Thursday, September 16, 2004
"AN OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT IS TO BE MORE FEARED THAN A TIGER"
I may have showcased this site in the past, I can't recall but if so, the recent State Department finding of Genocide in the Sudan seems like a good time to bring up R.J. Rummel's Powerkills, dedicated to the analysis of the history of Democide. Rummel's philosophical approach is that of an anti-statist which rankles a lot of his fellow academics, addicted as they are to the socialistic benevolence of the nanny-state.
The Sudan case is interesting because it goes against State's history of an almost monomaniacal aversion to the use of the " G " word, no matter how clear-cut or horrible the specifics - an unbroken history of denial that stretches back to the Armenian genocide in 1915. Moreover, State has chosen a relatively ambiguous situation, legally (if not morally) speaking, to break new policy ground. Janjaweed terror in Dar Fur is a borderline case under the terms of the Genocide Convention so State legal experts could have found innumerable grounds to ignore yet another ongoing horror. Obviously they were overruled at a political level during an internal debate either by Secretary Powell - who evinced no such viewpoint in the cases of Bosnia and Rwanda- or by a crusading neocon like John Bolton or Elliott Abrams.
The international community and transnational progressive NGO's who have so much to say about the United States in Iraq are now badly trailing in the moral wake of George W. Bush. France, of course, supports the Sudanese Islamist regime on the Dar Far issue - remaining impeccably consistent in their patronage of ruthless African Genocidaires, so long as they are anti-American.
¶ 8:03 AM
I may have showcased this site in the past, I can't recall but if so, the recent State Department finding of Genocide in the Sudan seems like a good time to bring up R.J. Rummel's Powerkills, dedicated to the analysis of the history of Democide. Rummel's philosophical approach is that of an anti-statist which rankles a lot of his fellow academics, addicted as they are to the socialistic benevolence of the nanny-state.
The Sudan case is interesting because it goes against State's history of an almost monomaniacal aversion to the use of the " G " word, no matter how clear-cut or horrible the specifics - an unbroken history of denial that stretches back to the Armenian genocide in 1915. Moreover, State has chosen a relatively ambiguous situation, legally (if not morally) speaking, to break new policy ground. Janjaweed terror in Dar Fur is a borderline case under the terms of the Genocide Convention so State legal experts could have found innumerable grounds to ignore yet another ongoing horror. Obviously they were overruled at a political level during an internal debate either by Secretary Powell - who evinced no such viewpoint in the cases of Bosnia and Rwanda- or by a crusading neocon like John Bolton or Elliott Abrams.
The international community and transnational progressive NGO's who have so much to say about the United States in Iraq are now badly trailing in the moral wake of George W. Bush. France, of course, supports the Sudanese Islamist regime on the Dar Far issue - remaining impeccably consistent in their patronage of ruthless African Genocidaires, so long as they are anti-American.
¶ 8:03 AM
