A Genocide of Convenience (by Elizabeth Palmberg)
As I do more reading about Darfur, I've had to re-examine some of my assumptions about genocide. I'd tended to think about genocides on the model of the Holocaust, which involved a massive logistical undertaking by a ruthlessly evil state whose armies were strong enough to conquer multiple other nations.
The genocide in Darfur is intentionally caused by a ruthlessly evil state, but that's where the similarities end. Khartoum's strategies in Darfur - as in southern Sudan before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 - are the methods of a government that is not only evil and selfish, but weak.
Faced with insurgencies in Darfur, Khartoum chose a strategy based on weakness - rather than go to the expense of fighting its own wars, the regime recruited ethnically based proxy militias. Rather than go after the actual rebels, those militias, egged on and given air support from Khartoum, have pursued a scorched-earth policy of murdering, raping, and displacing civilians who happen to be of the same ethnic groups as the rebels. (Those would be the ethnic groups which, in an earlier divide-and-conquer move, the government had been economically and politically marginalizing even more than it marginalized the other residents of the desperately poor region.)
For a regime willing to spend provincial citizens' blood like water, genocide simply seems like the cheapest way of holding onto power.
The bad news is that the victims of a genocide of convenience are just as dead or traumatized as they would have been if the crimes' instigators had some different motivation. And, given the upsurge in violence against humanitarian workers, and the government's efforts to drive people from the comparative safety of the camps, there's the potential for a lot more people to die.
The good news is that this will be much, much easier to stop than the Holocaust. Khartoum can be brought to heel by coordinated economic, political, and diplomatic pressure - as was demonstrated just three years ago, when a U.S.-led coalition of countries prodded Khartoum into signing a substantive peace deal with rebels in southern Sudan (and in Darfur, in contrast to southern Sudan, there aren't even any proven oil fields). The first priority should be pushing Khartoum to stop dragging its feet on its agreement to admit U.N./African Union peacekeepers who will defend civilians.
Recently, a committed pacifist I know startled me by grimly joking that we should nuke Khartoum. The gallows humor was understandable, given the horror of the situation. And transforming the international outrage over Darfur into effective international economic and political sanctions will not be easy or simple. But nothing remotely resembling World War II (or any war) is called for to stop this genocide-on-the-cheap.
Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
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Comments
Ms. Palmberg ironically illustrates the limitations of modern liberal foreign policy in this article:
The good news is that this will be much, much easier to stop than the Holocaust. Khartoum can be brought to heel by coordinated economic, political, and diplomatic pressure - as was demonstrated just three years ago, when a U.S.-led coalition of countries prodded Khartoum into signing a substantive peace deal with rebels in southern Sudan...
Modern pacifism confuses talk with action, negotiations with diplomacy, and agreements with peace. There was a "agreement" in Darfur, the problem was that it was not followed through on. Under the tenets of modern liberal foreign policy that agreement should have guaranteed lasting peace.
So what happened? The Sudanese government failed to follow through on its end of the bargain. That lack of follow through can be attributed to one thing: the lack of serious consequences for the government in Khartoum after its failure to meet its obligations. Serious consequences may require a military response, but other than the US and Britain there are no western nations capable of projecting force.
Modern liberalism, seeing all use of force as inherently bad, limits itself to "soft power" that has been utterly worthless in Darfur. And the US, for better or worse, is occupied elsewhere.
The crack about nuking Khartoum is very revealing, and I would urge Ms. Palmberg to ponder the truth contained therein: without a credible military threat Khartoum is unlikely to meet its obligations and the genocide is likely to continue.
The solution, it would seem to me, would be for other western nations, especially in Europe, to develop effective militaries of their own that could be deployed in Darfur and other similar situations, so that the global community would not be forced to beg the US to take military action every time it faces a situation where the use of force is necessary. Either that or liberals might want to consider dropping their objections to American hegemony and the expansion of the US military power so that the US can fight their battles on more than one front at a time.
For years the left has treated force and diplomacy as the opposite ends of a continuum so that diplomacy ruled out the use of a credible military deterrent. In reality, depending on the nature of the government we are dealing with diplomacy is just as likely to be the midpoint of a range of responses, with military action at one end and inaction at the other. By swearing off military responses, liberal foreign policy all too often makes effective diplomacy impossible.
Wolverine
Posted by: Wolverine | December 14, 2007 12:39 PM
On the contrary, Mr. Wolverine, it's the promotion of violence as redemptive, and a short cut to dispute resolution and conflict, escalation of militarism, uncontrolled arms sales and proliferation, that have acted as the enablers to all this.
