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Go Home Who Really Cares About Darfur? Certainly Not The Obama...

THE SPINE AUGUST 7, 2009

Who Really Cares About Darfur? Certainly Not The Obama Administration

BY MARTIN PERETZ

Just about a year ago, The New Republic published a long and well-documented indictment of American and international policy around Darfur. The article was by Richard Just, one of our most gifted and scrupulous writers and editors. The piece was called "The Truth Will Not Set You Free." It made something of a stir even though it was published in the middle of a campaign defined by slogans. Joe Lieberman took the article to John McCain. Someone (now high in government) whom I do not feel free to mention took it to Barack Obama. But the stirring didn't quite move the principals, although they both pointed out that earlier in the campaign they had issued a joint statement precisely about Darfur. Oops, I almost wrote "Biafra" whose dread and forgotten fate I fear also will be Darfur's.Now, again, Just has written a desolating essay about Darfur and the ugly cynicism of paying lip service to the cause but doing nothing. Worse, disguising the realities. It will be published in out next print edition (to which you may subscribe here) and thereafter on the web (but only thereafter).We've also had the benefit of carrying the pathbreaking writings of Eric Reeves who was quite literally the first person to address the question of Darfur as a challenge to western civilization.He's got a devastation of an op-ed in this morning's Boston Globe, "The phony optimism on Darfur." There's another one of Obama's highly touted "special envoys," this one Scott Gration. What he proposes is that we normalize relations with Khartoum, "including," as Reeves characterizes it, "lifting sanctions and removing Sudan from the State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring nations."Read the piece. If you don't weep or get angry you have a heart of stone.

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55 comments

The review article last year by Richard Just was truly superb. If only a single piece could move mountains and galvanize the world into action. I have much appreciated Eric Reeves' writings on Darfur in TNR. I too remember Biafra. I was just coming of age and getting acquainted with the wider world. Scott Gration was an awful choice as our envoy to Khartoum. Never again? Again and again, as TNR noted apropos Darfur.

- liberal reformer

August 7, 2009 at 12:36am

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Can you even begin to imagine the apoplectic reaction from the right wingnuts if Obama sent the U.S. Army into Sudan and our soldiers started coming over in body bags?

You tell me: How many would have to die before the Dittoheads were marching down the Mall in D.C. with pitchforks in their hands?

Also, what was the position of The New Republic when Washington began enforcing the Monroe Doctrine by putting one thug regime after another into power in Central and South America?

Is there no end, no limit at all to the flagrant hypocrisy in here?  

Where the hell did you get your American History textbook, from a Crackerjack box?

george

- iambiguous

August 7, 2009 at 4:08am

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From the article: "He ignores the basic truth about these men: during their 20 years in power they have never abided by any agreement with any Sudanese party...."

? There's a truce in southern Sudan that - although stretched by both sides - has avoided the kind of open warfare that was going on there 10 years ago, with the last northern Sudanese troops leaving the area 18 months ago. That doesn't count?

- SMacEachern2

August 7, 2009 at 11:07am

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SMac, you are not only a discombobulated leftist but you are also an apologist for the genocidal Khartoum regime. As for the Sudanese government adhering to the January 2005 agreement, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army begs to differ. A spokesman for the SPLA , Kuol Diem Kuol, said two years ago (Aug. 6, 2007) that the Sudanese army had not withdrawn form the oil areas in the south, per the January 2005 agreement. You are an easy mark, aren't you? And yes, I believe that Khartoum has traduced their word. What a surprise. The SPLA rebels aren't angels but Khartoum has caused terrible suffering in the south that has abated, at the expense of the Darfuris.

- liberal reformer

August 7, 2009 at 11:42am

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liberal reformer: The Sudanese army withdrew, as I said, about 18 months ago. Presumably, if the central government had "...never abided by any agreement with any Sudanese party...", the Sudanese army would not have withdrawn from southern Sudan at all.

Given that while the war was going on, there were literally hundreds of thousands of people being killed by war and famine annually, I presume you'll agree that the cessation of warfare, as the result of negotiations between the central government and the multiple SPLA/SPLM factions, was a good thing?

