quote: [Senator]Brownback this weekend will travel to the Darfur region of the Sudan to view the dire human rights situation there and to press the Khartoum government to allow access for international aid workers. Brownback will be joined on the trip by U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf.
I like this guy's attitude.
quote:Speaking June 24 at "Bearing Witness for Darfur," an event held at the Holocaust Museum in Washington to raise awareness about the turmoil and violence in Sudan, Corzine said, "We are here today to call for meaningful international action" to help bring a halt to atrocities being committed there. "It is a moral obligation and we would like to see it be a legal process, a legal obligation," he said.
posted
Since you mentioned the Holocaust museum, when I visited 4 years ago there actually already were fliers warning of at the time "possible" genocide in Sudan. Until Sudan attacks us I wouldn't expect to see any action taken. Afghanistan too was well on its way to a duplicate of the Holocaust up until we invaded, but all we ever heard from the media was the abuse of women which of course was bad enough. The Taliban had replicated Kristallnacht by using its version of the Brown Shirts to destroy Hindu temples and then followed Hitler's example of identification by requiring Hindus to wear a special patch to "protect" them from religious persecution.
The media has always chosen to ignore genocide, even the Jewish owned New York Times pushed stories of mass murders by Nazi hit squads to the back pages if they made the paper at all. I still haven't seen a major story about Sudan on either paper or television. Until the media decides that its newsworthy there won't even be an oppurtunity for the American people as whole to demand action unless the administration or Congress forces the issue by threatening military force. Nobody actually cares about sanctions. Would anybody actually know about Abu Graihb if it wasn't on the front page of almost every newspaper and the lead story on every television newscast?
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Two million have died in the last 17 years in the region. However, in 2002, there was a peace agreement. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working out according to plans.
However, this is situation is much more extreme than before. 2 million in 17 years, nearly 400,000 this year alone. Seems someone has upped the ante.
And your reasons are the reason I come here and rant. I know it's probably mostly pointless and only a few people who will ever read this, but it's a few that will then have at least some awareness. That's better than nothing, I suppose.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Peace agreements almost always mean nothing. Prominent examples would be that Hitler still invaded the Soviet Union after he signed a nonagression pact with them and of course Saddam Hussein repeatedly violated the terms of the ceasefire agreement after the Gulf War.
I can accpet your mission to get people to care, but I'm not sure why you have to start bashing conservatives while you're at it.
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posted
By my lights it looks like conservatives are more likely to care about what happens to people in other countries--but that's a transient phenomenon, in the long run.
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posted
Honestly I don't think how much people care about those in other countries has anything to do with their political affiliation which is why I don't see why its necessary to bash one side of the political spectrum. Too often people will oppose an action just because of the person who is carrying it out. If Bush were to take military action in Sudan before or after the election he'll take flak from "anti-war activists" and if he sits on his hands he'll take flak from the "humanitarians."
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Give me a break. I railed against Clinton about Rwanda. Too bad you weren't here for those posts. Unfortunately for you, Clinton isn't in office. Bush is and he's doing nothing different than Bush. I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised though, considering his earlier comments which basically entailed, "Golly gee wilikers, genocide sucks, but oh well." I don't give a crap about their political affiliations, I care about what they do.
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posted
Yes, because that has been the rallying cry from conservatives since there turned out to be not WMD in Iraq. It was a humanitarian mission to free the Iraqis from an oppressive regime. I don't understand why the same logic doesn't apply in Sudan when it comes to the conservatives. I could understand the liberals, who were more hesitant to start a war with Iraq being reticent to go to Sudan, but I don't understand why the conservatives are.
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posted
No, when conservatives use false motives to start a war, they should expect to be called on it when a similar situation comes up and they do nothing about it.
However, I see no problem holding them to a higher standard. They seem content to make everyone else live by their moral values, why shouldn't they be held to the standard they preach?
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posted
Unless you're going to tell me that what was happening in Iraq wasn't genocide you're the one that is being hypocritical for demanding action now but then condemning the previous action in Iraq for "false motives."
For the record, I personally have always supported the war for humanitarian reasons first and foremost even well before the war started.
Also the US has now put forth a UN Security Council resolution for immediate sanctions and has threated future action if demands for crackdowns on the militia that has been carrying out the actual genocide and free passage of peacekeepers aren't met.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Ahh, you apparently have no idea what my view of Iraq is/was then, do you? I was very much for intervention. I believe our reasons for doing so, at that particular time, were completely wrong. We even had several discussion about whether or not doing something right, for the wrong reasons, was okay. Bush lied. He wanted nothing to do with anything "international" before 9/11. After, though, he suddenly had the clout to go after Iraq. Do you remember what he was like before 9/11? He, nearly single-handedly, screwed up the peace agreement that Israel and Palestine had going. He backed out of anything that had a hint of international. He was positioning the US as a very isolationist country. Then, after 9/11, he suddenly became a humanitarian who needed to save the Iraqis. Bull.