Never have we been more hegemonic, and yet, nothing changes. The answer for those who do not want to love their enemies and be peacemakers, as commanded by Jesus, for those who truly are His, are "forever wars" and "endless occupations."
"The White Man's Burden" may have gone high tech in its weaponry and destructive capabilites but it's just as falsely self-serving as ever it was, in pursuit of domination and greed.
Simply reciting a distractive litany of "left" or "liberal" boogeymen shibboleths as to blame is not productive especially when in truth exactly what you propose has been the ruling paradigm over the past 28 years and has only intensified with additional negative fallout over the past 7. Proposing ever more massive military buildups everywhere to accomplish "force projection" diplomacy - a ratcheded-up order of magnitude greater "gunboat diplomacy" is the neocon equivalent of redoubling efforts in just the same way after yet another failed Soviet Five Year Plan. When violence doesn't produce a peaceful outcome, ever more violence is necessary, until the goal is achieved. And since it never is, more is always applied. In the end, means can't be separated from ends, and the militarism and violence become the ends themselves, leading to a resignation to endless conflict and permanent war as the norm in a commander-in-chief government in a state of constitutional suspended animation.
It's true that "pacifism" per se isn't the complete answer, but that too is a kind of sly canard by those who see violence as quick and decisive - when any serious analysis just reveals that one conflict morphs into another and is the root cause for the next because in truth nothing really was decisive after all except more people died at the ahnds of others. Creative, tough, committed non-violence and conflict resolution efforts are needed. Probably they can't be adopted or even understood by those so committed to violence being redemptive and the answer to human disputes. They can't ever admit they were wrong about anything and therefore keep doubling up. Diplomacy doesn't deserve the term if it's just the mobster "offer that can't be refused" before the hit men are sent out.
The very idea of American exceptionalism is being consigned to the trash heap of history as we teach others our one unintended lesson - we have nothing new to teach them, just the irony of Mao's old refrain that "power comes out of the barrel of a gun."
The biggest problem we have is that we can't even recognize ourselves or our enemies for what we and they really are. As Sun Tszu laid out for all time in his The Art of War, the commander who knows neither himself nor his enemy, but surrounds himself with lies, will find himself constantly losing wars.
The fog of deceit has been particularly thick, and one can't tell whether one is simply caught in it or the author of it, or both.
Time for truth - and I know no better way to start seeing it than to start living according to how our Savior commanded us in Matthew 5, 6 or 7. It's certainly not for the cowardly or the faint of heart or the less than committed.
Posted by: N.M. Rod | December 14, 2007 1:40 PM
N.M. Rod - How do you apply what Jesus taught to what's going on in Sudan? How do we protect the innocents in Sudan while following Jesus?
It's easy to criticize militarism, as it often fails or just creates more violence. It's a lot harder to come up with other solutions that actually work, which was part of Wolverine's point. Maybe there's some secret diplomacy that hasn't been tried in this instance, but I doubt it. I'm not saying therefore we should resort to violence, but there's no easy solution. The sort of diplomacy practiced by the U.N. doesn't solve problems, it just pushes them down the road and let's them fester.
The third alternative is to sit back and let people fight it out over there (wherever "over there" might be at a particular time). Then when they've had enough of killing, they might try something else. Sort of the Ron Paul approach.
Posted by: Eric | December 14, 2007 2:28 PM
"Modern liberalism, seeing all use of force as inherently bad, limits itself to "soft power" that has been utterly worthless in Darfur. And the US, for better or worse, is occupied elsewhere."
While I get your point, generally, I wouldn't tag all of modern liberalism with this assertion. This attitude has largely arisen in response to the Iraq war, with diplomacy being seen as the opposite of what this president is presently conducting.
As such, partisans with short term memory (and the opportunistic politicians who love them) have invented a diplomacy vs. military action paradigm. This is not a necessary tenet of modern liberalism (Joe Lieberman is a modern liberal, and so is Hillary Clinton).
I agree, however, that it is not the signing of peace deals, but adherence to them, that should be our end goal. Sojourners would do well to take a stance on the question of whether it is worth firing bullets (UN or otherwise) to achieve this end. Nebulous advocacy tends to have nebulous results.
Posted by: kevin s. | December 14, 2007 2:42 PM
NM Rod,
First off, I didn't necessarily call for a tighter US hegemony, I actually laid out two possible responses, both of which account for the reality of military strength and its connection to effective diplomacy.
