The American government is missing its chance in Darfur and in the southern Sudan. The inhabitants of Darfur, if they could somehow get word out, would also ask for American forces, as some Somalis are now said to be doing, and with greater cause.
And over the past 20 years, the Christians and animists in southern Sudan have done so. But during the past twenty years the West did not listen, just as during the Biafra War it did nothing to help the Biafrans, and nothing to stop the Egyptian pilots from strafing Ibo villages. But now the Camp of Islam can be better comprehended. The Arab Muslims of Khartoum are supported completely by Egypt and other Arab Muslims. Nor has there been a single word of protest about the 20-year-long Jihad against the Christians and animists in the southern Sudan from the Arab League or any Arab government or spokesman. And that is to be expected: the solidarity of the umma al-islamiyya is what matters. Why should Arabs care what Arabs to Christian and animist blacks in the southern Sudan, or Kurds in Iraq, or any non-Muslims anywhere?
There has also been the same silence, complicity, support for the Arab Muslims in Darfur, where the inferior -- because non-Arab -- Muslims are being killed and driven out of their lands by Arab Muslims. The Americans could use as justification any number of actions by the Sudanese government to seize, without an enormous effort, both the southern Sudan and Darfur -- or at the very least, to destroy every plane and helicopter in possession of the Khartoum regime, as a warning that it must stop, and to ensure that it will, in any case, no longer possess the means to continue.
That might be enough to change the balance of forces. It might be enough to hearten non-Muslims and non-Arab Muslims in the Sudan and especially among black Christians in Ethiopia. Those groups need to be reminded, to have their consciousnesses raised at every step, of how Islam has always been a vehicle for Arab supremacism. (The other day the BBC had a long piece on Harar, described by the female reporter as "the fourth city of Islam." Her sympathies were clearly with the Muslims. Her voice dripped with fellow feeling for the put-upon Muslims, and incomprehension and hostility toward the government of Ethiopia that in her view was leaving Harar as an ill-considered backwater, no doubt part of a Christian plot against those inoffensive -- everywhere inoffensive -- Muslims.)
And such a move would hearten Christians in southern Nigeria, in Togo, in the Ivory Coast, and in Kenya and Tanzania. They need a boost. They need to believe that Islam is on the run, that what they see as the Christian West will defend them, as it did not defend the Biafrans during the 1967-69 War. It will send a message to Egypt: stop telling Ethiopia what it can or cannot do with the headwaters of the Nile, some of which Ethiopia quite rightly wishes to use for irrigation projects. The Nile does not belong to Egypt alone.
And the destruction of the Sudanese airforce will be a signal as well to the Arab countries that Dar al-Islam can not only not expand, but be forcibly contained, or even subject to violent contraction. Remove those planes and those helicopters in one fell swoop. It should not take much. It would send a message the way messages are sent in the Muslim world:
This far, and no farther.
American troops should only be sent where the end result will be to damage the Camp of Islam and Jihad in the most cost-effective way possible. The greatest damage to Islam's spread, and to the Camp of Islam, that could right now be done is in the Sudan, through a humanitarian effort to protect those being mass-murdered. Even Nicolas Kristof would have to approve. And even the E.U. and, outwardly, most of the U.N. would have to go along. Only the Arab League would still dare to express its rage at this effort to protect non-Arab Muslims and non-Muslims.
Every move should be calculated. Does this weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad, at the low cost to us? Does it properly exploit the pre-existing fissures within Islam? Perhaps, in Somalia, the answer is yes. Or perhaps not -- perhaps the locals’ hatred for the Islamic Courts will soon be outweighed by dislike, or whipped-up hatred, for the Infidels -- whatever the local warlords and those in the previous government think. That is only to be expected from a Muslim population. In the Sudan, however, the black Africans in Darfur have had their own experience with Arab Muslims murdering them, and their own Islam is rudimentary -- as it would have to be with a largely illiterate population. They are much less likely to be prompted by the anti-Infidel sentiments than the Muslims of Somalia, who have not experienced the full fury of the Arab Muslims. That is, they have not experienced or recognized Islam as a vehicle of Arab imperialism. They may even complacently think of themselves as Arabs, and continue to do so until the real Arabs decide to let them know otherwise.
