Quote:
Originally Posted by UtahDan
What is interesting to me is that the same people to whom it seems obvious that we can't be getting into adventures around the world where we can't control the outcome (and additionally think it imperialist, immoral, jingositic and arrogant for us to do so) also want very much for us to cure all of Africa's ills from aids to the genocide occurring in Darfur. Darfur that is in the middle of a sectarian (or close enough) civil war (or close enough) that will ultimately make additional bloodshed unvoidable because they just don't want to live together peacefully or share power. Darfur that is run not by the Sudanese government, but by the Janjaweed (a militia). Darfur that poses no threat to us and has never attacked us. Starting to sound familiar?
I think that as between those who hypocritcally say we have no business in Iraq but should intercede in the Sudan and those who cycnically say that we have interests at stake in Iraq and nothing at stake in the Sudan I probably give more credit to the latter because at least there is a cogent thought process behind it.
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Where did Osama bin Laden build up his organization before he went to Afghanistan? Sudan. Why? Because a broken state acts as a haven for illegal activity, drug running, disease, etc. Look at Afghanistan, Chechnya, southern Phillipines, etc. for more examples of how fractured states serve to eventually become our interest. So, while we cannot say definitively that Darfur is in our immediate interest, we can predict that if it is left untended that it will become a part of our interest, with a fairly high degree of certainty.
Similarly, the AIDS crisis in Africa presents all sorts of long term problems, including the spread of the disease into China, the adaptation of the disease to becoming drug resistant, etc. Economic and security interests are connected to health concerns in a more globally minded world.