I think it would be preferable for our allies to become stronger themselves, mainly because the military cost of a US hegemony might be higher than the US would be willing to pay over the long run -- for perfectly understandable reasons. No, I am not attracted to a vision of constant warfare. But if our allies continue to be over-reliant on "soft power", then a US hegemony is the least-bad remaining option, especially compared to a possible situation in which the west simply cannot project military power where it is called for.
You seem to consider it axiomatic that American military interventions must fail. But the reports from Iraq indicate that the surge, in combination with new tactics, is working. And the pure soft-power approach to Darfur isn't exactly working out well.
I never said that violence is "redemptive", or spoke of a white man's burden, or argued for American exceptionalism. The principles that military force and effective diplomacy are linked is universal, or at least planetary, in application, and flow from the reality of post-fall human nature.
A century from now the role of the US could very well be played by India, and if that happens, the reality will be that the Indians will need both smart diplomacy and a capable military -- or allies that are strong enough to assist with both -- in order to be effective.
Wolverine
Posted by: Wolverine | December 14, 2007 3:03 PM
The U.S. constantly laments that allies don't hold up their end of the military burden - but the truth is, the U.S. wants financial contributors who don't have any control at all over policy or deployment.
An alliance means simply supplying soldiers to serve under U.S. civilian and military command, serving U.S. interests that might be tangential to their own, or out of fear of economic retaliation.
What was mentioned about knowing yourself and others is the point. Current policy is to allow no military rivals, neither ally nor potential competitor nor "axis of evil," but to maintain a hegemony and global power projction in perpetuity in pursuit of a "Pax Americana." This neocon dream, which has its own roots in leftist revolutionary theories they immersed themselves in before abandoning liberalism because of its "soft" nature, is central to the Project for a New American Century.
I think that Christians who buy into all this, as a necessity in a "fallen" world, inadvertently do away with Jesus until He comes back as a military liberator after Armageddon, because they see His message as unrealistic for the world we live in. To them, it seems as if the message ought only to be, "Praise God and pass the ammunition," for there is no realistic transformation of the human heart possible. By their actions, they think He failed as far as any practical influence outside "personal salvation" in which heaven is assured but you live in the meantime according to all the precepts of a fallen world.
The deception at the heart of this is that it requires always demonizing the other, to grant no possibility of legitimate self-interest to the other or redemption, but transforms one's own heart into a false view which then justifies what one already wanted to do to the other.
It is possible to develop an ethics consistent and advanced along with our advanced technology, but that's not what we have done. We are psychologically stuck in the dark ages and we need to spend as much time on practical development of understanding conflict resolution. There has been a sea change in our technological prowess for destruction, but not in our bad habits of tending to self-destruction.
Inasmuch as the scientific advances we see would have been deemed as impossible fantasies over a hundred years ago, but were not, neither do I believe that application of analysis to practical conflict resolution cannot be accomplished if there is a will.
We cannot be a "Left Behind" sect which has no answers for humanity beyond Jesus coming back momentarily so that there is no use Christians helping develop mankind ethically. When that doesn't occur, and tragedy ensues and we are all left behind, we will have become irrelevant, and justifiably so. That is what happened to a complicit Christianity over two World Wars in Europe.
America is onl more religious because we have not personally experienced that level of devastation from our own failed policies yet.
Posted by: N.M Rod | December 14, 2007 3:56 PM
Eric writes:
"N.M. Rod - How do you apply what Jesus taught to what's going on in Sudan? How do we protect the innocents in Sudan while following Jesus?"
Good question. In the posts above, N.M. Rod is trying to apply the teachings of Jesus to the situation. The various other contributors once again completely ignore Jesus and argue from secular principles what they think is right or wrong to do.
When will we ever learn to see our world through the Jesus-filter?
How do we protect the innocents in Sudan while following Jesus? Did Jesus ever hint of using lethal violence to protect innocents? If not, then how can using lethal violence possibly be "following" Jesus. It would be going where he never went.
Rather, if we're serious about "following" Jesus, we'll put away the sword and find other ways to protect the innocents ... perhaps by sacrificing our own bodies to save people, like Jesus did.
Posted by: steve | December 14, 2007 4:23 PM
N.M. Rod - I understand where you're coming from. But what you're talking about is a sea change that would take place over a decade, if not a generation, or more. You're talking about completely changing the way people around the world think. You make an effective agruement for a long-term solution.
