Ahira's Hangar

Dhofar? Well, I'll bring up historical slaughters that are never mentioned: 1)the slaughter of 100,000s of Armenians by Turks in 1910s - 1920s, 2) the slaughter of 10,000s of Indonesians (mostly leftists and other governmental dissenters) after the general's coup in 1963. taraswizard
Allan Rosewarne N9SQT/WDX6HQV
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Very well said Duchess.

The perception of a thing is as important as the thing itself, if not more so.

Co-operative effort lessens the perception of personal motives etc.

And Taras, those are only a very few of them. The point is not that those have happened I think, it is to try and prevent it from continuing to happen.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

But (to play devil's advocate) isn't any incursion into another country's affairs (no matter how nasty) the same as going into Iraq (or any of the other country's we've meddled with)? Yes, I agree that genocide is a horrible thing, but do we really want to se precidence that the US or the UN invades other countries when there are human rights violations? If htat's the case, we need to invade China right now.

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In this case, the violence (and huge numbers of refugees) is spilling out into neighboring countries, who are begging for international intervention/aid. That entire region of Africa might errupt into chaos and death as a result of what is going on.

As far as I know, no one begged for Iraq to be invaded - quite the opposite was true in most of the world.

Intervantion in the Darfur would be an attempt to put out the flames - not adding fuel to them, as the Iraq invasion seems to have achieved. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Avatar said: Quote:And Taras, those are only a very few of them. The point is not that those have happened I think, it is to try and prevent it from continuing to happen.

Amen. "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"<i></i>

I'll grant you that duchy, but is that what we need to wait for? People begging to be helped? Again I point to China, which has the worst human rights record on the planet.

Should we invade China?

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You know, if America said that they were going to enforce human rights globally, I'd support that.

If they said they supported human rights, but wouldn't interfere, I'd support that too.

The fact that they claimed that the invasion of Iraq was motivated by ensuring human rights, and then didn't invade China, Zimbabwe, Somalia, etc. just makes me assume that human rights had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq other than providing the next handy smokescreen.

If the US said that they would invade any country that was committing genocide, I'd support that too.

Should you invade China? Only if your policy is to enforce human rights.

Should you be trading with a country who violates the rights of people on such large scale? I don't think so.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

Yeah, I can agree with all that.

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Avatar usually manages to be the voice of reason.

In answer Cail - you have to begin somewhere. Why not help the countries begging for help in the face of such a disaster? And if the US troops are spread too thin right now (as they very well might be) - what is stopping the US from putting together an international coalition for helping Chad and the other countries begging for help due to the spreading Darfur crisis? We could be the coordinator, rather than the invador, so to speak. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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The problem is, even with the best intentions, we're still the invader. Someone, somewhere is going to disagree with foriegn troops interfering with a civil war.

IOW, even though the intent is altruistic, it's still interfering.

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Of course somebody is going to hate you. But it's going to be the people who are committing genocide. And nobody much will care.

Seriously, if Iraq had been running death camps, and the invasion had liberated them, you wouldn't have heard a quarter, a tenth, of the outcry.

People need a reason. They need to see something good coming out of things like that. Something tangibly good. The growing opposition to the Iraq war is because the reasons turned out to be false, and it seems like only bad things are coming of it.

If something good was visibly coming from it, it probably wouldn't even matter that the reasons were bad. Instead, 50 Iraqi's a day are dying. Far more than ever did under Saddam.

People will tolerate altruistic interference far better than any other kind.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

FYI, Shelby Steele (a known conservative commentator) earlier today had an essay published establishing that U.S. military power should only be used to further the military strategic interests of the U.S. IMO, that explains much of the indifference. <i>Edited by: taraswizard at: 8/25/06 2:59 pm
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I pretty much agree. If there's no benefit to the US, either tangibly or strategically, they're not going to bother.

Which is fine in itself, they have every right to do nothing. (Well, apart from that little bit of law concerning genocide.) But then they should be honest about it, and admit that the veil of humanitarian concern is pretty much just that. A veil.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>