[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] Fwd: Bush on Darfur

[C. G. Estabrook]

    May 2, 2006
    "Out of Iraq, Into Darfur"
    Just Saying No to Imperial Intervention in Sudan
    By GARY LEUPP

At the huge, inspiring antiwar march in New York yesterday, I
noticed many placards with the massage, "Out of Iraq, Into
Darfur." They were held by members of a group called
"Volunteer for Change," described as "a project of Working
Assets." I wasn't sure what to make of the slogan. Was it
somehow satirical, playing on "Out of the frying pan, into the
fire" and warning about a future Somalia-like intervention in
Africa? Or was this really a call to take U.S. troops out of
Iraq and deploy them instead in "humanitarian" "peacekeeping"
in western Sudan?

This morning I've done some Google searching and found the
answer. It is, unfortunately, the latter. Since at least last
year Working Assets has been urging people to petition
President Bush to support "urgent international action"
through the UN to "protect innocent civilians" in Darfur.
Plainly the organization finds no contradiction between
opposing imperialist military deployment in Iraq and
supporting it in Sudan. Nor, perhaps, do many of those
marching in Washington D.C. today to demand such U.S.
intervention.

For many months now I've occasionally received emails asking
me, "Why are you spending so much time attacking Bush Middle
East policy, and ignoring the atrocities in Darfur?" There are
many reasons I haven't written on it, including the fact that
I put opposing imperialist wars with their murderous
consequences at the top of my list of things to do in my spare
time, and the fact that I haven't much studied the situation
in Darfur. But I've sensed for awhile that some forces are
using the alleged "genocide" in that region to divert
attention from the ongoing slaughter in Iraq (and ongoing
brutalization of the Palestinians by Israel), and to depict
another targeted Arab regime as so villainous as to require
what the neocons call "regime change." They've
mischaracterized the conflict as one between "Arabs" and
"indigenous Africans" whereas (as I understand it) all parties
involved are Arabic-speaking black Africans---"Arab" "African"
and "black" being distinctions more complicated than most
Americans realize.

I'd ask those holding those signs yesterday to recall that in
November 2001 a general at the Pentagon told Gen. Wesley Clark
that in the wake of 9-11 the administration had "a five-year
campaign plan" to attack not only Afghanistan but "Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Somalia." I'd ask
Working Assets to observe that the Iraq War it opposes and the
Sudan intervention is endorses are in fact part of that same
empire-building campaign plan.

Last June a UN commission determined that what has been taking
place in Darfur, however awful, does not constitute a
genocidal policy by the Sudanese government. But Washington
decided otherwise, and used the highly emotional concepts of
genocide and "holocaust" to describe the situation.

It has since pushed NATO to train African Union troops to
provide peacekeeping operations in Darfur and advocated a
direct NATO presence in the region, unprecedented in Africa.
Last November, John Bolton, the bullying, bellicose,
unconfirmed U.S. ambassador to the UN who has no history of
concern for human rights, blocked a briefing by a UN envoy on
Darfur to the Security Council prepared by Juan Mendez,
Secretary General Kofi Annan's special adviser for the
prevention of genocide. In doing so he joined nations like
China and Russia for their own reasons not inclined to take
action against Sudan.

But Bolton unlike the Russian and Chinese ambassadors pushed
for such action. We know enough already, he says, now it's
time to move! Washington isn't really much interested in the
facts of the Darfur situation, any more that it was about the
facts in Iraq before it attacked that country. It's interested
rather in what the neocons call "perception management," and
is doing a good job of managing the perceptions of even some
progressives on the issue.

Today's demonstration in Washington was organized by a
coalition called "Save Darfur." It describes itself as "an
alliance of over 130 diverse faith-based, humanitarian, and
human rights organizations." The Jerusalem Post provides
additional information: "Little knownis that the coalitionwas
actually begun exclusively as an initiative of the American
Jewish community."

The American Holocaust Museum has been conspicuously involved,
and while many people feel that the term "genocide" should be
used very sparingly the Museum hasn't hesitated to draw
parallels between the Shoah and the Darfur situation.

Sudan Joining Jewish organizations are evangelical Zionist
Christian groups who see Sudan as a prime mission ground in
these Latter Days.

And as advertised, diverse organizations capable of drawing
someone like the admirably progressive actor George Clooney
into give an address at the rally.

We're talking about a rally urging a U.S./NATO intervention in
Africa's largest country, legitimated by the UN strong-armed
by a thuggish neocon-led administration in Washington. We're
talking potentially about regime change in Africa's
second-largest oil producer, in the context of planned U.S.
strikes against Syria and Iran. Should anyone in the antiwar
movement with a minimal knowledge or recent history be
comfortable with that, or suppose that it could be fully benign?

A good contingent of students from my university took the bus
to New York to participate in the New York demo. But other
progressive students elected instead to bus down to the
Washington Darfur demo the following day to demand, in effect,
that Bush do something about Darfur. As though oppressors
could be liberators.

I have no doubt that the Sudanese regime is vicious; a close
friend from Sudan indeed assures me that that is true. I think
it likely 200,000 people have, as charged, been killed by the
Janjaweed forces. But I also know the viciousness of which
"my" government is capable, and its proclivity for jumping on
humanitarian crises (Kosovo, 1999, for example) to advance its
own geopolitical strategic interests which have nothing to do
with anybody's human rights. (In occupied Iraq, about 200,000
civilians had, according to Andrew Cockburn, been killed as of
January 2006.)

When President Bush meets "Darfur advocates" in the White
House before the rally and tells them, "Those of you who are
going out to march for justice, you represent the best of our
country," he indicates pretty clearly that they're playing a
supportive role in his effort to remake the "Greater Middle East."

Throughout the country, the pious-sounding campaign on behalf
of Darfur simultaneously prettifies U.S. imperialism---if only
by asserting the latter can despite itself do some good in
this world. The honest campaigners are like Boromir, in the
Lord of the Rings, asking, "What if we were to use the Ringfor
good?" But you can't use it for good! You can't go "Out of
Iraq, Into Darfur" without bringing the principles governing
the former illegal intervention into the latter intrusion
you're so naively recommending. Imperialism's not a friendly
tool kit that can be used to fix the problems its own lackeys
jot down on the collegiate "peace and justice" to-do list.
It's the problem itself.

By all means, may the people of Darfur, including those in the
Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army
(if indeed they represent liberation), using any means
necessary, fight their oppression and seek international
allies in the process. And let those Americans who've really
studied the situation and wish to assist the struggle of
Darfur's oppressed provide such help as they can---especially
if they do so while fighting oppression globally without any
skewed agenda. But let the U.S. antiwar movement not confuse
friends with enemies, and in that confusion help those Martin
Luther King once called "the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today."

* * *

May 1: According to Reuters, the Washington demo yesterday
drew "several thousand." This morning's Boston Globe had a
full color front page photo and article on the march,
estimating the numbers at "tens of thousands." The one in New
York, drawing 300,000, missed yesterday's front page.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and
Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of
Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa
Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in
Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men
and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to
CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq,
Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp at granite.tufts.edu