MB Civic

Free Tibet, stop Darfur, save Congo!
———————————————-By Salil Puri
The Daily Texan
April 11, 2007

While dodging flyers for the cause d’jour, I
chuckle a bit at the student lobbyists who
ask me if I’d like to “help free Tibet
today,” “stop the genocide in Darfur”
or “bring peace to the Congo” while
walking through the West Mall. Sure, let
me get right on that in between classes.

I wonder if pre-med students are similarly
amused when presented with the
opportunity to “end AIDS” or “win the war
on cancer?” Without cancer, what reason
would we have to wear those cool yellow
wristbands?

One day, a particularly determined activist
asked me, “Don’t you want to stop the
killing in Darfur?” I couldn’t help but pause
to talk to him. Maybe he was secretly a
genie testing my character before giving
me the opportunity to blink away the
Tibetan occupation and infant HIV. Of
course I wanted to stop the killing.

I eventually realized that he was not a
magical wish-granting creature, and I
asked him how he intended to stop the
slaughter. His answer? “Raising awareness.”

OK. I pushed further – maybe he had a
letter-writing campaign in mind, a petition,
some sort of lobbying attempt to focus
government attention? Perhaps a similar
initiative directed at the U.N.? No, no, this
particular fellow didn’t really believe in
appealing to authorities. Evidently he was a
self-described “anarchist, of sorts.”

This intrigued me. Perhaps I had just
uncovered a reservoir of good ol’ American
vigilantism, Ross Perot style. Was the
Darfur group recruiting for a paramilitary
force of college students, a posse if you
will, ready to gear up and mosey on over to
the Sudan to protect the peaceful farmers
from the banditos?

Much to my chagrin, my remarkably
passive activist stressed again that they
were just trying to “raise awareness.”

Confident that my awareness was as raised
as it could be, and that it wasn’t going to
stop anybody from killing someone 12,000
miles away, I continued my trek to the
Union to make my stomach aware of some
carcinogenic BBQ.

My hat goes off to activists who do write
letters about these problems and petition
their representatives. These are serious
issues that require serious attention.

There is no doubt that Tibet should be
freed from the oppressive heel of China.
The genocide in Darfur is abhorrent, and
the religious complications of the situation
have been inflated by non-interventionists –
the Muslim militias are killing Christians,
Animists and Muslims alike. We know we
failed to act quickly enough in Rwanda,
why are we letting the related slaughter
continue in the Congo?

Stopping these humanitarian disasters will
require more than diplomacy. They will
require the application of force. No
genocide has ever been stopped without
good guys who cowboy up and face down
the aggressors. The bad guys won’t drop
their guns and stop slaughtering
innocents, because they’re moved by Joan
Baez.

Troops will have to be deployed, and as
history tells us, that means U.S. troops. It
means U.S. soldiers will die, and U.S. tax
dollars will be spent.

In Tibet’s case, most foreign policy
professionals recognize that pitting even
the largest international coalition against
China would have disastrous results – if not
tactically, then for the world markets. Even
defending Taiwan is a risky proposition.

The irony is that some of same people who
rally for the western-backed liberation of a
small Asian country from its communist
oppressor are the very same people who
protested the attempted liberation of a
small Asian country from communist
oppressors 40 years ago.

Darfur and the Congo don’t present the
same complications as Tibet does. Certainly
Islamic and nativist radicals will paint any
intervention as evil and colonial in nature,
and our troops will be subject to the sort
of hostility the U.N. received in Rwanda and
Somalia. Hopefully, we will have learned
the lesson of Mogadishu, when we showed
al-Qaida just how little it took to make us
run away.

Regarding Darfur, the Bush administration
has pressed the U.N. to act more than any
other international leadership. Regarding
genocide, “not enough” is a far cry
from “never again.” It is time the U.S.
leverages its subsidy of Europe’s defense
and demands that our NATO allies – as well
as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Japan –
act together in concert, under U.S.
command, to end the African genocides.
The citizens of these countries must show
some intestinal fortitude and let their
military forces do what they’re trained to
do: engage the enemy.

Critics may claim the U.S. cannot afford to
instigate another “unilateral” operation
outside of U.N. sanction. My question is,
how can we afford not to?

— Puri is a government, psychology, history
and Middle Eastern studies senior.