About ten years ago, then Air Force Chief of Staff General Tony
McPeak — now one of the Kerry General Staff — told me that
America had a moral duty to intervene militarily to stop genocide
wherever it occurs. McPeak stated the military corollary to
Carterism: that America’s first and foremost interest was always
human rights. McPeak spoke at about that same time the Clinton
administration — still recovering from its disastrous failure in
Somalia — sat back and watched while about 800,000 people were
killed in a Rwandan genocide. Last week, Jimmy was preaching a
revival of his doctrine. The ongoing mass murder in Sudan’s Darfur
province makes the resuscitation of Carterism more than an academic
question. Should we intervene in Sudan? The answer is no.
In Darfur — a region roughly the size of Texas — at least
30,000 have been killed in a government-backed campaign by the
“Janjaweed militias.” By some estimates, a million people will be
murdered (by violence or starvation) in Darfur in the next
year.
Sudan is an oil-rich nation that is dirt-poor because it has
been misgoverned by one military junta after another since the
Brits left almost fifty years ago. The current bunch of rats came
to power in a 1989 coup, and is made up of Islamic militants who
are much inclined toward terrorism. They would probably be engaged
in it were they not fully occupied by their own civil wars and by
causing problems for their neighbors, Eritrea, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
According to the CIA, since 1983 about two million deaths have
resulted from Sudan’s civil wars. The Sudanese are, if little else,
consistent.
The Sudanese government has an infrequently equaled human rights
record, being one of the few nations on earth that permits chattel
slavery. It is, of course, a member in good standing of the U.N.
Human Rights Commission. Sudan’s Islamist government is composed of
lighter-skinned African Muslims that fancy themselves “Arabs.” The
genocide is directed against darker-skinned African Muslims.
All you need to know about the Darfur genocide is in the
report compiled by Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Frank Wolf last
June after their two-day tour of Darfur. The “Janjaweed” militias
aren’t named after some hallucinogen they smoke. The Arabic term
means “wild men on horses with G-3 guns” (the G-3 being a German
assault rifle). As the Brownback/Wolf report explains, the typical
Janjaweed attack begins with a strike on a village by Sudanese air
force aircraft or army helicopters. The Janjaweed follow, murdering
and raping all along the way.
There have been cease-fire agreements, hand-shake deals to
protect humanitarian relief for the Darfuris, and
“communiqués” between the U.N. and Sudan, all of which have
come to naught. On July 30, the U.N. Security Council passed a
resolution demanding the Sudanese disarm the Janjaweed militias
within thirty days, but stopped short of threatening direct action
if they fail to comply. The Arab League is about to meet and
perform its usual ritual of demanding action by Sudan while doing
their best to stall, objecting to any international intervention
before Sudan is allowed more time to stop the killing. The U.N.
will fiddle and diddle, and the Sudanese will dance the Saddam
Shuffle indefinitely. Meanwhile, another thousand or more die every
day. Looks like a job for the Good Guy Superpower, right?
Wrong.
The U.N.’s latest deadline is fast approaching, and it will
expire on the first day of the Republican convention. If Tony
McPeak has his way, John Kerry will be bashing the president for
not taking time out from the convention to go across town to demand
the U.N. take action. Because Sudan’s regime is radical Islamist,
Kerry and his surrogates (such as Howard Dean, the Washington
Post, and the New York Times) will argue that
intervention in Sudan would be a more direct way to fight terrorism
than to take on innocents such as Saddam.
The answer to this nonsense is threefold. First, America has
important interests in Africa but not in the Sudan. Al Qaeda is
active and growing in many of African nations, as are other
jihadist-terrorist organizations. As one faithful reader points
out, the jihadists are aiming to topple the Egyptian government of
Hosni Mubarak and establish another Iran-like kakistocracy there.
(More on that in a future piece.) The terrorist networks are
working hard to threaten access to Nigerian oil. But our national
security and economic interests do not compel us to intervene in
Sudan. Nothing we could do there would stem the growth of jihadist
power. If we intervened with sufficient force to stop the genocide,
all we would do is create a pause in the killing. The moment we
pulled out the situation would almost immediately return to what it
is now, as it did when Lil’ Billy ran from the Blackhawk Down
debacle. Intervention in Sudan — without establishing a large and
permanent military presence — would be a feckless adventure.
Second, the choice is not between American intervention and
nothing. Just because we are what the EUnuchs call a “hyperpower”
doesn’t mean that no one else is capable of doing what needs to be
done. Our ill-mannered enemy, France, has a considerable force of
troops and helicopters right next door in Chad, with more in nearby
Djibouti. They could be the core around which a significant
multinational force could be formed. France is not alone. Rwanda
and Nigeria are offering about 2,000 troops between them. Many
other African nations (as well as Russia, China, and others) have
significant military forces they could contribute. Those who
decline to help in the Middle East and Southwest Asia should
shoulder this burden without us.
Third, and not least, there are and will forever be nations in
which civil wars and genocides occur. What’s happening in Sudan is
ghastly, a crime against humanity. But it is different only in
degree from what happens regularly in many corners of the Third
World. A chunk of Colombia the size of Switzerland is held by the
FARC narco-terrorists. Are we going to intervene to free its
people? Somalia is still a murderous mess. Should we go back to
where we were in 1993 and try to finish the job? You see where this
goes: everywhere and nowhere.
The President can turn this lemon into lemonade pretty easily.
Because this issue implicates neither our national security nor our
economic interests, it is a proper subject to bring before the
United Nations. Ambassador Danforth should be instructed to venture
into the Asylum with a draft Security Council resolution in hand.
That resolution should condemn Sudan’s government in the strongest
terms, authorize military action against it forthwith, and — for
good measure — throw it out of the U.N. for violation of its most
basic obligations under the U.N. Charter. Mr. Danforth should make
it clear that we will support the resolution strongly but — sorry
guys — we’re busy so you’ll have to mount the intervention without
us. There’s a billion-to-one shot it might work. If it does, some
Sudanese lives may be saved. If it doesn’t work, it will prove —
for the umpteenth time — that the U.N. has outlived its
usefulness.
TAS Contributing Editor Jed Babbin is the author
of, Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe Are Worse
Than You Think (Regnery Publishing).
