More sound reasoning for helping Liberia

Roger Carstens pro-intervention piece has all the reasons anyone could need including the big one on links with terror groups. Those opponents of intervention only have one argument and that is the argument of the Isolationists.

What? Who? Liberia? Where's that? How much do we trade with Liberia? Really? That little? You want to send troops in? Absolutely not! Liberia is not in our vital interests.

Now most of the opponents have much more eloquent ways of articulating their stance, like Buckley, but they are all chanting the same mantra. Liberia is not in our "vital" interests. Ah, but what is "vital"? What exactly is a "vital" interest? This is just a debating trick. Throw a variable qualifier into the mix and you win because you can adjust the definition of the qualifier as you please. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to make a rational claim that supporting stability and peace in west Africa is not in the interests of the US. But is it vital to US interests? Now the isolationists can begin to chip away at any plan to help.

It may seem clichè to some but we need to come to terms with the fact that everything is interconnected on this planet. One of the lessons we can learn from 9/11 is that leaving instability to fester in forgotten corners of the world is a very dangerous thing. No one is to blame for not seeing that letting Afghanistan rot away would have had the results they have but at the same time who would bet the WTC would still be standing if we had intervened in '96 to stop the Taliban.

Look at this picture...

Kids with guns. That's what Liberia is right now. The Liberians are begging us to help. If we don't what will Liberia become in 10 or 20 years? Do we send in 2,000 peace keepers now or the entire 3rd and 4th Infantry Divisions later?

Too all you isolationists out there poo pooing intervention let me say this. Liberty Doctrine. It is in the vital interests of the United States of America to actively pursue and champion the cause of freedom and liberty in every corner of the world. We can't do it all at once but we can easily help Liberia now.