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

[Scott Edwards]

I disagee Al, that this list is not an appropriate place for this discussion 
(essentially a discussion about a potential conflict between peace and 
justice as principles of action), but I'll keep it short.

Gary Leupp's essay is way of the mark, and almost offensive to the countless 
people, such as those in the Save Darfur Coalition, who have worked 
tirelessly to bring the widespread rape and murder of civilians in Darfur to 
the world's attention.

There *will* be a transfer of AU peacekeeking operations to the UN. And to 
the dismay of those who assail the liberal principles of global justice and 
universal human rights as a tool of American Imperialism, the UN 
peacekeeping force will be wholly African. Oil contracts will remain 
China's, there won't be US fighter planes patrolling the skies of Khartoum, 
and the Sudanese regime will maintain its strangle-hold on power. But the 
raping and killing will stop, and humanitarian aid providers--unable to 
operate as is--will continue their work.

And that is good.

*****************
Scott Edwards
Amnesty International, US
Country Specialist for Sudan
_________________________________
Gender Projects Manager
Coordinative Effort for the Reporting of Rights Violations (CERRV)


>Subject: Re: [Peace] Fwd: Bush on Darfur ? All Talk, No Walk?
>To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>Cc: Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net>
>Message-ID: <b81b7b5c8eff7cf098fbabffc7b99216 at uiuc.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
>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


>From: peace-request at lists.chambana.net
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>To: peace at lists.chambana.net
>Subject: Peace Digest, Vol 28, Issue 19
>Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 12:02:15 -0500 (CDT)
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>Re: Fwd: Bush on Darfur ? All Talk, No Walk? (Alfred Kagan)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>    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
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 2
>Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 13:17:29 -0500
>From: Alfred Kagan <akagan at uiuc.edu>
>
>