I don’t know how many folks around here have been following this story. Most posts seem concerned with domestic situations, but this one bothers me…
Now this is nothing new in this region of the world where there are all kinds of militias doing all kinds of horrific shit to people. The number of girls kidnaped is a bit unprecedented, but terrible, awful stuff happen to the Africans in middle Africa all the time.
In our little sheltered bubble of 1rst world luxury, we use examples of extreme evil to make a point. In Africa this stuff actually happens.
So what do you think? Should the U.S. help? I would like us to. This isn’t about politics or isolationism or being the world police, or whatever; this is about people suffering and extreme forms of evil. We have the means to help and I think we should, politics aside. Help these people get their daughters back and deliver some well earned justice to some extremely evil assholes. Opinions? Does anybody care?
[quote]pat wrote:
I don’t know how many folks around here have been following this story. Most posts seem concerned with domestic situations, but this one bothers me…
Now this is nothing new in this region of the world where there are all kinds of militias doing all kinds of horrific shit to people. The number of girls kidnaped is a bit unprecedented, but terrible, awful stuff happen to the Africans in middle Africa all the time.
In our little sheltered bubble of 1rst world luxury, we use examples of extreme evil to make a point. In Africa this stuff actually happens.
So what do you think? Should the U.S. help? I would like us to. This isn’t about politics or isolationism or being the world police, or whatever; this is about people suffering and extreme forms of evil. We have the means to help and I think we should, politics aside. Help these people get their daughters back and deliver some well earned justice to some extremely evil assholes. Opinions? Does anybody care?[/quote]
I’ve been following the story. The region Boko Haram is hiding out is dense bush land covering an area six times the size of Yellowstone national park. Apparently the Nigerian government is not even going after them. Should the US send forces to Nigeria to try to rescue them? There’s a reason Africa is called the dark continent. Has the international community done anything about the hundreds of thousands of people killed in Sudan? The UN general assembly is only interested in passing resolutions against the ‘Zionist entity.’ The security counsel is ineffective as Russia and China veto everything the US proposes. Sadly the US does not have the stomach for anymore foreign deployments.
Isn’t Nigeria near Kenya? Obviously Obamas behind this. jk
On a serious note, my girlfriend got very upset the other day reading about this. Some of the shit that goes on in 3rd world countries is extremely sickening, and people like this should be put down with extreme prejudice.
As far as costs are concerned, I can see that the cost of acting vs the reward would be an argument against it.
On the plus side, using SEAL team 6 to rescue kidnapped girls would be nice PR, but then you’ll always have some assholes saying stop intervening in other countries.
I’d like to see some action taken. No one deserves that, and I find the Nigerian gov’t saying that they’re working on it, and no results being seen, to be somewhat suspicious. This isn’t one kid in a large city, it’s a whole school.
Fuck’em. If the people of those nations are willing to accept that without retaliating, then they deserve all of the inhumanity that their neighbors and fellow countrymen can serve up.
We don’t need to waste a penny or one of our own lives on people who wont spend their own.
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Let the UN go in and handle it, but they won’t, because they know daddy America will come in and save the day. [/quote]
The UN spends a lot of time in the African continent actually. We rarely go in (especially after Somalia) and it’s typically to rescue American citizens.
We didn’t do anything when the massacres were happening in Rwanda or Darfur so we aren’t going to do anything now. And if we wanted to what could we do? We can’t piecemeal solutions in that region and fix one small problem at a time. This region needs much more attention paid to it.
Of course ECOMOG could help…wait, Nigeria is ECOMOG.
We don’t need to waste a penny or one of our own lives on people who wont spend their own.
[/quote]
Cicero said it best:
“We are taxed in our bread and our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property, not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of man, but for foreign nations, for complacent nations who will bow to us and accept our largesse and promise us to assist in the keeping of the peace - these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness or our treasury is bare. We are taxed to maintain legions on their soil, in the name of law and order and the Pax Romana, a document which will fall into dust when it pleases our allies and our vassals. We keep them in precarious balance only with our gold. Is the heart-blood of our nation worth these? Shall one Italian be sacrificed for Britain, for Gaul, for Egypt, for India, even for Greece, and a score of other nations? Were they bound to us with ties of love, they would not ask our gold. They would ask only our laws. They take our very flesh, and they hate and despise us. And who shall say we are worthy of more?”
I can’t help but have a great deal of sympathy for this view point.
We don’t need to waste a penny or one of our own lives on people who wont spend their own.
