Conflict in Darfur, Sudan - The Mega Thread

[Kirkhill]

I yield to your closer sense of the man, Edward.

For those of us that are not so acquainted with him I don't know that it serves to go that road.

Cheers, Chris.

 

[paracowboy]

For those of us that are not so acquainted with him I don't know that it serves to go that road.

it is my duty, as a Jack, to stand up for my troops when they are getting screwed over. I will do so to my Sgt, WO, PL Comd, OC, and CO. Many times it is out of ignorance of a soldier's situation, and once brought to your superior's attention, it is addressed. Sometimes, it is not, and I will continue to press the issue. I will do so as politely as possible at first, but will not stop until I am out of legal options. This is no different.

He's screwing the troops for politics. It MUST be addressed.

 

[a_majoor]

Since RecceDG knows the man from personal experience, I will accept he is charismatic and can attract the loyalty and trust of his men, but I will side with Paracowboy here on this issue, it is my duty and responsibility as an NCO to look after the welfare of my men, and if a leader (or the leadership) is suggesting an unsound course of action, then I must point out the alternatives.

The danger here is Dallaire is not in any of our chain of commands, and we as serving members must follow the lawful orders of the government of the day. If he wields his influence to push the government into making an ill considered and unsupportable deployment, then the potential consequences are horrifying for all of us. Remember, except for the party in power, nothing substantial has changed in the strategic sphere (i.e. how does this affect our national interest), nor in our military ability to pull this off. If Gen Dallaire was making these statements as an opinion columnist (like Gen Mackenzie does from time to time) that would be one thing, but he is a Liberal Senator, so he is speaking from a different and privileged platform to influence public opinion and government policy.

 

[DG-41]

Since RecceDG knows the man from personal experience, I will accept he is charismatic and can attract the loyalty and trust of his men

You make him sound like some sort of cult leader.

Gen. Dallaire didn't generate this kind of loyalty through personal charisma; he earned it the hard way, by demonstrating, time and time again, his overarching concern for the success of his mission, the welfare of his troops, and above all, the safety and security of the people under his protection.

We have discussed the Col. Grossman "sheep, wolves, sheepdog" metaphor before; Gen Dalliare is the King Daddy Sheepdog. The requirement to protect the sheep is integral to the man, all the way to the core of his soul.

His methods, his operational decisions, and his measure of success in completing his missions can be debated, but as far as I am concerned, his ethics are beyond reproach. I have never met any other officer for whom the military ethos was so completely internalized, and whose personal conduct served as the very example to be emulated. He set the bar the rest of us try and live up to.

To accuse him of partisan politics, especially in the context of the lives of Canadian soldiers, is to completely misrepresent the man's honour and integrity, and it so flies in the face of the man's history, that I am forced to conclude the accusation itself is a partisan act.

One of the things I have always admired about Gen Dallaire is his capacity to admit to his own errors, correct them, and carry on. If his position on Darfur has changed, then I conclude that he has revised his analysis and has adopted that new position based on that revised analysis. And note that I am not commenting one way or another on his initial or his revised analysis - Gen Dallaire is not omnipotent nor omniscient; he may make mistakes as readily as any other man.

But to assume that his position has changed for partisan reasons makes assumptions utterly in variance with reality, and I think projects the qualities of the accusers. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

DG

 

[Edward Campbell]

...

But to assume that his position has changed for partisan reasons makes assumptions utterly in variance with reality ...

Romeo Dallaire changed occupations.

He went from being a retired general officer, with all the prospects available for e.g. lobbying or playing a leadership role in non-partisan, non-governmental, public affairs, to being a working politician: a senator.  More power to him.  Politics is an honourable calling, it is public service of the highest order with its own prospects for leadership in public affairs.  It is also highly partisan, which did not offend Dallaire – he said, when he took the appointment, that he was a life long Liberal, from a family of Liberals.

I don’t pretend to know Dallaire’s current reality, but his change of opinion looks partisan and sounds partisan so I continue to assume it is partisan.

I don’t object to Senator Dallaire being a partisan politician but we need to recognize that the main reason he, as an untested legislator, gets prime real estate in the national media because he was a lieutenant general and he is the victim of Chrétien, Baril et al and their Rwanda fiasco.