How does this speak to people who are dying, today, tomorrow, next week in Sudan - the people about which Elizabeth is writing? Can they wait for this vast change for which you advocate? What are your thoughts?
Posted by: Eric | December 14, 2007 4:27 PM
Steve - Thanks for acknowledging my questions. I'm not advocating using lethal violence in Sudan; let's get that straight. The point I'm trying to get at is what is Rod for? It's easy to say violence is bad and acting out the love of Jesus is good and that the world needs to change it's ways of the 10 centuries, but what does this really mean for people dying in Sudan? It means they'll continue to die at the hands of their oppressors.
Posted by: Eric | December 14, 2007 4:43 PM
NM Rod,
Let's go through our lefty stereotype check list, shall we?
Neocons: check
"Left Behind": check
Pax Americana: check
Redemptive Violence: check
Now let's consider the one thing that the suffering folks in Darfur might be interested in: a workable solution to their plight. I didn't see anything on those lines and Eric (who's certainly not a Neocon) seems to concur.
Now, it certainly isn't my intention to do away with Jesus, or turn him into a Rambo-like warrior god. But I also don't think its wise to put words into his mouth, and I just don't see anything he said that neatly applies to foreign policy. I see a lot of calls for the church to serve as a peacemaker, but he never addressed how that applies to matters of state.
I see lots of condemnations of many aspects of Roman society, but I don't recall reading a straight-on condemnation of Rome's foreign policy in the New Testament -- and Roman hegemony was far more blunt than any Pax Americana dreamt up by any Neocon.
You want the gospel to be about foreign relations and national security. I tend to think that the Gospel is about a deeper transformation, one that does not depend on either Diplomats or Generals -- a transformation not of politics but of human hearts.
And when the day comes for that transformation, then there will be peace. Until then we can hope to nudge things in that direction, and one way to do that will be to establish that there will be a price -- a military price if need be -- for genocide. But before we can do that we have to recognize the world for what it is, not what we hope it will be someday.
Wolverine
Posted by: Wolverine | December 14, 2007 5:27 PM
problem; the world is not christian. the u s a is not christian. so all the Jesus talk is irrelevent. the new progressive christians want to talk, talk, talk without recognizing the fact that they are talking to world leaders who don't give a whit about anything but power and money. applyjng christian principals to all these dictators is irrelevant. spinning in your christianity and blaming white men for not doing something christian in sudan tells me that liberal christians on this blog are irrelevant because they never offer real solutions to real problems. let's have a meeting to discuss this further. bring all the christians in the world together and agree on a negotiated WWJD solution and see how far it goes. how far did wallis' ecumenical meeting in iran get us?
Posted by: jerry | December 14, 2007 6:14 PM
The reality is that our own political leaders suffer from the same defects found in the standard-issue human body used universally around the globe, among them foreign leaders. The maker has made an upgrade available but the owners refuse to return their models to the place of origin for service so that they could begin to operate correctly.
You don't change anyone else's perception until you change that of yourself. All of us labor under unchallenged assumptions and delusions about ourselves, mostly to do with a great deal of self-justification. This creates a false belief in the unmitigated righteousness of oneself while exaggerating and attributing evil intent to others' failure to acknowledge and submit to your own false view of self.
I hear some folk basically reviling endless talk as useless and therefore impatiently moving from talk as a vehicle for conflict resolution into the supposedly clear cut and decisive realm of hittimg and killing instead as being the practical and quick answer. Let me dissuade you by pointing out what dissuaded me: the "Mission Accomplished" with a supposedly surgical strike in 2003 has morphed into acceptance of the necessity for "endless war" in that same theatre.
Of course the talk has to be meaningful communication - not simply hurling slogans at one another to "prove" how evil the other is. "Bring it on" is not a morally useful paradigm any more than Long John Silver's prescript for murder with "Let 'er rip" was. In fact the challenge to fight it out has resulted in the deaths of untold innocents. Is that the tone of a peacemaker. regardless of how many Abrams tanks belligerent threats sell and even if it creates jobs in one's congressional district?
Tell me, just when has jingoism reduced the level of conflict? Increasing tensions with threats foments conflict and does not ameliorate it. Leaders who stop talking with each other and start shouting at each other often raise the emotional level to frightful levels where public opinion becomes irrationally inflamed with calls for revenge and war.
What if Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev hadn't been willing to talk with each other and adjust the attitudes they held, but had continued speaking belligerently past each other? We now know from Reagan's diaries that his advisors were stunned by the path he was taking. They were largely prisoners of their own rogid and unrealistic ideology, as were the Soviet counterparts of Gorbachev's.
