Alternet today published The Black Agenda Report’s commentary calling the ‘Save Darfur’ a US interventionist PR scam. Ten Reasons to Suspect “Save Darfur” is a PR Scam ‘Humanitarian intervention’ is getting to be a more and more difficult sale for the government to make.
It reminds me even of a new and used car dealership I once ran into. The salesman had this gigantic 3 foot by 2 foot Bible on his desk. Don’t buy it!
And don’t buy that the US government is some how the agent for progressive intervention anywhere around the globe. It just is not. Too bad that it is this way, but it just is.
Want to help the people of the world out? Then fight against giving this country’s government permission to go into other peoples’ territories to run their affairs. The ‘Save Darfur’ campaign is in great part a government funded PR scam that does the complete opposite of that. It wants our government to tell others just what to do, to do it our way, and to punish any of those who get in the way. It is a campaign to provide rationale for military interventionism into important parts of Africa that our corporate government wants to control.
So, I guess Barbara Lee – who was the only member of Congress to vote against the war in Afghanistan – somehow turned into a huckster for drafting the strongest Sudan divestment legislation on the books? This author’s thesis doesn’t seem to hold. Should we not care because there is oil there? Are Congressional Black Caucus members all hoodwinked?
Printo, you should care what happens in Darfur, as we should all care about what happens in all of Africa, too. America has been notably uncaring about what happens in Africa, as have all of the Western European allies of the US. IN fact, the US and the Western European countries have CAUSED much of the bloodshed and poverty of Africa, and the group ‘Save Darfur’ doesn’t in any way oppose any of this.
As to the record of the Congressional Black Caucus, it is not so hot. They have done little to oppose the implementation of an increasingly nasty police state in the US which terrorizes much of our inner cities, and their record in regards to African affairs is even worse.
Many of the Congressional Black Caucus members have lobbied often and hard for African dictatorships and dictators, and most have done nothing to help fight African poverty that is killing far more than just the constant wars themselves are doing. They have hardly opposed the US corporations that have penetrated Africa in a way that spreads wars and poverty there. So it is hard to imagine why you use them as framework for how we should judge the movement to support US interventionism in Sudan?
IN short, do you really think that it is Barbara Lee and others like her who are calling the shots in the growing campaign to force Sudan to do our government’s bidding? Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending the government of Sudan’s record at all, who are a bunch of cut throats. But that does not mean that we should call upon our own bunch of government and corporate cut throats to take over and run things in Sudan, now does it? But that is essentially the direction of the ‘Save Darfur’ campaign which you support.