by Patrick Dansie

Created on: January 26, 2010

Why military intervention in Darfur, Sudan would be a more noble cause than the Iraq War

Years after Ali Hassan al-Majid committed his barbarous crimes “chemical Ali” has at last got the fate he most certainly deserved. The trial and execution of a living monster should remind us all of the duties that wealthy liberal democratic states have. There are but a few deluded fools who oppose the international aid given to Haiti in the wake of the terrible earthquake. In situations like these we are all asked to give generously to help those who cannot help themselves. Yet when a different kind of aid is needed, the aid needed by many countries in the developing world, a debate occurs on the rightness or wrongness to assist.

We open our mouths to say never again, yet it happens always again. Why do we moralize over whether to take action against monsters? Is it out of fear against defeats, do we think that these dictators will match us in any conflict? No of cause not. The military might of the USA, UK or France far outstrips that of Sudan or the militias of Rwanda.

The problem is that we in our successful western democratic societies have forgotten what it means to be oppressed. Our moral compass is distorted, debating over the legitimacy to do good. The Iraq war has had some terrible repercussions. The effective kicking over of a hornets’ nest or the opening of Pandora’s Box. Yet does this mean the Iraq war was wrong? Should we have allowed Saddam Husain to continue is arbitrary rule of religious and ethnic discrimination? The debates of whether or not he posed a threat to our national security or had WMD’s are debates that should never have had to take place. The police do not only go to arrest a murderer if they feel he may be a threat to another police officer. No they arrest him because he has committed a crime and needs to be punished for it.

It is the same with the criminal Ba'athist regime.  Ali Hassan al-Majid and Saddam Husain along with all the other criminals in Iraq should have been removed long ago. Not because we were threatened by them, but because the people of Iraq were threatened by them. The human rights of the Iraqi people and the right to self determination of the Kurdish people should have been what brought us to war. Likewise the tyrant Omar al-Bashir, dictator of Sudan needs to be removed from power and brought to justice for the 200,000 people who have died under his rule in south Sudan and Darfur, by

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