WI: Bush orders the US to invade Sudan?

Well, basically, world opinion would go with you and you could imply that the chinese are supporting genocide (Which I view as there sorta a party to in a convoluted way)

kayne west saying China doesn't care about black people anyone?

That would basically be enough to tell china to STFU if any nations in the UN had a pair

Yes because China cares what Kayne West thinks, seriously it doesn't matter what people think because in the end as long as you don't take any actions that threaten China, China won't care. Just look what went on with Tibet or Sudan right now, as long as they don't bring sanction against china itself, which is impossible due to the fact that China has veto powers, not surprisingly it won't allow, then they don't care.
 
China vetos, UN goes from a bunch of America haters to a bunch of China Hater.

No, the Left here would be screeching racism and colonialism. It would also be comparing Bush to Mussolini, instead of Hitler, and instead of Bushism being Nazism reborn (which, much as the Left wants to state otherwise, was not an uncommon opinion, see: Naomi Klein), it would be Italian-style fascism. Oh, and any US invasion would be generally accused of racist imperialism as well, and any crimes done by the Sudanese minimized or obscured once the Bush Administration fucked this up as badly as it did Iraq. And any attempts to refer to Darfur would be accused of whitewashing genocide.

Am I cynical? Not really, this is just the censored version of my real thoughts on the matter. :(
 
No, the Left here would be screeching racism and colonialism. It would also be comparing Bush to Mussolini, instead of Hitler, and instead of Bushism being Nazism reborn (which, much as the Left wants to state otherwise, was not an uncommon opinion, see: Naomi Klein), it would be Italian-style fascism. Oh, and any US invasion would be generally accused of racist imperialism as well, and any crimes done by the Sudanese minimized or obscured once the Bush Administration fucked this up as badly as it did Iraq. And any attempts to refer to Darfur would be accused of whitewashing genocide.

Am I cynical? Not really, this is just the censored version of my real thoughts on the matter. :(

Okay, UN turns into a bunch of China Haters that still hate America, and they never actually do anything in Darfur.

Reminds me of OTL.
 
Perhaps like OTL the US ignores the UN and still invades the Sudan but this time with European (French, German etc.) support.

The question is who actually joins the coalition. I can see france, with it's history of involvement in the region, joining in, but that alone does not mean the EU will go to Darfur (although I would anticipate at least a little more support for this war).

One place I see this bogging down, however, is objectives. Sooner or later, the US is going to have to confron the question of what does it actually aim to accomplish in the Sudan. Does it want to overthrow al-Bashir? Independence or autonomy for Darfur and/or South Sudan? Or just to stop the genocide? Is the US going to be proactive, or focus more on arming the persecuted? And if the later, what does it do if/when they begin harassing their former oppressors? Unless the US has a firm idea of what it is doing in the Sudan, even with other potential problems handwaved, it is easy to see the situation deteriorating.
 
The question is who actually joins the coalition. I can see france, with it's history of involvement in the region, joining in, but that alone does not mean the EU will go to Darfur (although I would anticipate at least a little more support for this war).

One place I see this bogging down, however, is objectives. Sooner or later, the US is going to have to confron the question of what does it actually aim to accomplish in the Sudan. Does it want to overthrow al-Bashir? Independence or autonomy for Darfur and/or South Sudan? Or just to stop the genocide? Is the US going to be proactive, or focus more on arming the persecuted? And if the later, what does it do if/when they begin harassing their former oppressors? Unless the US has a firm idea of what it is doing in the Sudan, even with other potential problems handwaved, it is easy to see the situation deteriorating.

If the Bush Administration is in charge of it and Rumsfeld is SecDef, you can bet it'll be as sloppily handled as Iraq. The reasons would change every 2 or 3 weeks, the amount of soldiers would be under-strength and under-supplied, the place would be a magnet for Qaeda fighters that didn't already exist there, and the general war would kill far too many Sudanese before the government decides to change pace a wee bit too little too late.

I'm equally as cynical on how the war would be handled as to its domestic rhetoric on the Left. And the Right would accuse the Left of Genocide Apologia and treason, and Limbaugh would still make jokes about killing liberals on a regular basis, and effectively, aside from geography, the ethnic groups involved, and the scale of it, the 8 years of George Bush wouldn't change any.
 
Isn't Sudan nice and flat, mostly?

The US's air and ground forces would operate much better there than in, say, mountainous Afghanistan.
 
