It's the summer of an election year, and President George Bush is coming off of a war against Iraq the previous year. The war was justified partly on humanitarian grounds, with souring rhetoric about a new moral vision for world politics which transcended narrow realism. But Bush's stratospheric approval ratings from the war have collapsed entering the general election campaign, and things aren't looking good for Bush. Meanwhile, a genuinely horrifying humanitarian and political crisis has broken out in a relatively unimportant East African country, and public opinion is beginning to demand action - asking why humanitarian reasons justified war in Iraq but not here. Bush increasingly seems as though he might pursue a limited "humanitarian" intervention, with limited forces and a limited mission... very possibly leaving it as a poison pill for his Democratic successor.
Is this Somalia 1992 or the Sudan 2004?
Does that matter?
Interesting parallels ... but slightly inaccurate. It was President Bush (41) who ordered American troops into Somalia ... it happened in December 1992, a few weeks before Clinton was inagurated.
The timeine ...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/etc/cron.html
Posted by: anon | August 15, 2004 at 12:44 AM
What I meant to say is that the intervention in Somalia wasn't "limited". Bush Sr. committed 25,000 troops.
Posted by: anon | August 15, 2004 at 12:48 AM
Yes, that's the point - Bush sent in the troops before Clinton, leaving him to deal with it. And it *was* a "limited" intervention in terms of its mandate -humanitarian relief -followed by "mission creep" and the disasters which followed.
Posted by: the aardvark | August 15, 2004 at 07:59 AM
I'm having a hard time even understanding the basic facts about Dharfour.
In the Toronto Sun, Eric Margolis wrote "Far from a case of Arab whites versus African blacks, all concerned are dark-skinned Sudanese Muslims".
Yet an article in yesterday's NY Times says:
"First, in pitting Arab herders against black African farmers, the civil war in western Sudan underscores a larger struggle for power, land and water that cuts across borders in this arid part of Africa."
This kind of confusion has been typical of the reporting on Sudan for years.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/08/15/583447.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/international/africa/16sudan.html
Posted by: No Preference | August 17, 2004 at 06:43 AM
No Preference -- I can relate to your confusion on the Sudan. You might find http://www.PassionOfThePresent.com useful as a clearinghouse of information on the Darfur situation.
(Abu A., hope you don't mind me jumping in with a link for another reader.)
Posted by: Rachel | August 19, 2004 at 03:58 PM