# America Is A Disgrace, But Why Hasn't Europe Jumped Into Sudan? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2005, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179 "2005-03-12T10:36:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/1 "2005-03-12T10:36:14Z")
We Americans have an excuse. We have an idiot President who has us up to our eyeballs in Iraq. No troops to spare, and not enough oil in Sudan to interest us…plus Dubya doesn’t really give a flyin’ fuck about Africans. But what is Europe’s excuse? Why isn’t anyone doing anything? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/2 "2005-03-12T11:18:23Z")
What exactly are you suggesting that Europe should do? I agree that we’ve got an international emergency in Sudan, but short of lighting up the Batbeacon and letting superheroes take care of it, what is the proposed mechanism for handling the emergency? As of 1 February, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Sudan released its [report](http://www.globalsolutions.org/programs/peace_security/peace_ops/conflicts/darfur/current_situation.html) strongly recommending that “the Security Council immediately refer the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.” IANAL but it looks to me as though the Court is the right venue for dealing with the [Darfur crimes:](http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9160) > [@](#): > > The report accuses six unnamed, high-ranking members of central government in Khartoum of conspiring in a “joint criminal enterprise” with eight local government officials and 14 Janjaweed militia leaders to commit crimes against Darfur’s civilian population. Though the names of the accused are being withheld from the public, the accused know who they are. […] > > On February 1, a State Department spokesman told reporters that the Bush administration [which opposes the ICC in general as a potential danger to American autonomy] will press the United Nations to refer the Darfur atrocities to an “accountability tribunal” to be built on the existing infrastructure of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which is seated in Arusha, Tanzania. In theory, this proposal does not sound bad. In practice, the delay involved in preparing that tribunal – which is already overwhelmed and understaffed – would mean business as usual in Darfur. […] > > Of course, no one thinks indictments alone will stop the killing. But until a robust peace-keeping force is on the ground in Darfur, the best hope for deterring future massacres is to level the credible threat of criminal prosecution against the militia and government leaders who organize the killings. […] > > At the moment, the world’s leading jurists and prosecutors are sitting in offices just waiting to sic the heavy hand of justice on the criminals of Darfur. The court has been preparing for this moment for three years – unlike the Rwandan option, the ICC is open and ready for business. Should the Security Council confer upon the ICC the jurisdiction to try Sudan’s war, the indictments could be handed down relatively quickly. So things might move somewhat faster if the US would agree to refer Sudan to the ICC. However, they still wouldn’t be moving particularly fast—nowhere near as fast as necessary to halt the current disaster going on in Darfur. This is part of the problem that I’ve mentioned around here before as the “failure of liberal internationalism” in dealing with things like humanitarian and peacekeeping interventions. I’m a committed liberal internationalist myself, and I think on the whole it’s a preferable approach to militant unilateralism. But there’s no denying that when the community of nations is faced with a civil war or other barbarities within a sovereign nation, the community of nations is awfully slow to get off its duff and stop the killing. IMO, this is largely because we haven’t really figured out a workable balance between defense of universal human rights and respect for national sovereignty. Civilized nations simply **can’t** be permitted to invade other countries without what the world in general agrees is sufficient justification. On the other hand, that means that while the world argues about the justification issue, innocent people die at the hands of brutal and unscrupulous leaders. Responsible international governance hamstrings itself by its very insistence on being responsibly international. And the resulting leadership vacuum provides the excuse for unilateral military adventurism. The US invasion of Iraq was a bad thing in many respects, but it could claim legitimacy partly on the undeniable grounds that nobody else was really doing anything effective about the horrific regime of Saddam Hussein. I think the ICC is a step in the right direction in making international governance more genuinely effective, but we still have a long way to go. Show me a way to get there better and faster, and I’m with you. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/3 "2005-03-12T15:15:10Z")
If your claim is that Africa is not a big enough priority for the US, I’d agree with you. But you said > [@DMark](#): > > Dubya doesn’t really give a flyin’ fuck about Africans. [Please indicate what leads you to the conclusion that this administration makes Africa a lower priority than others? > [@](#): > > “You’ll think I’m off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy,” Geldof told the Guardian. ]([Geldof back in Ethiopia | Emergency planning | The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,965311,00.html)) ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/4 "2005-03-12T16:23:38Z")