 

[KevinB]

The moralist in me wishes to see Western Troops in Darfur -- the realist in me stays STAY THE FUCK OUT...


I disagree on DG's assesment of Dallaire - I will leave it at that.

 

[Journeyman]

There are few officers from whom I have learned so much, and he is of VERY few who I would follow anywhere, unhestatingly, without question, because I trust his judgement and his ethics.

I too worked for Gen Dallaire, when he commanded 5CMBG. And I too thought he was an excellent officer, tactical commander, and human being. The key to both those statements, however, is they are written in the past-tense. We've crossed paths several times since, including a rather lengthy discussion when he couldn't escape me on an Amsterdam-Toronto flight. He is not the same man he was, primarily due to the demons he will likely always carry. Even if his opinion on the mission was not tainted by partisan politics, which it clearly is, he is not the dispassionate, rational observer most suited to make such a judgement.

If Romeo Dallaire comes to me and says "I think Darfur is doable, and I need you to go" - then Darfur is doable, and I will drop everything and go.

I suspect the judgement will be couched more in hand-wringing terms of "something must be done," rather than any sort of straight-forward "Darfur is doable."

Darfur, however, is not doable given the realities of the CF's current strength/capabilities and the Canadian population's support for such an operation. If Canadian troops are told to get on with it, they will. They will fail, but the government will find some positive aspect in order to declare it a success. Committing troops to Darfur will certainly force a weakening of our efforts in Afghanistan, increasing the peril of that mission's success as well. And the people who are predisposed to dislike the military will point at the CF and proclaim "why were they allowed to drag Canada into these situations?"

 

[MarkOttawa]

Jack Layton and Dawn Black of the NDP want Canada to reduce the Canadian Forces' mission in Afghanistan in order to do "traditional peacekeeping" in Darfur: "Get soldiers out of Afghanistan, into Darfur" (full text not online):
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=98c09cca-ca71-473e-a1f2-c952eacede01

Mr Layton says ""Canada invented the concept of UN-led peacekeeping forces under (former prime minister Lester B.) Pearson 60 years ago in order to protect people in very difficult situations like you see in Darfur..."

Mr Layton is clearly not aware that the UN's Suez peacekeeping mission (UNEF)--Pearson's concept--had nothing to do with protecting people. Its mission was simply to place troops between two armed forces, the Israeli and Egyptian, in order to discourage a resumption of hostilities.

And according to the story Ms Black said "...once Canada fulfils its Afghan commitment in February, it should look at returning to a more traditional peacekeeping role in a place like Darfur."

The story also notes that "Liberal Senator Romeo Dallaire, the former general who led the doomed UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, has called for Canada to play a lead role in a proposed 20,000-member UN peacekeeping force."

Clearly Ms Black is unaware that what most of those urging intervention in Darfur--including Sen. Daillaire--want is no such thing. Rather they want a UN Charter Chapter VII force with a mandate to take action and use force on its own: in other words "peacemaking" (as in Afghanistan) rather than "traditional peacekeeping".

How ironic that such nonsense would appear on VE Day--a day that is a reminder of a real tradition.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[DBA]

There is zero chance of the UN sanctioning any direct action in Darfur as they have declared it not a genocide and several veto holding countries will block action anyway. Since the Liberals held the UN as the moral authority on such issues while condemning the US in Iraq it's very hypocritical to now suggest something has to be done even if it's outside UN approval. Typical sanctimonious liberal crap. "I know when I am right so I can ignore the rules for the greater good but you must follow them as breaking them is evil" is how I view this line of liberal reasoning. It's an easy trap to get into as you do know your own intentions but not those of others. If you feel superior to others and never analyse your viewpoint then this self serving contradiction doesn't even seem a problem.

Dallaire may be hoping the Conservatives will follow a more US approach to the UN and ignore the lack of a UN mandate for direct action.

 

[a_majoor]

Why listen to Senator Dallaire when Mark Steyn sums it up so much better?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20876,19056736-7583,00.html

Mark Steyn: New coalition of willing needed in Darfur
Hollywood stars are naive to expect the UN to stop the bloodbath in Sudan

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

08may06

I SEE George Clooney and Angelina Jolie have discovered Darfur and are now demanding "action". Good for them. Hollywood hasn't shown this much interest in indigenous groups of the Sudan since John Payne and Jerry Colonna sang The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish in Garden of the Moon (1938).

