But these are also times of crises, the global financial crisis for example, which did not leave the Western world. Sirens signaling that the crisis is alive and kicking can still be heard loud and clear in the US and the European Union.

The EU has been fighting unsuccessfully to emerge from the debt crisis. Greece and Ireland (more so Greece) are battling to keep afloat in the deluge of debts. Spain, Portugal and Italy may be next. And others, if debt factors remain constant, are feared to follow in their footsteps.

We are talking in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars. The European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other EU member states have lent money to Greece and Ireland, but they have also expressed reluctance to keep doing so for long. The World Bank, in fact, has refused to help Greece.

The situation in the US may not be as bad as that in Greece, but it sure has its problems, which refuse to go away.

But then NATO and Western forces have enough money to launch another war (in Libya). It's a different matter, though, that they have lost hundreds of billions of dollars and sacrificed the lives of thousands of their own citizens in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Why don't Western leaders divert the money they are wasting on wars to save their own likes in Greece and Ireland, and possibly Spain, Portugal and perhaps Italy? Why don't they use the money to improve the lives of their own people and spare them the draconian austerity measures, instead of using it to kill people in poorer countries?

Perhaps, it's wrong to lament the possible loss of Roman ruins (Leptis Magna was first built by the Phoenicians, though). Why should leaders who don't care about living people (or the future generation) care about those dead and long gone?

The author is a senior editor with China Daily.

(China Daily 06/20/2011 page8)