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Is Kipling onto something that we should know again?
Take up the White Man's burden--The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
****
The Free West's Weblog Why we should not interfere in Darfur
Darfur is a mess.
I quote from the website SaveDarfur:
'According to reports by the World Food Program, the United Nations and the Coalition for International Justice, 3.5 million people are now hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced due to violence, and 400,000 people have died in Darfur thus far. The international community is failing to protect civilians or to influence the Sudanese government to do so.
The international community is deeply divided -- perhaps paralyzed -- over what to do next in Darfur. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur described the massive scope of atrocities carried out in the territory, primarily by the government and its allied Janjaweed militias. And the situation on the ground shows a number of negative trends, which have been developing since the last quarter of 2004: deteriorating security; a credible threat of famine; mounting civilian casualties; the ceasefire in shambles; increasing tensions between Sudan and Chad; and new armed movements appearing in Darfur and neighboring states. Chaos and a culture of impunity are taking root in the region.'
Sudan is a member of the UN Human Rights Commission and of all the international Muslim Organizations, an independent nation-state the rights of which we need to respect.
Khartoum does not want UN soldiers in its country. Who are we to impose upon them our military?
Why would the West want to interfere in Darfur? Muslims kill Muslims, Muslims are starving, are ill, die by the thousands, and who should be concerned about this? Infidel whites?
Sudan is not a threat to the West. We can do some business in Khartoum – I have been there once in the early eighties – and support the moderate Sudanese, but Darfur is a matter of the Africans and the Arabs. We can't solve all the problems in the world, don't we?
The Muslims and Africans seem to go their own way without losing any sleep over the plight of the Darfur blacks. I have not seen any mass protest in the Arab-Islamic world over the treatment of the Sudanese blacks. Yes, I have seen mass protests over the cartoons.
Today, the world's media are in uproar because Israel grabbed some terrorists and forced them to undress so they could be catched in underpants - this seems to have insulted the Arabs. But the Arabs don't seem to be insulted by what Muslims are doing to Muslims in Darfur.
400.000 deaths in Sudan is a footnote in the awareness of the media and the Arabs. No Jews involved over there. Not even Bush.
So: if the Africans don't care, if the Muslims don't care, why would we - Christians, Jews, Unbelievers -care?
Why don't we stick to our own concerns and why should we send our soldiers, our money and our supplies to another continent which should be of concern of people closer to the region?
Why can't we leave those blacks alone with their masters in Khartoum?
You have any idea why we cannot not leave those people alone?
Do we believe stronger in humanity and in the sanctity of individual life than Arabs, Africans, Muslims?
Why do we discuss the cruel, terrible fate of the people of Darfur while the terror masters in Khartoum are celebrated by Muslim and Arab leaders?
Are we less inclined to accept injustice, suppression, torture, than the people closer to the Darfurians?
Let us be Realpolitiker. Let us be critical about interventions way beyond our borders.
Who are we to impose our values and way of life upon other people?
Here is one reason...
What was wrong with Kipling's White man's burden?
http://www.welt.de/z/plog/blog
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.html.
4 comments:
International aid agencies are now reporting that they expect a large outbreak of cholera in Sudan. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
I have to disagree with you on one point.
This isn't merely Muslim's killing Muslim's.
Sudan's militant Muslim regime is slaughtering Christians who refuse to convert to Islam, according to the head of an aid group who recently returned from the African nation.
The forced conversions are just one aspect of the Khartoum government's self-declared jihad on the mostly Christian and animist south.
Villagers in several areas of the northeast Upper Nile region say that when women are captured by government forces they are asked: "Are you Christian or Muslim?"
Women who answer "Muslim" are set free, but typically soldiers gang-rape those who answer "Christian" then cut off their breasts and leave them to die as an example for others.
Villagers are rounded up and asked "Do you renounce Jesus Christ?" Anyone who refused was killed by a three-inch nail driven into the top of the head.
F**king "Religion of Peace"the
That Kipling poem is brilliant, Kipling should be required reading now the west has ventured into the 'stans.
Darfur is FUBAR, and the cost of fixing anything there would be completely astronomical - damn near as much as Iraq is costing.
That comment that was made was somewhat inaccurate. Kipling was a flagrant racist who believed that white men were endowed with supremacy over all of those who were not right. His poem was used as a propaganda tool that reinforced the concept that as we exploit them we will lead them to civilization. I find it offensive that it could be used in this instance because this scenario is about intervening to stop the genocide. In this sense it would be different from what Kipling is suggesting because the United States is going into stop the killing and for a cause that has no financial gain for them. That is completely different from what Kipling suggests which is the subjugation of a people for the greater glory of their Empire (British). If you had read the poem you would have realized that the title itself is ironic.
The fact of the matter it has been proved that the Chinese government whether knowing or unknowingly provided the material for the Genocide in Darfur. The fact of the matter is that would it be iresponsible for anyone in the position to speak out against the issued in that reason of the world to speak up? For crying out out loud how many Holocaust memorials do we have to build before we actually do something about mass murder.
Another important factor to remember is the fact that the killing in Darfur would not be decried by the governments in the middle east because of the fact that it shines light into the misdoing's of another Arab nation. Why were the CIA spies in Europe allowed to operate while they were fully sanctioned by the host country? The simple fact was that it was in the best interest of those nations to keep their mouths shut. Now look at the United States it has the largest military in the world and the world economy combined rivals the United States and not that of individual nations. If the United States had the political will to act then it should and it can. Not to mention the fact that you are referring to nations in other parts of the world that have an underdeveloped legal systems and social norms. I wonder if you would be so outspoken about the genocide in Darfur if it happened to interfere with some that affected the United States either financial or militarily. Only short sightedness prevents people from realizing that the conflict in Darfur is part of the GLobal war on terror and terrorism does not always come in the form of explosions and the death of American civilians. If radical Islam takes root it will rise to challenge our freedoms and the freedoms of many around the world like fascism and socialism eventually did in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The very structure of the United Nations was expressly for the purpose of adverting war and the kinds of conflicts that could lead to global wars. if the United States consciously wants to thwart radical Islam it should do so by flexing its moral as well as military authority around the world.
Thanks all for the comments and the time and effort you've taken to make your statements and opinions public here.
Everyone, pretty much regardless of the stance, is welcome to post a comment. I don't find it flattering or interesting to have people repeat what I post, even if I'm more or less right.
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