I wish the celebs well. Those of us who wanted action on Darfur years ago will hope their advocacy produces more results than ours did. Clooney's concern for the people of the region appears to be genuine and serious. But unless he's also serious about backing the only forces in the world with the capability and will to act in Sudan, he's just another showboating pretty boy of no use to anyone.
Here's the lesson of the past three years: The UN kills.

In 2003, you'll recall, the US was reviled as a unilateralist cowboy because it and its coalition of the poodles waged an illegal war unauthorised by the UN against a sovereign state run by a thug regime that was no threat to anyone apart from selected ethnocultural groups within its borders, which it killed in large numbers (Kurds and Shia).

Well, Washington learned its lesson. Faced with another thug regime that's no threat to anyone apart from selected ethnocultural groups within its borders which it kills in large numbers (African Muslims and southern Christians), the unilateralist cowboy decided to go by the book. No unlawful actions here. Instead, meetings at the UN. Consultations with allies. Possible referral to the Security Council.

And as I wrote on this page in July 2004: "The problem is, by the time you've gone through the UN, everyone's dead." And as I wrote in Britain's Daily Telegraph in September 2004: "The US agreed to go the UN route and it looks like they'll have a really strongish compromise resolution ready to go about a week after the last villager's been murdered and his wife gang-raped."

Several hundred thousand corpses later Clooney is now demanding a "stronger multinational force to protect the civilians of Darfur".

Agreed. So let's get on to the details. If by "multinational" Clooney means a military intervention authorised by the UN, then he's a poseur and a fraud, and we should pay him no further heed. Meaningful UN action is never gonna happen. Sudan has at least two Security Council vetoes in its pocket: China gets 6 per cent of its oil from the country, while Russia has less obviously commercial reasons and more of a general philosophical belief in the right of sovereign states to butcher their own.

So forget a legal intervention authorised by the UN. If by "multinational" Clooney means military participation by the Sudanese regime's co-religionists, then dream on. The Arab League, as is its wont when one of its bloodier members gets a bad press, has circled the camels and chosen to confer its Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on Khartoum by holding its most recent summit there.

So who, in the end, does "multinational action" boil down to? The same small group of nations responsible for almost any meaningful global action, from Sierra Leone to Iraq to Afghanistan to the tsunami-devastated Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia and on to East Timor and the Solomon Islands. The same core of English-speaking countries, technically multinational but distressingly unicultural and unilingual and indeed, given that most of them share the same head of state, uniregal. The US, Britain, Australia and Canada (back in the game in Afghanistan) certainly attract other partners, from the gallant Poles to the Kingdom of Tonga.

But, whatever international law has to say on the subject, the only effective intervention around the world comes from ad hoc coalitions of the willing led by the doughty musketeers of the Anglosphere. Right now who's on the ground dragging the reluctant Sudanese through their negotiations with the African Union? America's Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick and Britain's International Development Secretary Hilary Benn. Sorry, George, that's as "multinational" as it's gonna get.

Clooney made an interesting point a few weeks ago. He said that "liberal" had become a dirty word in America and he'd like to change that. Fair enough. But you're never going to do so as long as your squeamishness about the projection of American power outweighs your do-gooder instincts.

The American Prospect's Mark Leon Goldberg penned an almost comically agonised piece fretting about the circumstances in which he'd be prepared to support a Bush intervention in Darfur: Who needs the Janjaweed when you're prepared to torture your own arguments the way Goldberg does? He gets to the penultimate paragraph and he's still saying stuff such as: "The question, of course, is whether the US seeks Security Council support to legitimise such airstrikes."

Well, no, that's not the question. If you think the case for intervention in Darfur depends on whether or not the Chinese guy raises his hand, sorry, you're not being serious. The good people of Darfur have been entrusted to the legitimacy of the UN for more than two years and it's killing them. In 2004, after months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan took decisive action and appointed a UN committee to look into what's going on. Eventually, they reported back that it's not genocide.

Thank goodness for that. Because, as yet another Kofi-appointed UN committee boldly declared, "genocide anywhere is a threat to the security of all and should never be tolerated". So fortunately what's going on in the Sudan isn't genocide. Instead, it's just hundreds of thousands of corpses who happen to be from the same ethnic group, which means the UN can go on tolerating it until everyone's dead, at which point the so-called "decent left" can support a "multinational" force under the auspices of the Arab League going in to ensure the corpses don't pollute the water supply.

