OBSLF - My question still stands though, hard decision or just not bother making one at all? The world is riven with conflict and human suffering but I'm afraid I find the viewpoint that there's just too much of it to bother doing anything, no matter how small, about it a bit callous and isolationist. I suppose we could go the whole hog - DfID's foreign aid budget is about £6 billion a year, why bother with that? £6bn spent at home would build a lot of schools and clinics here. Surely £6bn is a drop in the ocean compared to £248bn owed by the world's 47 poorest nations? Why bother? So they might kill another 900,000 Africans? There's another 880 million sub-saharan africans kicking around so it's just 0.001% of the total; probably won't be missed. No point bothering trying to stop that then really.
The examples of strife torn countries you quote cover the whole gamut of worldly ills - humanitarian disaster, civil war, rebellion, insurrection, fruitcakery and simple criminality. Yes people are dying everywhere but the politics, size of forces involved and sheer unfeasibilty make intervention by UK/NATO/the boy scouts nigh on impossible. That is just a harsh reality of life.
A decision to get involved in a humanitarian/interventionist op must be based primarily on what you can actually offer and what, if any, benefit your action will have, ideally without getting all your blokes killed in the process. There is also the political "what's in it for me" factor. No one is suggesting we send a brigade or a division into the Congo with an Iraq style crack-on-and-give-us-a-bell-in-a-year-or-two type plan. I'm certainly not advocating invading the place and driving Challengers up the palace steps, but instead just putting enough forces in place to avoid what history has shown us is probably going to happen again. Perhaps helping to avert a humanitarian disaster also makes the Govt look good? Raises their standing on the world stage and diverts eyes away from unpopular ops elsewhere?
I don't hold these views because I feel we need to assuage some great national guilt nor do I think we should get involved so we can be righteous crusaders, Robin Hooding it through Africa, freeing the poor from oppression. I agree we have problems at home that need sorting but without being some sort of dreadful socialist I find it difficult to equate some dole sponging loser fretting about their 52" plasma telly and if there'll be enough left over for micro-chips for the 10 kids, with some poor african peasant fretting about him and his family getting their heads cut off. I'm just a simple, career military bloke who has spent the last 15 odd years trash hauling to all manner of war zones and disasters. I regularly marvel at the huge amounts of cash, men and materiel we tip into generally fruitless endeavours and often wonder if perhaps we directed a small percentage of our efforts elsewhere could we actually make a real difference to people's lives rather than just bombing their vegetable patches?