Shouldn't those pondering the pros and cons of military intervention in Sudan also be wondering whether the US should also intervene in other regions of Africa where people are facing depredation - especially if the main concern is not specifially about Darfur but about people in general suffering? Why is Sudan 'more important'.
One clear difference between Ethiopia, the Congo and Uganda on the one hand and Sudan on the other is that the governments of these countries are friendly (to say the least) to the United States and major recipients of US military aid - whereas the government of Sudan is not only not a US ally, but an important part of and furthermore, has been flirting openly with the Chinese government and giving the Chinese all kinds of access to Sudanese goodies - at the expense of American and Canadian oil and mining concerns such as Talisman Energy.
Another matter to keep in mind is the counterfeit notion, driving much of the Save Darfur hallaballoo, is the 'never again' mantra with respect to Rwanda. The false idea that the west 'stood by and did nothing' as people perished in Rwanda and by god we won't let this happen again. The West, especially the United States and France were heavily involved in that situation - the French via their ties to the Habriyamana government and the United States through its direct sponsorship (se http://www.globalresearch.org/view_article.php?aid=609297505 ), through Uganda, of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (led by elitist Tutsi exiles) who not only waged a ten year revanchist guerilla war against the Rwandan government but precipitated and participated in the mass killings that ensued. What happened in Rwnda was not a Hutu vs. Tutsi war as portrayed in the excessively mawkish and misleading Hotel Rwanda (see below)
Back to Darfur, it is therefore not so much a matter of whether or not to reflexively oppose US military intervention, but a matter of gaining a better and clear eyes understanding of the historical and current context of events there and identifying what strategic interests are at play for all the parties (including France in particular). We are all grown up enough to know that even supposedly pious food aid NGOs - much less armies, are deeply involved in cynical manipulations - for political and financial gain.
Of course we all want to stop human suffering, but blindly taking cues about who to save and when from the state department and an assortment of single-issue do-gooders hardly seems the way to go.
Joe W.
some instructive passages from Keith Snow's article: HOTEL RWANDA: Hollywood and the Holocaust in Central Africa
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20051016&articleId=1096
The Pillars of Hotel Rwanda
When Human Rights Watch investigated the genocide, they sent Alison des Forges to tell the story, and the product of her long investigations was the fat treatise on genocide in Rwanda titled Leave None to Tell the Story. Irony is heaped upon irony when we consider that those who are left to tell the story are silenced by the authorized storytellers like Alison des Forges.
“Alison des Forges is a liar,” says Cameroonian journalist Charles Onana, author of The Secrets of the Genocide. “She is a LIAR.” Paul Kagame, RPF General and President of Rwanda, sued Onana for defamation in a French court: Kagame lost.[8]
“Des Forges has written a book which has become the bible regarding Rwanda,” says Jean Marie Higiro, former Director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR) who fled with his family in early April 1994. “Everyone points to her book even though some of what she has produced is fiction. I don’t think she is an intentional liar, but I don’t know why she investigated Hutu human rights abuses but no RPF human rights abuses.”
Hotel Rwanda is built on the pillars of selective human rights reporting, but it really takes off from the celebrated text We Regret To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, the New Yorker magazine’s premier Africa expert.
“Gourevitch's short book should be compulsory reading for Heads of State and Ministers of Defence all over Africa,” wrote Guardian reporter Victoria Brittain, “as well as for all UN officials involved in peacekeeping operations and humanitarian aid, from the Secretary General on down, and the heads of missionary orders in the US, France and Belgium.” Brittain is a Nation magazine contributor on genocide in Rwanda. Notably, a U.S. immigration judge in St. Paul Minnesota imposed Gourevitch’s book as compulsory reading for all attorneys dealing with Rwandan refugees requesting political asylum.[9]
What we never learn about Philip Gourevitch is that his brother-in-law, Jamie Rubin, was Madeleine Albright’s leading man and, through him, Gourevitch planted in the public mind a narrow perspective on Rwanda. Funding for Gourevitch’s book came from the United States Institute for Peace, a State Department offshoot.[10] An intimate pal of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Philip Gourevitch is not an impartial journalist, regardless of how much you may have loved his book, or been moved by it, because he has taken sides, and he has told only one side of the story, and he has told it badly, and he has been rewarded for his fine job in telling it badly.
“Gourevitch begins the story with the Tutsi as these saintly victims,” the Times’ Howard French says. “And I don’t think Gourevitch is a stupid guy. I think that it’s just sheer intellectual dishonesty… Gourevitch was coming out in the New Yorker every other month with this very well written and--if you don’t know the facts--very compelling picture about Rwanda… as the Israel of central Africa and the Tutsis as the Jews of central Africa. That’s powerful stuff. But I’m on the ground in Central Africa seeing that the reality is very, very different.” [11]
The theme of genocide in Rwanda--whether true or false--has birthed an industry that revolves around a standard, simplified plot. The appearance of the film Hotel Rwanda marks the coup de grace in the long process whereby the facts, the ugly realities and dirty details of what really happened in Rwanda have been distilled into a neat and tidy story that proliferates in the media, in film, in literature, at seminars on genocide and workshops on reconciliation, and it is the predominant discourse in academia. Quebec journalist Robin Philpot calls it “the right and proper tale.” [12]
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> From: sawicky at verizon.net
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] "Save Darfur": Evangelicals and Official "Jewish Leaders"
> Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:11:27 -0400
>
> This is kind of perverse. It's like saying commies instigated the civil
> rights movement.
> My wife is going -- I'm not -- and she just wants to keep people from
> getting murdered.
>
>
>
>
>
> The fact that the aggressors in Darfur are Arab Muslims - though it
> should be said that the victims are also mostly Muslim - and are
> supported by a regime in Khartoum that is backed by the Arab League
> has made some people question the true motives of some of the Jewish
> organizations involved in the rally.
>
> (Gal Beckerman, "US Jews Leading Darfur Rally Planning," Jerusalem
> Post, 27 April 2006,
> <http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961241838&pagename=JPost%2FJ
> PArticle%2FPrinter>)</blockquote>
>
> Should we laugh or should we cry?
>
>
> ___________________________________
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