[Peace-discuss] Military action in Darfur, like Kosovo

[C. G. Estabrook]

Scott Edwards wrote:

> ...I don't think anyone who is taken seriously in Darfur advocacy is
> calling for a NATO military operation ... This situation is so
> remarkably different from Kosovo that I'm just confused as to why it
> keeps coming up on this list... If there is a similarity to a US-led
> bombing campaign in Southern Europe, I fail to see it...

Unfortunately that's not the view of some of the most avid supporters of
"aid for Darfur" (via military action against Khartoum).  In tonight's
News-Gazette, Nat Hentoff -- who's been active in this matter for
sometime -- calls for (as the headline has it) "Targeted airstrikes 
needed to send message on Sudan."

The centerpiece of Nat's argument is Darfur's similarity to Kosovo!
That's established for him by a Clinton official, Susan Rice.  Needless
to say, both think Clinton/NATO's attack on Serbia a splendid idea,
which should be repeated in Sudan.

(BTW, I consider Nat a friend and a courageous champion of civil
liberties for many years.  But his foreign policy views have become
increasingly Rightist in recent years -- a sad mistake, I think.) --CGE

===

	News-Gazette October 3, 2006
	Nat Hentoff
	Targeted airstrikes needed to send message on Sudan

     At the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 19, Secretary-General Kofi
Annan described "men, women and children in Darfur, driven from their
homes by murder, rape and burning of their villages ... making a mockery
of our claim, as an international community, to shield people from the
worst abuses ... Not having done enough for the people of Rwanda." He
continued, "can we just watch as this tragedy deepens?"
     If we wait for the United Nations to act, the answer is "yes."
     In August, the U.N. Security Council supported the sending of 22,500
U.N. forces into Darfur to strengthen the small African Union presence.
But Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, threatens to attack those
peacekeepers if they come in -- adding that rising world protests
against his government are part of a Zionist plot to redraw the region
in order to protect Israel.
     The primary obstacle to any meaningful intervention by the United
Nations is that, as Mr. Annan has stated, permission must come from Mr.
al-Bashir for U.N. forces to enter because the United Nations is
composed of sovereign nations, and the sovereignty of each must be
respected.
     In a stinging response, Susan Rice, former assistant secretary of
state for African Affairs, told National Public radio on Sept. 15: "It
is like giving Milosevic or Hitler a veto over the world stopping the
perpetration of genocide."
     I vividly remember Ms. Rice while she was in the Clinton State
Department -- wishing to prod the White House to act more vigorously on
slavery in Sudan's south -- traveling to Sudan by herself to awaken
world interest then. Now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, she is speaking the horrifying truth to the world if nothing
more happens than more talk at the United Nations and more anguished
editorials in the press. Just wringing our hands, she points out, "is an
opportunity for the people who have perpetrated genocide, the government
of Sudan, to clear out all the witnesses and ... continue a second wave
of the genocide, with the international community poised to stand by and
watch."
     Ms. Rice has an alternative: "If we, the United States, decided --
as we did in the case of Kosovo -- that we're going to act, then action
would happen." We must say to the government of Sudan that "there will
be military consequences ... unless and until you relent and allow the
United Nations force to come in and protect civilians."
     But in view of the civil war in Iraq, the resurgence of the Taliban
in Afghanistan and our other pressing obligations, is it conceivable
Congress would send American troops into Darfur?
     What we can do, Susan Rice says, acting with NATO or a coalition of
democratic nations -- there can be "targeted air strikes at Sudanese
airfields to knock out its airplanes, which have been very much involved
in killing civilians."
     "The threat of the actual action," she continues, "might be
sufficient to persuade the Sudanese to accept a U.N. force. That can
happen from the air" and could lead to "the U.N. forces on the ground."
     It's vital to remember that the United States has bypassed an
impotent U.N. Security Council before when essential. Says the admirably
clearheaded Ms. Rice: "We did act ... when we faced a similar, albeit
not even as grave a situation in Kosovo. We acted without the Security
Council, even though it would have been our strong preference to act
with the Security Council.
     "We acted with NATO to save lives in Kosovo. We didn't accept
Milosevic vetoing international action. We used a language Milosevic
understood, which was air force strikes. We never put a single NATO
soldier on the ground, but Milosevic got the message and a U.N. force
went in."
     If we do not now act to save the survivors in Darfur, one of them,
in Tawila -- Shiek Abdullah Muhammad Ali -- told Lydia Polgreen, the
invaluable New York Times reporter on the ground: "What happened in
Rwanda, it will happen here ... we beg the international community,
somebody, come and save us. We have no means to protect ourselves. The
only thing we can do is run and hide in the mountains and caves. We will
all die."
     In Rwanda itself, a survivor of the genocide there, Freddy
Umutanguha, told Reuters: "We survivors stand with the victims in
Darfur. We know what it is like to lose our mothers, fathers, brothers,
sisters, sons and daughters. We know what it is like to lose everything
and see all who are dearest to us destroyed."
     Of all world leaders, President Bush has tried the hardest to save
the survivors in Darfur. He named this crime against humanity being
perpetrated by the government of Sudan for what it is -- "genocide" --
while other leaders used the euphemism "ethnic cleansing."
     Will the president, with all the problems he is dealing with
elsewhere, lead further, hopefully with other democratic nations -- as
we did in Kosovo -- with targeted air strikes on Sudanese airfields to
ground the killing Sudanese airplanes, and show Mr. al-Bashir he faces
consequences?