> [@](#): > > America Is A Disgrace It’s just fuckin’ killing you, ain’t it? All the good things happening happening in the Middle East right now. Oh, America’s so terrible, we know that because that’s the received wisdom, but where are those awesome worldly Europeans, who also didn’t intervene in Rwanda, or the Sudan last time, or Somalia, and who even needed US leadership to handle Bosnia right in their back yard? Where’s wonderful Europe, who held massive protests against Reagan’s Soviet strategy right until the Berlin Wall was for sale in their airport shops? Where’s marvelous Europe, for whom even the UN-approved sanctions against Iraq were too inconvenient so they traded around them with the oil-for-food scandal, enriching Saddam at the direct dollar-for-dollar cost of his people and who would later say it was the US who didn’t respect the UN? Yes, where are those human-rights-loving Europeans? The answer is that Europe doesn’t go anyplace that it doesn’t have a bunch of colonists. That’s why France is in their former colony the Ivory Coast – there’s still French people there controlling the economy. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/5 "2005-03-12T16:37:13Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I think the ICC is a step in the right direction in making international governance more genuinely effective, but we still have a long way to go. Show me a way to get there better and faster, and I’m with you. Invade 'em. Just drop 50,000 or so troops on the country and, like the song says, take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys and hang them high in the street. Nothing would please me more than to find my last post proved horribly, embarrassingly incorrect. I would dance on my error and promise to name my first kid **Jacques Gerhard manhattan**. Europe should invade, or the US should, or, ghod-forbid, they should get together and do it as a team. Even Russia should. Or freaking _somebody_. Hell, right now I think I’d settle for Libya, even knowing the complications that would cause. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/6 "2005-03-12T16:53:23Z")
> [@manhattan](#): > > The answer is that Europe doesn’t go anyplace that it doesn’t have a bunch of colonists. That’s why France is in their former colony the Ivory Coast – there’s still French people there controlling the economy. England is Europe too. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/7 "2005-03-12T23:35:43Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > But what is Europe’s excuse? Why isn’t anyone doing anything? I’m curious as to why you feel Europe is obligated to do anything. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2005, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/8 "2005-03-12T23:51:03Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > I’m curious as to why you feel Europe is obligated to do anything. Because Europe created nearly every state on that Continent. And the blame for the troubles of ethnic violence and massacres is due to their own short sightedness. Africa needs a majority of its states broken up and redrawn on ethnic lines, its the only way to achieve some sort of stability where the people of a certain state aren’t at each others throats half the time. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/9 "2005-03-13T00:31:33Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Because Europe created nearly every state on that Continent. And the blame for the troubles of ethnic violence and massacres is due to their own short sightedness. And you think that gives us blood on our heads for all eternity? Personally I leave the original sin to the Catholics. Africa’s problems are of own creation, ethnic violence and massacres their own responsibility. Of course that doesn’t mean one can’t believe Europe still has a moral obligation to help if it could, being our brother’s keeper and all that. And (some of) Europe’s pathetic attempt to ride the moral hoppy horse with words should imbue them with some measure of intent to live it out in action – if they had any shame, which still have to be shown. And none of that alters the fact that Europe is pathetically weak. Which European country is it you expect to have the will and means to control and secure a country the size of France against a determined guerrilla movement? ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/10 "2005-03-13T00:38:22Z")
Why doesn’t the Islamic world send their troops in to help out? Personally, I feel that intervention in these African civil wars won’t help anything. Africa will continue to have these conflicts as long as it remains a tribal society. look at Somalia…they really didn’t want to be helped…they prefer to fight eachother. Let these civil wars burn themselves out…and then maybe a new generation of African leaders will emerge…and straighten things out. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/11 "2005-03-13T00:43:21Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Why doesn’t the Islamic world send their troops in to help out? Personally, I feel that intervention in these African civil wars won’t help anything. Africa will continue to have these conflicts as long as it remains a tribal society. look at Somalia…they really didn’t want to be helped…they prefer to fight eachother. > Let these civil wars burn themselves out…and then maybe a new generation of African leaders will emerge…and straighten things out. Because number one they don’t care, Number two they’d rather see them at each others throats as for them not to develop, also, racism, as black Muslims are regarded as lower by their Arab counterparts. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/12 "2005-03-13T01:09:30Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > IANAL but it looks to me as though the Court is the right venue for dealing with the [Darfur crimes:](http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9160) I agree – but if the ICC does hand down indictments of the national, local, and militia leaders in question – whose job is it to go in and bell the cat? ---