Incidentally, take a look at Wellings K, Collumbien M, Slaymaker E, Singh S, Hodges Z, et al. 2006. Sexual behaviour in context: a global perspective. _Lancet_ 368:1706-28. Africans actually turn out to be less sexually promiscuous that citizens of developed countries in a 59-country comparison. But apparently I'm not allowed to say that on the 'Out of Africa' thread....

- SMacEachern2

August 7, 2009 at 12:52pm

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Sadly, the United States has little credibility to offer on this or any other pending humanitarian crises brought on by a repressive government willing to murder or allow the murder of its citizens.  Contrary to all reason and common sense, it has allowed North Korea to build a nuclear weapon and only half-heartedly tries to prevent that country from disseminating nuclear weapons technology. Our officials when speaking of Iran talk more about what will happen when Iran is capable or does obtain a bomb than what can be done to prevent it.  Finally, our President is about to give a medal to a woman who has condemned the United States as a racist and unjust society and led a world conference which did the same. We condemn our friends and apologize, scrape and bow to our enemies and those who support them.  And yesterday we learn that our government still does not know what it is doing in Afghanistan and needs more time to figure it out.  

I expected this administration to speak in the clear sentences of Daniel Moynihan or Jeanne Kirkpatrick in foreign policy.  Instead we get more of the same fecklessness that has been our foreign policy since at least 1988 with the sole exception of the the closing years of the Clinton administration, when we intervened in the Balkans and made a serious run at solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the 1991 Iraq war, when we judiciously used and leveraged our military and diplomatic power. Until the our allies, enemies, and necessary nuisances believe we say what we mean and say what we mean, no one looking to save Darfur should look to the United States for help.

Just's recent essay remarks that Egypt does not think there is much of a crises. Of course not— they allow the Sudanese refugees who come into their country to illegally cross into Israel. Israel tried sending them back, but stopped doing that after it learned the Egyptians were shooting them. Now Israel has another refugee problem— refugees from an Islamic country headed by a man wanted for war crimes.  Giving Mary Robinson— the condemnor of Israel as racist— the Medal of Freedom is an insuit to all those who ever received it. What right thinking person would want to be in her club? Omas al-Bashir must think he might receive one someday.

- Shane Fergessen

August 7, 2009 at 1:33pm

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Darfur is yet another example of islamic psychotics mass murdering infidels - first Christians and now anyone that's not islamic.

Ever since the 2008 election, Darfur has disappeared off the scope of the news.  Liberals and the media used to use it to attack Bush.  Now, they'll excuse mass murder to protect their precious president from inaction.  For shame.

- jwl2672

August 7, 2009 at 1:37pm

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iambgious,

You're a complete idiot.  The "right wingnuts" are the ones that advocated military intervention in the first place.  Maybe then, millions of lives would have been saved with western soldiers taking out that pathetic sudanese islamic government.  Why don't you ask yourself why the sudden call for any action over Sudan has died down the instant Obama got elected?  Even his envoy is putting on his happy-thoughts t-shirt and proclaiming an end to violence and normalization of relations with the sudanese government.

- jwl2672

August 7, 2009 at 1:42pm

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jwl2672: The populations on both sides in Darfur are Muslim. Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit... all Muslim.

- SMacEachern2

August 7, 2009 at 1:48pm

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And,it hardly needs to be added, jwl2672's aim here is killing Muslims, not doing anything particular in Darfur.

- SMacEachern2

August 7, 2009 at 2:00pm

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Perhaps the US could have intervened militarily in Darfur (together with some kind of multi-national force) if it wasn't already committing great amounts of men, materiel and money to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Let's face reality, for once -- there is no political will in the US or anywhere else to intervene militarily in Darfur, and precious little money to commit to such an intervention, certainly not while Afghanistan is a battlefield.  Unfortunately, the US is not in the position to greatly expand its global military capabilities, raise taxes to fund them and deploy its troops wherever necessary like it did during World War II and the Cold War.  The neocons believed that we could do all this on the cheap, with picking at low-hanging fruit and intimidating our enemies accordingly, but this was not a successful strategy (to say the least).  Thus, I would strongly suggest to Marty, Stuart Wild, jwl and the rest of the gang to take stock before venting about American irresolution in Darfur.  Just like on the economy and a myriad of social problems, our ability to solve these issues is directly impaired by the horrendous mess that George W. Bush made during his tenure.

