Obama Has No Problem With Genocide

Next time you hear Sen. Barack Obama (D-IN), presidential candidate, talk about human rights and bringing an end to genocide and other human rights crises, remember the following:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven't done," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea," he said.

Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said it's likely there would be increased bloodshed if U.S. forces left Iraq.

"Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis," Obama said between stops on the first of two days scheduled on the New Hampshire campaign trail. "There's no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing U.S. presence there."

Military action would have put an end to the Darfur genocide because the janjaweed and Sudanese military would be stopped from further carnage and harming civilian populations. The failure to deploy military forces - peace makers or even United Nations peacekeepers in force - allowed multiple genocides and ethnic cleansing events to occur around the world, from Rwanda to Congo to Kosovo and Iraq.

Sen. Obama also hasn't a clue as to the number of US forces available or even involved in operations. Right now, we've got about 150,000 troops in Iraq. We haven't massed 300,000 troops for any operation since Gulf War I, and President Clinton clipped the size of the military considerably in the peace dividend of the 1990s.

I've long argued that failed states and regions are a persistent and ongoing threat to national security. Such regions include areas that have seen genocides and ethnic cleansing, like Sudan and Darfur, lawless regions like Somalia and Warizistan along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Wishful thinking will not make those areas any less lawless. Diplomacy will not make them less lawless. Military force will eliminate the threat, imposing order on those regions, and deny terrorists like al Qaeda an area of operations from which to launch operations.

Obama thinks that talking about stopping genocide is the same about actually stopping it. World War II proved that the only way to stop genocide is to depose those regimes responsible for it. The same went for Kosovo.

Saddam Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands during his reign of terror, and the Iraqi government rightfully hung him for his crimes against the Iraqi people. That would not have happened had the US not deposed him.

Obama would much rather let millions die than take actions that would prevent such events from occurring.

Obama would like people to believe that we're at greater risk if we stay in Iraq. That couldn't be further from the truth. Al Qaeda is in Iraq, and where exactly does Obama propose we fight them? He's willing to cede that field of battle to al Qaeda?

If we withdraw, where will al Qaeda go next? Western Europe? Africa? The US?

We know where al Qaeda is now - and we're fighting them now. In Iraq.

And our presence in Iraq is also a stabilizing influence because we're able to give the Iraqis time to get their own house in order. We know what the alternatives look like - the millions dead in the Killing Fields of Southeast Asia.