Yee-haw! Another warmongering American proposes illegal military invasion of the Sudan ... with private hired guns!

Is there something in the water in America or what? Most of the Darfur commentary that I'm coming across online is beginning to sound like it's written by a bunch of cowboys. Surely their aggressive gung-ho warmongering attitude is down to their upbringing, insularity, education (particularly history) and diet of Hollywood movies and TV. Considering America's short history (I have pottery older than the USA) and what goes on with American natives, Klu Klux Klan and other race relations, it's amazing to see American know-it-alls thinking they can sort the problems of ancient cultures and mindsets so far removed from their own they may as well be living on another planet.

Note this excerpt from an opinion piece by Max Boot in the LA Times June 1, 2006 - Send mercenaries to Darfur. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on FOREIGN RELATIONS! Crikey. Gulp. Y'all have a nice day!

"....there is a way to stop the killing even without sending an American or European army. Send a private army. A number of commercial security firms such as Blackwater USA are willing, for the right price, to send their own forces, made up in large part of veterans of Western militaries, to stop the genocide.

We know from experience that such private units would be far more effective than any U.N. peacekeepers. In the 1990s, the South African firm Executive Outcomes and the British firm Sandline made quick work of rebel movements in Angola and Sierra Leone. Critics complain that these mercenaries offered only a temporary respite from the violence, but that was all they were hired to do. Presumably longer-term contracts could create longer-term security, and at a fraction of the cost of a U.N. mission.

Yet this solution is deemed unacceptable by the moral giants who run the United Nations. They claim that it is objectionable to employ -- sniff -- mercenaries. More objectionable, it seems, than passing empty resolutions, sending ineffectual peacekeeping forces and letting genocide continue.

From the weblog of Jan Pronk, UN SGSR in the Sudan, Dec 31, 2005:

There is hardly any country in the world which can point towards such a long history as Sudan. The first time I visited the National Museum in Khartoum, about thirty years ago, I was surprised to see beautiful pottery, older than what I had seen before in Egyptian musea. As a European, coming from a country with a history hardly longer than two millennia, I became quite modest when confronted with artifacts which had been crafted six to seven millennia ago. Sudan, and in particular North Sudan, has seen the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, wars and climatic changes, invasions from abroad. It has survived all that. This may explain the Sudanese attitude towards present conflicts and threats. Sudanese leaders, whatever region or tribe they belong to, display confidence in their own strength and do never haste. They seem to believe: 'history shows: time is on our side'.

Photos: In Meroe, 3 hours North of Khartoum, ancient buildings are testimony of past civilizations. (Jan Pronk Weblog/Paula Souverijn-Eisenberg Copyright) Click on the original images at Jan Pronk's blog entry for magnified view.
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Some reactions

June 1 2006 Beltway Blitz - blog entry Boot: Send in the Mercenaries - Max says the UN is bound to fail again in the Sudan. Given its history, that's a fair prediction. But he notes that Western democracies aren't serious enough to send their own troops. His solution: mercenaries. I've secretly harbored this thought for a long time. Still don't know that I think it's a good idea. Is Mr. Boot crazy? Am I for even considering it? [Sudan Watch ed: Yes to both questions]