When all the bodies in Darfur have been buried, how will history judge us?

Question

Do you think that the United States or the UN should take ACTION? Is so, why? If not, why not?

Just to tell you, 500,000 bodies have already been buried. More are pending, and the Government of Sudan is going out of their way to cover it up.

Answer 1

I sure the US won't be judged very well considering all the time and money we are wasting in Iraq going after a thousand terrorist while in Africa the terrorist are killing everybody and their sister after they rape them.

Answer 2

Better yet, how will history judge the Arab militia and the present Sudanese government that's responsible?

Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, will not allow any outside peace keeping force into his country - despite a UN resolution authorizing 22,000 international troops into West Darfur.

This is the religion of peace and tolerance:
On Oct. 29, approximately 400 Arab militiamen on horseback raided 8 villages - they slaughtered 63 people, including 33 children, 27 under the age of 12.

In 3 1/2 years, more than 250,000 people have been slaughtered and another 2 1/2 million driven from their homes.

The only effective military support we can muster would be deemed an invasion - and, judging from the support we presently have from all of our "allies" - regardless of the honorable and decent intentions of any efforts we aim at Darfur - we would be denounced and vilified as war mongering imperialists.

Go figure. Damned if we do and damned if we don't.

I find it very ironic that many of the people on this site continue to bring up the question of why we aren't in Darfur while at the same time calling for all of our troops in the Middle East to return home - how hypocritical can one get, eh?

Added note: And please, don't anyone try and tell me it's because there's no oil in Darfur - there wasn't any oil in Korea or Viet Nam either - just oppressed people.

Answer 3

Why should the US invade and occupy Sudan? The world hates us for Iraq and we at least have security interests there. The UN doesn't think it's a problem so why should we? Even the Black Activists in the US don't care because there is no money to be made. There is an active slave trade there perpertrated by the Islamics. Truely it is an outrage, but not worth US blood or treasure.

Answer 4

Just look back at Rwanda. I know it's difficult to compare the two, but it was still genocide and we still looked away. But unfortunately, Bush has us stretched too thin. Not to mention the fact that we have no economic interests in Sudan. If they had oil or something we'd be all over that country! Not to mention the fact than any aid we do send is blocked by those in power. It sits in warehouses and is sold at extremely high prices to further arm the government. It happens time and time again in countries in crisis like this. Interesting thing with slavery in Sudan (and in other countries). As soon as activist groups band together to buy slaves out of servitude, the prices on slaves go up and they are treated increasingly badly because the "demand" for them has gone up. This defeats the purpose of buying them free because fewer of them can be freed thanks to higher prices. It's difficult to say that anyone should take action because we first have to think about what action we take and what consequences that action may have. I wholeheartedly agree that the situation is a disgrace to the civilized world, and indeed to human kind. But it isn't easy to just say someone should do something and 1) leave it to someone else and 2) believe that just any action you take will automatically help.

P.S. - Contrary to the previous person's beliefs, this country did not used to be so casualty shy. Research has shown that the country would have supported Clinton if he had decided to send more troops to Mogadishu to control the situation, but the media got him to worry that the public would be casualty shy, so he pulled out instead. This has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and has created a country in which no casualties are tolerated, even though this is an inevitable occurrence in a time of war.

Answer 5

why should we do any thing , after all if we go in and lose some of our men and the expense of it and as soon as we are finished they will be anti America as always, hell I don't think we should help anyone except our friends,when I was in Africa as long as we had plenty of food and freebies for them they were good Christians , when the trucks were empty and no more freebies , they became Islamic American haters over night, since we did not kill them why should we bear the brunt of their attacks, and made feel responsible, we are already paying Israel for the so called Holocaust , why not also pay them so we can all go hungry here , hell no I am not feeling guilty and I don't want to lose not one American for those scumbags, what has happened every time we tried to help them?look at Rhodesia, South Africa
Angola, and every where we helped them.so don't try to sell the American people on busting our butt to help them , they won;'t appreciate it any way,also how the hell can history say one thing or the other about us and even if they do to hell with them , do we need to impress anyone , and we are not responsible for what ever happens to them it is their own peoples responsibility don't you think??

Answer 6

The number of 500,000 is not agreed upon by everyone but regardless of the number of dead the United Nations was established to help in this type of situation. The problem is they have not been asked to help.