- wildboy

August 7, 2009 at 2:37pm

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SMac: You are a classic paranoid. Cf. The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter. You just were victimized by a glitch. I have had problems posting any number of times in the sixteen months that I have been commenting at TNR.

- liberal reformer

August 7, 2009 at 6:10pm

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Your post is judicious and eloquent, wild.

- liberal reformer

August 7, 2009 at 6:11pm

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SMacEachern2 said:

"liberal reformer: The Sudanese army withdrew, as I said, about 18 months ago."

Don't you ever get tired shilling for horrendous African regimes?

No sensible person can take anything you say seriously after your apologetics for Mbeki and Sudanese genocide.

- J. Dyer

August 7, 2009 at 7:54pm

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J. Dyer:? I'm not sure how describing something that happened makes me an apologist. Why, exactly, do you think that there has been a decrease in levels of violence in southern Sudan in the last 10 years? Is it magic? Or is it still the early 1990s, when many tens of thousands of people were dying there every year? What's the reason for it? Is the civil war still going on there?  If not, why has it stopped? What's your explanation?

- SMacEachern2

August 7, 2009 at 8:55pm

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I know this is a lot to read, but be anice boy and  do give it a try, Mac:

".....If there is anything the Darfur literature makes clear, it is that the prime cause of the genocide is the national government. Not ancient and immovable tribal hatreds among Darfuris, but a particular regime in Khartoum. The historical studies show that while Darfur has seen tribal tension for centuries, these conflicts were nothing like the one that is now taking place. This was partly because Darfur's tribes lacked modern weaponry, but it was also because they had systems in place for containing conflicts--protocols that called for negotiations between tribes and for payment of compensation to prevent disputes from escalating out of control. The vast majority of the Darfur scholars and writers seem to hold Khartoum, not the Arabs of Darfur, mainly responsible for initiating the slaughter.

And so do the Darfuris whom they cite. "We haven't any problem with Arabs. We have a problem with the policy of the government. Arabs are being used by the government to fight us," says one man in Darfur Diaries. "This is not a wise government who burns villages and kills civilians," says another Darfuri in the same book. "This is not a government that anyone can elect or support. In war, soldiers fight soldiers, but we never heard about soldiers fighting civilians." Writing in War in Darfur, Abdul-Jabbar Fadul and Victor Tanner quote a Fur leader saying that "Our problem is not with the Arabs, it is with the government. The government destroyed our area. Even if Arabs did take part, they are just poor people like us. The government is behind it." In the same chapter, a Masalit leader puts it this way: "The government says the problem is tribal. I say the problem is the government." Daoud Hari predicts that "when the government has removed or killed all the traditional non-Arabs, then it will get the traditional Arabs to fight one another so they too will disappear from valuable lands. This is already happening in areas where the removal of non-Arab Africans is nearly complete." Later in the book, he and Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times interview a Janjaweed fighter, about fourteen years old, who has been captured after participating in a failed attack on a non-Arab village. Why, they ask, did the Janjaweed attack? "We are from a village just over there," the boy responds. "We have always been friends with the people of this village." Then he explains what changed: "We were told by the government soldiers that these people were going to attack our village and kill our families if we did not attack them first. They would give us money if we did this."

In other words, government officials were the ones pulling the strings. Indeed, many Darfuris seem to hold Omar Bashir personally responsible for the violence. "After the English left, we were still okay, but at Bashir's time they came and separated Arab people and black people," says the sheik of Shegeg Karo in Darfur Diaries. In Heart of Darfur, Blaker and a colleague speak with a Darfuri woman who has been chased out of her village. "She wants us to write this down," the colleague translates. "She says that Bashir has thrown us into this fire and we are all dying." In Darfur Diaries, one refugee who has fled to Chad says that she and her husband, who is still in Darfur, "are separated by Omar Bashir."

