I am a liberal. In my view, bringing down BOTH regimes, Saddam's and the Sudan's, is entirely proper because both were genocidal. The WAY Saddam's was brought down, however, was one of the worst possible ways to do it. Bush screwed up from the outset. If he'd been smart, he'd have tried to get the U.N. to bring down Saddam because he had committed crimes against humanity, instead of appealing to Americans' self-interest by claiming they had WMDs and terrorists. But my fellow Americans care little about curing genocide, particularly against indigenous blacks who live "way over there." So that approach would have failed, and there's nobody to blame but "we the people" for not wanting to bother stopping genocides.
Yes, we (meaning ALL free nations) should invade Sudan. It'd be totally different. Arabs live in the north, the black indigenous people in the south. The Darfurians could choose which they prefer to belong to. Two nations should be established, as Britain did when it ended its colonial rule. After the British left, the Arabs invaded the south and took over. They now want to keep that land because of oil, uranium and access to the Nile river water. They don't own those legitimately and never did. Their goal is to erase black skin from all of Sudan.
If you don't know what "Islamization" and "Arabization" mean, you can learn from reading what I've written - or research them yourself. If you don't know their meaning, you have no grasp of the evil of the Sudanese regime.
After toppling this regime, the northern Arabs can rebuild for themselves without our help. We need only get rid of the present leadership, help any blacks stuck in the north to return to their southern homes, then leave the north. The Arabs were, after all, the perps here; they merit no aid from us. A similar regime, should they choose one, isn't going to abuse Arabs. Another approach would be to simply send a global-based military directly between the Arab north and the black south, and nary an Arab shall pass. We'd only need to fight those Arabs who tried to resist, and enter the militarized area. A no-fly zone can be imposed on the north, too. Then the southern blacks can establish their own country. The only problem with that approach is getting blacks who are stuck in the north back home again.
The U.N. will need to guard the border against invasion, and have the military authority and muscle to do the job. It's hard to imagine the Arabs would ever establish a government that wouldn't try to invade the south again - if for nothing else, for the oil revenues, to which they aren't, and never were, entitled. Those reserves belong to the black people, to the sovereign country they once had.
Of course, China would have hissy fits if the black people retook their own country, because that nation would never treat with the Chinese, ever again, since they supported the genocide quite fully - even to contributing troops under the guise of "construction experts," who participated in the killings.
The west should help get the new southern nation on its feet, help the population re-establish their original lifestyles, then pull entirely out of the south, except for maintaining the border protection, and let the black people decide for themselves to whom they will sell their own oil. Nobody's asking them now, because nobody thinks they have any right to it. But their oil reserves were stolen from them, along with millions of their lives and their national sovereignty.
If the Arabs re-establish a similar regime, it'll get the same treatment as the first, if it tries to impose on the black indigenous people ever again. The black indigenous people will need some help rebuilding, but it'll cost a pittance, compared to Iraq. It'll be an ongoing cost to the world to protect them from the Arabs permanently, but that isn't much, if the cost is shared by many nations.
The black Sudanese are BEGGING for liberation from the free world. They'll know precisely how to use it if they get it, too. They already know how to do the job, as long as they are allowed to do it.
Nation-building will NOT be a factor after toppling the present Sudanese regime.
Yes, overturning the Sudan regime is possible, affordable, and the aftermath will be successful if it is properly planned. The northern Arabs have absolutely no right to the southern regions. They invaded a sovereign nation and took it over. Britain made the south a nation, but forgot the belligerence of the Arabs, their hate of blacks, and didn't set protections in place for the new nation of indigenous people. They had no guns, only spears and clubs; reinvading them was easy for the Arabs to do, and the world stood by and let it happen, too.
The southern blacks have always chosen their leaders (when they had any at all) from their most highly-respected elders. When they have a nation again, it should allow this to be the way leadership is chosen, not granting it to leaders of militias, as Sudan did when it accepted John Garang. Garang had brutalized his own people, and was unfit to lead them. Only respected elders, chosen by the various ethnic groups, should be on their electoral slates. The ethnic groups of black people do not hate and make war with one another. Democracy among them will flourish. In time, the oil revenues will likely aid them in protecting their own borders, too, one day. They won't need coercing to sell oil to the nations which helped set them free. Their gratitude alone will do that. Southern Sudan, as a nation, could become a tremendously potent influence for promoting democracy and human rights in Africa. They deserve it. They've learned the hard way what the lack of human rights can do.
