Back during the days of world colonialism, countries that wanted to expand their empires found that taking over kingdoms and nations was relatively easy. Of course, the story goes that the British Empire was so vast that the sun would never set on it.
Many of the European countries participated in the easy pickings including small nations like the Dutch. Yes, back in the day, a tiny little enclave like Holland could just go down to South Africa or to the Caribbean Antillies and say, “Our boats docked here, we pitched a tent and no one complained so all of this land belongs to us.” Saint Martin, Curacao and perhaps other islands are still impacted by Dutch control right now.
Nowadays, when a government or governments want to take over a country with oil, they need a “coalition of the willing,” they need missiles, they need war ships, they need informants and snitches and they need to make the leader of the country they want to attack and take over look like a devilish beast, so to speak.
Oh, and when governments invade other nations, they are described as heroes. Yes, the deployed fighters are brave when they have cruise missiles and predators, fighter jets and stealth bombers.
But none of the so-called super-power “coalition” members want to send any soldiers into those countries. War on the ground may very well be a guerilla war and the “coalition” can’t fight guerilla warfare. Recently, Israel tried to go into Lebanon on the ground and fight, but soon had to retreat.
Also, talk about “we’re going to save the people” to me means nothing because the “coalition of the willing” didn’t care about the people getting killed in the Congo, they didn’t care that people were being killed in Rwanda, no one wanted to invade the Sudan and help the people in Darfur and they don’t care about the poor people in America who get oppressed and exploited right here every day.
Anyway, it’s hard to just walk in and claim or “discover” a country and take it today. The people will never stop fighting. There will always be economic conflicts, religious conflicts, racial and class conflicts in every country. What groups of people are more war-like, rebellious and combative than the American Democratic and Republican political parties?
Everybody can’t model their political system after the United States system. Some countries need a strong leader – dictator if you must – to control all of the different factions and keep them from killing one another and initiating civil war.
Today, anybody can go into Iraq and set up shop. Iran, Al Queda and anyone else can roam around Iraq like they please. When Saddam Hussein was in Iraq, no single country or terrorist group would even try to attack Iraq. Hussein wasn’t having it.
Yes, it is obvious that no leader of a country is perfect. Most leaders have done both good and bad. Sadly, some leaders have done more bad than good.
I say coalitions can do all they can to save innocent lives, but they need to can the talk about telling citizens of other countries who should stay, who should leave or how the people should be governed.
Now that the acid trip called bombing is over, the “coalition of the willing” should leave Libyan citizens and all other Africa citizens alone and let the people of each country resolve their own issues and differences.
Lucius Gantt is a consultant based in Tallahassee. He may be reached at www.allworldconsultants.net
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