Yet even George Schultz caught the spirit of the zeitgist and became enthusiastic.
Look at Darfur not bracketed by just itself in this moment in space and time but in context of the responsibilities of others past and present. What are the roots of the present conflict beyond the immediate? What caused them? Are those things able to be recognised and redressed now? Who can now be pragmatic in terms of vision and yet hard-headedly idealistic? Fixing Darfur means acknowledging responsibility without dwelling on guilt, because everyone either was responsible or is now responsible to do something. That will mean acknowledging just what our own goals have been and what they ought to be. Is there an application of measured force or resistance to violence that can be in the manner of restraining violence rather than trying to punish?
Posted by: N.M. Rod | December 14, 2007 6:52 PM
"Did Jesus ever hint of using lethal violence to protect innocents?"
Jesus didn't believe that any of us were innocent, but I'll take your point at face value. Did Jesus ever protect innocents from governmental abuse? How did he do so?
Jesus did put himself in harm's way... To keep us from the wrath of God, not government. However, God will execute his wrath, and those who do not believe will be destroyed. God's justice seems to include both elements of wrath and grace.
God is demonstrated to be fiercely jealous of us. So how would he react to those who are murdering the innocent? You might recall why Jesus was sent to the cross to die.
It just isn't as simple as you insinuate.
Posted by: kevin s. | December 14, 2007 6:55 PM
The reality is that our own political leaders suffer from the same defects found in the standard-issue human body used universally around the globe, among them foreign leaders. The maker has made an upgrade available but the owners refuse to return their models to the place of origin for service so that they could begin to operate correctly.
You don't change anyone else's perception until you change that of yourself. All of us labor under unchallenged assumptions and delusions about ourselves, mostly to do with a great deal of self-justification. This creates a false belief in the unmitigated righteousness of oneself while exaggerating and attributing evil intent to others' failure to acknowledge and submit to your own false view of self.
I hear some folk basically reviling endless talk as useless and therefore impatiently moving from talk as a vehicle for conflict resolution into the supposedly clear cut and decisive realm of hittimg and killing instead as being the practical and quick answer. Let me dissuade you by pointing out what dissuaded me: the "Mission Accomplished" with a supposedly surgical strike in 2003 has morphed into acceptance of the necessity for "endless war" in that same theatre.
Of course the talk has to be meaningful communication - not simply hurling slogans at one another to "prove" how evil the other is. "Bring it on" is not a morally useful paradigm any more than Long John Silver's prescript for murder with "Let 'er rip" was. In fact the challenge to fight it out has resulted in the deaths of untold innocents. Is that the tone of a peacemaker. regardless of how many Abrams tanks belligerent threats sell and even if it creates jobs in one's congressional district?
Tell me, just when has jingoism reduced the level of conflict? Increasing tensions with threats foments conflict and does not ameliorate it. Leaders who stop talking with each other and start shouting at each other often raise the emotional level to frightful levels where public opinion becomes irrationally inflamed with calls for revenge and war.
What if Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev hadn't been willing to talk with each other and adjust the attitudes they held, but had continued speaking belligerently past each other? We now know from Reagan's diaries that his advisors were stunned by the path he was taking. They were largely prisoners of their own rogid and unrealistic ideology, as were the Soviet counterparts of Gorbachev's.
Yet even George Schultz caught the spirit of the zeitgist and became enthusiastic.
Look at Darfur not bracketed by just itself in this moment in space and time but in context of the responsibilities of others past and present. What are the roots of the present conflict beyond the immediate? What caused them? Are those things able to be recognised and redressed now? Who can now be pragmatic in terms of vision and yet hard-headedly idealistic? Fixing Darfur means acknowledging responsibility without dwelling on guilt, because everyone either was responsible or is now responsible to do something. That will mean acknowledging just what our own goals have been and what they ought to be. Is there an application of measured force or resistance to violence that can be in the manner of restraining violence rather than trying to punish?
Posted by: N.M. Rod | December 14, 2007 7:03 PM
Kevin,you asked what God's response (and therefore, I take your argument leading, our own as His agents) would be to those who murder the innocent.
To get a feel for this direction, I think that you believe that abortion is the murder of the innocent. Is violence the required response to prevent this if there's no other immediate solution? If not, why not? Is the taking of some life to prevent the loss of greater life justifiable?
