4/29/2006

just smoke the janjaweed, mon

Can anyone explain to me why the heck we haven't just gone in bombed the crap out of the janjaweed militias in Darfur yet?

It's a simple question. Why are we discussing potential airstrikes on Iran but none on the murdering children-mutilating rapist thug scum?

Related: What the United States can do to end the crisis in Sudan (audio from NPR.org)

1 comment:

Thomas Nephew said...

Are these rhetorical questions? The national security of the United States or its allies (ie, Israel) is not directly affected. Darfur is not in a region of the world where the US belongs to an affected alliance (as with the Balkans and NATO). That leaves the African Union and the UN; the US is helping the former, and pressing the latter.

That's not to say military assistance shouldn't be considered and expanded (assuming we have some to spare). I support US involvement in a humanitarian, internationalized peacekeeping mission. What I get from the NPR piece is that fairly appropriate action along those lines is being taken (or attempted) by the US, although not with the energy and resources I'd like.

My own Darfur post from Sunday's DC rally is here. I'll say here that part of me does just want the US to ride to the rescue, and I don't enjoy making distinctions based on allies, alliances, or an international system that left Bosnia and now Darfur in the lurch for so long. I'll admit that were we not bogged down in Iraq on what turned out to be false pretenses, I might feel differently. But I'd still want to know that there was no alternative to US military action, and I don't know that yet.