Richard - My comments were not intended to shoot the messenger.  I've been paying attention to Africa's social issues and America's weaknesses in strategic minerals for several years now. I expect we'll be fully engaged in Africa in our lifetime because of one or the other (or both) issue(s). I also expect our efforts there to be as ultimately futile as every other colonial/neo-colonial power that has gotten involved in Africa. I've lost the blind optimism/idealism of my youth. I no longer want to get involved in foriegn adventures unless there is a clear and overwhelming benefit to the US. If the natives want a better life, let them take charge of their own destinies and work to achieve it. IIRC, the last time we screwed around over there we wound up with Samual K. Doe.
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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)
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