A Marshall Plan for Africa & the Darfur Protectorate: Time for America to Stand Up
Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.
Chief Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) Judgement at Nuremberg 1961
We are entered upon a century of global competition with emerging superpower China--which brings me to:
The need for a Marshall Plan for Africa. Greg Behrman describes most eloquently in The Most Noble Adventure how the original Marshall Plan helped prevent a Europe teetering on the brink from going Communist.
The Chinese are a great and noble people. Their government, however, doesn't share our values. It supported the Khmer Rouge when they murdered Joseph Hargrove, Gary Hall, and Danny Marshall during Mayaguez and then several million of their own people as well. It has brutally oppressed its own people as well as Tibet and it has frustrated US humanitarian initiatives in Darfur and Burma. This despite its military being significantly inferior to ours and its economy being but 1/5 our size.
China's economy and military are rapidly growing. Her coal-fired plants dramatically speed the pace of global warming just as the spread of her wealth and influence through investments and aid increases her power. By mid-century, she may well have surpassed us in economic and military might.
What kind of world will that be? Wracked by environmental disasters and littered with killing fields? Democracy a failed experiment limited at best to the US, the EU, Japan, Australia, and Canada? And in what form?
Even now, the billions China is pouring into Africa have induced many Africans to question the value of democratic and western-style economic reform. Africa was just as much the battleground of the Cold War as Europe was of WW II and now Africans are suffering from a crisis of confidence at least comparable to that of Europe in 1947.
If we are to prevent this nightmare scenario, a Marshall Plan for Africa isn't just right, it's required. While we develop such a plan, we should also build an alliance between the African Union and NATO. This will establish a security guarantee to complement the economic support and will be the precursor to the first important step: establishment of the Darfur Protectorate. This will be demilitarized apart from AU and NATO troops and a no-fly zone controlled by NATO AWACS will be established.
Under the Darfur Protectorate Plan, all refugees will return and will be placed in as near to their former condition as possible. Sudan will be given a prominent place in the African Marshall Plan aid package in return for renouncing its rights to Darfur. We cannot change Darfur's past, but we can change its' future.
We have friendly and capable European leaders in Brown, Sarkozy, and Merkel and Brown has already advocated a Marshall Plan for Africa. They can be convinced if the US shows leadership.
What do they see instead from our noble candidates? If I hear one more Democratic candidate slam another's lack of experience or one more of my fellow Republicans say one of their opponents isn't enough like Ronald Reagan, I am going to scream!!!
What made even those who disagreed with Reagan admire him was his focus on his own optimistic vision for America. This is a lesson that all candidates from both parties would do well to learn. Six months ago everyone made fun of Gravel and now they're all a bunch of griping grouchy Gravels!!!
Along with the blue ribbon panels on how we go to war and creating the African Marshall Plan and the Darfur Protectorate, I would propose that Congress pass a resolution as follows:
Be it resolved that should any candidate from either party criticize another candidate, that candidate will be required to put on overalls and report for 1 days' duty at Arlington or another of our National Cemeteries. There, they shall "take increased devotion to that cause for which others gave the last full measure of devotion". At the beginning and end of the day, they shall be required to write 100 times: "I will focus on my vision for America like Ronald Reagan did and I will not criticize my fellow candidates". Democrats can leave out the Ronald Reagan part!!!
We can make a better world for our children and grandchildren, but it will take an "all hands" effort. The Marshall Plan needed not only Democrats like Marshall and Harriman to succeed, but also Republicans like Vandenberg and Hoffman. Just so, we must all roll up our sleeves and pitch in if we are to build that "shining city on a hill" of which Pilgrims dreamed and Reagan spoke.