To be sure, many observers believe that the conflict has grown far more labyrinthine in the past year or two, as Khartoum has lost control over the carnage that it initiated. The violence between tribes has acquired a momentum of its own, while the rebels have split into myriad different factions. Some rebels have declared allegiance to the government, then turned their guns on other rebels. All this is, first and foremost, an argument for why we should have intervened earlier. Had we sent troops in 2004 or even 2005, we would have encountered a much more tractable war than the one we face today--and hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. But it is also a cautionary note about the situation that awaits us in Darfur should we decide to intervene now.

Sponsored By:Still, the fact that non-Arab Darfuris ultimately blame Khartoum for the genocide more than they blame their Arab neighbors must count as a sliver of hope for the region's future. It suggests, among other things, that if an intervention force could ever establish a modicum of peace in Darfur, such a peace might stand a reasonable chance of taking hold. For their part, not all Arabs in Darfur participated in the slaughter, and many are disgusted by what they have seen--so disgusted that, in 2006, Arab Darfuris actually launched a rebel group to oppose the government themselves. "It denounced the Janjawiid as 'a minority of mercenaries and hired individuals,'" Flint explains, "and pledged to fight the 'injustice' of Khartoum and the 'terrorizing' of civilians. "

So the role of complexity in Darfur is, well, complicated. While some complexities undoubtedly make the genocide more difficult to stop, others might mitigate in favor of intervention. And some complexities are, upon close examination, less complex than they seem. What we can say for certain is that invoking "complexity" in order to dismiss the possibility of armed intervention has played right into the hands of the Sudanese government, which wanted the world to view Darfur as a hopelessly elaborate tribal conflict, and not as the campaign of government-orchestrated mass murder that it is. Reeves cites the following statement from 2005 by Robert Zoellick, who by that time had become Bush's point man on Darfur: "It's a tribal war. And frankly I don't think foreign forces want to get in the middle of a tribal war of Sudanese." The ghosts, again. If Omar Bashir knew of Zoellick's comment, then he would also have known that he would win in Darfur. And he has won.

When the definitive book about Darfur is someday written, I suspect it will treat the genocide as something that was both old and new. The story of Darfur is old in the context of Sudan, where similar mass atrocities unfolded in the south during the 1990s; old in the context of Africa, where Rwanda famously exploded in violence in 1994; and old in the context of the world--which, after a century filled with genocides, has yet to figure out how to answer the question posed by a displaced man early in the movie Darfur Now: "One by one, they are killing us like dogs. Where do you go to complain?"

Yet while genocide is an old phenomenon, our experience of the Darfur genocide has been in one way novel. Never before have we observed a genocide so diligently. We educated ourselves about the suffering. We watched movies, read books, and wore bracelets. Our politicians attended peace conferences, issued ultimatums, even dispatched an international force. And yet none of it has stopped the killing. What has gone wrong? Did we, over time, grow immune to the images and the testimonies? Did we give too much weight to what seemed like the conflict's complexities, and too little to the raw human suffering that was taking place before our eyes? Did we put too much faith in the United Nations and too little in ourselves? Did we allow our elected leaders to deflect responsibility back onto us--to seduce us with airy statements congratulating us on our passion, when they should have been consulting with generals about how to get soldiers onto the ground as quickly as possible? True, we were poorly served by a small-minded president and his bungling administration. But did liberals demand the right things of him? Did we push for what would really save the people of Darfur? Or did we get trapped by the inclinations of our worldview, and advocate for too little?

But it is too soon to succumb to a retrospective spirit, and to busy ourselves only with learning the right lessons for the next genocide, which will surely come. The suffering in Darfur is not yet yesterday's news."

