Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Darfur & the Europeans (Wimps?)

The USA is the country the rest of the world loves to hate. While it’s busy ridding the world of butchers like Saddam and bin Laden, there’s little doubt that all the UN delegates are blaming the good ol’ USA for not “doing something” about Darfur. Without question, the Muslim-controlled government of Sudan is perpetrating genocide on those in the Darfur region just as it did against the southern Sudanese, mostly Christians and animists, a few years ago. This is another example of why the civilized people in this world must band together and neutralize any government anywhere that is controlled by the maniacal imams and their “super-religious” henchmen, known euphemistically as government officials.

There’s a catch. As much as the leaders in this country, as well as many of its citizens, want to “do something” about Darfur, the USA is already “doing something” to neutralize the Islamic insanity that drives these efforts at genocide. It’s putting its military in harm’s way every day, as it has since October 2001, in an effort to stop the butchers, while other members of the UN, gliding along and watching the show, are sitting on their big, fat behinds and patting themselves on their respective fat backs for having the good sense not to get into the fight. In other words, the UN is made up mostly of wimps whose self-interest is their only interest.

And the wimpishness has to stop. This country, with troops serving second and third tours overseas, is stretched too far already. It, along with Britain, has done more than its share. If the EU countries, especially Germany and France, had had the guts back in 2001 and later in 2003 to join the effort to take out the Islamic madmen, things would be much different today. Instead, France, for instance, was actually breaking the sanctions against Iraq and doing business with the evil Saddam. Kofi Annan’s outfit at the UN, including his son, was on the take…maybe he was in on the action, too. Who knows? There’s nothing like a juicy kickback to help one make decisions. But the chickens have come home to roost.

How serious are the leaders of countries such as Germany and France, the Old World countries whose people consider themselves the most civilized in the world? Are they ready to put their money where their usually open mouths are? They’d better be ready because the Islamic madmen have their eyes on Old Europe, and, indeed, those countries become more Muslim every day. In fact, they are apt to cower the general populations on most any day, as has been proven recently especially in France by the riots.

Germany has 284,500 active troops. France has some 259,000 active troops. Together, these countries are capable of putting over half a million troops into action any time they see fit, though they will caterwaul about being unable to “do something” until the UN decides what to do. This will happen roughly…never. Not like the old days when they had to police their colonies, these countries don’t need many of their troops anywhere but at home. So…why not “do something” about Darfur, using the troops already trained to go there, kick the Islamic butchers back into their caves, and set the people free?

Is there precedent for this? Indeed there is. When the UN wouldn’t go along in ridding the world of Saddam, leaving that entirely to the Americans and Brits and a handful of other nations with contingents too small to be of much significance (no matter how earnest), this country and its coalition partners took on the job on their own. So…the Germans and the French and the rest of the Europeans – who have decided they can get along very well together, even using the same money – can now take advantage of the opportunity presented by their togetherness to “do something” about Darfur, and in the bargain “do something” for the whole world, namely get rid of another bunch of governmental thugs.

They can do this with a minimum of expense, especially when considered in light of the tremendous financial outlays made by this country in behalf of making the world a lot safer. Whereas this country has had to send its military nearly halfway around the world to make the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, Europe only has to cross the Mediterranean and Libya to get to Darfur and make the fight anywhere in Sudan. With their sophisticated weaponry and technology, they could and would sweep the Sudanese murderers away with hardly any threat to their own forces. Sudan has 104,800 active troops. Throw in most of the 53,000 troops from the Netherlands, 194,000 from Italy and 150,700 from Spain. These form the number of active troops those countries boast. So, counting the French and Germans, there are well over 900,000 active troops available in just those five European countries. Surely the Europeans could come up with half that number, 450,000 or so, to take on the small Sudanese army,

primitive by comparison.

What’s so hard about this scenario? Nothing. All it needs to make it work are some hardheaded leaders in Europe who actually care enough. One would think that the knowledge of Adolf Hitler and the Germans causing the deaths of 11,000,000 civilians – ordinary people – before and during World War II would be enough to remind Europe that civilized people can and should exercise their civility in order to help the most vulnerable. Will they do it? Not likely. Don’t bet the farm. They’ll caterwaul that the USA isn’t “doing something,” and then they’ll return to their TV sets. From this corner comes the hope that this will not be the case and the hope of being proven wrong.

Some might wonder why fellow UN suspects Russia (1,212,700 active troops), and China (2,255,000 active troops) are not included in the effort to “do something” in Sudan/Darfur. And then, there’s North Korea with 1,106,000 troops for grand total of 4,573,700 military guys to bring peace to Darfur…from communist countries. Bit of a problem with this: Since there’s oil in Sudan, the leaders of these communist nations, by definition, could collude to simply take over all of Sudan or choose up sides and fight it out to get that oil. Either way, the message for the rest of the world would not be good.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

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