Thursday, April 13, 2017

The slaughter goes on, all over the world


Syria and North Korea are in the news at the moment, but killings and terrorism are rampant in many other countries - we just don't hear about them, because they're less newsworthy.

The latest to come to light is South Sudan.

On April 4, government militias loyal to the president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, entered the town of Pajok and began killing and raping men, women and children, one observer said.

Opposition forces led by the former first vice president, Dr. Riek Machar Teny-Dhurgon, estimate that more than 200 innocent civilians were killed in Pajok.

“At the onset of the massacre, the tribal army burned down several buildings in the town and indiscriminately shot at the innocent civilians including kids and women who were trying to run for their lives,” a security officer in South Sudan told Fox News.

“Primary school pupils were forced to lay on the ground in a straight line and were run over by tanks, and crushing them flat. Some of the primary school girls aged between 11 to 13 years were raped in front of their teacher and the teacher was later murdered by the government soldiers, possibly to conceal evidence of their heinous crimes,” an independent observer said.

When a grandmother in her late 70s said she could not tolerate the pain of losing her children and grandchildren, who had been slain in front of her, she begged the soldiers to take her life, too.

“Without remorse, the primitive government soldiers decided to cut her limbs, and she was left to die a painful death,” the observer said.

No one was spared from the soldiers’ wrath, he said, even the tiniest of children.

“Toddlers were thrown into the river live,” he said. “The lucky ones had their heads swung against poles and walls before being thrown into the river, at least leaving them dead by the time they have been thrown into the river.”

Though largely unknown to most of the world, these atrocities are happening with the full knowledge of international bodies, including the United Nations, the African Union and the Troika, which includes United States, the United Kingdom and Norway, meaning the non-Dinkas are left with no help and no options, the independent observer said.

There's more at the link.

However, because there are no major geopolitical factors in play in South Sudan, the international community will continue to ignore such atrocities.  They're doing the same in the Congo, in Yemen, in the Philippines, in Thailand, in Burma . . . in dozens of different nations.

I'm not saying the USA needs to intervene in all those places.  We can't.  We can't afford it economically, and our military (particularly after having been deliberately run down under the Obama administration for the past eight years) is already spread too thin.  Nor can NATO or other international organizations do so - they're also overstretched, under-budgeted, understaffed and under-equipped.  I'm merely saying that violent death and terrorism are rampant, all around the globe. They've been that way since shortly after the end of the Second World War, largely as a result of the global geopolitical destabilization brought on by that conflict and its aftermath.  They aren't going to go away anytime soon.

Anytime someone says to you, "But we must do something!" about those evils, ask them what we can do that will eliminate the problem.  They won't be able to answer you, because there isn't anything that will do that.  All we can do is temporarily halt the problem in one place, or a few places.  As soon as we've gone, it'll come back - and meanwhile, it'll continue in all the places where we can't intervene.

Evil is always with us.  We can do our best as individuals to combat it, first in our own lives and families, then in our own communities, then by sharing our resources (personal and national, as far as is feasible without beggaring ourselves) with organizations that can and do make a difference (e.g. Doctors Without Borders, the Salvation Army, etc.).  We can also do our best to stop the proliferation of weapons to such areas, although that's very difficult to accomplish.  Apart from those things, we have to accept that we can't solve all the problems of the world.

Trouble is, too many people won't accept that.  They're blind to reality.  They demand utopia . . . forgetting that it was a fictional place to begin with.  It still is to this day.


*Sigh*


Peter

13 comments:

NobobyExpects said...

I'd say that making colonies of those lands, again, could work. But the would be new colonial powers are not up to the task, either.

Anonymous said...

JL, China is doing almost that exact thing in parts of Africa. They are, from what I have read, about as bad as you'd think they are.

LittleRed1

JoshO said...

Repeal the Neutrality Act. If Americans want to form a regiment and go kill bad guys, the government should get out of the way. Not that most of those crying "do something!" actually would do something but somebody might.

VFM #7916 said...

Let's do the first step: don't bring the same mindset and culture here.

Tim Newman said...

Thailand? Are you sure about that?

Peter said...

@Tim Newman: See -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Thailand_insurgency

Will said...

I take exception to your call to "stop the proliferation of weapons" anywhere. Weapons are not necessary for killing groups of people. They do, however, make it hazardous for those who wish to kill in wholesale numbers. Screw the UN, arm everybody.

Peter said...

@Will: It's a nice thought, and I'd agree, but for the reality that most people are sheep, not sheepdogs or wolves. Give a sheep a gun, and a wolf will take it away from him and use it against him.

I'm as strongly pro-gun-rights as anybody, I think; but I'm also a realist.

rcocean said...

I'd add that people need to understand that our good-hearted meddling has often left things worse off. We went "over there" to get rid of the Kaiser and ended up with Hitler. We got rid of Hitler & Tojo, and then had to battle Mao and the USSR for 45 years.

We've been meddling in Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan since the Gulf War, are things better off?

I'm not sure what hitting Syria with Missiles will accomplish, long term, but I guess it made everyone feel good.

Joseph said...

In places like the mideast, knocking off the head honcho seems to result in an inevitable bloodbath. There are some places democracy just won't work. The only way to stop the killing is to impose order, and we don't have enough troops or money to do this, as Peter noted.

shugyosha said...

Two things:

Peter, I kinda take issue to the wolves-sheep analogy. It lacks something. Col. Grossman has the wolves-dogs-sheep analogy, which I find outright dangerous [*]. Both of them lack something like, say, the ram: I'll graze and walk about... just don't threaten me or mine and we'll keep watching each other, deal?

Then, part two: Is there a way to send diplomatic immunity to the hell it sometimes belongs with representatives of governments whose armed forces systematically eviscerate human rights? They might be a little more open to controlling their own troops if they could be, say, judged in absentia (Israel style, maybe: secret proceedings with appointed public defender and such), and shot down next time they, say, visited UN.

Yes, the picture I just drew is not realistic. The thrust could be, I think. Make the trial public, if you want, and allow the defendant to send counsel. As long as you don't have to wait 20 years for someone to detain the @#!!!

Take care.

Ferran

[*]: I don't know in the States, but in Spain, shepherd dogs mark the ankles of sheep or cows to steer them when barking doesn't work. While appropriate, I don't like a simile where most of the energy of the dog is geared towards ensuring that people (er... cows) are kept in control of the politi... shepherd, instead of defending them from outside threats.

Feather Blade said...

@shugyosha

If I remember correctly, when my grandfather ran sheep, he had two types of sheepdogs: Great Pyrenees, which often stayed out with the flocks and guarded them from coyotes, and Border Collies (I think) which stayed near the farmhouse and only went near the flocks when Grandpa needed to move them.

I expect that the wolf-sheepdog-sheep analogy references the Great Pyrenees type of sheepdog, rather than the Border Collie type.

For a lot of Americans, their earliest exposure to the idea of sheepdogs probably came from watching Looney Tunes, and the sheepdog in those was one that stayed with the herd and fought the coyote.

Tim Newman said...

Peter,

Thanks for the link, but the insurgency in Thailand is vastly different in both form and degree than what is happening in Sudan and the other places you mention. Kids are not being massacred in large numbers, let alone by tanks. I spend half my time in Thailand, there is absolutely no grounds for the US to involve itself here. There is undoubtedly some nasty stuff going on, but the Thai military is not made up of butchers like those you describe in your post. Insofar as military dictatorships go, the Thai one is extraordinarily benign. Thankfully.

Anyway, I love your blog! Do keep it up!