Richard Just is the deputy editor of The New Republic.

www.tnr.com/.../story.html

- J. Dyer

August 7, 2009 at 11:31pm

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ndmackenzie commented on the Just article:

-- This is a welcome, and long overdue, article on Darfur. My main quibble with it is the way that Just excoriates "liberal" activists for their failures while ignoring the right completely. I hope TNR takes Just's comments to heart that its usual Darfur commentator, Eric Reeves, "writes in a sustained rage" and finds other writers on this topic. TNR's coverage of Darfur to date has been pretty much a one-note tirade - which is not necessarily the most effective way to help us understand the problem.

And I haven't read anything in the last year to change my opinion about TNRs coverage of Darfur.

- ndmackenzie

August 7, 2009 at 11:52pm

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Thank you for posting part of Richard Just's review article and the link to his entire piece from last year, jackson. You don't suppose that SMac is a paid flack for Khartoum, do you? By the way, what happened the discussion of the essay on Thomas More by James Wood? I saw some time back that basman was going to post on it but then I never saw his musings.

- liberal reformer

August 8, 2009 at 1:53am

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Good Lord, a Marty piece I can do nothing but wildly applaud.  And I think Just is on target with his attacks on liberal activists because the right has always been dragged into humanitarian interventions save *some* neocons (there was far less enthusiasm for Clinton's efforts it Bosnia and Kosovo than for Iraq).  To hear, as I did, human rights activists say privately that 2005-6 that supporting a no-fly zone in Sudan would implicitly endorse George W. Bush's war in Iraq was sickening.

- Lymon1

August 8, 2009 at 6:33am

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"You don't suppose that SMac is a paid flack for Khartoum, do you?"

I don't know, LR, there are two Macs here and each of them supports tyrannical rule in the name of "liberation."  

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 11:16am

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"By the way, what happened the discussion of the essay on Thomas More by James Wood? I saw some time back that basman was going to post on it but then I never saw his musings."

I am ready to start discussing the Wood essay any time.

I have been posting on More's Utopia, here

blogs.tnr.com/.../should-we-have-to-read-the-bard-before-hearing-him-more-on-shakespeare.aspx

And there is no reason why we can’t also discuss the essay on the same thread.

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 11:19am

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I am not able to post on that thread, jackson. When the number of comments approaches or exceeds one hundred - and there are currently one hundred and three posts there - the page is white below the last comment. Could we have the discussion elsewhere so that I can participate? Thank you very much.

- liberal reformer

August 8, 2009 at 12:41pm

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"Could we have the discussion elsewhere so that I can participate? Thank you very much."

Of course, let me propose another one and if it's not to your liking suggest one yourself.

blogs.tnr.com/.../further-thoughts-on-an-untenable-distinction.aspx

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 1:07pm

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...I am not able to post on that thread, jackson....

LR it's not that bad.

Just scroll to the bottom of the thread you'll find that the last 10 posts or so are only UTOPIA. As far as that discussion is concerned just ignore the before posts. And all those dedicated posts are between J. Dyer  and me.

I got sidetracked: what was the Wood essay were going to look at?

Please remind me.

- basman

August 8, 2009 at 1:10pm

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basman said:

"...I am not able to post on that thread, jackson...."

It doesn't matter to me.

I'll leave it up to LR. Wherever he wants to post is ok with me.

We were going to discuss the first essay in  Wood's book which, by chance,  deals with  Thomas More.

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 2:25pm

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J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur. Your objective here appears to be to evade the existence of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the central government in Khartoum and the various factions of the SPLA/SPLM in southern Sudan - because the existence of the CPA (which was laboriously negotiated, over about 15 years in all) raises the possibility of a diminution of violence in Darfur that doesn't necessarily involve overthrowing an Arab government and killing a lot of Arabs. Since - like Peretz and jwlwhatever - killing Arabs is the whole point of the exercise for you, with the situation in Darfur distinctly secondary, the CPA obviously presents a problem. The issue is, do you want fewer dead Darfuris, or do you want another government in Khartoum? What's the priority?

