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

[Scott Edwards]

Yeah...David Lake made a similar appeal (along with S. Rice), likening it to 
Kosovo. I was ticking off the hours till you wrote.

If the international community can get a UN transfer in Darfur, then that is 
what needs to happen.  There are still some diplomatic levers that can be 
pulled on. Nothing has changed, other than a few more terrible comparisons 
to the NATO Kosovo campaign, which was illegal.

best,
scott




>From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>To: Scott Edwards <scottisimo at hotmail.com>
>CC: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>Subject: Military action in Darfur, like Kosovo
>Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:50:01 -0500
>
>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?