It's a good question because the practicality expressed ought to be instructive. Darfur is not close at hand, but abortion is.
To be truly pro-life, and not merely anti-abortion, one is called not to try to have the end of saving life try to justify a means of the taking of other life. I think the Christian anti-abortion movement has gone substantially down the pro-life road by making this policy central to the movement. Those who have attacked abortion doctors or clinics are rejected. So it should be easy to move further to be consistent in other areas where human life is being destroyed and many are tempted to deal with it by more killing. It is no more effective there than we know it is in regards to abortion.
However, those making the opposite argument in one are bound to honor it in both. But I believe either the half-measure or the full application are both morally incoherent.
Posted by: N.M. Rod | December 14, 2007 7:53 PM
n m rod, payshun, and all the other blamers who think that the u s a should be more christian and more negotiating,and more talking; where is the NAACP, southern christian leadership, jackson, sharpton and all the other black people on this issue? why haven't we heard an endless outcry of outrage on this issue from those who claim to be discriminated against and suppressed by white people? why haven't blacks in this country gone to the aid of those who are being slaughtered in sudan? why isn't there a contingent of blacks marching and protesting in sudan? marching on the u n? answer me that please.
sitting in your correctly integrated inner city churches ripping on mega churches in texas will make you feel good but won't solve anything. i think maybe the world is to big for progressive christians. nit picking white suburban mega churches is easier to fathom. i'll put my money on the big religious organizations that are sending money, food, medical help and people over to help the situation. you can keep sharpton and jackson in business by sending money to their web sites. yes, i am not happy with whining blacks. i like the ones that are doing something like oprah, and cosby.
Posted by: jerry | December 14, 2007 9:20 PM
NM Rod wrote:
The reality is that our own political leaders suffer from the same defects found in the standard-issue human body used universally around the globe, among them foreign leaders. The maker has made an upgrade available but the owners refuse to return their models to the place of origin for service so that they could begin to operate correctly.
An upgrade? You make this sound like undoing the consequences of the fall is no more complicated than heading to Jiffy-Lube for a while-you-wait soul change. Real mature Christians know that regeneration is a long, slow, two-steps-forward-one-step-back process.
You don't change anyone else's perception until you change that of yourself. All of us labor under unchallenged assumptions and delusions about ourselves, mostly to do with a great deal of self-justification. This creates a false belief in the unmitigated righteousness of oneself while exaggerating and attributing evil intent to others' failure to acknowledge and submit to your own false view of self.
Uh-huh. Tell me all about it.
I hear some folk basically reviling endless talk as useless and therefore impatiently moving from talk as a vehicle for conflict resolution into the supposedly clear cut and decisive realm of hittimg and killing instead as being the practical and quick answer.
I'm not reviling anything; endless talk, without an agreement that will be followed through on, is useless. As for the "practical and quick answer", I will argue that often military action is more practical than talk, especially "endless talk" but it seldom is quick. I don't recall saying that military action is "quick".
Honestly, Rod, are you reading what I'm writing, or are you just assuming that I'm following your script?
Let me dissuade you by pointing out what dissuaded me: the "Mission Accomplished" with a supposedly surgical strike in 2003 has morphed into acceptance of the necessity for "endless war" in that same theatre.
Uhh, not exactly. Iraq wasn't a "surgical strike", Iraq was an invasion. (A "surgical strike" is when a missile, bomb, or a small team is is used to take out a discrete target without any intention of taking over any territory. Invasions are always messy; even if the actual invasion plan goes off without a hitch the subsequent occupation is frought with perils of its own, as we learned in Iraq.
My point is, you aren't telling me anything I didn't know prior to 2003. Bush underestimated the difficulties of ocuupying Iraq. That doesn't negate my main point: that an effective military is often necessary for effective diplomacy.
What if Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev hadn't been willing to talk with each other and adjust the attitudes they held, but had continued speaking belligerently past each other? We now know from Reagan's diaries that his advisors were stunned by the path he was taking. They were largely prisoners of their own rogid and unrealistic ideology, as were the Soviet counterparts of Gorbachev's.
Yet even George Schultz caught the spirit of the zeitgist and became enthusiastic.
Let's back up a little bit in the 'ole history books and look at what preceeded the zeitgeist: the liberation of Grenada from a Marxist regime, the British retaking of the Falklands, US aid to the Nicaraguan Contras (which contributed to the eventual defeat of the Marxist Ortega in a free election), the deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in Europe, and the early stages of research into defense against Soviet ICBMs -- in short, the US and its allies strengthened the credibility of their offensive and defensive capabilities.
