'Who Says 'Save Darfur?'
By Joe Mariani (01/31/07)
There is no doubt that Darfur, the western part of Sudan, is in a horrible situation. Members of the Janjaweed milita, a radical Muslim group supported by Sudan's Arab government, roam the land killing, raping, burning and pillaging. About two million people -- blacks, either non-Muslims or not Muslim enough to suit the militias -- have fled their homes for refugee camps, where they are brutalised and terrorised on a daily basis. Approximately two hundred thousand people have been killed since February 2003, according to a study by Dr. John Hagen of Northwestern University. The Sudanese government has refused to allow the United Nations to send international troops. And the UN, tired of the violence (or perhaps unable to wring a dishonest Euro out of the situation) is considering whether to just pull out, taking with them what slim hope the refugees have left.
And so, as in any dire situation, the world turns to America for help. Activists and protesters demand that President Bush stop the genocide. Hollywood actors appear in television and print ads urging action in Darfur. When President Bush mentioned Darfur in his 2007 State of the Union address, Democrats leapt to their feet, clapping wildly. When he spoke of victory in Iraq a few seconds earlier, however, most Democrats sat in stony silence. Those on the Left keep telling us that we're not the world's police. Ideological brothers-in-arms to those who cry, "Save Darfur!" recently marched in Washington DC alongside Vietnam-era traitor Jane Fonda, denounced the President for sending troops to Iraq, spat at an Iraq war veteran on crutches and defaced the Capitol. How dare they demand he send troops to Sudan?
Besides, for what purpose should we send troops -- to simply stand between members of an Islamic militia and their victims? Liberals and their pet Democrats attack the President daily for his proposal to reinforce American troops in Iraq who (as they see things) serve only as targets for the enemy. We are constantly treated to Left-wing hand-wringing over the dangers faced by (again, in their twisted view) the "children" who were "sent by Bush to die" in a "war of choice." Time magazine recently captured the Liberal attitude in a cartoon: rows of soldierly silhouettes wearing targets on their backs, with the caption, "21,500 reasons to oppose Bush's troop surge." Yet the same people want us to send those troops to perform that function in Sudan instead?
Or are we to believe that they want those troops to remove the Arab government behind the genocide? Let us apply the "Iraq test" to the Darfur situation, to help anticipate whether Liberals would consider regime change in Sudan a "good" war or a "bad" war once it reached the limit of their short attention spans. Sudan poses no possible threat to America. Sudan never attacked us. The violence in Sudan is contained. Sudan is not threatening to invade its neighbors, has no weapons of mass destruction, and we already know that Liberals do not generally believe there is an Islamic terrorist threat to the world.
If President Bush sent troops to remove Sudan's president, and if they were true to their professed principles, the anti-war crowd would practically break their necks rushing out to the streets to hold a protest rally. They have shown by opposing the war in Iraq that they do not consider genocide or brutality sufficient reasons to impose change on a "sovereign" government, even one so heinous as that of Saddam Hussein or Sudan's Umar Hasan Ahmad Al-Bashir.
We should not commit troops to a situation in which the Left would once again have the chance to stab them in the back without a pressing national interest -- and there is no such need for American troops to be in Sudan. As much as we should oppose genocide and fanatical Muslim mass murderers, the same Liberals who demand US action there have damned it by their own overblown criticism of US action elsewhere.
Hat tip to RightThinkingGirl for the Time magazine cartoon.
http://guardian.blogdrive.com/archive/cm-01_cy-2007_m-01_d-31_y-2007_o-0.html
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