Good news! Blogger unretires!

One of my favorites from the early days of my blog reading is back: The DiploMad 2.0. He (or she) is an anonymous former Foreign Service officer who’s come out of blogging “retirement” because the current administration is so inept, he can’t take it anymore. Here he is on the Obama and Clinton’s casual approach to going to war:

Does Obama consult with the US Congress?  Bush did that, remember?  Does he ask Congress for an expression of support for the use of military power?   Bush, did that, and we still hear from the left that he got insufficient authorization.  No.  Obama and Clinton get permission from the UN, the EU, and the Arab League instead.  I guess when you’re a liberal, that’s all that counts. No need to bother with the Congress or in making a case to the American people.

So, now we are in a war with no clear objective: Is it to establish a “No Fly Zone,” or get Qaddafi out? What if we get a NFZ, which our military will establish quickly, but Qaddafi doesn’t go or continues his war without aircraft? What then? Are we on the hook to protect Libyans from Libyans? How long before the pictures of dead and dying Libyans, supposedly killed by our missiles and bombs, have the UN, the Euros, and the Arab League backing out? Guess who will get left holding the bag of sand?

Code Pink, where are you?

Welcome back, DiploMad. You’ve been missed.

(Now, if I could only get Arthur Chrenkoff blogging again…)

More about the Teddy Bear of Blasphemy

It seems those peaceful, tolerant demonstrators calling for the death of teacher Gillian Gibbons were working for the Sudanese government:

The protesters, some carrying swords, screamed, “Shame, shame on the U.K.!” and, “Kill her, kill her by firing squad.”

They were calling for the death of Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in jail. Under Sudanese law, she could have spent six months behind bars and received 40 lashes.

Despite the display of outrage, witnesses said that many of the protesters were government employees ordered to demonstrate, and that aside from a large gathering outside the presidential palace, most of Khartoum was quiet.

The article fairly points out that, while imams across the city denounced naming the toy "Muhammad," few called for the head of Ms. Gibbons. Still, their drawing of an equivalence between the name given a stuffed animal by children on the one hand and idolatry on the other is asinine. Nor, given events of recent years or the treatment of non-Islamic people under Islamic law, does this do anything to change my opinion of Islam as a tolerant religion.

It isn’t.

This does throw another light on the affair, however. As the Times article points out, Gillian Gibbons may be a pawn in the chess game between the international community and Sudan over Sudanese depredations in Darfur:

It seems that Ms. Gibbons and the teddy bear became enmeshed in the larger struggle between the Sudanese government, which routinely accuses its Western critics of being anti-Islamic, and European and American officials pressing for an end to the crisis in Darfur.

In early November, Sudanese officials said that peacekeepers from Scandinavia could not serve in Darfur, the troubled region of western Sudan, because of a dispute two years ago, when several Scandinavian newspapers published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

United Nations officials have said that the Sudanese government was simply looking for ways to block or delay the deployment of an expanded peacekeeping force. This week, United Nations officials said that unless the Sudanese government started cooperating, the expanded mission might not be possible.

The Arab-dominated government of Sudan has been engaged in a genocidal pogrom against the Black African (and Muslim) population of Darfur for several years, now, using the Janjaweed militias as proxies. Faced with growing international pressure to accept a peacekeeping force, the government has agreed, but raises objection after objection to stall its implementation, as with the above-mentioned Scandinavian participation. If the Times article is correct, then Ms. Gibbons’ predicament is another attempt by the Islamist government of Sudan to play the "insult to Islam" card in order to work up popular sentiment against intervention in Darfur.

All it has done instead by picking on a middle-aged schoolteacher is to show its own barbaric nature and expose Islam to further opprobrium in the West.

LINKS: More at LGF, Blue Crab Boulevard, and Contentions. Power Line comments on the madness in Sudan and points out where you can buy your own Teddy Muhammad.

 

Technorati tags: teddy bear, Islam, Sudan, Darfur, Gillian Gibbons, Janjaweed, genocide, pogrom, United Nations

Trivializing a tragedy

I have a hard time believing the man said this with a straight face, but UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon blamed the ethnic cleansing in Darfur on global warming:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.

"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban said in the Washington daily.

When Darfur’s land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.

With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing.

"For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out," he said.

OK, let’s leave out the leap in logic Ban made to assume the rise in Indian Ocean temperatures were anthropogenic in nature. Suffice it to say for now that the "scientific consensus" on man-caused climate change is anything but.

Secretary-General Ban is guilty of two monstrous misrepresentations here: first, by blaming the jihad  in Darfur on climate change, he removes any responsibility for the burnings, rapes, and killings from those committing them — the Arab Muslim Janjaweed militias, which receive direct support from the Sudanese government and indirect support from the Chinese, who support that government by guarding their oil fields and pipelines. By making humanity –in other words, everyone– responsible, Ban makes no one responsible.

Second, in the classic twisted logic of appeasers everywhere, he then blames the victim! In Ban’s world, by fencing in their lands, the Black African farmers provoked the nomadic Arab herders, leading to the violence. Although he would never come out and say it, his words imply the farmers brought this on themselves.

The insipid cluelessness displayed by the UN’s top clerk is astounding, but not surprising. His predecessors were capable of equally vapid attempts to avoid hard facts.

Here’s a clue for you, Mr. Secretary-General: I agree with you that the climate change in Northeast Africa has caused hardship, even if I don’t agree about anthropogenesis. However, the only ones responsible for the massacres in Darfur are the Islamofascist militias, their patrons in the Islamist government of Sudan, and their enablers in Beijing. Climate change is a fact, but it was the choice of Islamists in Sudan to kill darker-skinned Sudanese and take their lands.

By ignoring the real cause of the problem, Mr. Secretary-General, you only prolong the killing.

LINKS: More at Little Green Footballs and Roger L. Simon, who thinks Ban is doing more for the Darfuris than his predecessor. That’s an awfully low bar.

 

Technorati tags: Ban Ki Moon, UN, United Nations, Darfur, Sudan, climate change, global warming, appeasement, ethnic cleansing, Islamism