One hopes that Sudan (that is, southern Sudan, with its already producing oil wells, and Darfur, with potential oil wealth -- which would allow a new independent state to be self-sustaining) will still be higher on the list of places where American forces should intervene directly, than Muslim Somalia. By intervention one means something far less than the massive, fool's errand mess of Iraq, but something beyond the odd A-130 attack and whatever supplies and training are now being offered Ethiopia and other non-Muslim forces in and close to the Horn of Africa.
"to destroy every plane and helicopter in possession of that regime"
This could be easily accomplished. Muslims understand destruction and the power of the gun. They respect violent power.
And that's ALL they respect
As I understand it the Sudan is one place where human slavery is still common practice, I am always confused why those who go on at great lengths about the past existance (I do agree slavery always was, is, and will be, evil) of human slavery in the USA but show no intrest in wanting to stamp out the practice worldwide, once and for all.
Do we need any more bodies of our kid soldiers to be dragged thru the streets of Mogadishu, before we learn our lesson?
The more the u.s. interferes, the less the people there get up the fortitude, unity and rage - utter rage - to enable them to fight back against the moslems. HONEST RAGE!
In their own country -
This is the same with other countries in Africa, and in Haiti, etc.
"Do we need any more bodies of our kid soldiers to be dragged thru the streets of Mogadishu, before we learn our lesson?"
......the lesson learned was not to attempt a job unless you intend to finish it.....unfortunately, there was no plan to do anything... and our supreme military commander Willy Clinton did his impression of the French and simply ran away at the sound of the first shot....
It is unfortunate the only bodies left in Mogadishu were Americans......
Well, someone else who remembers what stupid Willy did . . .
Click "more" top right then check the links.
Another link under the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DozLuoBxusM
Hugh
I'd say arm the Christians soldiers in the South, and let them go at it. However, I'd hold off supporting the Black Muslims of Darfur unless they officially jettisoned Islam. What would they have to lose - their treatment couldn't be any worse.
But I'm against doing anything for non-Arab Muslims simply because of their enemity towards Arabs - be they Kurds, Barbers, Darfurites, et al.
But the Dar Furians are getting the word out, via George Clooney (oops, he's a bete noire of the Right) and commercials on TV.
However..let's take into account that the word Darfur means Dar Fur or (Abode of the Fur (a Black African tribe), and the Fur are Muslims. What is happening in Dar Fur is an act of genocide, while Arab muslims are trying to wipe out black muslims.
Do we have any vested interested in saving one muslim entity from the actions of another?
I don't think so.. unless you wish to revise your opinion of the Sunni vs Shi'a violence in Iraq.
"Do we have any vested interested in saving one muslim entity from the actions of another? I don't think so.. unless you wish to revise your opinion of the Sunni vs Shi'a violence in Iraq."
-- from a posting above
If you don't see what the difference is, then you have missed a main point of my 600-odd postings about Iraq. I stressed that the sectarian split between Sunni Arab and Shi'a Arab should be a matter of indifference, and the only "dog in the fight is the fight itself." Surely you remember that.
But then at the same time I always insisted that the struggle of non-Arab Muslims to throw off the Arab yoke should be supported, and for several reasons. ONe is that any conflict which helps to increase the consciousness of the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arabs, that in Islam the Arabs see themselves as superior,and that Islam itself encourages them in that belief, for the belief-system originates in the need for something that could justify and promote Arab conquest of other, much wealthier and more advanced peoples by those Arabs. One wishes to have starkly presented the real clash within Islam between Arabs and non-Arabs, and helping the black Africnas of Darfur -- whose Islam is rudimentary, and who may even be likely candidates, at this point, for conversion (especially if saved by smiling Americans, seen as Christian saviors)-- would do that.
In Iraq, of course, the non-Arab Muslmis who have been persecuted are the Kurds, and a main reason for supporting the KUrds -- as suporting the Berbers in North Africa -- is that while Islam has a strong, mesmerizing hold over many of its followers, that hold is reinforced by the sense of "Uruba" or "Arabness" and is weakened, however slightly, by the sense of not being Arab, and weakened far more if the people in question --Kurds or Darfurian blacks or Berbers or others -- have been on the receiving end of Arab attentions.
You misread me. You misunderstood. There is no contradiction in what I have written before about Iraq and what I have written about supporting the Christians and animists, and non-Arab Muslims of the Sudan.
