Fitzgerald: The Sudan, American Power, and Samantha Power

Samantha Power is one of the two people (the other is Nicholas Kristof) whose careers have benefited from their deep expressed concern over the situation in Darfur. No one in particular made a career out of the mass-murder of non-Muslims in southern Sudan, now about to be put back into full gear, or seemed as deeply concerned over the deaths of about 2 million non-Muslims, as they do about a tenth or a fifth that number of Muslims in Darfur. This may be because they can present the Darfur business, incorrectly of course (google "Islam as a vehicle of Arab supremacism"), as having "nothing to do with Islam" -- because, you see, both murderers and victims are Muslims: it is only Arab Muslims killing non-Arab Muslims.

One wonders if Samantha Power has given any thought to what motivates the Arabs in Khartoum, who have supported the Janjaweed to the hilt, and to the other Arabs, behind the Arabs in Khartoum, in Cairo and elsewhere, who have been running diplomatic interference for the Sudanese Arabs -- Egypt and the Arab League in particular. They never dropped a tear as they contemplated what was going on in Darfur, but are quite pleased with themselves at having prevented, or at least greatly delayed, the only thing that might stop the continued massacres in Darfur, and the renewal of massacres in the southern Sudan -- that is, intervention by a few thousand American troops, who could seize both Darfur, and the southern Sudan, and hold that territory until the inhabitants could express their desires in a referendum on independence.

For there is no way -- none -- that the Arab Muslims will ever stop (in 1900 the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was 90% black African) in their goal of killing or pushing out or reducing to a state of helplessness the black Africans, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

If she cares to figure out as to how what has been happening in the Sudan is prompted by Islam, is explained, both in the south, by the murderous hatred for Infidels that Islam inculcates and that the primitive masses of Muslims so fixedly believe, and in Darfur, by the Arab supremacism that is part of Islam, that would represent a geopolitical, and in the end a moral, advance.

And if she wishes to go even farther, and promote the idea of an American intervention, and wishes to understand that the way to win political support for such humanitarian intervention is to present it, truthfully, as a way to limit the downward march of Islam through east Africa (Ethiopia is the next target, one that the Egyptians are most interested in because they want an islamized, and submissive-to-Egypt Ethiopia give up plans to divert, for the purposes of irrigation, part of the headwaters of the Nile) that too would be an advance.

But it will require her to start to look steadily, and whole, at Islam. Can she do it?

The American government is missing its chance in Darfur and in the southern Sudan. It could use as justification any number of actions by the Sudanese government to seize both the southern Sudan and Darfur -- or at the very least, to destroy every plane and helicopter in possession of that regime, as a warning that it must stop.

That might be enough to change the balance of forces. It might be enough to hearten non-Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs (who need to be reminded at every step of how Islam has always been a vehicle for Arab supremacism) both in the Sudan and in Ethiopia. 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 be kept from expanding, but can 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.

Nothing else remains to be done -- except to get those in power, or those close to those in power, to listen. Starting with Power, Samantha.

Posted by Hugh at March 14, 2008 9:56 AM
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