April 20, 2004: Headlines: COS - Cameroon: Iraq: Speaking Out: The Southern Illinoisan: Whenever I hear U.S. politicians talk about spreading democracy to Iraq, I reflect on my old Peace Corps days in Cameroon. While Peace Corps volunteers generally remain pretty innocuous in the realm of foreign relations, I can only imagine the reaction if I had gone to Cameroon packing weapons claiming I was there to help. Not good.

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Cameroon: Peace Corps Cameroon: The Peace Corps in Cameroon: April 20, 2004: Headlines: COS - Cameroon: Iraq: Speaking Out: The Southern Illinoisan: Whenever I hear U.S. politicians talk about spreading democracy to Iraq, I reflect on my old Peace Corps days in Cameroon. While Peace Corps volunteers generally remain pretty innocuous in the realm of foreign relations, I can only imagine the reaction if I had gone to Cameroon packing weapons claiming I was there to help. Not good.

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-242-91.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.242.91) on Thursday, April 22, 2004 - 4:23 pm: Edit Post

Whenever I hear U.S. politicians talk about spreading democracy to Iraq, I reflect on my old Peace Corps days in Cameroon. While Peace Corps volunteers generally remain pretty innocuous in the realm of foreign relations, I can only imagine the reaction if I had gone to Cameroon packing weapons claiming I was there to help. Not good.

Whenever I hear U.S. politicians talk about spreading democracy to Iraq, I reflect on my old Peace Corps days in Cameroon. While Peace Corps volunteers generally remain pretty innocuous in the realm of foreign relations, I can only imagine the reaction if I had gone to Cameroon packing weapons claiming I was there to help. Not good.

Whenever I hear U.S. politicians talk about spreading democracy to Iraq, I reflect on my old Peace Corps days in Cameroon. While Peace Corps volunteers generally remain pretty innocuous in the realm of foreign relations, I can only imagine the reaction if I had gone to Cameroon packing weapons claiming I was there to help. Not good.

Fewer, not more, troops in Iraq
To the Editor:

Some of our politicians (e.g., Sen. John McCain) are now calling for more U.S. troops to be sent to Iraq. Apparently the theory is that, with more troops, more law and order would be imposed on the "thugs" and "criminals" causing so much trouble.

The problem with this theory is that Iraqi resentment toward U.S. troops goes much deeper than simply being an offshoot of criminals who do not want "democracy." Many Iraqi civilians have suffered their own human losses as a result of the U.S. military operation in Iraq. While many Iraqis were undoubtedly glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein, they had little desire to substitute us in his place.

Whenever I hear U.S. politicians talk about spreading democracy to Iraq, I reflect on my old Peace Corps days in Cameroon, Africa. A primary goal of Peace Corps is to assist less economically developed countries to improve their economic status. Yet, even as a Peace Corps volunteer, I never felt that my presence was truly appreciated or desired by the locals, especially in a development context.

After all, the locals knew much more about Cameroon that I did. I certainly enjoyed socializing with the locals. But I also learned that trying to reshape a non-Western society into a U.S.-style democracy and economy requires incredible skill and training and may not even be desirable on some levels.

While Peace Corps volunteers generally remain pretty innocuous in the realm of foreign relations, I can only imagine the reaction if I had gone to Cameroon packing weapons claiming I was there to help. Not good.

The last thing we need in Iraq is more troops. If anything, we need fewer. More areas of Iraq must be turned over to those Iraqis who have been trained to govern and police those areas. Some fighting may break out among Iraqis. However, the number of deaths from this fighting would probably not exceed the number exacted by U.S. troops.

I question whether Iraq will soon be the democracy envisioned by President Bush. But that is not so important at this time. The United States. did the Iraqis a great service by eliminating Hussein even if, in my opinion, we should not have gone to war in Iraq. Nothing can change what we did.

Yet, we cannot micromanage what happens now. It may even be that, in time, Iraqis revert back to a strong, less than democratic leader to hold things together. For most Iraqis, though, I suspect that this would be preferable to the continued presence of U.S. troops with their tanks, helicopters and other symbols of destruction.

ROBERT MCCORMICK, MURPHYSBORO




Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.

Story Source: The Southern Illinoisan

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Cameroon; Iraq; Speaking Out

PCOL11083
96

.


Add a Message


This is a public posting area. Enter your username and password if you have an account. Otherwise, enter your full name as your username and leave the password blank. Your e-mail address is optional.
Username:  
Password:
E-mail: