I can feel that this is going to end well.

Is it really a surprise though?

Despotic ruler who felt most of the damage against his reputation was being spread by foreigners (justified or not) so decides to remove the wrong problem.

Guess we could have seen it coming. :(

To be honest, I have never really seen the point of publicly announcing that someone has an arrest warrant (unless your main intention is embarrassment and not to arrest them). I mean, doesn’t that just mean you lose the initiative to arrest them.

Be silent. Arrest them. Then tell the world how cool and morally upstanding you are.

If you’re looking to me for insight, you’re in a world of hurt! ;)

my dear govts official explanation is that these NGO’s are the reason why there is an arrest warrant for the idiot of the president we have, as they supplied the info, reports and wat have you on the humanitarian violations inflicted on the pple of the darfur region – if you want to know just how big this region is, it’s a good 2 -3 hour flight from nyala for ex to khartoum the capital,,,and from kht to cairo (in another country) it’s a mere 2 and a half hour flight.

so putting in mind the vastness of some parts of the western region, let alone the rest of the country, they’ve gone and kicked out the very same ngos and groups that are doing one of the jobs which any govt is morally, legally and ethically obliged to do – and that’s to provide decent health-care to its pple. a catastrophe that’s been occuring far too much in sudan for the past 20 odd years. in my lifetime i cannot recall any time in our short history of there being a period where there was not one catastrophe happening – the famine of teh 80s, the 25 year civil war, the situation in western and eastern sudan …the list is endless. and to think we were actually one of teh few arab and african countries to actually have and hold democratic elections and choose a leader, only for him to go and fuck it up royally, resulting in us being stuck in the current situation since 1989.

on the issue of the icc warrant, wat a joke. it sounds and looks good on paper and in the eyes of the media, but how will they actually arrest him? send some commandos to sudan thereby violating god knows how many international treaties incl the soveriegnity of the sudan – albeit not smthg that’s stopped anyone in the pase,

lets not forget ,wh countries have actually accepted and ratified the icc?? the us hasnt, hence obama and his predecessors admin not really pushing for the case of al bashir’s arrest, dont think any of the member of the arab league nor the african union have either, so while the ICC is waiting for the arrest of omar al bashir for crimes agasint humanity, he’s too busy traipising around the mideast and africa visiting fellow heads of states, who are just as corrupt (if not more) as him and guilty of crimes that would add 20 years to anyone life if they knew of the extent of what exactly these so called govt actually do.

aaaaaaah so frustrating…politics utter bullshit…and i wonder why i spent 6 years of life studying it, bring nothing but ulcers and agony…

and another thing, looking at it from the point of view of one rule for us and another for us…
its not just the likes of bashir who should be charged with crimes against humanity etc etc, wat about the likes of the top idiots george w bush, tony blair, donald rumsfeld, paul wolfowitz (former head of the world bank but one of the masterminds of the iraq war), shimon perez, benjamin netenyahu, vladimir putin and countless others who have authorised and helped mastermind the violations and killing of countless of peoples under the pretext of bullshit??

its sooo frustrating when you see and read their excuses, nay sorry valid reasons, when in reality its utter utter crap. for gods sake irag, an independent soveriegn nation was invaded on the pretext of lies, and while the iraqis continue to suffer til this day, george bush and his war cronies are enjoying retirement w millions in teh bank, round the clock secret service protection while blair is going on lecture tours further ballooning his bank account. utter bullshit. where’s the justice for all those iraqis, afghanis and palestinians whose lost lives have been calculated as collatoral damage???

and than they wonder why there is so much animosity towards their governemnts??

am not talking about saddam or justifying terrorism (its never, ever justified) but wat some governments get away with is also terrorism it’s just boxed and nicely wrapped in a bow of legality – supposedly.

sorry if i went off on a tirade but when i sit and think about wats happening and how 99% of the time its govts actions…..my blood boils…

am not talking about saddam or justifying terrorism (its never, ever justified) but wat some governments get away with is also terrorism it’s just boxed and nicely wrapped in a bow of legality – supposedly.

