October 2, 2004
DAMNED IF YOU DO...:
US 'hyping' Darfur genocide fears (Peter Beaumont, October 3, 2004, The Observer)
American warnings that Darfur is heading for an apocalyptic humanitarian catastrophe have been widely exaggerated by administration officials, it is alleged by international aid workers in Sudan. Washington's desire for a regime change in Khartoum has biased their reports, it is claimed.The government's aid agency, USAID, says that between 350,000 and a million people could die in Darfur by the end of the year. Other officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, have accused the Sudanese government of presiding over a 'genocide' that could rival those in Bosnia and Rwanda.
But the account has been comprehensively challenged by eyewitness reports from aid workers and by a new food survey of the region. The nutritional survey of Sudan's Darfur region, by the UN World Food Programme, says that although there are still high levels of malnutrition among under-fives in some areas, the crisis is being brought under control.
'It's not disastrous,' said one of those involved in the WFP survey, 'although it certainly was a disaster earlier this year..."
So now we're to be blamed if our policy works too?
We were working pretty amicably with the regime--which realized after Bill Clinton cruise-missiled the country that they were better off getting along with us--on a peace settlement in the South until the killing in Darfur started, then we made it an issue and that's brought it under control. No one's talking about regime change and we'd prefer not to have to send our own troops in. It's much better for all concerned if the African Union patrols its own backyard. You have to have a serious hate on for America to view this episode of our interventionism darkly.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 2, 2004 11:14 PMThe UN is the source of the criticism. It is long past time for them to leave the States, us to leave that fetid swamp of an organization and for the space on the East River to be used for a new stadium for the Jets and Mets. At least it would be an impetus to finish the vaunted 2d Avenue subway line which has been a work in progress since Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor.
Posted by: Bart at October 3, 2004 6:30 AMI think all of us are just beginning to realize how influential the Tranzi movement described so perceptively by O'Sullivan below is. It is every bit as dangerous as marxism was in the 30's and 40's because it has so captured the imagination of the world's intellectual and other elites that the damage it is causing is ignored, hidden or simply seen as unfortunate excess(like the Ukraine famine). There is a very long and heavy intellectual slog ahead, and a lot of dying, before it is seen critically. For now, it is just the apocalyptic hope of mankind for millions. Like marxism, it promises peace, prosperity and simplicity without individual effort or sacrifice--who isn't for that?
That it has no army or even central direction may not matter all that much if its ability to corrupt continues unabated. It has succeeded in convincing most of the world and too much of the States that Iraq was an oppressive, imperialist failure rather than a liberating success. It has raised anti-Americanism to new heights, including apparently in America, and its teflon appeal to emotion protects it from having to take any responsibility for its murderous failures-- Rwanda, AIDS, terrorism, etc. When France is the international hero and the U.S. the bad guy, you know you are up against an idea whose time has come--and a bad one.
This extensive, powerful community is no more going to allow the U.S. to get credit for saving Darfurians than European communists were willing to thank it for the Marshal Plan. Pulling out of the UN may or may not be a good idea, but it will be no quick fix.
Posted by: Peter B at October 3, 2004 8:09 AMUnder control?
A million subsistence farmers have been chased off their farms? What could be more disastrous?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 3, 2004 2:23 PMIf they'd been murdered.
Posted by: oj at October 3, 2004 2:30 PMThat's how you murder subsistence farmers.
How Stalin did, anyhow.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 6, 2004 1:45 AM