If there is ONE reason to go to war, it is to stop a genocide. The shame for not doing so is on all countries which had the power, collectively or individually, to stop both genocides, but who did nothing. Still, though Saddam was indeed genocidal, he was sporadic about it and only killed, at most, a few hundred thousand people. It's still genocide, and just as heinous, but genocide on a larger scale is indeed more important, particularly if ongoing.
Sudan's genocide is a true POGROM. Sudan has already got a body count from its FIRST genocide (BEFORE Darfur began) of 2 1/2 million, and the world's governments and media kept that genocide from becoming headline news. So PLEASE! - ask your representatives and people in the mass media, particularly in the free world, why they called the original genocide of Sudan a "civil war," when it was anything but. The world owes the black indigenous Sudanese - particularly the non-Muslim ones, a big debt. Let's start paying it by admitting our past negligence and then doing something that will stop the genocide for good.
For 20 years the Sudan pounded the southern (Nilotic) black people. Herding whole villages into their own thatched buildings and setting them to the torch, then burning their crops and their other buildings, killing their livestock and on to the next village qualifies as genocide. If it wasn't genocide, please tell me what IS. This is verifiable through Amnesty International. Even they didn't dare call it a genocide, but you can make up your own mind when you read some of their evidence for that 20 years.
The people DID try to rise up with militias, and for that reason the free world felt they could call it a "civil war." Should they have just held out their wrists so the Arabs could open their veins, in order for the media to call it something else? Darfurians have militias too, but in their case it is called a genocide - which it is. But nobody is yet admitting to having ignored the first genocide entirely. In fact, most people think Darfur "just happened," as though in a vacuum. It is, in reality, an extension of the original (and unmentioned) genocide.
Although a "peace treaty" exists with southern Nilotes, the Arabs will break it when they want to. If Darfur is stopped, they'll start up again in the south.
For twenty years the world neglected this first genocide. They could have spared most of those 2 1/2 million lives if the world, collectively, had gone for "regime change" in the Sudan when it began that first genocide. Even now, the media and governments still fail to recognize the first genocide as such - to their everlasting shame.
They didn't, and even with a second genocide going on at this moment in Darfur, and even though this time they HAVE recognized it as a genocide, the world still prefers to do nothing. The U.S. isn't the only nation culpable; the culpability is on all nations of the world - and particularly on their public.
All this diplomacy is for naught, and nobody knows this better than the nations sending diplomats to Sudan. The Sudan will never stop the genocide. It must be stopped militarily. There IS no other way. The victims are helpless to stop it on their own. They've tried, and been brutalized more as a result.
The world's apathy exists because the people who are being victimized are black, which puts them at the bottom of the totem pole of "human worth" right there. But they're also indigenous, which is just as low. Why go to war to protect and save people nobody even knows exist? That is the typical Western attitude. To THEIR everlasting shame.
Our main problem is that we, as civilized free people, will only bother ourselves over genocide if it somehow threatens us, or is perpetrated on whites. The blame for allowing the first Sudanese genocide is our very own. It was FAR more blatant - and brutal - than Darfur.
We can't go back and reverse our behavior, but we CAN do something about the genocide going on NOW. And the only cure for genocide is military intervention. Genocidal regimes never stop their slaughtering. They must be forced to do so, and it'll only happen if they're overthrown. That's what made it right to overthrow Saddam, but it was done so ineptly that the very terrorism Bush went to war to stop was facilitated tremendously. Iraq now HAS what Bush said Iraq HAD, but DIDN'T. Your tax dollars at work.
And now, if we try to pull out of Iraq, we'll bring black horror into the world. It's already spreading, but will spread faster and sooner if we leave Iraq. We can't change the fact that we are there NOW, and we're really stuck there - we don't dare leave. I'd love to agree with fellow liberals to have the troops home yesterday, but even as a liberal, I know what the consequences would be. First, genocide by Shi'ites on the Sunnis. Then, with its partner, Iran, Islamic terror would be firmly - and permanently - entrenched, able to spread its evil globally. Not only can't we afford to leave, it is downright selfish and cowardly for the other nations of the world to let the U.S. do it all for them. They have as much at stake as anyone else does, now.
Meanwhile, the shame of the civilized free world over Sudan is being perpetuated. It isn't just the fault of the U.S. It is a global apathy that has allowed Sudan to genocide with impunity since the '80's. The world says it won't tolerate genocide, but when it finds one, it makes a "value judgment" on the worth of the victims involved before it takes any action at all. The genocide in Bosnia was dwarfed by Sudan long ago, but they got intervention. Sudan is still waiting for it.
