From The Washington Post
By Jim Hoagland

While world leaders gathered here to unleash soothing words on the financial tsunami swamping their economies, the daring “responsibility to protect” doctrine adopted by U.N. members three years ago was being buried in the killing fields of eastern Congo.

For the sake of your bank account, hope that the international community can protect dollars, euros and yen more successfully than it protects the lives and safety of people who happen to live in failed or rogue states.

In three years, “never again” has become “sorry about that.” Humanitarian intervention — proudly proclaimed as a universal mission by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and other Third Way leaders and eventually adopted at the 2005 U.N. summit — has fallen into serious disrepair.

The slaughter, looting and forced removal of defenseless Congolese civilians around the city of Goma this month — even though they were theoretically under the protection of 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers — are grim testimony to the consequences of making righteous-sounding promises without thinking enough about the means to carry them out. The money men and women of the Group of 20 should take note.

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