Sudan Massacre

[TSwizzle]

Some folks here seem to think we're supposed to be mindful of Israel's needs but pay no mind to its flaws.

Do you mean me? If so, then yes, I am curious as to why, out of the scores of atrocities going on in the world daily right now (and Sudan seems a particularly vicious and brutal one) it is the atrocities in a tiny sliver of land on the med where the Jews live that invokes such outrage in lefties, why the main stream media studiously report on it and why Owen Jones of Teh Gruaniad questions whether October 7th was really that bad. I think I know why but I can't be sure.

I think you think it's because Israel is the Jewish State and you believe anyone who would criticize Israeli policies must be prejudiced against Jews.

I wouldn't say anyone and everyone who criticizes Israel or Israeli policies are prejudiced against Jews but I think an awful lot of them are and of those remaining, you scratch the surface and their motives are questionable.

I think it's because Israel has had America's rapt attention since the 1970s,

I am not talking about "America" specifically, whatever that means (US government?). I'm noticing that the lefties here in the states and across Europe have a weird obsession with Jews and Israel. In the UK, there are now two parties (they are both a joke but certainly attract a certain demography) who are pretty much aligned with Hamas. Worrying times if you are a Jew in Europe.

 

[Gospel]

5. Who else is there? China? That might be the least bad option.

I agree. The issue with China is that its involvement tends to focus narrowly on its own interests, which means it often overlooks the political and social realities on the ground. That’s why its track record in Sudan is far from perfect. Many Sudanese, especially those suffering the most right now, might accept China as a mediator simply because they want the killing to stop, not because they trust China or genuinely want their shit leadership involved.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Some folks here seem to think we're supposed to be mindful of Israel's needs but pay no mind to its flaws.

Do you mean me? If so, then yes, I am curious as to why, out of the scores of atrocities going on in the world daily right now (and Sudan seems a particularly vicious and brutal one) it is the atrocities in a tiny sliver of land on the med where the Jews live that invokes such outrage in lefties, why the main stream media studiously report on it and why Owen Jones of Teh Gruaniad questions whether October 7th was really that bad. I think I know why but I can't be sure.

I think you think it's because Israel is the Jewish State and you believe anyone who would criticize Israeli policies must be prejudiced against Jews.

I wouldn't say anyone and everyone who criticizes Israel or Israeli policies are prejudiced against Jews but I think an awful lot of them are and of those remaining, you scratch the surface and their motives are questionable.

I think it's because Israel has had America's rapt attention since the 1970s,

I am not talking about "America" specifically, whatever that means (US government?). I'm noticing that the lefties here in the states and across Europe have a weird obsession with Jews and Israel. In the UK, there are now two parties (they are both a joke but certainly attract a certain demography) who are pretty much aligned with Hamas. Worrying times if you are a Jew in Europe.

The only danger to Jews in Europe is the resurgence of right wingers in Europe.
Many of the opponents of what Netanyahu and the IDF are doing are Jews, both inside and outside Israel. Do these people have a weird obsession with Jews and Israel? Or are they simply concerned about what the Israeli government is doing (allegedly on their behalf)?
Incidentally, what the Jewish settlers are doing is so bad, that recently even Netanyahu criticized them.

 

[Bomb#20]

The civilians themselves should become the only legitimate force in the country. What I am proposing is the complete removal of the current leadership, every faction and every general, followed by a new government built by the people and enforced by the people. I am talking about the Sudanese population that wants the military elites out so they can finally live in peace without proxy warriors tearing the country apart. This will require some level of outside support, and it is unfortunate that the United States, like most superpowers, is too self-interested for an idea like this to be taken seriously.

So who's the one armed group that enforces the new government?

1. The people themselves,. i.e., give a gun to everyone? There's a famine going on, so nearly everyone who doesn't use it to become a robber will sell his gun to buy food.

2. A new security force made up of Sudanese loyal to democracy, that disarms the RSF, the traditional army, and the various rebel factions? History suggests it will just stage yet another coup. Sudan has an Arab majority, and Arab military culture isn't kind to democracy -- troops tend to be loyal to their units, their clans, their officers, anybody but their country; and Sudan is coup-prone even by Middle-Eastern standards.

3. The Americans? The U.S. isn't going to invade to restore democracy -- the majority of the Sudanese favor Sharia, Arab supremacy, and contempt for the rights of minority groups. The U.S. won't be up for enforcing that. If the Americans are brought in to shore up a new civilian government we'll insist on equal rights and secular government, and then the majority will be against us and new armed opposition groups will spring up.

4. An Arab foreign power? The African Union? Either of those will be perceived, probably correctly, as just muscle for one of the local factions.

5. Who else is there? China? That might be the least bad option.

I swear yawl really love adding a lot of strawmen to a persons statements.

Dude! How the heck can I be adding strawmen?!? I didn't attribute anything to you! I thought your proposal sounded nice but had a glaring hole in it that needed to be filled for it to become a plan anyone could act on: you need specify who is going to disarm the current leadership, every faction and every general. Failing that, all we'll get is another Catalonia -- when the people elect a new government the generals will just have the SAF arrest them.

