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Don’t Go Into Congo (Or Any Other Places)

Well, this took a week longer than I expected. The Economist starts the drumbeat for more intervention in Congo, and it gives Obama an ultimatum: If he is to prove worthy of the near-universal exaltation with which his election has been greeted, he has to prepare America and the world for the possibility of further […]

Well, this took a week longer than I expected. The Economist starts the drumbeat for more intervention in Congo, and it gives Obama an ultimatum:

If he is to prove worthy of the near-universal exaltation with which his election has been greeted, he has to prepare America and the world for the possibility of further American military interventions overseas.

I’m hoping that Obama has no interest in being worthy of near-universal exaltation, and that he was not serious last year when he said that American security is inextricably tied to the security of all other nations. Perhaps instead he will be satisfied with merely nationwide forbearance? Maybe just hemispheric respect?

Let’s hope that Obama will stow away these suggestions that he act like the hyper-ambitious interventionist that he has claimed to be along with the promises he made in Berlin to help dissidents in Burma and Zimbabwe. When it comes to humanitarian interventions, there is usually a time-lag of one to three years between Economist leaders demanding action and U.S. involvement in a foreign crisis it has no business addressing. There would seem to be much more of a lag when it comes to interventions in Africa, because so few governments are willing or interested in doing much of anything about African crises. Better still, perhaps Obama could simply ignore calls to intervene and focus entirely on the American interest. That would be quite a change.

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