Before sitting down to write this column, I went online to check the latest news from Africa. I was going to write a column arguing passionately, and, I hope, convincingly, about the need for Western intervention in the African country of Cote d’Ivoire.

So, you can rightly assume that I was both surprised and delighted to read on the New York Times website that the United Nations and France have begun military strikes against the forces of former president Laurent Gbagbo.

Former president Gbagbo lost his campaign to remain president of Cote d’Ivoire, a former French colony, last November. The election, certified by several international agencies as fair and honest, awarded the presidency of this cocoa-rich nation to Alassane Ouattara. Unfortunately, Gbagbo refused to accept his loss, and held on to power. Since then, the situation in Cote d’Ivoire has only deteriorated.

Negotiations floundered, Ouattara set up his own government in his U.N.-protected hotel room, and, eventually, armed fighting began between forces loyal to each side.

Cote d’Ivoire descended into violence between pro-Ouattara supporters in the largely Muslim north and pro-Gbagbo supporters in the largely Christian south.

This violence culminated recently in the massacre of 1000 civilians in the town of Duekoue, a dangerous step towards genocide.

(Both sides deny responsibility for this massacre, though it does look like the blame falls on Ouattara’s forces.)

So I am pleased that France and the United Nations have stepped in to do something about it. France and the United Nations have commenced air strikes against military and political targets in Cote d’Ivoire. I am glad that someone in the Western world realized they had a duty to do so.

Yes, I said a duty.

You see, I advocate Western intervention to prevent genocides not just because I believe those who can prevent genocide have a responsibility to do so, and not because I am some naive bleeding heart who does not understand the so-called “real world.”

My insistence on aid and intervention for Cote d’Ivoire comes from my belief that the United States and Western Europe have a duty to help places like South America and Africa because our ability to do so, our wealth and all it buys for us, has been made at the expense of these places.

As a society, we often try to forget about the misdeeds of our past, to pretend things were not as bad as they truly were or to try to distance ourselves from what we claim to be the mistakes of our ancestors and therefore not our responsibility.

This is a fallacious argument.

Much of the wealth and power on which this country sits and uses to mold so much of the world into the shapes we find most pleasing has come to us because of what we and European imperial powers were able to take from places like Africa.

The Western world robbed Africa of its people and its resources, yet we assume that having given African countries their independence — a gift that we did not give but which we gave back — somehow absolves us of responsibility for the repercussions that African nations continue to suffer through.

By initiating military strikes against the despotic and violent forces of Laurent Gbagbo, France has made a bold step toward repaying the debt it owes its former colony and might just save a lot of lives in the process.

I hope, but do not expect, that we might see a greater response from the Western world toward the prevention of genocide and violence around the world, especially toward countries to which we owe so very much.