75,000 US Peacekeeping Force...

[insein]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...fp/us_military_foreign_040429194831&printer=1

US mulls 75,000-strong foreign peace force

2 hours, 53 minutes ago Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (AFP) - US officials are mulling plans to create a 75,000-member peacekeeping force to intervene in trouble spots around the globe, two senior officials with the George W. Bush administration said.

"What we envision is about a 75,000-person force starting in Africa for training of peacekeepers, people to be available for peacekeeping," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a House of Representatives committee.


The pricetag for the program would be "about 100 million dollars the first year and 660 million dollars over the five-year life of this program," which would be financed jointly by the US Defense and State Departments, Armitage testified.


Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations that the force could intervene in countries like the Sudan, where civil war has led to the displacement of thousands of people, and along with other world hotspots.


"This is an initiative designed to train other country's forces, so that when peacekeeping requirements come up, as they did recently in Liberia (news - web sites) or as we're facing one in Haiti today, there are more capable foreign forces to draw, on -- so that we're not constantly turning to our military for tasks that could be performed by others."

I definitely don't like this idea. We don't need to be going around to countries that don't have any bearing on our own. We give them money and aide. We don't need to give them people on the ground so they can whine and hate us more for our generosity.

We need to focus on the War on terror. We need to strike countries that have a bearing on our own defense like Iraq and afghanistan. We definitely don't need to waste that money.