Imma keep it short and sweet. Sudanese civilians aren’t demanding “everyone gets a gun".

Of course they aren't. I was listing options, not judging which option anyone favors.

They’re asking for something every functioning state has: one unified security institution under civilian authority, not ten competing warlords.

That’s the only model that has ever produced stability in a collapsed state, and it’s exactly what the Sudanese pro-democracy movement has been fighting for since 2019.

There are two ways to get that -- one force defeats the rest and disarms them, or else the various warlords negotiate power sharing and all incorporate their fighters into the unified security institution. That's what Sudan already tried. Then the unified security institution staged a coup and overthrew the civilian authority it was supposed to be under. And then the Janjaweed who'd been incorporated and renamed the RSF started up the civil war again.

I ain't saying the U.S. should invade Sudan. International backing for constitutional restructuring and for guaranteeing elections is the normal path for post-conflict states. That’s how Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, and parts of the Balkans transitioned out of civil war.

Nobody said you were saying it. I'm saying the generals aren't going to go down without a fight, and if they keep their jobs but under civilian control, they aren't likely to stay under civilian control, unless somebody invades and takes them down. The Balkans transitioned out of civil war once Clinton bombed Serbia into submission.
.

 

[Gospel]

Dude! How the heck can I be adding strawmen?!? I didn't attribute anything to you! I thought your proposal sounded nice but had a glaring hole in it that needed to be filled for it to become a plan anyone could act on: you need specify who is going to disarm the current leadership, every faction and every general. Failing that, all we'll get is another Catalonia -- when the people elect a new government the generals will just have the SAF arrest them.

I literally said in my original post that “this will require some level of outside support, and it’s unfortunate that the United States, like most superpowers, is too self-interested for an idea like this to be taken seriously.”

Why are YOU taking it seriously?

In the real world, my proposal is unlikely because Sudan’s crisis was both created and being driven by powerful nations chasing their own strategic interests. In a fantasy world where major powers consistently supported civilian rule instead of resource politics, a full overhaul like this would be possible, and maybe wouldn’t even be necessary in the first place.

Given current global incentives (aka reality), the idea is dead on arrival, and I thought I made that pretty clear. You’re reading me as implying the opposite of what I actually believe. But I’m sure NoHolyCows and company will insist I said whatever you think I said, and that this is just me ‘tightening’ my argument after the fact.

Despite all of that, I actually agree with most of your response to what you thought I said.

 

[Emily Lake]

I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) that the United States provides about 3.8 billion dollars in aid to Israel annually and sent an additional 16.3 billion in military aid since the October 2023 attack while it sends an average of about 500 million per year to Sudan, largely through food or health programs.

And I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) how many US Presidents and presidential candidates have visited Israel and why they did so, while none of them have visited Sudan.

I mean, yes? Israel has been a treaty ally of the US kind of since Britain gave that land to dispossessed jews. The US is not a treaty ally of Sudan. I don't think it should be any kind of a gotcha to recognize that the US tends to provide more support to our allies than to non-allies, and that our leaders visit the lands of our allies and rarely visit the leaders of non-allied countries.

It's not a gotcha. It's context.

Supporters of Israel are going to have to pick a lane. Either Israel is just a "a tiny sliver of land on the Med" that people who don't obsess over Jews should pay no more attention to than they do to places like Sudan or Djibouti, or it's an important ally deserving of the multi-billions of annual aid, the visible and vocal support of US presidents and members of Congress, and regular reporting in US media.

Some folks here seem to think we're supposed to be mindful of Israel's needs but pay no mind to its flaws. We're supposed to send Israel billions of dollars worth of military aid but not care what military actions it undertakes. We're supposed to use our wealth to entice others into signing treaties we help Israel negotiate but ignore Israel doing things that inflame the conflict. We're supposed to just shrug when Republican Presidential candidates make obligatory visits to Israel in order to secure their Party's nomination and to keep Israel in mind when we cast our votes for Mayor of New York City, but not think Israel has an outsized influence on US politics. We're supposed to have standards but not hold Israel to the same standards as every other country.

Both. I mean, it's not always nice, but that's what being an ally means - that you spend a lot of money to defend your ally when they're attacked even if (and sometimes especially if) they're a tiny sliver of land that the vast majority of people don't care about. I'm not even sure the majority of Americans of jewish ancestry actually care about other than in some nebulous 'oh same god' kind of way.

 

[Emily Lake]

In my view, the only solution is the complete dissolution of all armed groups, full accountability through trials for every leader involved, and a new constitution that puts civilians in charge and rejects colonial identity categories entirely.

Conceptually I'm with you. Where I get hung up is on who gets to make those decisions and oversee that change? I'm not sure I trust any government or organization with that kind of power.