What's the quintessential leftist cause? It's the one you see on a gazillion bumper stickers: Free Tibet. Every college in the US has a Free Tibet society: There's the Indiana University Students for a Free Tibet, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Students for a Free Tibet, and the Students for a Free Tibet University of Michigan Chapter. Everyone's for a free Tibet, but no one's for freeing Tibet. Idealism as inertia is the hallmark of the movement.

Those of us on the Free Iraq-Free Darfur side are consistent: There are no bad reasons to clobber thug regimes, and the postmodern sovereignty beloved by the UN is strictly conditional. At some point, the Left has to decide whether it stands for anything other than self-congratulatory passivity and the fetishisation of a failed and corrupt transnationalism. As Alexander Downer put it: "Outcomes are more important than blind faith in the principles of non-intervention, sovereignty and multilateralism."

Just so. Regrettably, the Australian Foreign Minister isn't as big a star as Clooney, but I'm sure Downer wouldn't mind if Clooney wanted to appropriate it as the Clooney Doctrine. If Anglosphere action isn't multinational enough for Sudan, it might confirm the suspicion that the Left's conscience is now just some tedious shell game in which it frantically scrambles the thimbles but, whether you look under the Iraqi or Afghan or Sudanese one, you somehow never find the shrivelled pea of The Military Intervention We're Willing To Support.

Mark Steyn is a regular contributor to The Australian's opinion page.

So yes, we and our friends in the Anglosphere may be the only ones willing to take effective action in Dafur, but as a practical matter, we as the Canadian Forces do not have the wherewithal to make it happen, nor will we for years to come. Since Senator Dallaire knows this as well as anyone (and far better than most of his fellow senators), he should be very careful in his pronouncements about what we "should" be doing.

 

[Centurian1985]

Sadly, this hilarious comedic piece has done a better job of summing up the situation than most any academic with a political science background...

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

I'm liking this Mark Steyn fella.

 

[Journeyman]

Yes, he seems like a typical, shy, understated Aussie 

 

[Old Sweat]

Mark Steyn is a Canadian.

 

[Journeyman]

Mark Steyn is a Canadian.

Yet one more thing I didn't know...or was wrong about. Thanks for that. 

 

[artsy]

sorry.......the u.s has everything to do with darfur.....and the genocide.......they trained to them and supplied them with weapons......get educated people

 

[George Wallace]

Two posts artsy girl and you are starting to look a lot like Pike.  If you insist on Trolling, your existence here will be eradicated with extreme prejudice.

 

[mainerjohnthomas]

sorry.......the u.s has everything to do with darfur.....and the genocide.......they trained to them and supplied them with weapons......get educated people

    Get educated?  Darlin', my family has been soldiering in Africa off and on for the last three hundred years.  We did not have to teach them genocide, that is the reality of tribal warfare.  We did not have to arm them, the traditional tools for genocide in Africa are muscle powered, not precision guided.  There are no outdated weapons.  A rock will still crush a skull, a blade will still cut a throat, and when you are facing defenceless women and children you do not need a tank.  Africa has sunk all the way back to the way it was when we colonized it in the first place; a few small islands of order in a sea of poverty and pain.  I know you want to blame the US and shadowy corporate figures for all the evils in the world; but child, most of us have met these evils, and they were old before the first coin was struck, and will continue on long after capitalism goes the way of the dinosaur.
    PS, if you want to be takes seriously.  Use the shift key to make the big letters just like the grownups do ;D

 

[Fishbone Jones]

sorry.......the u.s has everything to do with darfur.....and the genocide.......they trained to them and supplied them with weapons......get educated people

I don't know what kind of mind altering chemicals these guys and Layton are taking,

but I hope their using cat sanitation. Whatever it is, it's to powerful to be released unimpeded into our water system when it runs off the rope their pissing up.

 

[The Wrong Guy]

sorry.......the u.s has everything to do with darfur.....and the genocide.......they trained to them and supplied them with weapons......get educated people

Ok. Please support these statements with facts, if you can, and not hearsay. If not, then where have you been getting your education from?

What do Peace and Freedom mean if they are not shared ?