S. KING/IRISH EXAMINER, (EXCERPT):The well-respected International Crisis Group is currently tracking 70 conflicts around the world, from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zimbabwe.
Yes, 70: we live in a dangerous world.
Some of these are very familiar to us: Northern Ireland, Iraq, the Basque country, North Korea and, of course, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Others are not nightly news: Kashmir, Burma, Eritrea and so on.
And then there are the conflicts we have forgotten about, or never really heard about too much because they are far away or poor, or both: Armenia versus Azerbaijan, Mindanao in the Philippines, Morocco/western Sahara and Aceh.
Some of the 70 hotspots are especially deadly.
Millions of black Africans have died in Congo in the past decade, well below most people’s radar.
Sri Lanka has had a bit of a focus in recent weeks – though hardly the minute-by-minute wraparound coverage Gaza had in January. How many of us were really aware of the fact that more than 80,000 people have died in a quarter of a century of civil war?
Try this. Google "Tamil Tigers" and you will receive 2.3 million results.
Google "Hamas" and you get 10 times as many – and Hamas hasn’t been around nearly as long.
It’s the same if you Google "Tamils" and "Palestinians".
Is the difference that the Tigers might have killed Rajiv Gandhi but, unlike the Palestinians, have rarely brought their murderous tactics to Europe directly? The Sri Lankan conflict, at least in its military phase, looks as though it is coming to an end. The work of peace-building will last for years to come.
The same could be said about Chechnya. The Russians have just announced the end of their "counter-terrorism" operation. There are no solid figures for the number of civilians killed since the second war began there in late 1999, but estimates range anywhere between 25,000 and 200,000.
Put that in context.
Israel might be geographically small – smaller than Munster – but in population terms Chechnya is absolutely tiny. A region with a little more than one million inhabitants has seen anything up to one-fifth of its civilian population killed in two decades of war. And one school siege aside, we have largely looked the other way.
By comparison, 6,000 Palestinians – armed and civilian together – out of a Palestinian population in the territories three to four times that of Chechnya have died since the second intifada of 2001.
It goes without saying that any civilian death is a tragedy – and, very often, an outrage – but search for Chechnya on the DFA website and you only receive one-tenth of the number of hits that you do for Israel.
No-one believes the DFA is somehow in league with the Russians and supports their quasi-colonial war against Chechnya, but it does go to show some perspective has been lost somewhere along the line.
I SAY THAT PERSPECTIVE HAS BEEN LOST BECAUSE OF ANTISEMITISM:
- WHEN YOU HOLD JEWS TO DIFFERENT STANDARDS THAN NON-JEWS THAT'S THE ONLY EXPLANATION.
- THE UN IS A CESSPOOL OF ANTISEMITISM - AND SO ARE THE FOREIGN MINISTRIES OF MOST OF EUROPE'S NATIONS AND THE EU.
- THE BEST WAY TO DRAIN THESE "SWAMPS" IS TO ABOLISH THE UN AND TOSS THE SOCIALISTS OUT OF POWER IN EUROPE. (YES: THE LEFT IS THE HOME OF ANTISEMITISM.)
RTWT. VIA
ROP.
The trouble with that analysis is that we don't have dogs in most of those fights.
ReplyDeleteRussia created Chechnya with their typical heavy handed approach to their neighbors the same way they did Afghanistan.
Tamil Tigers are going back to what is referred to in Counter-Insurgency as the latent/incipient phase. Make no mistake, as long as there are sympathizers to Tamil Tiger's cause, it will be around. Again, not really our battle.
To me, Africa was and always will be a giant collection of banana republics. They can't take care of their own despite the UN meddling in just about every country on the continent.
Our largest concerns, of course, are our ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the surrounding countries of Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, and so on.
I do agree with you that antisemitism never left Europe; it has only been ill-hidden for decades. The question is: With the current administration in the U.S., how do we abolish the UN? We could certainly just look at it as an economic money pit in which nothing is ever resolved due to political correctness and corruption. How likely is obama to take that perspective?
It is incumbent upon the conservative movement in this country to keep the homefires burning for Israel's people. They are our only true ally in the Middle East regardless of what other regimes play cards above the table with the U.S.
The only logical solution is to let Israel solve it's own problems without United States intervention. This means letting Israel crush the Hamas and Fatah. Breaking the backs of those two forces and driving it's sympathizers and followers into neighboring countries (and believe me, the other Arab countries don't want the Palestinians) seems to be the most logical solution for Israel.
The fact remains; as long as the state of Israel remains in the region, there will be resentment going back centuries (even if misplaced) and war and death. We have entered an era where asymmetric warfare has replaced the typical force on force battle and there is nothing that our conventional forces can do but adapt to the changes and beat these smaller forces at their own game.
African and other Asian conflicts have been seething for generations. Unless the western world is prepared to re-colonialize these nations and stay there long enough to change the culture to a functioning democracy, there is no use intervening. The Israeli conflict though, has the potential to become just as terrible. It also has the potential to spill over into the western world.
ReplyDeleteSince Israel is the front line in defense of western civilization, it does receive a great deal of attention. And at least from the US standpoint, Israel deserves American support.
Obama will try to smooth over the situation next month with His Middle East Apology tour. coming up with enough things to apologize for will be easy enough for Him. (for a complete list of things the Leader will apologize for, you can hit: http://firstconservative.com/blog/top-ten/presidential-apology-tour-middle-east-version )