Retired generals Romeo Dallaire and Lewis MacKenzie have been publicly arguing over what Canada should commit to Darfour. I do not know who is right, but I have certain points about each of them and their positions.
Firstly, MacKenzie has more of the classic military leader traits that you would expect from a general. He is the guy who went into Yugo and kicked ass. Dallaire went to Africa and failed. Who would you listen to?
A few points about going to Darfour:
1. People are not like us. It may surprise many of you out there, but people in other countries are not like us. They think differently and have different priorities. Africa is still very tribal and many tribes have not respect for the life or rights of other tribes. By that I mean, if you are not from their tribe, you have no right to life. For those too stupid to get my meaning, the only thing that stops them from killing you is what the consequences will be to them.
2. Unarmed could mean dead. I have been in the military for 15 years, and there is no way I would go to Darfour without a gun. At the very least, I would carry a pistol so I could shoot myself before they could take me. Even better to have something that can take a few with me. However, see point number one and remember, their lives mean less to them than your does to you, so you may need to be able to kill a lot of them to make that cost/benefit ratio come out it your favour.
3. Not all armies are created equal. Some are more competent than others. Ask any soldier who has been on any peacekeeping mission and you will hear horror stories regarding the action of the Jordanians or of Bangladesh, etc. An African army is not like the a western European one. Having AU soldiers protect you will not be like protecting yourself. Remember this when people say we don't want "whitey" in our country, we want other Africans. Why not white soldiers? Because they would actually do the job that needs to be done. Am I racist? Some throw back to "white man's burden"? No, just realistic. Don't believe me, go see for yourself. Or ask someone who has been there.
So, go to Darfour or not? I do not know the answer. But I can say I am pretty certain the AU troops there are not up to the job. If they do succeed it may be in a way that we do not approve of (ie. putting the fear of death into the bad guys by killing everyone they see).
I am quite happy that I am now a part time soldier. This gives me the option, short of a war, of refusing any positions such as Darfour. The way that mission is presently structured there seems only two possible outcomes:
-be so outgunned that Canadians are afraid to leave the camp. I can waste 6 months at home just as easily as in Africa.
-go out and do the job with the consequence of someone begin taken hostage, being killed, etc. Being in the army means you accept the risk of being killed or injured, but I am not too particular about dying because Paul Martin wanted to buy off David Kilgour and save his sorry government.
The Darfour problem will never be solved until a competent army with the political will to are put there with the tools to get the job done. Until someone has the political will, there is no point risking the lives of Canadian soldiers in a mission that cannot succeed.
1 comment:
The problem with UN missions to Africa is that people in the West expect them to act like Europeans/Americans. But they will not act like Europeans so getting into the middle of them will only make things worse. What Canadian citizens here don't realize is that if we do get involved in a country of millions of people that at some point we have to have the cooperation of some faction or we will need to bring a 100,000 soldiers to keep them all suppressed. But even then, that will only keep them from acting like savages until we leave. And then the shit hits the fan. If make allies in the conflict zone to keep the peace then we will be seen as backing one faciton over the other and then what we are really doing is involving Canada in a civil war. So rather than doing "good" what we would actually accomplish is executing empire - direct control of a foreign population. In fact, we would probaby embolden our allies to strike back at the opposition using us as the shield.
It is hard to explain to people that buy into those hard luck relief ads on TV, but involving yourself in the slaughter is worse than doing nothing to begin with. You are now an accomplice to genocide.
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