■"The American Witness: Congress gets a chance to get off the fence," op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 2 March 2005, p. A25.
Kristof's piece on Sudan today is all about a Marine captain who's spent time as an American military adviser to African Union observers cataloguing war crimes in Sudan. Here is what he had to say:
"Every single day you go out to see another burned village, and more dead bodies," [former Marine Captain Steidle] said. "And the children-you see 6-month-old babies that have been shot,and 3-year-old kids with their faces smashed in with rifle butts. And you just have to stand there and write your reports . . .
It's systematic cleansing of peoples by the Arab chiefs there. And when you talk to them, that's what they tell you. They're very blunt about it. One day we met a janjaweed leader and he said, 'Unless you get back four camels that were stolen in 2003, then we're going to go to these four village and burn the villages, rape the women, kill everyone.' And they did."
Think there's going to be a solution that doesn't involve the U.S. getting its hands dirty-just a little bit? Feel better that we're not there, imposing our "imperialistic will"?
Guess what? Suing our government officials for civil damages in the Global War on Terrorism ain't the answer.
If you want perfect justice, just keep waiting. But if want to stop things like Darfur, then build the SysAdmin force. Make it big, make it Core-wide. Move beyond balance-of-power bullshit that keeps us fixating on familiar foes. Stop the killing now.
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