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Now!
"tens of thousands of
protesters rallied around the world on Sunday in a global day
against genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan ... In New York,
organizers said over 30,000 people gathered in Central Park.
Speakers included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
[sic] ... Demonstrations and vigils were also held on Sunday
in Berlin, Dubai, Dublin, London, Melbourne, Paris, Seoul and
Stockholm and dozens of other cities. The global day of protests
was organized to coincide with the start of the United Nations
General Assembly debate this week on Sudan. Late last week the
actor George Clooney testified before the United Nations Security
Council."
What might be called the liberal
position on Darfur can be stated as follows:
"The people of Darfur
have suffered unspeakable violence, and America has called these
atrocities what they are -- genocide. For the last two years,
America joined with the international community to provide emergency
food aid and support for an African Union peacekeeping force.
Yet your suffering continues. The world must step forward to
provide additional humanitarian aid -- and we must strengthen
the African Union force that has done good work, but is not strong
enough to protect you. The Security Council has approved a resolution
that would transform the African Union force into a blue-helmeted
force that is larger and more robust. To increase its strength
and effectiveness, NATO nations should provide logistics and
other support. The regime in Khartoum is stopping the deployment
of this force. If the Sudanese government does not approve this
peacekeeping force quickly, the United Nations must act."
The liberal position is hardly
distinguishable from
(a) the Bush administration's
position on Darfur, and
(b) the Clinton administration's
position on Kosovo.
In both cases the cry of genocide
and "humanitarian" intervention is used to cover the
USG's imperial machinations to reduce a state (respectively Sudan
and Serbia) that was unreliable from the US/Israeli POV.
For Clinton, "NATO must
act" -- and the situation of Kosovo got worse, but Serbia
was brought to heel. For Bush, "the United Nations must
act" (with NATO providing logistics and "other support")
-- and the wretched situation in Darfur will probably get worse,
but Sudan, an oil-producing state (much of its production goes
to China) will be put under increasing pressure.
Of major media, only the BBC
has said at all clearly that Khartoum's resistance to "peacekeepers"
was based on "well-founded fears of the designs of Western
governments on Sudan." Meanwhile self-styled US peace groups
and the Israeli lobby urge "Out of Iraq and into Darfur!"
People honestly concerned about
Darfur should listen to the calm common sense of Alex de Waal,
a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard, an advisor
to the African Union, and author of "Darfur:
A Short History of a Long War":
"I don't believe there
is a military solution. It will not defeat the holdout rebel
groups. What it will do is, it will kill more people, create
more hunger, create more displacement and make the situation
even more intractable ... I think the key thing to bear in mind
is that the solution to Darfur is a political solution. No solution
can be imposed by any amount of arm twisting, any amount of bluster,
any amount of military force. Even if we sent 100,000 NATO troops,
we would not be able to impose a solution. The solution has to
come through political negotiation."
But by mobilizing the cover
story of humanitarian intervention, the Bush administration should
be able to introduce a military solution to its real problem:
how to attack another country on the Neocon hit list, another
country (like Serbia) on the concentric circle around the cynosure
of US foreign policy, Middle East energy resources.
President Carter's National
Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has frequently expressed
the bipartisan consensus of the US foreign policy elite. "America
has major strategic and economic interests in the Middle East
that are dictated by the region's vast energy supplies,"
he wrote two years ago in The National Interest. "Not only
does America benefit economically from the relatively low costs
of Middle Eastern oil, but America's security role in the region
gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European
and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports
from the region."
And how is Sudan related to
this long-term US strategy? We have it from no less a figure
than the official hero of Kosovo, Wesley Clark: "As I went
back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior
military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still
on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more.
This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan,
he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning
with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan."
Note: what was called the liberal
position above is taken from Bush's address to the U.N. on Tuesday.
C. G. Estabrook is a retired visiting professor at
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the co-host
of the community radio program "News
from Neptune". He can be reached at: galliher@uiuc.edu
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