Right On The Right

I just read a pretty interesting story over at Little Green Footballs which shows how idiotic some leftists are. He links to a site which exposed a Columbia Journalism Review article. Here's a nice excerpt from that article, and note the sarcasm:

How dare a college grad and engaged citizen volunteer to join the Army to fight for his country! (Which is something that most of the brave souls who inhabit the milblog community prefers to leave to others.

This is implying that milbloggers are chickenhawks, leaving the fighting to others while sitting behind their computers. We've heard this talking point before used against Conservatives, but not milbloggers. Why not milbloggers? Well, let's look at the Milblogging community:

Milblogging indexes a wide variety of military blogs including webblogs written by: military spouses, military veterans, military personnel (who are in the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard), civilian contractors, reporters, military parents, civilians, and other groups. Many of the military blogs listed on Milblogging are written by troops deployed to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Charles suggests that the Associated Press puts out a guide to blog terminology, because these idiots are really embarassing themselves. Milbloggers are chickenhawks? HA!

Upset liberals, Hollywood nobodies, and thousands of teenagers are banding together to support a common cause, stopping the genocide in Darfur. The honest truth is, hundreds of thousands are dying in a bloody war in the Sudan, and millions more are being displaced. Because of this reality, a movement has sprung from the grassroots here in the States pushing for the government to interfere in Darfur and end the genocide. I have to wonder though, if the movement would still exist if the idiots wearing the Save Darfur t-shirts actually knew what the conflict was about. Arab militiamen, a renegade government, displaced villagers, divided factions, and Islamic terrorist leaders? It's a lot more complicated than most of these self-described humanitarians know. I also doubt the feel-good activists know the truth about the organizations pushing for intervention in Darfur. I think the movement here in the U.S. needs to get educated, and save face for their idiocy. Allow me to explain...

Darfur is a region in Sudan, roughly 90% of the size of France, which is basically a large dry plateau with some mountains. Conflict has erupted between arab militiamen, allied with the Sudanese government, and several other arab organizations such as the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Equality and Justice Movement. Amongst those in the Save Darfur movement, the SLM and EJM are considered the good guys, and the arab militiamen, known as the Janjaweed, are considered the bad guys. During their fighting, hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, many at the hands of the Janjaweed, and millions have been displaced. That's the short version, and the version many are being sold on.

The first thing you need to know is who is selling the watered down and factually inaccurate version of what's happening in Darfur. Let me introduce you to the group leading the charge, Amnesty International. The folks at Amnesty run the Save Darfur campaign, along with other politically-motivated campaigns, like their running campaigns to shut down Gitmo, destroy 2nd amendment rights, and defend abortion access. A key thing to remember here is that groups like Amnesty International never operate without a political agenda. Darfur is all about being a pet cause for people that want to look like they care for the oppressed without caring about those oppressed by terrorist violence in places like Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. Amnesty can be tied directly to the International Action Center, a group founded by Communists and Socialists. Also, don't forget the new vanguards of the Left, like Code Pink and the ACLU. Amnesty International is pushing the agenda on Darfur, but what's really happening on the ground?

I sampled some discussion on some Save Darfur sites, and one comment from the Save Darfur myspace group popped out at me. The question posed in the group was actually, "What would you would do if you were President, in regards to Darfur and Iraq?" A majority of the posters are obviously anti-war, and Amnesty International's sham agenda of Saving Darfur for the sake of surrending in Iraq is apparently taking hold. This comment was actually from one of the few that supports action in both Darfur AND Iraq however. He is one of many that thinks the Janjaweed are the bad guys, and need taken out:

I'm not going to argue that the Janjaweed aren't a bad group of people. They're responsible for most of the killing, and they're Sunni radicals that actually border on being Shi'ite, according to a Wikipedia explanation. The question is, does that immediately make the other side better? One of the main groups on the other side is the Justice and Equality Movement, which has ties to a man named Hassan al-Turabi, who denies supporting the group but isn't a big fan of the Sudanese government, and has been public in the entire conflict. What's the big deal about al-Turabi?

Dr. Hassan 'Abd Allah al-Turabi (الدكتور حسن عبد الله الترابي in Arabic), is a religious and political leader in Sudan, who may have been instrumental in institutionalizing sharia in the northern part of the country.

Al-Turabi was influential in the massacre of Christians in the southern portion of Sudan in the past, and apparently he's now allied with the JEM and the other groups fighting against the Janjaweed. This is a muslim on muslim conflict with the only unfortunate bystanders being the Christians left in the Sudan. Why is it better that these groups fight each other than work together?

"Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support-even if only training-for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives." -- 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 2

I'm pretty sure that we have a vested interest in letting this man get involved and hopefully die in the conflict, and we also have a vested interest in letting the Janjaweed militia get slaughtered. I understand that a lot of these Save Darfur idiots want us to help those in the crossfire, but our soldiers in the crossfire might just be the thing to unite these radical muslim groups and give them a common enemy. That's the last thing we want. Sudan is a long ways away from being a terrorist training ground, because of the conflict, whereas Iraq is a heartbeat away from being a sanctuary state for terrorists, should we fail. Understand the defeatist Amnesty sub-plot yet?

If we were involved in fighting Islamofascism in Sudan, which is basically what both sides are espousing, I have no doubt that groups like Amnesty would be crying about our involvement. The only thing we could be doing in Darfur that would help us, would be carpet bombing both sides of the conflict. For those of you that think that's an effective solution, you obviously don't know the definition of collateral damage. There would be even more civilian deaths if we got involved. To answer the question about whether Iraq or Darfur is more important, it has to be Iraq, especially now that we're there and we've put American lives on the line. It comes down to this; The key question in deciding which conflicts the United States should get involved in is "What Do We Have to Lose?" In Darfur? A sore heart for those suffering. In Iraq? The end of an era of American military supremacy, a loss in the early stages of the War on Terrorism, and potentially a training ground for people wanting us dead. Iraq means more than Darfur.