there are real consequences. First off, when the World's Only Superpower steps in, we ironically lend credibility to our opponent. Much of the world hates us and, if we are against someone, much of the world feels the need to support the other guy. One of the reasons that the monster Castro is beloved on the left is that he has framed his utter failure in leading a nation as a fight against the cruel and evil US. North Korea has, for sixty years, declared themselves at total war with the US and explained to their people that the famines and concentration camps and the fact that each generation of North Korean is shorter than the previous one because of malnutrition are all necessary sacrifices to keep the US at bay. Tinpot dictators and warlords the world over will use the fact we are supporting their enemies as propaganda and a recruitment for anti-American terrorists the world over.

The second problem with 'R2P' is that we are no longer deciding where and when the US military is to go in. We are giving corrupt bureaucrats and misguided idealists and people that can make a good youtube video the power to declare war and letting them guide how we use our forces. We did that in the 1990s when we bombed Serbia and intervened militarily in Kosovo. We are still there. No, really, a generation later we are still there. Just like we're still in Western Europe protecting them against the Soviet Union that dissolved even before Kosovo. The 1990s also saw us get involved in the first Gulf War to protect non-democratic regimes from being attacked by another non-democratic regime (our military being stationed in Saudi Arabia is what sent Bin Laden against us, by the way) and the intervention in Somalia (where those pirates that attack from Egypt to India come from) which gave us 'Black Hawk Down'. The US military is designed to do one thing and one thing only: to smash other militaries to tiny bits very quickly and at almost no loss of US life. There is another thing the US military does very well, responding to natural disasters overseas and providing food/water/medical aid and security against looting but that is essentially moving our military to smash an enemy and giving them food instead. As Vietnam and Afghanistan and the two Gulf Wars and Kosovo and Somalia have shown, nation building is something very different and difficult and we have really achieved it twice, in Germany and Japan, and that was after we utterly smashed them to pieces and kept millions of military-age men in POW camps for years afterwards.

The third problem with 'R2P' is that we will be working with unreliable partners. Look at UN Peacekeeping forces and their record of child rape and forced prostitution. The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have let terrorists set up ammo dumps and launch missiles at Israel for decades from mere yards away and done nothing except watch. They don't stop the terrorists or blow up the ammo dumps or even alert Israel that rockets are going to be incoming soon. Pakistan has provided intelligence, logistical support and protection for the Taliban in Afghanistan in addition to Bin Laden living a comfortable life in the town home to Pakistan's version of West Point. The Oil-For-Food program run by the UN provided millions of dollars in bribes for UN officials to allow Saddam to siphon tens of billions of dollars for his personal use as well as to rearm after the first Gulf War. The Libyan 'freedom fighters' that we supported included terrorists that have stolen thousands of surface-to-air missiles.

The fourth problem is that 'R2P' can be used against our allies. The article I'm linking to goes into detail about Power said, in 2002, that 'R2P' would lead to the US occupying Israel and pouring billions of dollars into Palestine. She saw that as a good thing. Putting US troops into that mess would not be in our best interests. The UN is openly anti-American and putting our military at their disposal is just a bad idea. Putting our military at their disposal with them writing the rules of engagement is even worse. It also goes against the Constitution where Congress declares war, not the UN or the President.

One of the problems with liberalism is that the goals are what matter, not the results. Conservatives are forced to look at their failures and examine why they failed. Liberals, not so much.



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