Do you ever feel like you are talking to a wall?
i agree with Hugh.
in mid-2001, there was a head of steam building up in the US for some firm action against the Sudanese government. see
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103/28.htm
when Bush appointed Danforth as his special envoy to the Sudan on September 6, 2001, i really was hopeful that something was going to happen. unfortunately, what happened was 9/11.
part of the fall-out of 9/11 should, in my opinion, should have been rapid action to support opponents of the Sudanese government, even if only with a few 'advisors' and special weapons to counter the government's control of the air.
instead, someone decided that the Sudanese government, with its long history of deceit, really wanted to be 'our bastards' and help in the GWOT.
since then, the Sudanese government seems to have been allowed to carry on as usual, and even to expand the activities of the Janjaweed wef 2003.
islamists are, generally, brutal people. sooner or later, they do brutal things. they actions make enemies, and those enemies, whether Muslim or not, can be our allies.
choosing not to help or, god forgive us, acting like we might help them and then abandoning them, is stupid and self-defeating.
since the dweeb in the white house is so averse to using the fleet & the air force i recommend reducing the budgets of both by say 50%. no sense in using something which will not likely ever to be used
Posted by: god
well the previous dweeb in the white house left somalie with its tail tucked under, and after that kaos and the murderous islamist taking charge.
so the current dweeb is at least using more fire power, and l hope he keeps it up, and perhaps leads to more fire power in the sudan. you know is instead of all this brow beating a man, all this negative persection by the dinoshaur media has caused the demomcrats to take over control of both house, and now you are in worse shape than ever.
Thanks, Hugh. My daughter's boyfriend is a southern Sudanese Christian. He's been shot thirteen times by the jihadis - unlucky number, but still kicking, despite a few scars.
Lily has met many interesting Sudanese refugees. Her boyfriend's cousin just joined the US Army. They're all super pro-American and want to help in the War on Terror, as it were.
The Darfur inhabitants could be described as " moderate Muslims ". And look what is happening to them at the hands of their ' muslim brothers ', they are faced with genocide.
As for the world wide " vast majority of moderate muslims " they apparently see nothing wrong with this as you do not hear a peep from them.
Given the means muslims will kill themselves off on religious grounds.
-----Nossy
The two faces of Islam. Well spoken, Hugh, well spoken. The two faces of Islam. I would like to outline what this means to me, in light of what Hugh has so masterfully posted.
In theory, at least, the Western world is loathe to follow the example so colorfully explicated by Mohammed and his 'companions'. Westerners do not wish to kill infidels where they find them, nor Jews hiding behind rocks and trees that speak to Moslems. Nor Moslems who hide behind the deceptive veil of religion, misleading Westerners who are loathe to go to war.
Because Western people tend to read more than a single 'holy' book and because the Western mind always searches for answers to the question: Why?, there are innumerable history books, filled with the consequences of war; and movies that bring such histories to life (what an awful pun!). Westerners are aware, perhaps too aware, of the awful consequences that war brings. The Western world is loathe to go to war. Hence the concept of 'police action', as in Vietnam et al... and now Iraq.
Millions, nay hundreds of millions of Moslems, are precisely the opposite. They remain oblivious to the true horror that war brings. Their muftis and imams speak of glory and heaven and blessings and booty, while conveniently leaving out the nitty gritties, such as razed cities, pestilence, famine, zero population growth as the young are orphaned or abandoned. The real consequences of war, as outlined in freely available history accounts, are withheld from the general Moslem populace; to be replaced by outright lies and deceptions.
And then the Moslem strikes out against his fellow Moslem, Shiite against Sunni, Arab against black, in what can be described only as war or, heaven forbid! as GENOCIDE. And we Westerners, so loathe to go to war, fail to see an opportunity to utterly discredit the cause of this seeming contradiction viz a viz Islam, itself.
Israel showed the way in 1982, by destroying Saddam's nuclear reactor just as it went hot. Perhaps a dozen people died. Perhaps a handful of helicopter gunships wreak havoc with the defenseless citizens of the non-Arab Sudan ie 90% of the population. Ethiopia shows the way, using somewhat more than mere harsh language. Casualties are relatively few and tend to be those bearing arms ie soldiers. So, yes, destroy that pernicious little air force, stating explicitly that only true cowards would use such weaponry against unarmed civilians. Discredit the Kartoon govt and be prepared to revoke its 'sovereignty' if it continues to slaughter its own people. Demonstrate that as much as the West hates war, it hates cold blooded murder on a genocidal scale even more. And teach the people that all this horror and endless bloodshed has its cause and root in one book: the Q'ran.
Well said, Hugh, Well said!