oh yeah, THAT genocide
Back in the run-up to the war in Iraq and after those darn WMD weren't found, the Bush folks were spinning faster than Barry Goldwater's corpse (if he is keeping up with the hi-jack of 'his' conservatism by the religious right and the neo-cons).
We were warned that our security was in danger and that we risked being 'mushroomed clouded' (that from Condi Rice, no less) if we didn't take care of bizness in Iraq. When those lies didn't quite pan out, our crusade was suddenly about saving the people of Iraq from the heinous Saddam Bathist crowd who, for the love of God, actually gassed the Kurds when they wouldn't roll over for him.
Conveniently forgotten in all this is that Saddam did use gas on the Kurds, but he did it in 1988-89 in the waning days of Reagan and the beginning of the Bush I era. The Republican controlled Senate couldn't manage to pass a freaking resolution against Saddam. Oddly enough, two of the people who lobbied the Senate NOT to resolve against Saddam were Cheney and Rumsfield.
In the first Bush II campaign, he excoriated the Democrats for engaging in nation building and pledged that American troops would not be used for such an endeavor. Given that the current folks in charge can't even get away with faking a teleconference between Bush and a few cherry-picked soldiers, it is no wonder that the horror against nation-building has been conveniently forgotten and replaced with the embrace of nation building in Iraq.
So, if we are in the business of saving people from tyranny, why aren't we 'dealing' with Sudan and the genocide in the Darfar area?
The following quote is from a sermon delivered by a missionary who had just returned from Sudan last year.
There's been lotsa 'God-talk' from the Bush lately. Odd how God is 'pushing' Iraq and ignoring His children in the Sudan.
We were warned that our security was in danger and that we risked being 'mushroomed clouded' (that from Condi Rice, no less) if we didn't take care of bizness in Iraq. When those lies didn't quite pan out, our crusade was suddenly about saving the people of Iraq from the heinous Saddam Bathist crowd who, for the love of God, actually gassed the Kurds when they wouldn't roll over for him.
Conveniently forgotten in all this is that Saddam did use gas on the Kurds, but he did it in 1988-89 in the waning days of Reagan and the beginning of the Bush I era. The Republican controlled Senate couldn't manage to pass a freaking resolution against Saddam. Oddly enough, two of the people who lobbied the Senate NOT to resolve against Saddam were Cheney and Rumsfield.
In the first Bush II campaign, he excoriated the Democrats for engaging in nation building and pledged that American troops would not be used for such an endeavor. Given that the current folks in charge can't even get away with faking a teleconference between Bush and a few cherry-picked soldiers, it is no wonder that the horror against nation-building has been conveniently forgotten and replaced with the embrace of nation building in Iraq.
So, if we are in the business of saving people from tyranny, why aren't we 'dealing' with Sudan and the genocide in the Darfar area?
The following quote is from a sermon delivered by a missionary who had just returned from Sudan last year.
As the world’s attention was turned to crises in the Middle East....... a slaughter has raged for 17 months in Sudan. A woman named Issa, whose brother and cousin were gunned down in front of their horrified families, explains why the Janjaweed militia is killing her people, “They say they don’t want to see black skin on this land again.” If humanitarian workers can’t reach the estimated 2 million in desperate need, the death toll could surge to 350,000 by the end of the year.
I believe, however, that the most important thing we can do is to remember these people, to think about these people, to find ourselves connected to these people. In other words, we must NOT FORGET these people – these precious children of God – and move on with our own priorities.
There's been lotsa 'God-talk' from the Bush lately. Odd how God is 'pushing' Iraq and ignoring His children in the Sudan.