For what it's worth, the Just articles is, from my point of view, quite - well - just. It seems pretty accurate, and I agree with most of the sentiments involved. I'd quite like to see Bashir's government disappear: for one thing, I won't do research in that country with that government in power, and I have had the opportunity.

There's one major problem, though, one I've alluded to before and that wildboy effectively addressed above. After all the posturing on TNR about Darfur, as you and Peretz and the rest of the fire-eaters compete to see who has the biggest rhetorical dick, you're always extraordinarily short of answers on how this is supposed to happen. Who is supposed to intervene, and how?

You all hate the UN and you think all Africans are incompetent, so presumably it's the USA and/or NATO. Unfortunately, the USA has since the beginning of the Darfur genocide been assiduously vacuuming up military resources for Iraq and Afghanistan. There actually _was_ a Canadian proposal, from Roméo Dallaire, to deploy a Canadian battlegroup, with NATO logistical tail and US helicopter support IIRC, to Darfur in about 2005. I've worked in Chad, and trust me, the challenges of logistical support for a major Darfur operation are really wicked, so how is this supposed to happen?

The problem with you and yours is that you've got no answers to any of this. Until you do, why should anyone take you seriously?

- SMacEachern2

August 8, 2009 at 4:07pm

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SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur."

You are full of it, mac.

The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government.

If any western government had been guilty of even one tenth of such carnage you would have called its legitimacy into question a long time ago. The fact that they ended the killings for now changes nothing. It's still the same murderers in power.

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 5:41pm

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SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur."

You are full of it, mac.

The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government.

If any western government had been guilty of even one tenth of such carnage you would have called its legitimacy into question a long time ago. The fact that they ended the killings for now changes nothing. It's still the same murderers in power.

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 5:41pm

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SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur."

You are full of it, mac.  

The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government.

If any western government had been guilty of even one tenth of such carnage you would have called its legitimacy into question a long time ago. The fact that they ended the killings for now changes nothing. It's still the same murderers in power.

“You all hate the UN”

Who is you, Mac the Bigot.

“and you think all Africans are incompetent,”

Where did I say that, bigot?

“so presumably it's the USA and/or NATO.”

This is incoherent.

Your attempt to change the subject is pathetic.

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 5:49pm

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J. Dyer: "The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government."

The question is exactly whether there is still a civil war in southern Sudan. If there is not - and there isn't, although it's still a violent place - we have to ask ourselves why not. However, as I said, that would disturb your agenda and that of Martin Peretz... which has nothing to do with Darfur, and everything to do with pulling an Iraq2003 in Khartoum. And so you do not want to hear anything about the situation in southern Sudan today.

- SMacEachern2

August 8, 2009 at 9:32pm

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SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: "The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government......However, as I said, that would disturb your agenda and that of Martin Peretz... "

Spare me your conspiracy thinking.

"The question is exactly whether there is still a civil war in southern Sudan."

There was no "civil war" in the South there was wholesale slaughter of people there by the Sudanese government.

You are shameless shill for a murderous regime.

- J. Dyer

August 8, 2009 at 10:04pm

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Thank you, jackson, that link is fine. The original one that you suggested would have been okay by me, I just couldn't post there. Basman, I believe you misunderstood me. When there are so may posts, the screen goes white and sometimes cuts off in the middle of a post. I am unable to comment in such situations because the Leave a Comment section is missing. Jackson, you are entirely correct about SMac; he is a shill for Khartoum. So what if the civil war in the south has wound down? It was in the interest of the Bashir regime to do so. The SPLA has violated the peace accord in any case.

- liberal reformer

August 9, 2009 at 3:36am

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Correction: I measnt to say above that the SPLA has charged Khartoum with violating the 2005 peace accord.

- liberal reformer

August 9, 2009 at 3:37am

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LR, I am ready for the discussion any time you are.

Hopefully, Itzig will join us there too.

There is no reason we can't have two simulataneous discussions going on two threads.

- J. Dyer

August 9, 2009 at 10:08am

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liberal reformer: "So what if the civil war in the south has wound down?"

