Trailing George Clooney [article on Sudan]

The Darfur conflict has now lasted longer than World War II, but this year could be a turning point — provided that President Obama shows leadership and that the world backs up the International Criminal Court’s expected arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The stakes are evident in this little market town of Dogdoré, whose normal population of just a few thousand has swelled to 28,000 desperate, fearful people driven from smaller villages. They don’t think it’s safe here, but they find some reassurance in numbers — and leaving town isn’t an option, either, because flying out from the dirt airstrip is the only way to avoid rampant banditry on the roads.

Aid workers were pulled from Dogdoré in the fall because of violence in the area, leaving people on their own. Aid workers have just returned, but the entire town remains on edge.

One of the first persons we met was Qatri Ibrahim, a young woman who fled her village when the Sudanese janjaweed militia attacked and shot her 5-year-old and 8-year-old sons. “I’m afraid,” she said grimly. “But there are other people here, so I stay.”

In Darfur and eastern Chad, you can randomly approach any group of people and find heartbreaking stories. Mr. Clooney was clowning around with a group of boys bathing in the river — taking their photo and showing it to them digitally — and that’s when we met the 13-year-old boy with the bullet in his knee.

If the U.N. is too craven to protect its own goodwill ambassadors — because they might criticize genocide — it’s not surprising that it and the international community fail to protect hundreds of thousands of voiceless Darfuris.

Wow, when did Kristof van Winkle wake up? The UN is more than useless (in this situation and any other). It is downright dangerous!

I have never understood the Left’s whole hearted support for intervention in Darfur. I can't help but think they are only interested in helping where it will not benefit the USA. Now I know that Darfur is a tragedy and the murdering should be stopped but where is the Left’s compassion for the innocent Iraqis that Saddam Hussein was continually slaughtering? Why are we the bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan? Where are the Feminists? Why are they not celebrating the liberation of millions of Iraqi and Afghani women? The Left’s politics will always frighten and confuse me.

Darfur is located in the ever trendy Africa, the Middle East is just yuckie.

White Africans bowed to international pressure, Middle East dictators simply laugh at them.

3 posted on 02/19/2009 5:12:05 PM PST by Niuhuru (Fine, here's my gun, but let me give you the bullets first. I'll send them to you through the barrel)

janjaweed = arab-islamic-slave raiding-looting criminals

4 posted on 02/19/2009 5:13:13 PM PST by 2banana (My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)

Feminsts don’t like to get their hands dirty, they would rather strip naked and shoot men for being aroused.

5 posted on 02/19/2009 5:14:05 PM PST by Niuhuru (Fine, here's my gun, but let me give you the bullets first. I'll send them to you through the barrel)

Liberals...they are like Risk players, who allways leave only one army ad advance with everything they’ve got, until they are overstreched, and being worn down eventually, once a high attrition battle is waged, become easy to roll right over.

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