Re: [Peace] Fwd: Bush on Darfur – All Talk, No Walk?

[Alfred Kagan]

Obviously, the Peace list is not the place to discuss the politics of 
Sudan.  Let me just say that I disagree with the message below.  Durfur 
needs a UN peace-keeping force.  If anyone wants to further discuss, 
please send me a personal message off the listserv.

Al


On May 17, 2006, at 12:10 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>    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
>
>


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801

tel. 217-333-6519
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