Nice to see how your real concern for Sudanese people shines through.... That civil war killed almost 2 million people between 1983 and 2004, and you ask 'so what'? If the ending of the genocide in Darfur deprived you and yours of the excuse to fantasize about overthrowing the government in Khartoum, you'd be saying 'so what' about Darfurians as well.

- SMacEachern2

August 9, 2009 at 10:33am

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"Nice to see how your real concern for Sudanese people shines through.... "

In your posts they do, mac.

You put you emphasis on a civil war which is still ongoing, though at a lower level, while ignoring Darfur which you believe along with the Sudanese government that the claims of mass killings are exaggerated by Zionists.

It's all a zionist plot, you see.

- J. Dyer

August 9, 2009 at 12:40pm

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You are one piece of work, SMac. Any sentient, cognizant, intelligent person would comprehend that when I wrote the "so what ...." comment , it was in the context of debating you over the malignity of the Khartoum regime. I was very relieved when the civil warned burned itself out. You are a shill for the disgusting Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir and, therefore, you attempt to turn the tables on your critics with your ridiculous postings.

- liberal reformer

August 9, 2009 at 12:50pm

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J. Dyer: "You put you emphasis on a civil war which is still ongoing, though at a lower level, while ignoring Darfur which you believe along with the Sudanese government that the claims of mass killings are exaggerated by Zionists."

Right. Which is why in the post before that I refer to the genocide in Darfur.

Enough. The two of you know nothing about Sudan, nothing about Darfur, nothing about Africa, and what's more, you don't actually give a damn. Go back to your mutual pleasuring, and have fun.

- SMacEachern2

August 9, 2009 at 1:44pm

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Resentful Mac reveals himself:

"Enough. The two of you know nothing about Sudan, nothing about Darfur, nothing about Africa, and what's more, you don't actually give a damn."

Just because mac spent a couple of summers digging for piss pots in Africa doesn't make him an expert in that region.

Besides only an ignorant fool like mac would think that one could "know" all of Africa.

It's like saying that because I spend some time in India I am an expert on China as well.

Mac would do better to go on with his self-pleasuring.

- J. Dyer

August 9, 2009 at 2:25pm

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What is the book of essays in which Wood's essay on More can be found?

- basman

August 9, 2009 at 2:41pm

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okay found it: James Wood. “Sir Thomas More: A Man For One Season.” in The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief. (New York: Random House, 1999), [www.luminarium.org/.../wood.htm].

- basman

August 9, 2009 at 2:43pm

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l.r. one thought: though I am happy to chat with you at any functional site, if you get to the thread via windows instead of firefox you don't experience the cut off-- or at least I don't.

- basman

August 9, 2009 at 2:46pm

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Now I have that Wolfe site marked so I can go there readily.

Let's rock.

All I need to do is get the essay and read it, which I'll do as quickly as I can. I volunteer to do its precis and evaluation og it as a piece of crticial thinking.

I'll let you know when I have it.

- basman

August 9, 2009 at 2:54pm

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Good news bad news:

good news/ I just bought hte book on line (used);

bad news/ it's going to take 1 week or 2 for me to get it.

So if someone else wants to go first at the dedicated site, be my guest.

if you want to wait, I'll proceed when I can.

- basman

August 9, 2009 at 3:20pm

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SMac: I will put up my knowledge of Africa against yours any day of the week. Some people do have a cursory acquaintance with a topic that they declaim on but I have studied Africa intensely for many years. You just don't like the fact that jackson and I have your number, that we are on to your shilling for tyrannocrats (yes, my neologism, which came to me as I was typing this) and to your dotty leftism, so you have to demean our knowledge. As jackson said, going or even living somewhere is no guarantee of sagacity as regards a country. Paul Hollander detailed the idiocy of political pilgrims in his wonderful book by that name (Political Pilgrims, that is), whereby leftists went in search of their romantic political dreams and found what they sought. I think that you are a political pilgrim of a sort, SMac.

- liberal reformer

August 9, 2009 at 7:19pm

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P.S. SMac: Have fun fellating Omar al-Bashir. I hear that he doesn't pay well, though.

