Redeploying the troops.

Time to go attack sdome other nation and kill some other people. Just Wonderful!! (NOT!!!)

Thanks for posting the quote.

I just wanted to note that I think, while I am anti-violence generally (as many progressives probably are), there is a place and a need for humanitarian intervention. Indeed, were the U.S. to be more involved in humanitarian intervention, we could have had much-needed positive impact on such tragic historic events as the Rwandan genocide.

I'm wondering if the redeployment language, if used, should include an explicit reference to human rights/humanitarian needs rather than just grabbing the "deployment" and "security" frames of the conservative party.

Not all the evils in the world are due to Western or US action

but considering their power it's something to be looked for, and guarded against. "Humanitarian intervention" can be a cover for all sorts of nasty actions, but ambitious and greedy governments and officials rarely stray from their "national interests". Do we understand the motivations behind the current crop of US politicans and corporate powers?

http://www.zmag.org/content/ForeignPolicy/zunes0117.cfm

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/494/in2.htm

This, below, is the sort of thing which "redeployment" and "humanitarian intervention" tends to result in: more troops killing more people ("collateral damage") in more countries. The Iraqi plans for redeployment meant moving troops out of Iraq but keeping them nearby (where they could do air strikes and raids).

The problem is the policies and strategies, not the tactics and particular words for the tactics, except that people can be fooled by the words- some for a while, some all the time (echoing Lincoln about fooling people). An argument might be made that intervention by a moral and humanitarian nation can help, but that's what sort of nation (government) the US is (and very few nations are like that). It's been said that nations do not pursue idealistic morality or justice, but "national interests", which are amoral. It also takes a bit of arrogance to think that any nation can solve the problems of another, or that any such problem can be solved by killing and destroying; usually the problem was at least partly created by the intervention and meddling of another country. Should not the US first establish peace, democracy and justice within itself before even thinking about trying to solve another nation's problems or install those qualities somewhere else (take the beam out of our own eye)?


http://www.alternet.org/story/46424/
"The stability that emerged in southern Somalia after 16 years of utter lawlessness is gone, the defeat of the ruling Islamic Courts Union now ushering in looting, martial law and the prospect of another major anti-Western insurgency. Clan warlords, who terrorized Somalia until they were driven out by the Islamists, and who were put back in power by the U.S.-backed and -trained Ethiopian army, have begun carving up the country once again.

With these developments, the Bush administration, undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, has opened another battlefront in this volatile quarter of the Muslim world. As with Iraq, it casts this illegal war as a way to curtail terrorism, but its real goal appears to be to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic area of the world through a client regime. The results could destabilize the whole region.

The Horn of Africa, at whose core Somalia lies, is newly oil-rich. It is also just miles across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and [...]"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010907J.shtml
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070109/ap_on_re_af/somalia

"US Launches Two Airstrikes in Somalia
    By Mohamed Olad Hassan
    The Associated Press
    Tuesday 09 January 2007

    One or more U.S. military gunships struck at least two sites in Somalia where Islamists were believed to be sheltering suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa and many people were killed, Somali officials and witnesses said Tuesday. [...]"