Obviously there would be huge butterflies from OTL. One of the Immediate ones would be no Ahmadinejad in Iran and possibly no Kofi Annan scandal involving Oil for Food program.
I'm not fully convinced that such a POD would completely preclude Ahmedinejad from the presidency. Iran still has the U.S. on one of its borders, and wouldn't necessarily be relieved that it just has Saddam on the other. Further, Ahmadinejad was already a rising star in Iranian politics with a burgeoning populist support base. I think that even without the U.S. in Iraq Ahmadinejad would still have a good shot at the presidency, though it does become more likely that his politics will be less radicalized.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Everyone seems to think that the Sudan would be this magnet for Islamic extremists, but that never happened in Bosnia. After all, there were Muslims being decimated there.

But everything you guys are talking about; the foreign fighters being brought in, the outside politics being brought into a peacekeeping mission, all of those things have been overcome before. All that needs to be done is make sure the US and France push for a united UN chapter 6 or 7 resolution.

For those of you wondering, the Chapter 6 resolution would mean something akin to what they used in Sinai, Lebanon, South Africa, and Cambodia. Now, I am NOT talking about the US troops that were put into Lebanon and Cambodia. I mean the UN Observation Posts that were put into place to monitor borders and ceasefire points.
Chapter 6 resolutions are also known as "peacekeeping" resolutions. They involve mostly unarmed observers to keep a third-party watch over two or more groups that have decided that for whatever reason, they want peace as opposed to the war that they have been fighting up to that point.
The can normally be undertaken on the ground with less powerful countries, as long as "stronger" countries are willing to provide the bankrolling and transport.

Chapter 7 resolutions are what were used in Bosnia, Kosovo, etc. These are known as "peacemaking" missions.
They are normally the ones that require the white-painted BMPs and M-113s and air wars. They also normally require a one or more "stronger" countries to shoot their way in.

There is another kind, one that is sort of legalese that was begun in the mid-90s and pioneered by Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, known as Chapter 6 1/2. This is involved going into a country using primarily unarmed observers with an armed reserve force to help handle any flare-ups.
(read Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil, or Gen. Lewis MacKenzie's Peacekeeper)

But Sudan, as far as I know, doesn't have that many high value targets for air strikes. And to enforce the kind of resolution (we'd need to pass something like they went into Rwanda or Bosnia with, but with the teeth to back it up. That's where Rwanda went wrong.) that would work in that kind of country, you wouldn't invade the whole thing.
The UN would just want to put ground troops in Darfur to create a cordon to provide safety from the Janjaweed and Sudanese Army units. After all, everyone here seems to be forgetting that the UN put a force on the ground in South Sudan almost a decade ago, and it's been doing fine.

But I'm completely in agreement with those people who say that if the US went in all Iraq style, it would be a debacle.
That was one thing about Bush: he said that the US military shouldn't be used for country building, then he proved it. But me personally, I'm not going to blame the hammer for missing the nail.
 
Or China decides to intervene instead of the US. How about them apples?

China does not have the logistical ability to project power very far from its borders, let alone to Darfur. And even if they had the capability, the Chinese are on pretty good terms with the Sudanese government. why would they want to disrupt that (not to mention the flow of oil behind those cordial relations in the first place)?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Seriously, guys. The US doesn't just have to go in by themselves. I know that a lot of people would love to see the 24th Mechanized just rolling around flipping the victory sign to some heavy metal or something, but that's not what you need.
The African Union force that's on the ground now could do it's job fine if they had some helicopter transport, which is where the west could come in. The Canadian Forces had let the African Union force use some of their 6x6 Bisons, known better to Americans as LAVs.

What's operated really well on the ground so far, it seems, is what the western military knows as an armoured cavalry force. The only problem is, we're telling these poor peacekeepers to stop the violence in an area the size of Texas with like, 4 helicopters. And they're allowed those, as far as I know, because the Sudanese government hasn't felt the need to allow any more in. Peacekeeping and Peacemaking missions work when both sides feel that peace is in their best interests (it doesn't matter WHY they think that), and the Sudanese government obviously doesn't think that.
So if the US could provide, say the Air Cavalry Squadron from the 3rd ACR (I'm just spitballing an exact unit). It wouldn't even need to provide the whole thing, just those few Troops from the Squadron that consist of Kiowas and Blackhawks and can provide transport.