- liberal reformer

August 9, 2009 at 8:30pm

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-- I will put up my knowledge of Africa against yours any day of the week. Some people do have a cursory acquaintance with a topic that they declaim on but I have studied Africa intensely for many years.

I am always struck by the lack of self-awareness of the right-wing nitwits posting on The Spine.

- ndmackenzie

August 9, 2009 at 8:47pm

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ndmackenzie said:

"I am always struck by the lack of self-awareness of the right-wing nitwits posting on The Spine."

Here comes the other Mac.

I am always struck by how deluded right wing supporters of Islamo Fascists like the Macs are, and in Mackenzie's case supporters of antisemites like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Their calling others "right wing" is a grotesque joke.

- J. Dyer

August 9, 2009 at 9:09pm

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There is no more right wing Jew hater here than mackenzie!

- J. Dyer

August 9, 2009 at 9:18pm

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There is no more right wing Jew hater here than mackenzie.

- J. Dyer

August 9, 2009 at 9:19pm

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Another mac attack (or is it the same mac?)

ndmackenzie said:  “I am always struck by the lack of self-awareness of the right-wing nitwits posting on The Spine”

I am always struck by the lack of self awareness of right wing pro Islamofascistic antisemites like Mackenzie who consider themselves to be on the left.

- J. Dyer

August 9, 2009 at 9:23pm

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Even by your prostrate standards, your post is extremely fatuous, nd. I am on the moderate left, as you would know if you had any intelligence whatsoever. Moreover, my knowledge of Africa was being impugned by SMac, hence my response. What is unself-aware about that? No need to reply, given that you will have nothing intelligent to say, as ever.

- liberal reformer

August 10, 2009 at 8:46am

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This is not a question about right and left, as some of the few left-leaning readers here demonstrate.  This is a question of right and wrong.  If, in the course of world events, you can spare minimal effort to save human misery, you must do it.  I don't know what the balance will have to be - 1 US Soldier dead for 1 Sudanese civilian saved is too high a price. 10-1 is too much.  But in this situation, it would most likely have been 10,000 - 1.  The US just had to use its air superiority to protect the refugees.  We did not.  And if we would not, who would? The UN? The African Union? What a joke - they're loaded with cronies of the Sudanese gov't who would worry that they'd be next since their human rights records aren't sparkling either.

I supported the Iraq war because of the massacres that Hussein and his twisted sons perpetrated on Iraqis.  I assumed that the price to be paid will be small while the lifting of an entire people from the yoke of oppression will be high.  The price was much higher than expected.  The price would have been much less if those ingrates did not then turn on their deliverers.  Happily, the Kurds at least are living in peace and happiness and no longer need to fear mustard gas bombs in the night.

- jwl2672

August 10, 2009 at 1:15pm

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-- I assumed that the price to be paid will be small while the lifting of an entire people from the yoke of oppression will be high.  The price was much higher than expected.

And it is precisely a recognition of the (almost) universal failure of this assumption that leads nearly all thoughtful and responsible human-rights NGOs to shy away from pushing for military adventure to bring an end to human-rights atrocities. History has shown time and again that such adventure usually brings misadventure in its wake.

- ndmackenzie

August 10, 2009 at 1:37pm

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Jwl: I would be embarrassed to be endlessly fatuous but you seem not to be; you are not chastened at all by your ignorance, you just keep spouting off. The "ingrates" were largely the Sunnis, who were removed from power by the US invasion of March 2003. The Sunnis were responsible for huge amounts of the violence in Iraq, until the surge and the buying off of the tribal chieftains (aka "The Sons of Iraq" program) ratcheted down the carnage. Your nonsensical take would be equivalent to referring to the contras in, say, 1986, as ingrates who did not appreciate the Sandinista revolution. Why are you even at TNR's site anyway? Is it because those organs which are Tribunes of the People, e.g., National Review, the Weekly Standard, Commentary etc. don't have reader-response fora?

- liberal reformer

August 10, 2009 at 5:33pm

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