Look, I don't agree with everything Bush (or Reagan for that matter) ever did. Bush in particular failed to anticipate the difficulty of establishing a stable and humane government in Iraq, for which history may yet judge him harshly. But that doesn't mean that "endless talk" can ever be a substitute for an effective military.
Wolverine
Posted by: Wolverine | December 15, 2007 2:39 PM
Elizabeth has written a piece with thought and knowledge of the problem in Darfur.
What she has not realised is that Genocide has a different meaning than the political one when George Bush for his own reasons called Darfur genocide. War and civil conflict are dreadful things, and provide dramatic pictures for war correspondants.
Genocide is a legal term, BEFORE you use the term you should have legal opinion supporting the charge; for example the Yale University Report in 2004
"Indonesian Human Rights Abuses in West Papua:
Application of the Law of Genocide to the History of Indonesian Control"
Genocide like Armenia, Nazi Germany, and West Papua today in human terms is about denial; denial that these people were human beings, denial of escape, denial of the world media to report their plight.
Neither the New York Times nor 6 o'clock News told the American public about these genocides while they were happening.
America owns the world's largest Gold & Copper mine ; and in 1962 America forced the Netherlands to sell the people of West Papua to Indonesian control, and paid the United Nations $200m to go along with the deal.
Why is the world's largest Gold & Copper mine, visible from space, never in your news or talked about ?
That is genocide, that is denial.
http://wpik.org
Posted by: Andrew | December 15, 2007 5:10 PM
"To get a feel for this direction, I think that you believe that abortion is the murder of the innocent. Is violence the required response to prevent this if there's no other immediate solution?"
No, but only because we have a legal system that can put abortion performers to justice. However, we have no jurisdiction over Khartoum. If we attempt to arrest and imprison the purveyors of injustice, they are going to fight back. If enemies didn't fight back, there would be no war.
A UN peacekeeping force will result in people being shot to death. So the question is whether justice in Darfur merits the taking of life. Sojourners would be in a better position to advance the cause if they were clear on this question.
Instead, it seems they find excuses to be non-committal (e.g. a peacy treaty that was signed and ignored).
And Reagan certainly spoke "belligerently" to Gorbachev. When he said "tear down this wall," he certainly didn't say please.
Posted by: kevin s. | December 15, 2007 5:19 PM
I took the time to post a response earlier, but it's been deleted for whatever reason I cannot fathom.
I'm not going to waste time spending an hour each time making efforts like that if they are simply going to be deleted...
I guess the new policy is to delete whoever's not firmly in the camp of either left or right!
See ya.
Posted by: N.M. Rod | December 16, 2007 7:22 PM
'The first priority should be pushing Khartoum to stop dragging its feet on its agreement to admit U.N./African Union peacekeepers who will defend civilians.'
This sounds like a civil war to me. Should the UN go in and why should the Blue Helmets be put into harms way as most of the time they are not allowed to shoot unless shot at. They can still kill each other as long as they don't shoot at the UN personnel. Sojo and Co. is all PO'd at the war in Iraq and have made the claim that we should not be involved in a civil war. NOW - we are to be involved in a civil war?
Stay home - as the UN will not be anymore effective wheather they are there or back in the home country.
Blessings -
.
Posted by: moderatelad | December 17, 2007 9:50 AM
Many of the comments above seem to assume that military force would be effective, but actually it was concerted economic and political sanctions which the Bush administration and international allies used to make Khartoum sign the peace agreement with southern Sudan in 2005, as I noted in an earlier blog post:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/11/darfur-we-know-what-works-by-e.html.
You'd think that the Bush administration would be mustering the same kind of pressure on Khartoum now to stop its genocidal strategy in western Sudan (Darfur) - but, as I describe in a commentary in the next issue of Sojourners, this is, shamefully, not happening.
Posted by: Elizabeth Palmberg | December 17, 2007 11:28 AM
Ms. Palmberg,
It may be true that economic and political sanctions forced Khartoum into signing an agreement, but you yourself acknowledge that they are not actually abiding by the terms of that agreement. In other words, the actual genocide was at most delayed, not prevented, by "soft power".
Listen me now, believe me later: signing a treaty by itself does not guarantee peace. For that the happen, the treaty must actually be followed.
We live in a world where a Smith and Wesson beats a full house. We might wish it were otherwise. We might hope to make it otherwise. But if we are to be effective we cannot pretend that it is otherwise.