[/quote]
Cicero said it best:
“We are taxed in our bread and our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property, not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of man, but for foreign nations, for complacent nations who will bow to us and accept our largesse and promise us to assist in the keeping of the peace - these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness or our treasury is bare. We are taxed to maintain legions on their soil, in the name of law and order and the Pax Romana, a document which will fall into dust when it pleases our allies and our vassals. We keep them in precarious balance only with our gold. Is the heart-blood of our nation worth these? Shall one Italian be sacrificed for Britain, for Gaul, for Egypt, for India, even for Greece, and a score of other nations? Were they bound to us with ties of love, they would not ask our gold. They would ask only our laws. They take our very flesh, and they hate and despise us. And who shall say we are worthy of more?”
I can’t help but have a great deal of sympathy for this view point.[/quote]
What I lack in eloquence I make up for in succinctness.
Really though- I just rocked my son to sleep. If someone tried to come in and take him by force there would be at least one dead body here by the time it was all said and done. If not theirs, then mine.
But 200+, and there aren’t droves of people with any tool or weapon they can muster scouting that area and de-limbing anybody involved?
That is ridiculous. That article should drop the subtext of human chattel and ineffectual government and start looking at these peoples complicity by neglecting to act on their own behalf.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Really though- I just rocked my son to sleep. If someone tried to come in and take him by force there would be at least one dead body here by the time it was all said and done. If not theirs, then mine.
But 200+, and there aren’t droves of people with any tool or weapon they can muster scouting that area and de-limbing anybody involved?
That is ridiculous. That article should drop the subtext of human chattel and ineffectual government and start looking at these peoples complicity by neglecting to act on their own behalf. [/quote]
There are a lot of dead bodies in that region of Africa and lots of grieving parents.
It sounds so simply when you put it like you did but the reality is not that simple. Most of those people aren’t armed, they don’t have the financial means to arm themselves. And even if they are armed there is only so much they can do against an overwhelming force. Nigerian forces are spread thin. Part of that is because they providing peacekeeping (if you can call it that) throughout that region and part of is it simple economics.
But reality is never as simple as we make it sound.
[quote]pat wrote:
I don’t know how many folks around here have been following this story. Most posts seem concerned with domestic situations, but this one bothers me…
Now this is nothing new in this region of the world where there are all kinds of militias doing all kinds of horrific shit to people. The number of girls kidnaped is a bit unprecedented, but terrible, awful stuff happen to the Africans in middle Africa all the time.
In our little sheltered bubble of 1rst world luxury, we use examples of extreme evil to make a point. In Africa this stuff actually happens.
So what do you think? Should the U.S. help? I would like us to. This isn’t about politics or isolationism or being the world police, or whatever; this is about people suffering and extreme forms of evil. We have the means to help and I think we should, politics aside. Help these people get their daughters back and deliver some well earned justice to some extremely evil assholes. Opinions? Does anybody care?[/quote]
According to the article, the U.S. has offered and Nigeria has accepted U.S. military/police support. I’m fine with that. This isn’t a genocide but it is about as horrific as it gets short of a genocide and we’ve been invited to help.
It’s being reported that the Nigerian government kidnapped family members of Boku Haram in the past, and the current kidnapping is claimed to be retaliation. Not trying to make any excuses for Boko Haram, they are obviously insane, but maybe the Nigerian government isn’t worth defending, either.
Nigeria’s government also turned down our offer to help, originally. And they originally claimed that all the girls had been released and were safe.
I think that Africa would be a great place to get into another war. I’m getting tired of that “desert camouflage” uniform anyway - that was SOOO last season.
Here’s a thought (probably a politically incorrect thought): If we, the United States “world police”, have to go into a country to “save” it, then why don’t we charge them for the privilege? Seriously, we went into Kuwait, saved their ass, spent billions of OUR treasure, but then let them keep their oil? Same with Iraq. What. The. Fuck? If they are now enjoying the benefits of freedom and democracy (even if they cant get it right), then why shouldn’t that come with a cost? It sure as fuck cost US!
Africa has metric shit tons of natural resources. Why aren’t we "quid pro quo"ing that to our advantage? We will kill your war lords and set you up with some better farming equipment, provide peace, vaccinations and education, etc… and you will give us XYZ quantity of natural resources.
This isn’t a new phenomenon or anything. Britain just settled it’s war debt from WWII back in 2006. So why don’t we make these other countries pay? They have plenty of natural resources. Hell, in lieu of direct payments, we could just agree to give US companies exclusive rights to the oil/minerals/whatever.
