How About Minding Our Own Business for Once?

The U.S. is urging Sri Lanka to carry out a war crimes investigation of actions taken during its long civil war with Tamil separatists.  

The appeal by Stephen Rapp, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues, came hours after his office presented Congress with a detailed account of alleged atrocities during the conflict that suggests both sides may have violated international law and committed crimes against humanity.

Why is the this any of our business whatsoever? Why do we even have an ambassador at large for war crimes? Does Congress have nothing better to do than to hear reports about what went on in a civil war in Asia? You might think we had enough to worry about with our own wars.

Meddling in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka is not only pointless, it is clearly not in the U.S. interest. By accusing others of war crimes, when we have no involvement or interests, we invite other countries to examine our own conflicts and accuse us of war crimes. The civil war is over. How the Sri Lankan government deals with the aftermath, and whether or not it wants to conduct any investigations, should be up to Sri Lanka. The U.S. constantly invites problems by interfering in the affairs of others where it has no actual interests.

Human rights groups and political analysts have accused the Obama administration of failing to confront Sri Lanka more forcefully over reports of indiscriminate shelling of displaced civilians as it moved in to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Not only should the administration not have confronted Sri Lanka "more forcefully," it should not have confronted them at all. The U.S. is not and should not be an agent of human rights groups, many of which are often inimical to American interests.