[Peace-discuss] Humanitarian intervention

[C. G. Estabrook]

I don't see a metaphor here, Mort -- rather comparisons drawn
among actual and potential cases of misnamed humanitarian
intervention.  --CGE

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:03:19 -0600
>From: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel at uiuc.edu>  
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Humanitarian intervention  
>To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>Cc: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>
>Haven't had the opportunity, recently, to use an old cry:
>
>"Block that metaphor! "
>
>--mkb
>
>
>On Feb 16, 2006, at 11:00 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> [The semi-official US government television channel, PBS,
devoted  
>> much of its evening newscast tonight to announcing (with
the help  
>> of Senators Brownback and Obama) that "the international
community  
>> [sic] and some U.S. senators have called for increased
involvement  
>> in the Darfur region of Sudan to stop the violence that
began three  
>> years ago and has since claimed more than 200,000 lives."
Some have  
>> argued that there's no parallel between the media campaign
against  
>> what is called genocide in Sudan and a similar campaign
against  
>> Serbia during the Clinton administration.  Others find it
odd that  
>> there is today so much talk about the undoubted horrors in
Darfur  
>> and none about the Congo, where four million people have
died in  
>> the same period; or that children in southern Africa now
die every  
>> day at the same rate as at the height of the killing in
Rwanda,  
>> because Western drug companies withhold the medicines for
easily  
>> treatable diseases.  Can it be that the US government (as  
>> represented by those bipartisan senators) chooses the Darfur  
>> atrocity rather than other ones because it has useful
propaganda  
>> effects -- it can be portrayed (with considerable
distortion, but  
>> not pure lies) as chargeable to Arabs, a useful hate object?   
>> Furthermore, here in what Gore Vidal calls the "United
States of  
>> Amnesia," why do so few recall the events of just seven
years ago,  
>> when Japan felt called upon to exercise its rights of
humanitarian  
>> intervention?  The Prime Minister of Japan set out his
reasons in a  
>> speech of 24 March 1999: it's translated from the Japanese,
below.  
>> (Some have noted that it's similar to the speech President
Clinton  
>> gave in the same month, announcing the US-NATO attack on
Kosovo,  
>> which Clinton presented as a clear instance of humanitarian  
>> intervention; the Japanese PM obviously saw his actions in
the same  
>> light.) --CGE]
>>
>>    Thu, 25 Mar 1999
>>    Japan bombs New Mexico
>> ...