Stoopid Stuff

Bashing al Bashir - Is it Time for Real Action in Sudan?

Yeah, I get it. Military intervention has not exactly yielded the kind of benefits it's advocates so glibly promise. Iraq was the hideous disaster it always had to be, and Afghanistan is nothing but incoherent, mindless violence and corruption with no benefit to the parties doing the bleeding. Israel did not exactly cover herself with glory in Lebanon and Gaza, and the only lesson little Georgia learned was not to pick a fight with the biggest kid in the neighborhood.

I know. I DO get it. Except.

Except I always wonder what difference a Ranger battalion might have made in Rwanda. I wonder about Kenya, if some determined men under arms could have brought a halt to the bloodletting. I think it's fair to say that NATO did some good in ending the violence in the Balkans.

But most of all I wonder about Sudan. It is the Sudanese government enabling the crimes, perpetuating the horror, both ordering and allowing the brutal torment of the non-Arab ethnic minorities under the guise of fighting the anti-government rebel movements like JEM.

Were it not for the actions of the Sudanese government, there might be some viable options for the international community to intervene on behalf of the helpless people dying hard by the thousands in the sprawling refugee camps on both sides of the border, the victims of rape and murder and disease and starvation that are the whole point of the discussion. So logic seems to dictate that any first step towards addressing the suffering would require some methodology for taking the option to participate in the conflict out of the hands of the Sudanese Leadership. And if somehow one believed that additional international legitimacy was necessary before undertaking such drastic measures, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has handed down an indictment against al Bashir for Crimes Against Humanity. It seems as if the time for action, if not well past, has come.

There are a wide array of options. From a no-fly zone to the complete destruction of the Sudanese Air Force, the US military has the power to act in a coercive manner to force Bashir to behave within international norms. Certainly, widespread bombing of Omdurman would not serve the US or the International Community well, but very selective targeting of palaces and military assets would very quickly result in the Bashir Regime's cooperation, however reluctant.

I'd also like to see a few companies of Rangers set up a Forward Operating Base in the area of the Refugee camps and exact a violent toll from the militias when they kill and rape. I realize that any combat deployment of American troops is necessarily controversial, and it may be nothing more than my own frustrated loathing, but it just doesn't seem beyond the pale to me. At the current levels of deployment and operational tempo, the judicious application of a very limited set of American military assets to begin to put an end to this rapacious thug's reign of terror seems to be to be a valuable and honorable use of military force.

Done right, I don't think we'd see a lot of blowback. Sure, the al Quaedas of the world would spin it as another occupation of another Islamic nation, but Sudan's neighbors and the international aid community would counter that with a different viewpoint altogether.

I am not a "foreign interventionist" by temperament, and I remain opposed to American international adventures, but at the same time, common sense seems to dictate that if this incredible capability we have squandered so much treasure to develop can be used to do some good, on balance, that would be a very good thing.

posted by mikey @ 2:37 PM