Playing Politics with People's Lives

The immorality of the American government obstructionism over
peacekeeping in Ivory Coast is simply astonishing. What motive can
there be for it, other than a desire to score a petty point against the
French?

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 4 — The United States on Wednesday
blocked the dispatching of United Nations peacekeepers to Ivory Coast
for at least a month even as France argued that the mission was
essential to peace.
The American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, in a closed meeting of the
Security Council, questioned a United Nations estimate that 6,240
peacekeeping soldiers were needed for the job and expressed concern
that the mission might lead to a de facto partitioning of the country.

It
would be one thing if the American government were obliged to provide
troops for any peacekeeping force, but this doesn't seem to be the
case. What is more, a partitioning of Ivory Coast, "de facto" or
otherwise, is arguably precisely what is needed to resolve the ethnic tensions there.