Troops to Liberia? For What?

A variety of opponents of the liberation of Iraq, including presidential candidate Howard Dean, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the French, appear convinced that the U.S. should send troops to Liberia. We might be pleased if we thought it was a vote of confidence. More likely Mr. Dean is pandering to a domestic constituency, and Mr. Annan and the French have no financial stake in the continuance of the Charles Taylor regime. It isn’t lost on us that the latter two made money off of Saddam – the French with contracts and the UN by raking off a “fee” from the “Oil for Food” program.

A variety of opponents of the liberation of Iraq, including presidential candidate Howard Dean, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the French, appear convinced that the U.S. should send troops to Liberia. We might be pleased if we thought it was a vote of confidence. More likely Mr. Dean is pandering to a domestic constituency, and Mr. Annan and the French have no financial stake in the continuance of the Charles Taylor regime. It isn’t lost on us that the latter two made money off of Saddam – the French with contracts and the UN by raking off a “fee” from the “Oil for Food” program.

We are as moved as anyone by the horrors of Liberia and not necessarily opposed to making a difference there, but we are reminded yet again of the military adage that there is a world of difference between “doing something” and “getting something done.” The former is simply the use of force. The latter requires a goal and a strategy of which military action is a component.

Somalia, the specter of which haunts the possibility of U.S. action in Africa, was an example of the former. And all through the ’90s, the U.S. undertook sporadic military action in Iraq with no particular goal in mind. We hit an empty building in retaliation for the attempt on President Bush’s life; hit antiaircraft batteries as punishment for Iraqi incursions into the Kurdish safe zone; and threatened repeatedly to bomb if UNSCOM was not permitted to do its job. These were all uses of military power unrelated to a definable endgame, i.e., just “doing something.” Of Liberia we would ask, if we are to be peacekeepers, is there a peace to keep? Between whom? Is our goal regime change? Is it sufficient for Taylor to be exiled? Who will run the country after he leaves? Us? How? Will we have indigenous support? Who? Is there an opposition government to bring to power? Is it any better than what we would depose? How do we know? And most important, is the deployment of American troops for a campaign of uncertain duration the best way to accomplish the goal?

The U.S. has trained a force of West African soldiers for peacekeeping missions. It might be possible to answer the questions and then decide to provide military support and coordination to an African force that would have legitimacy in the eyes of neighboring governments. It might not.

But if we do something without knowing what we want to have done, we will surely be sending our forces into a battle they cannot win.

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Correction: Several readers wrote to remind us that it was Mussolini who made the trains run on time, and Hitler who put the German unemployed back to work. Thank you, because it makes the point even more clearly that Hitler was providing an important service to his countrymen. Had the Allies decided that the liberation of Europe would frustrate a socially valuable Nazi effort, they might have chosen not to.