Peacekeeping promotes violence

[Kevin]

Hi,
I'm with you. I especially like "In December, Mr Ban had said few countries were willing to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia, as there was no peace to keep." So if there is unrest then it's better not to send peace-keepers because there might be conflict. But if there's no conflict, then there's no need to send peace-keepers. Catch 22, anyone? A wonderful example of the usefulness and importance of the UN :whistling:

I think you are intentionally misunderstanding this admittedly open to interpretation quote. There is no peace to keep because there is no central authority to report to. There is no agency/government that can provide the control or to hand the control over to.

You send in troops to there and you are now the government with dozens of factions that are still fighting. As you say later you'd have to pick a warlord and then prop him up or kill everyone else. Essentially you would end up sending in a force that is meant to be more of a high powered police force (that's what the UN Peacekeepers are supposed to do) and turn them into an invasionary force. Which in this case would pretty much escalate the violence.

This relates to some of my posts in the Pirates thread. The best solution looks to be to prop up a warlord. We did that in Afghanistan decades ago, how did that turn out for us again? The UN has issues, for sure, and it's not that they said they wouldn't go in, but since they don't have their own army you need the member nations to actually believe in the idea and provide support. The Somalis aren't really in a position to ask even if they wanted. So the UN has to decide to go in without permission. That's not really an issue that has happened before and I think that is justified. But again you need the troops you are sending into there to have a goal or you'll never get anyone to go.

Yeah it's callous but do you want to send a bunch of American 18-40 year olds over there to get shot at and killed when you have no idea what they are trying to accomplish other than "keep the peace" that will collapse again as soon as they leave? We went over this before. As you said it will likely take generations to get something something stable over there. The UN goes in now they are committing to generations unless we can find a way to jump start a more stable government. It does some good to stop the fighting that is going on. It gives you a better chance to find a more stable long term solution than what the people of Somali have right now. But as the article said it's high risk and very low reward. I'm not altruistic enough to want my friends killed over there for that marginal benefit. I'd be much happier if there were a more promising potential end.

Really I think I'm a dick enough to say, let them keep killing each other. Provide refugees a place to flee too and say screw it. I understand not wanting to leave your home or your culture, but how strong can those ties be after two decades of war? Get the people out that want out and let them start over. Those who really want to stay will have something they really want to fight for. After giving the people a way to get the hell out then you can say that we'll kill any pirates on sight. Any attacks on people fleeing will be met with harsh resistance. That limits the engagement. Yeah, figuring out what to do with 5 million displaced people (the country only has about 10 million people and I'm figuring we'll only displace half of them) is not an easy task but work on that. You want to stay and fight, fine, but we're not sending food or aid after we've moved the people out.

Of course that won't work either. I can shoot lots of holes in that idea as well.

Oh well.