And WHO, might I ask, is in the best position of "authority" to bring about regime change in Sudan? Other Islamic states, of course. Do you see them doing it? Do you see them castigating Sudan for genocide? On the contrary, we see nothing but support for the regime - maybe some occasional distaste at most. Bin Laden has even demanded that jihadis go to the Sudan in order to help maintain the genocide. And I'll note that Osama is buddy-buddy with Sudan.
Meanwhile, the free world is too busy to help spare the black indigenous people of Sudan from annihilation. What's really sad is that the southern Sudanese, who were genocided for 20 years, may never be able to resume their ancient cultures, which are the oldest on the planet - and remarkably civilized, too. Nor will the people, if freed, starve or suffer for lack of jobs because their indigenous lifestyle is entirely self-sufficient, when allowed to go its own way. Subsistence cultures don't need huge infrastructure. They'll only need a bit of aid to get back on their feet again. After all, who sent them aid 10,000 or 100,000 years ago? Their susbistence lifestyle has served them well for thousands of millenia, and it still could do so. If freedom means lack of jobs for them, it'll only be because their cultures have been erased and now they NEED jobs, for lack of other means of subsistence. But it shouldn't be necessary. What the southern Sudanese really want to do is go back to the cultures they have always had, if they can. So all we'd need to do is help them do it, help them form their own government (they would be ecstatic with democracy) and then guard their new nation against another invasion by Arabs. They can take it from there. The reason the southern blacks (not the Darfurians) were targeted originally is because they're black, indigenous and they HATE Islam. Most Darfurians are Muslims, but are still black, so killing them off has to be done in a way that separates the regime from direct culpability - through janjaweed, a surrogate for the regime. Otherwise, some northern Arabs might squeak over the killing of fellow Muslims. That is why Darfur is, if anything, a "gentle genocide," by Sudanese standards.
The hippocrisy, and hence the shame, is on all citizens, all governments and all media of civilized free nations in this world. If genocide ever arrives at our own doorsteps, we will have this generation to thank for it. In case you didn't know, genocide spreads. It can come to us, not through an external attack, but from within. There are many ways that can be done, and won't we be surprised if it happens to US? The fact that we feel so certain it can't happen to us only makes it easier to do so.
We either tolerate genocide or we wipe it out. We're tolerating it. It isn't called a "crime against humanity" for nothing. Any genocide is an attack on humanity itself.
"No man is an island..." remember John Locke? It was true then and remains so today - more than ever. It's not only true, it's RELEVANT to our own security, more than most people realize.
I have written some things to give you knowledge about Sudan and its regime and genocides; things that the media and governments withhold, or which aren't "politically correct" to say. Please send an email to me at stop_genocide. It's a Yahoo address, you know how to write it. In the Subject, type "Sudan genocide," to distinguish from the mountains of spam I'll be getting. I'll send a list of things I've written so you can choose the ones you want - no cost. Everything is in simple text.
I've devoted my remaining years to helping the indigenous blacks of Sudan. Because I'm disabled and retired in Mexico, I started an empowerment project with the indigenous Huichol, which has been very successful, and they're thrilled with the results. I'd like to see if it can be adapted in the Sudan. I am affiliated with no organization or political party, but am doing this entirely on my own. Since I have studied the Sudan since '94, I have a lot of information to share. Please feel free to partake.
I'd like to establish dialogue with people who also want the Sudanese blacks free again, and would particularly welcome any Nilotic people (Dinka, Nuer, Nuba, etc.) who would care to respond. They could help enormously to enrich all of our knowledge on this subject. I've written some things about their astonishingly civilized cultures, but the members of it can do much more in that direction.
Darfurians would be welcome, too, if any of them were online. Not bloody likely, since they're busy starving and fleeing from Arabs these days. It must be pretty rough these days on any Arab who isn't into jihading or slaughtering, but we'd certainly welcome any Arabs who are as appalled as we are over the Sudan's treatment of its "own citizens." That is, "citizens" whose own sovereign state was taken from them decades ago.
Although the "Save Darfur Coalition" is gaining momentum against the genocide and is helping, it has, like other organizations, become political and is riddled with the usual personal agendas. The group I hope to form here will not go that route. Still, helping that group is certainly not a bad idea at all. Someone, at last, is trying to do something, and that is welcome indeed. There's no reason, though, that WE can't try, too.
Holly B.