In summary, while I don't have a problem with us liberating suffering people, I do have a huge problem with the President of the United States lying to me and the rest of the world about his motivation. Is he a humanitarian, or not? If not, he needs to resign and get the hell out of the White House. He's done more damage around the world that any president I can think of in my lifetime.
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posted
More bad news for Darfur: the discovery of an ancient mega-lake bed covering 12,000 square miles / 31,080 square kilometres raises the strong possiblility of "fossil"water stored in deep underground aquifers and/or oil.
In a desert nation such as Sudan, the water itself would be a highly desirable commodity to have control over. Add oil, and oil-importing nations and energy corporations have incentive to muck around with the locals -- covertly finance the government's "ethnic cleansing" and arm Darfurians who resist being kicked off their own land -- in seeking favorable treatment over their oil-hungry competitors in the future.
So what would be good news to a stable country will probably merely strengthen the Sudanese government's resolve to rid Darfur of "undesirables", ie the real owners of the property.
posted
To comment on earlier comments, this really should have been an AU matter before it was ever brought to the UN. And I think Dagonee made the obligatory France joke: France was with us in Afghanistan in the beginning. I don't see German troops anywhere in Iraq, why don't the Germans ever catch any flak?
Now though I think the UN should get involved in a higher scale. Natural resources like that could easily be used by the government to finance extermination when they should be used to revitalize a war torn country. The UN could deploy peacekeepers and at least try and ensure that money from development is used for humanitarian concerns.
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posted
This was an AU issue first, AU forces were in place before it was brought to the UN in any substantive sense.
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posted
Yeah? I honestly didn't know. I was commenting on a post made like three years ago, and to be perfectly honest, I haven't been keeping up on Darfur that much, except to know that it's still there.
posted
Its worth nothing that it only took a few months (July to September) before the situation escalated at the UN, though it remained AU forces in Sudan as the agents, and with the direct controllers being the AU (though theoretically implementing a UN SC resolution).
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If Bush lied about WMDs then so did Kerry, Clinton, France, Germany, Japan, UN, and every intelligence agency in the world. I still don't see why the UN can't do this, or France, or China, or Germany, or Japan, or Spain, or England, or how about a coalition of African nations? Where is your outrage against all the other countries in the world who are doing nothing?
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Who said Bush lied? (not that I don't believe it, it just wasn't said in the last few posts, and I don't feel like searching the whole thread for two words).
And I don't think Bush necessarily lied, but I do think he was dishonest in his prosecution of the situation.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
DK: its possible that some lied and some were mistaken. For instance, Kerry had access to far less intelligence material than Bush, and much of what he had was shaped by the Bush administration, so it would be unsurprising if he reached erroneous conclusions without lying.
Just because statements are in agreement does not mean all are lies if one is.
So far there is no solid evidence about a direct lie by Bush about WMDs. There is such evidence for most other high-level members of his administration involved in the war effort at the time. There are also instances of falsehoods known to be falsehoods by the intelligence community being inserted in his speeches as facts.
Most of those intelligence agencies you cite used caution in their estimates of WMD. At very best the Bush administration treated possibilities and hypotheses as certainties; in many cases, the 'strongest' evidence they had was the most discredited (yellowcake, aluminum tubes; both were widely known by subject area experts to be ludicrous before the Bush administration even mentioned them, yet both became important centerpieces in their case for war).
edit: and it doesn't appear she's saying Bush lied about WMDs, but about a completely different topic. She's saying Bush lied about his thoughts on international intervention, which one can make a pretty strong case for. He was strongly anti-interventionist in public before 9/11, but it has since come out that his administration had been coming up with plans for an invasion of Iraq at a high level since shortly after his election.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by DarkKnight: Kayla said Bush lied in her post about 6 or 7 above mine
It's easy to miss given aspectre's thread necromancy, but that post was made close to three years ago. So you may not get a response, at least not from Kayla.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:edit: and it doesn't appear she's saying Bush lied about WMDs, but about a completely different topic. She's saying Bush lied about his thoughts on international intervention, which one can make a pretty strong case for. He was strongly anti-interventionist in public before 9/11, but it has since come out that his administration had been coming up with plans for an invasion of Iraq at a high level since shortly after his election.
Bush quote from the 2000 Presidential Debates, slightly paraphrased because I can't remember it precisely:
'I don't believe United States troops should be involved in what you call 'Nation Building''
Certainly changed his mind pretty quick.
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