Answer 7

The US should step in if the UN will not. So far the Democrats have given the only one who would stand up to the weak and ineffective UN the boot, and that was Bolton. Now we are to send some weak UN lover boy to pander to their every need while those in Darfur continue to be slaughtered. Just look at how the UN handled Bosnia, Herzegovina, Rwanda, Saddam's Iraq, Sudan...the list goes on. If the UN wont do something, isn't it our duty to save them?

Answer 8

UN should take action. The US should not. The last time we tried to feed them in Africa they dragged dead soldiers naked behind vehicles. The other reason I say not the USA is because the fact that so many don't want us in Iraq. Why the civil war in Africa is OK, and why the civil war in Iraq is not OK, its beyond me! Why get ourselves involved in another Muslim civil war?

Answer 9

Mr President, the U.S. is trampling on my country’s sovereignty. On behalf of President Blank—

I’ve just taken your airport. Clearing the way for the 101st Air Assault to take the capital. Seven thousand troops, 25 battle tanks, 15 Apache attack helicopters and three destroyers. Strictly speaking, I conquered your country without the paperwork.

Blank is in the midst of a civil war.

No, it’s not. It’s in the midst of a one-sided slaughtering of an entire people. Both the secretary general of the U.N. and the Vatican have pleaded with President Blank for a cease-fire, and both the U.N. and the Holy Father have struck out to the peril of 115,000 men, women, and god knows the children, particularly the boys.

Who will soon be men and rise up—

The heads of Ghana, Nigeria and Zaire have similarly been sent packing. The Red Cross has been denied entry on three separate occasions in the last 10 days. President Blank has 36 hours to give the command to his troops to hand over their weapons to the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army. At 36 hours and one minute, I give the order for the 101st Air Assault to take the capital and run up our flag.
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Whatever happened to politicians willing to actually make the world a better place?

The above is from The West Wing by the way, back when Sorkin was still writing it. And an avidly liberal president is the one talking up there.

Sure, invading Iraq for the (patently false) stated WMD reason was idiotic. Invading it to save people would have been a good reason, but we didn’t do much in the decade before despite Iraq going around gassing it’s own inhabitants.

Unstable nations that go around killing millions of people (cough50 years in the Congocough) with the rest in crushing poverty sans clean water and the like are worse then any silly reservations people have about a few thousand dead Americans/British/Kiwi/pick a western democracy.

Especially since the whole nations are equal to other nations was by a bunch of similarly sized and powerful nations that just got done fighting a really long war, and didn’t want religious conflicts back.

If somebody is committing genocide, or otherwise killing off vast amounts of their own people (based on say… height. Points to whoever guesses that African “country”) then let’s go stop them. Full stop. Screw any reasonably stable country that isn’t going around killing at least say 10s of thousands of people. We’ll get to them eventually.

The UN, as has been pointed out, needs to be invited. Rwanda was the end of peacekeeping as we know it. Or Bosnia, or pick some other obvious complete failure by peacekeeping, as opposed to peacemaking of some sort (which was, by the by, what Pearson had in mind. Peacemaking that is).

If this means putting a million (5, 10, whatever. If we could do it for WW2 we can do it for this) men from the western democracies in arms and losing 10s of thousands to save millions why do you disagree?

Besides the obvious a westerners life is worth more then somebody from Africa. Cough. Which is implicit in a lot of these arguments. From all sides actually.

Look for some reason left wing politico’s don’t support invading countries to save people living in them. I don’t why. It’s the only logical thing to do. Right wing politico's simply lack a reason to invade the country, although spreading democracy sometimes is a key point.

Right wing politicians go off and invade the wrong country. Is there anyone that wouldn’t have preferred to go invade say Sudan and the Congo instead of Iraq? Iraq frankly is well down on the death toll inside their own country list.

So let’s draw up a list. And then start going down it one by one. Institute a national service thing like lots of countries (heck even the Swiss) do, and let’s start invading countries and give them basic infrastructure (see the clean water producing Stirling Engine by the guy who invented the Segway for example) and then get out.

As long as they’re not actively persecuting their own people by the tens of thousands or so (min. standards Singapore. One party rule, but free market/no killing own people), we’ll turn them in a proper democracy of some kind later.

Answer 10

I think the UN should take action, but again, it is not going to just like they did nothing in Rwanda and Zimbabwe. I hate to say it, but the UN is as worthless as can be.

The US is busy, I wish these other "caring" countries would do something, such as France or Germany