The US and the UN cannot get elbow deep into every minor skirmish: that is not what they are there for. Sure Israel is no minor skirmish, but its Israel! That is a conflict in which you just do not get involved.
Don't get involved, other than creating the conditions for it to start that is.
My worry with the Ivory Coast is that's 20 million people (compared to Israel's 7 and between 2 and 3 million Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza) the minor incidences we've seen of property clearances are on a larger scale than Israel's were and the potential for ethnic cleansing is much greater. The UN refused to get involved with the Congo conflict and the rhetoric used there is almost exactly the same. While the Congo has a population 3 times that of the Ivory Coast, African war and conflict spreads out into every neighbouring country the atrocities committed are as bad as any conflict the UN steps into (which is its mandate) and are verging on the scale of the ones it didn't (Burma, Cambodia). With 5.4 Million dead the Congolese wars have dwarfed that of Iraq and Afghanistan combined, so what then is defined as a skirmish?
The other problem to consider is that at the moment northern Africa is in conflict, Central Africa has a 15 year long conflict under-way with as many as 45,000 people dying a month and Sudan's stability is now in question as the southern half of the country tries to split from the northern. Each war in Africa seems to be proceeded by a war in a neighbouring country, Rwanda leads to Congo, Nigeria/Libya to Chad, Angola to Zaire, Zaire to Congo, Guinea to Liberia the list just goes on and on. The point is the largest body counts in the world are potentially the African conflicts, the difference between a repeat of the Congo and a minor skirmish may just be the UN intervention. Though I get the impression it will be in Sudan, oil rich Sudan, southern Sudan.
This by the way from my friend Nadin, who's spent the last 5 years in Sudan dealing with the people promoting and perusing these conflicts.
Then there is the UN itself, which is made up with a good number of countries who themselves are not free democratic states. Those states deal with the despots and tyrants that the UN is there to protect against, how many times has China Veto'd action against North Korea? Then there's the forces themselves, I spent enough time working with child prostitutes in Cambodia and hearing about how money was pumped in by "Blue helmets" to have drawn a wonderful conclusion about them. According to my contacts in Save The Children this pattern is repeated in almost every country in which they intervene. Then again, the same is true of both the English and American military in Korea and Vietnam. Intervention will always be a double edged sword. Picking how when and where and what the fall out will be is an art akin to necromancy and alchemy.
I agree about Ghaddafi I just don't know why we wait so long to do anything about these people, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong-il (whose starving his people to death). I guess there's no profit in some conflicts.
The problem is I agree, to view Ghaddafi as someone elses problem, the UN as incompetent or Evil or African conflicts as skirmishes would be naive. There are no easy options and no easy answers, Africa is now more unstable than any other place in the world and Africa's instability leads to very long protracted civil wars and genocides. Intervening anywhere for any reason could be as fatal as not doing so. That said one less dictator in the world may well be a good thing.
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I take it all back. FFFFFFUUUUUU cardboard!!!!!