That would be win:win. Africa would be a far more peaceful place, the US would have several international income streams, it would allow us to forward deploy our military with “justification” to keep China on it’s heels and it would PAY DOWN OUR DEBT. And it would keep Muslim extremists down and perhaps keep 200+ innocent girls from being kidnapped and sold into slavery.
In some parts of the world, life is cheap and they accept that as a way of life. Life expectancy may be as low as 50 in some real ass-backward 3rd-world shitholes.
So should we bail them out? Not unless they have something as a bargaining chip as Angry Chicken suggests. The good old USA bails everyone out and gets the shitty end of the stick every time.
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
So why don’t we make these other countries pay? They have plenty of natural resources. Hell, in lieu of direct payments, we could just agree to give US companies exclusive rights to the oil/minerals/whatever.
[/quote]
I suspect if the layers get pealed back this was/is the primary motivation behind US foreign involvement. There are many moving parts and things don’t always go as plannned; but the objective is always there.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Fuck’em. If the people of those nations are willing to accept that without retaliating, then they deserve all of the inhumanity that their neighbors and fellow countrymen can serve up.
We don’t need to waste a penny or one of our own lives on people who wont spend their own.
[/quote]
They deserve to have their children kidnapped? They deserve all the inhumanity they experience? Dear God man!
The people this is happening to isn’t the government, they aren’t part of any problem, they are just people trying to eek out an existence and having their girls educated is a huge step out of their poverty. Those people don’t deserve it anymore than anybody else.
[quote]beachguy498 wrote:
In some parts of the world, life is cheap and they accept that as a way of life. Life expectancy may be as low as 50 in some real ass-backward 3rd-world shitholes.
So should we bail them out? Not unless they have something as a bargaining chip as Angry Chicken suggests. The good old USA bails everyone out and gets the shitty end of the stick every time.
Rob[/quote]
It’s not about bailing out Nigeria, it’s about helping people who cannot help themselves.
It also has the benefit of taking out a terrorist organization who is running roughshod over Africa. The inability of Africa to take care of themselves is exactly what terrorists need to operate and grow their ranks.
Africa has a complicated situation. Leaving the region untouched may have detriments to the U.S. as it allows terrorists a place to train, plan and regroup to further their attacks on western interests.
I think helping these girls is the right thing to do. Taking out some terrorists in the process is also the right thing to do.
Whether we like it or not, we are going to have to have a presence in Africa sooner or later.
The atrocities in Africa should not be tolerated. I don’t think we need a bargaining chip these are real people with real human lives who are being treated as less than human. If the governments there are helpless to do anything, then somebody should.
A world in which this type of thing is tolerated is not a good world.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Really though- I just rocked my son to sleep. If someone tried to come in and take him by force there would be at least one dead body here by the time it was all said and done. If not theirs, then mine.
But 200+, and there aren’t droves of people with any tool or weapon they can muster scouting that area and de-limbing anybody involved?
That is ridiculous. That article should drop the subtext of human chattel and ineffectual government and start looking at these peoples complicity by neglecting to act on their own behalf. [/quote]
There are a lot of dead bodies in that region of Africa and lots of grieving parents.
It sounds so simply when you put it like you did but the reality is not that simple. Most of those people aren’t armed, they don’t have the financial means to arm themselves. And even if they are armed there is only so much they can do against an overwhelming force. Nigerian forces are spread thin. Part of that is because they providing peacekeeping (if you can call it that) throughout that region and part of is it simple economics.
But reality is never as simple as we make it sound.
james
[/quote]
I agree. It’s one thing if the people could actually do something about it, but they cannot. They don’t have the means, the resources, they are totally helpless. When you are completely helpless and then it’s decided nobody will help you that’s another atrocity.
Let somebody take our children and let us be told that nobody is going to help you, they are gone and there is nothing you can do about it. And now your child is going to be sold and have who knows what done to them, by who knows who for the rest of their lives and you will never see them again.
Sure, we’d all like to think we’d strap on our Rambo vests and go get them, but that’s not reality. If nobody helps these people, their kids are lost forever. Nigeria is clearly useless, so what? Do we just tell them “too bad”, the world is a mean place and they have to deal with it? It’s easy to say when it’s not your kid.
I have been following this for about 3weeks . I am curious if it is too big for a black ops , send in a bunch of guys to kill the bad guys . Stack them up like fire wood and leave . No one knew who did it ???