That way, the AU force on the ground can have the rapid reaction capability that is required to keep a ceasefire line around Darfur. Yes, if you're talking about doing this in 2003, then the US would definitely want to be in on the sharp end, probably with the French (because it IS Africa and God help the poor soul that goes into Africa without the French).

But I don't see how it wouldn't be possible to put a ceasefire line policed by UN observers around Darfur, under Chapter 7 of the UN charter which allows them to be armed.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I had a bee in my bonnet to write a short story. So here's part 1 of the rough draft. Be kind. There's a little bit of language.

Quick Dial, Part 1


30 September, 2007
Al Fashir, Shamal Darfur, Sudan

“Je suis comment tu ruier de Haskanita!”
The Nigerian Lieutenant had been yelling on the radio for awhile now. 1st Lieutenant Andrew Shepard, Canadian Forces, had just gotten to the radio hut and was shouting orders to the several people around him, most of whom outranked him, none of whom spoke French.
2 UH-60s and from S Troop, 4th Squadron, 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment of the US Army sat on the dusty helipad outside the United Nations Mission to Sudan HQ, spooling up to head out with a squad of Indian infantry aboard. What exactly they were supposed to do when they got there was anybody’s guess until Shepard had arrived.
“Just jump on the damn helicopters, and I’ll tell you what you need to know on the way!” He pulled on the headset with the screaming Nigerian officer. “He’s talking about an enemy force about five klicks away moving towards him. He says the OP to the west got overran.”
He pressed the transmit button. “Y a veni de soutien!” His French was terrible, and he knew it. He’d done a few months in one of the primarily Quebecois artillery units, and that wasn’t the kind of French these guys were used to hearing.
“Quand serond-ils ici?” The Nigerian sounded really spooked.
“When can you guys get out to Haskanita?” Shepard turned to the map of Darfur posted on the wall, and started speaking to the radioman, a civilian from UNAMID. “You get on the horn to the OP on the northern side of Kassab. That’s the South Africans. Tell them UNAMITS wants to fucking talk. Now.”
He hated doing it this way. The lines of communication in this portion of Darfur all came back to the HQ post in Al Fashir since they couldn’t afford to outfit everyone with the wireless sets. Unless the actual refugee camps were under attack, they wouldn’t know about it from satellite phones. So he would have to relay the information to the South Africans at the Kassab-2 post, thirty miles away from Haskanita.
The Americans, along with the French, had integrated communications gear with every man. But for this fight, they weren’t using the United States Army. Their element of it that was on call for combat operations was just now taking off in a whirl of dust. Behind them, a mile away on the UNAMITS main helicopter landing zone outside of Al Fashir, three more Mi-17s of the Indian Army were getting ready to go.
“Quand serond-ils ici!?” The Nigerian was screaming into his ear.
“Vingt minutes!” He had just told the AU unit commander that the Blackhawks would be overhead in twenty minutes. He didn’t know if it was true, but he’d been on the chopper trip from Al Fashir to the Haskanita camp before, and figured it took around that long. God damn, I’m not good at ballparking it.
“UNAMITS HQ, this is Kassab-2. What’s going on back in the world?”
Shepard grabbed the waiting handset. “Kassab-2, we’ve got a situation over at the Haskanita OP. Western one’s already been overrun. We don’t know who did it. The Nigerians are holding up. What’s your personnel and equipment situation?”
“Whoa…uh…give us a second, HQ, I’ll be able to tell you exactly what we can send.” The UNAMID volunteer was looking at him, waving a cell phone. Shepard covered the mouthpiece.
“Who now?”
“Lieutenant, I had the number for a UNACEF guy at Haskanita. He’s driving out to the Kassab-1 post to drop his phone off to the Nigerian guy.” The volunteer scribbled the phone number down on a scrap of paper. “Here’s the number. If you have the South Africans at Kassab-2 dial up, they can talk to each other.”
“Fucking brilliant, Terry!” Shepard rattled the number off to the South African on the other end of the line.
“Alright, Lieutenant. We’ve got three Ratels heading over now. It’ll be at least fifteen minutes, and I can’t promise anything once we get there. We don’t even have a full combat load.”
“That’s alright. 3rd ACR’s got air elements and boots heading there now. Indian Army is also on the way. I think we’ll have air cover by the time you guys get your boots on the ground.” Shepard slumped down in his chair, and pulled on the headset for the Nigerian Lieutenant one last time, pulling enough French out of his brain to tell him that help was on the way, and it would be coming in under a half an hour.
 
Top