 

[Emily Lake]

In my view, the only solution is the complete dissolution of all but one armed groups, full accountability through trials for every leader involved, and a new constitution that puts civilians in charge and rejects colonial identity categories entirely.

FIFY.

The civilians themselves should become the only legitimate force in the country. What I am proposing is the complete removal of the current leadership, every faction and every general, followed by a new government built by the people and enforced by the people. I am talking about the Sudanese population that wants the military elites out so they can finally live in peace without proxy warriors tearing the country apart. This will require some level of outside support, and it is unfortunate that the United States, like most superpowers, is too self-interested for an idea like this to be taken seriously.

Do you really want the US to oversee the forcible change of government and power that this would require?

 

[Emily Lake]

The fact that many Sudanese Arabs also support the pro-democracy movement shows that the real issue isn’t ‘Arabs vs. non-Arabs.’ It’s national unity versus the ethnic and regional divisions the British left behind. That division is being magnified by foreign influences, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia among them, whose competing agendas fuel and prolong the conflict.

I disagree. The real issue is religion. Islam is the problem, not what color someone is, or what their country is called. It's a toxic, and fundamentally undemocratic religion and it has a stranglehold on that part of the world, and it's spreading.

 

[Elixir]

I disagree. The real issue is religion. Islam is the problem

Two billion Muslims say Christianity is the problem. Who should I believe? I guess whoever wins the war was right, b’cuz neither of their gods ever fucks up.

 

[Arctish]

I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) that the United States provides about 3.8 billion dollars in aid to Israel annually and sent an additional 16.3 billion in military aid since the October 2023 attack while it sends an average of about 500 million per year to Sudan, largely through food or health programs.

And I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) how many US Presidents and presidential candidates have visited Israel and why they did so, while none of them have visited Sudan.

I mean, yes? Israel has been a treaty ally of the US kind of since Britain gave that land to dispossessed jews. The US is not a treaty ally of Sudan. I don't think it should be any kind of a gotcha to recognize that the US tends to provide more support to our allies than to non-allies, and that our leaders visit the lands of our allies and rarely visit the leaders of non-allied countries.

It's not a gotcha. It's context.

Supporters of Israel are going to have to pick a lane. Either Israel is just a "a tiny sliver of land on the Med" that people who don't obsess over Jews should pay no more attention to than they do to places like Sudan or Djibouti, or it's an important ally deserving of the multi-billions of annual aid, the visible and vocal support of US presidents and members of Congress, and regular reporting in US media.

Some folks here seem to think we're supposed to be mindful of Israel's needs but pay no mind to its flaws. We're supposed to send Israel billions of dollars worth of military aid but not care what military actions it undertakes. We're supposed to use our wealth to entice others into signing treaties we help Israel negotiate but ignore Israel doing things that inflame the conflict. We're supposed to just shrug when Republican Presidential candidates make obligatory visits to Israel in order to secure their Party's nomination and to keep Israel in mind when we cast our votes for Mayor of New York City, but not think Israel has an outsized influence on US politics. We're supposed to have standards but not hold Israel to the same standards as every other country.

Both. I mean, it's not always nice, but that's what being an ally means - that you spend a lot of money to defend your ally when they're attacked even if (and sometimes especially if) they're a tiny sliver of land that the vast majority of people don't care about.

Except when your ally attacks one of your Navy ships and kills a lot of your sailors, in which case you say "Fuck those guys" and stop being allies. Unless it's Israel attacking a US Navy ship, in which case you bury the story.

Do you honestly think we would have let South Korea get away with that backstabbing shit? Or Iceland? Or any other "tiny sliver of land", anywhere? I think even Taiwan at the height of the Cold War would have paid a steep price for doing something like that.

Israel has strategic importance. It also has cultural cachet. It has America's attention and benefits from that enormously. I doubt very much that TSwizzle would be happy if we paid it no more attention than we do to Estonia.

I'm not even sure the majority of Americans of jewish ancestry actually care about other than in some nebulous 'oh same god' kind of way.

I think you're underestimating the sentimentality that the word "Jerusalem" evokes in both Christian and Jewish Americans. The Muslim Americans I know seem to feel less attached to the city itself even if they do care about Palestine, but I don't know as many Muslims as I do Christians and Jews so perhaps the smaller sample size is affecting the impression I get.

 

[bilby]

The real issue is religion. Islam is the problem

... as is zionism, and Christianity (Christian dominionism being a major driver of US policy regarding Israel, particularly in recent years).

Dominionism is a toxic, and fundamentally undemocratic religion and it has a stranglehold on the most powerful country in the world.

Islam is a big problem, but it's certainly not the only religion that is a problem, and there's nothing in Islam that prevents it from being practised in far less harmful ways than the jihaddist form, just as there's nothing in Christianity that prevents it from being practised in far less harmful ways than the dominionist form, and nothing in Judaism that prevents it from being practised in far less harmful ways than the zionist form.

One thing that's for sure, is that pretending that any religion is the ONLY problematic religion is an excellent way to radicalize its adherents.