But that’s it isn’t it? That bow of legality is at least one extra step that have to take that at least protects SOME civilians and that can be used against them, at least politically.

Frankly i think their deference to that makes them better than the likes of Saddam et al. That, and they can actually be voted out of office.

so you voted someone out of office, ok what next? where’s the justice for those who dont have a say in whether u remain in office or not? you voted him out but what about paying for his crimes? 8 yeas of distruction , deaths and utter incompetence and wat can be done about bush and cronies? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. yet El bashir is accused of crimes against humanity and immediately the ICC is more than happy to issue an arrest warrant. dont get me wrong im elated he’s been charged and all, but in international law you can’t have one law for some, and another for others. the law is the law, you break it, you should be charged- no matter who you are.

my point being just because smthg is tied up in making it appear legal does not make it so.
in any case the us and uk et al’s invasion of iraq was not legal…hell it even violated the un treaty…of which they’re signatories of and helped to set up.

The difference is that GWBs primary intent was not to kill civilians. Bashir’s was.

I ain’t trying to defend GWB’s foreign policy decisions here cos frankly I think there is very little he handled competently (and possibly some criminally incompetently), but there’s a gaping void between intentionally targetting civilians and “collateral damage” in legal terms.

You’d also need to get a whole lot more specific about WHICH war crimes Bush could be charged with. I think you could POSSIBLY get Rumsfeld on the issue of “prisoners of war” (gitmo, torture etc), but it wouldn’t be a slam dunk at all.

WIth regard to the Iraq war not being legal, again, there are plenty of lawyers who have expressed the opposite opinion. I am not saying I agree with them (because I don’t), but you can’t just dismiss their arguments out of hand.

Also, why can you speak English so well?

i agree bashir’s and gwb’s actions cant be held as being the same..on a personal note bashir’s is even more reprehensible/disgusting/inexucsable as it was committed against his own people…my god he’s our president yet his govt gives orders to kill, murder, maim, attack his own people…no excusing that at all.

but if we’re gg to start excusing one crime from another based on legal terms than wats to stop the likes of bashir from saying unfortunately the loss of lives is collatoral damage? not that he’d be able to prove so but still…a crime is a crime regardless of the build-up towards it. maybe i’m seeing it from the point of view of having lived/still living in a region where it’s been common practice both by domestic and outside factors with a multitude of reasons used but at the end of the day thousands of innocents have lost their lives and their rights weren’t protected and still arent.

as for dubya being not as guilty as rumsfeld for ex, the saying ‘the buck stops here’ comes to mind – nothing gets done without the tacit approval and agreement of the powers that be…

lol..my english… british school in sudan, american uni…typical elitist background of one fm a developing nation…but its served me well i must say

the guest reply was mine, forgot to log on and am at work so the info wasn’t automatically inserted…

The thing that stops Bashir from claiming that they were collatoral damage is the same thing that stops any criminal.

Evidence.

And I would disagree that nothing gets done without the president (especially a weak one like Bush). There would be plenty of people trying to “shield” the pres from the repercussions of morally questionable decisions.

What other languages do you speak?

the way i see it there’s little difference between bush and bashir — except the former was voted into power by his people, and the latter took power thru a coup…wasn’t there a case a few years back brought against the bush admin, or rumsfeld to be precise, for war crimes by a belgian lawyer?? if am not mistaken case was thrown out because of his position or smthg like that, i could be wrong…

speak arabic, my mother tongue….wh comes in handy when i feel like swearing at someone and i dont want them to understand wat am saying !!!!

I suppose the issue we are really talking about is “legitimacy” – the use of violence in a (perceived) legitimate way.

The problem is that entire books and theses have been written about that topic so we’re probably not going to come to an adequate conclusion on the forum of PBs. ;)