I woul guess many liberals would think evil conservatives don't care about what happens to a bunch of foreigners. In the case of Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe, they would be wrong. He was a supposed freedom fighter against colonialism. Never mind that the people of Zimbabwe didn't really elect him. He made a deal with the liberal administrations of Britian and America, who denonced the new government because whites were a part of it. He forced his way nto power, then made a political party that not being a part of meant you weren't fed. Even then, the people managed to elect a new guy, Morgan Tsvangirai. Of course, because of the violence, this guy has given up on his right to take over.
However, we conservatives have to spend all our energy on stopping the liberals and moderates from giving up on the Iraqis, who, while sometimes annoying, aren't deserving of being abandoned. They finally start to get their act together, and Obambi wont hear it. Lets face it, liberals love to say "Save [place that really needs saving]", "Free [place that really needs freedom]:, they are saying nothing. The biggest problem conservatives have, is that we dont talk the talk. We actually try to do something. Now, this can backfire on us, sometimes doing something concrete can mess up horribly.
Clinton was a bit better on this, as he tried, but if any real pain was involved, he would pull our troops out, like Somalia. Bombing from 10,000 feet in the Balkans managed to save some people, but we should have been more forceful. But, then, Clinton was not that much of a liberal. He was a moderate, or at least, was forced to be. Bush has the problem of actually wanting to see things through. This means he will be horribly obstinate, and not always choose the best strategy. Clinton is more popular, sadly, becase he gave up when things got hard. People really prefer that. Bush has made some boneheaded mistakes, and tries to fix them, instead of throwing up his hands.
Although, maybe the liberal are right. Maybe we should just spew platitudes, then do nothing. It is, after all, much easier. Maybe we sholdn't really care, after all, it usually is the locals mistake. But so what, are we going to curse millions to die because they were stupid?
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We have to know how to pick our battles. And the best way to do it is the much-maligned cost/benefit analysis. Everyone agrees that people made more decisions based on logic. But the best way to make decisions about the use of scarce resources is to measure them with a dollar value, and for some reason people hate that.
If it costs one million dollars to save a life in Iraq by fighting terrorists, and ten thousand dollars to save a life in Africa by killing mosquitoes, then we should pull the army out of Iraq and send them to fight skeeters in malaria-infested parts of the world.
But those numbers are simply not available, because people are afraid of thinking like that. So we have to guess about the real costs and benefits of everything.
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