The United States and Sierra Leone - Two countries not a world apart

A bold headline I know, but I do feel it partially true. If you are wondering where an earth this idea comes from, the answer lies in a film - "fair game" - a good film at that, about the Valerie Plame affair during the Iraq war. During the film, a certain conversation resonated with me. A taxi driver from Sierra Leone mentioned that in his country, corruption is widespread because there is too much power at the top. He then went on to say that in America, the so called land of the free, this is not the case - to which another of the main characters replied that actually the two countries are "more similar than you would think".


In my opinion, this meant that the Plame affair highlighted that in America in particular, there was far too much executive power - an imperial presidency if you will. This is not just the fault of Obama, the presidency has been increasingly powerful, since the end of the Cold war.You only have to look to foreign policy to see how much power the president yields. Bush launched both the Iraq and Afghanistan war without congressional approval, Obama is fighting in Libya, where it could be argued he is ignoring the War Powers Act and Clinton signed many treaties like Kyoto for example without any ratification from congress.


I would not go as far to say that we now have corrupt regimes and we need a citizens revolution, but I do think that the president and the White House now hold an immense amount of power, possibly too much. Should this be the case in the worlds leading democracy? Maybe, they should try to flatten out the cracks in their own democracy, before trying to preach or impose democracy on other countries.

Libya, A dangerous precedent?

Libya then, well as with any conflict, there are many questions that need to be answered - but I think the most important, is the same question arising from any situation; what happens next?

What do I mean by this, well we all have opinions as to whether or not we should even be there in the first place? We all have differing opinions about what exactly are we there for? Although we are there to officially to protect civilians, it could be argued we are therefor “regime change” again. 

The fact is though, we are there now and we are there for good with missiles, ships and planes etc. The biggest concern for the allied forces though, is what precedent does this set? If we are there to protect civilians from being slaughtered by Qadafi, then I fully support our presence, but what message exactly are we sending to these dictators and their respective countries.There is already the beginnings of another uprising in Bahrain and it is definitely possible that Yemen or Saudi Arabia may follow suit. By invading Libya, are we saying that we will support any protesters who wish to rid an evil dictator? Are we only going to intervene if protesters are campaigning for the western model of democracy? Are we saying that we are no longer willing to support dictators who give us oil? Maybe you can answer more accurately than me?

The current situation in Libya is intriguing, but what happens when Qadafi is inevitably defeated, will be particularly unpredictable? Will the allied forces pull out of the middle east completely or will they remain there and help other revolutions in Yemen or Bahrain?

And who knows, if these types of revolution spread as far as the repressive regimes in the far East like China and Burma for example, do the west support the protesters again? Do we risk damaging our valuable relationship with China? (almost certainly the next big global superpower)