**Author:** ![High\_Cheese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8797f3/32.png) [@High\_Cheese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/High_Cheese)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/13 "2005-03-13T01:10:54Z")
Average fuel price in the U.S. is $1.95 per gallon. The cheapest in my area is $2.02 per gallon. Oil prices worldwide [are](http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/) [up.](http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/) Eventually I’m going to stop believing spurious claims that the U.S. acts militarily solely for purposes of oil and demand proof. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/14 "2005-03-13T01:12:09Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > And none of that alters the fact that Europe is pathetically weak. The individual states might be weak. But collectively – NATO would be a pretty formidable fighting force even if the Americans and Canadians pulled out of it. If the EU had its own European Army, it would be quite capable of intervening effectively in Sudan. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/15 "2005-03-13T01:13:10Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > . . . also, racism, as black Muslims are regarded as lower by their Arab counterparts. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/16 "2005-03-13T01:18:30Z")
> [@manhattan](#): > > The answer is that Europe doesn’t go anyplace that it doesn’t have a bunch of colonists. That’s why France is in their former colony the Ivory Coast – there’s still French people there controlling the economy. Sudan was never heavily colonized by any European nation, but it was British colony – sort of – that is, it was a colony of Egypt, which was under British control from 1882 to 1922, while remaining nominally a territory of the Ottoman Empire. Sudan remained under British rule until 1956. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan#History) So maybe the Brits could pitch in and help here? Stiff upper lip, duty to the Empire, all that sort of thing? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/17 "2005-03-13T01:22:24Z")
> [@High Cheese](#): > > Average fuel price in the U.S. is $1.95 per gallon. The cheapest in my area is $2.02 per gallon. Oil prices worldwide [are](http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/) [up.](http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/) > > Eventually I’m going to stop believing spurious claims that the U.S. acts militarily solely for purposes of oil and demand proof. Errmm . . . you’re skipping a step there, **Cheese.** You’re simply assuming that when our leaders act to get control of oil, and win, that should translate into ordinary Americans paying lower prices at the pump. But that’s not what “control of oil” means to our leaders; it means, simply, being in a position to control the oil – and to supply it or deny it to our rivals, such as India and China and Russia. More importantly, it means preventing anybody **else** from controlling the oil – anybody who did would have America by the short and curlies, as we found out in the 1970s. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/18 "2005-03-13T01:25:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Cite? What the hell, do you even know what Darfur is about? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/19 "2005-03-13T02:25:06Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > What the hell, do you even know what Darfur is about? My understanding (based on previous thread discussions with **Tamerlane** ) is that it’s partly an ethnic conflict, partly way-of-life: “Arab” (i.e., Arabic-speaking) nomadic pastoralists vs. non-Arab farmers – like an Old West range war, only bloodier. But in color, the two groups are pretty much the same. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur\_conflict:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict:) > [@](#): > > Darfur is inhabited by a variety of peoples, generally constituting two distinct groups: non-Arab black peoples such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa, and Arab tribes collectively termed Baggara (also black by the standards of most English-speakers), who settled the region from about the 13th century onwards. Both groups are Muslims. However, relations between the two groups have long been tense; the pre-colonial Fur kingdom regularly clashed with the Baggara, particularly the Rizeigat. Moreover, before the 20th century (and by some accounts well into it) Darfur was a centre of the slave trade, and Fur slavers competed with Arab ones to raid the nearby Bahr el Ghazal to obtain slaves for the coastal regions. The two groups also have differing economic needs, which has led to clashes: the Fur and Masalit are primarily sedentary farmers, while the Arabs and Zaghawa are nomadic herdsmen, which has brought them into conflict over access to land and water resources. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179/20 "2005-03-13T02:49:00Z")
On a related note, how is that prosecution of Slobo going? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/america-is-a-disgrace-but-why-hasnt-europe-jumped-into-sudan/294179.md?page=2)