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Lost In Translation: The Liberia-United States Relationship |
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Written by Paul Jackson
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Friday, 20 November 2009 |
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For more than 162 years, our political leadership and historians have
been glossing over a meaningless relationship existing between the
United States and Liberia; we have refused to accept the inconvenient
truth that this relationship is more of a symbolic than a symbiotic
one.
While our political leadership continues to feign occidental privilege and draw meaningless parallels as a result of this “special relationship”, countries like Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Egypt rank among the world’s top ten recipients of aid from the United States of America (Washington Post, December, 2006). I cannot think of a more perfect analogy than the tale of a blissful and subsequently jaded lover who took a long time to realize that his beloved wife was having an affair with his brother.
One of the unintentional purposes of this piece is that it appears to diminish the importance of the minimum wage Liberia has been receiving from the United States, however, this is not my thrust; my thrust here is to delineate some recent trends in Liberia-United States relations that prove this relationship has been purposefully lost in translation just to support the whimsical agenda of history and its hapless participants. The term “hapless participants” is used loosely in this piece to refer to past and present Liberian leadership.
Trend Number One-President Bush’s Visit to Africa
Here’s what happened during President Bush historic six-days visit to Tanzania, Rwanda, Benin, Ghana, and Liberia, in February of 2008:
In Tanzania, President Bush signed a 698 million dollar grant to encourage conservative ideology about market forces, and to help mitigate the spread of HIV via abstinence education. Benin received a five year 300 million dollar grant to fight poverty. In Rwanda, the President gave 17 million to help with peace keeping initiatives in Sudan. President Bush did not only spend three days in Ghana, but he also pledged 17 million to help fight the spread of Malaria. In our beloved Liberia, President Bush spent roughly four hours and pledged 1 million text books. Yes, I wrote TEXTBOOKS!
Maybe it’s only me, but it appears like President Bush was punishing Liberia for being a strategic liability to the United States, and rewarding the other countries as strategic partners; but what do I know? Poor village idiot……….!
Trend Number Two- The Africom Fiasco
After the United States announced its intention to open a central military command in Africa, our illustrious President did everything, except sleep with President Bush just to have Liberia win this unenviable bid; she had no inkling that this move could have brought serious national security consequences and other adverse collateral implications on our already politically volatile nation.
Luckily, the United States was gracious enough to tell President Sirleaf, Thanks But No Thanks! The last time I checked, Africom was headquartered at Stuttgart, Germany. But it took few more months for our political administration to start working on a new scheme to endear Liberia to the United States; and that brings me to my third and final trend…
Trend Number Three- Obama’s visit to Africa
The Sirleaf administration lobbied and invoked the importance of Liberia’s “special friendship” with the United States, but Obama simply said NO! He wasn’t buying it; no way was he going to pay a quickie visit to Liberia. I don’t know which one is more ludicrous-Obama’s cold feet and snubbing of our President, or Mulbah Morlu’s prevarication about having bilateral talks with Obama in Ghana…
Conclusions:
I don’t know about you speculators, but if these trends don’t support the true nature of our make-belief relationship with the United States, nothing is going to disabuse your minds or transport you from this enchantment.
Let’s open our eyes, people, let’s accept our relationship with the United States for what it is: nondescript, childishly sentimental; it is a story that got lost in translation by historians and politicians whose only intention was to romanticize a relationship that does not really exist.
Bottom Line: Liberia is as important to the United States as Togo is to the planet Pluto.
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