Wolverine
Posted by: Wolverine | December 17, 2007 12:08 PM
Posted by: Elizabeth Palmberg | December 17, 2007 11:28 AM
'...commentary in the next issue of Sojourners, this is, shamefully, not happening.'
How do you know it is not happening - you have a friend in the Dept of State? They do not have a good track record on their agreements in the past - you believe that another signature on a piece of paper will do better for Darfur? World history is peppered with signatures of world leaders that had no intention of following through on the agreement - it just baught them the time that they needed to position themselves for the next attack. (Chamberlain and Hitler comes to mind)
Agreement(s) with no consequence(s) are really not worth the paper they are written on - and as you said, the people are just as dead.
Blessings -
.
Posted by: Moderatelad | December 17, 2007 12:09 PM
Greetings. First may I introduce myself. My name is Carlton Anthony Chase, and I am currently engaged in a vocational discernment, and am at present seriously considering a monastic life in the Cistercian tradition. I have been a practicing filmmaker, for the past twenty years, having had the blessing of working with locals making films in over 30 countries. Most recently, I was on retreat at the Abbey of the Holy Spirit, in Conyers, Georgia, and I am about to embark on a spiritual and vocational pilgrimage to Europe and the Middle East.
This Advent Season, I humbly ask that people pray for the forgotten people of Bukavu, and the Kivu district in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 1994, when the ethnic genocide of Rwanda spilled across the border into the Congo, some 4 million persons have been murdered. Almost all NGOs have fled the terror. There is almost zero accountability. Some 58,000 women were raped in an organized and brutal program of suppression. The local population is predominately Catholic. And these innocents are greatly suffering. Last week, both the New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald ran articles on the latest surge of violence, near Bukavu.
I extend this request to pray for all of our brethren, in all areas of great turmoil and uncertainty this holiday season, and for good Christians to look beyond Dafur.
Dafur is only one of many hells. And concentration camps and extermination centers can be produced everywhere: an grade school in Cambodia, a mansion in Eritrea (when it was part of Ethiopia), a army barracks in Southern Poland, any number of Catholic churches in Rwanda. To the suffering, the technicalities of the academics of genocide hold little merit.
Respectfully. In Peace.
Carlton

An article from this morning's Syndey Morning Herald:

Posted by: Carlton Anthony Chase | December 17, 2007 2:53 PM
Posted by: Carlton Anthony Chase | December 17, 2007 2:53 PM
I want to thank you for your post and reminding us that evil knows no bounds and that there are many of our breather all around the world that need our prayers and assistance.
On a personal note - what are the names of some of the movies that you have worked on? As a person who has worked on several feature films and been able to see parts of the world I never thought I would see - I'm just interested.
Blessings on you this Christmas Season and safe journey on your travels to Europe and the Mideast.
Blessings -
.
Posted by: Moderatelad | December 17, 2007 3:14 PM
Ummm Jerry,
Your assertions are absolutely ridiculous. as they usually are. This is the first time I have posted on this thread so while I do firmly believe in diplomacy there should be something done about the arm dealers.
The Jangaweed are getting their weapons from different sources and the poor are not being defended as they go out to get firewood. Don't you dare lay this at the feet of just black people. There are plenty of American black people doing things for Sudan (celebrities include Don Cheadle and the North Carolina Black Democratic caucus.)
So the problem of Sudan is a human problem and all of us must work to solve it. Oh and one more thing no one is arguing that big daddy white man can fix things. People want help, blankets, safe trails to get water and food (so that women aren't raped...) This is what they want.
Africa can solve it's own problems if and when we decide to continue to support AE development. Engage the surrounding nations to impose higher standards of peace and aid. Have consequences for not living up their deals, better yet get everyone at the table in the first place.
please don't be so ignorant.
p
Posted by: payshun | December 17, 2007 3:18 PM
The human problem that is currently manifesting itself in Darfur is a human problem that has had a long history in the U.S: it's racism. The 'fight' is between Arab Muslims, including the Janjaweed warriors on their horses (the image we are always shown) and the African Muslims of Darfur--the light brown vs. the dark brown, if you will. Racism still exists in the U.S. but racist-based killing is much reduced. What can Americans usefully share from the American experience with the Africans currently dealing with racist-based killings?
Surely our love for our African brothers and sisters requires that we share their burden and work with world leaders to bring an end to these killings.
Posted by: bren | December 17, 2007 5:46 PM
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