The Dark Continent

Johann Hari writes about France's destructive interventions in the Central African Republic and other parts of Africa. Andrew, apparently trying to shore-up his conservative credentials, observes that "If the US did anything like this, you wouldn't hear the last of it. But this is the first report I've read." Well, obviously US policy gets more coverage in the United States than does French policy, but it's really not as if we're inundated with coverage of American involvement in sub-Saharan Africa either.

Walter Pincus, for example, did an interesting May 28 Washington Post article about some potential problems with the idea of creating a new Africa Command but it ran on page A13 and I haven't seen whatever's happening there been the subject of intense journalist interest anymore than Ethiopia's US-backed invasion of Somalia has been. The truth is simply that things that happen in Africa that don't involve westerners getting killed (if French or American personnel started dying in large numbers as part of these intervention, we'd hear about that) don't get covered very much and a huge proportion of the coverage is dedicated to the situation in Darfur.

Comments

I guess Sully didn't really think this one through. Oh well, no doubt he'll learn from this rare lapse of judgment.

Posted by strannix | October 5, 2007 7:19 PM

How is Andrew wrong?

Isn't America's creation of a new African Command a little different than the French participation in a country's civil war.

Posted by thehova | October 5, 2007 8:17 PM

The WSJ had a front page article about France's military and non-military involvement in Africa a while back. France has remained heavily involved in Africa since the ostensible end of its colonial days, but, on balance, France's actions have probably ameliorated African dysfunction, rather than made it worse. The biggest African disasters (e.g., Zimbabwe, Darfur) seem to happen where western powers don't intervene. Incidentally, France still maintains the franc as a currency for some sub-Saharan countries, last I heard.

Posted by Fred | October 5, 2007 8:51 PM

The biggest African disasters (e.g., Zimbabwe, Darfur) seem to happen where western powers don't intervene. Incidentally, France still maintains the franc as a currency for some sub-Saharan countries, last I heard.

Congo Free State (Still, surprisingly enough, the biggest demographic catastrophe in recorded African history). And, umm, the French did intervene in Rwanda.

Posted by emmanuelgoldstein | October 5, 2007 9:36 PM

The media seems to have a limit of one Africa story at a time. Right now it's Darfur, in the past it has been Robert Mugabe's misdeeds, the end of Apartheid, Rwanda, Somalia, but pretty much only one of these things at a time.

If you read Romeo Dallaire's account of Rwanda incidentally, neither the French nor the American government comes off in a good light.

Posted by Dan | October 5, 2007 9:41 PM

"Isn't America's creation of a new African Command a little different than the French participation in a country's civil war."

He's not arguing there is an equivalence, but pointing out that the line of causality behind why there is so little coverage of France's actions has to do with perceptions of the US or France but more to do with a general lack of media interest in all issues African. The creation of a new African Command and the French story should be bigger stories, but every time a white woman goes missing here or Britney throws up again that's what the media cares about. The civil war in the former Zaire and the recent elections in the DRC should have been huge stories. The same with the fighting between Ethiopia and Somalia recently. Americans just don't care about Africa sadly.

Posted by Reality Man | October 5, 2007 10:16 PM

Yes, we have intentions in Africa, etc. But let's be clear: this mission civilatrice bullshit is actually quite extreme. That's not to say Iraq is not extreme, nor that N. Ireland wasn't, etc., etc..
But I do think Andrew's right that the Anglo-Saxon powers, to use the gallic terminology, would not get away with it.
Nor should they. Nor should France. Nor should anyone.

Kant, people!

Posted by Ben Cronin | October 5, 2007 11:29 PM

I remember in 1979 when France invaded the Central African Empire (as it was known at the time) and overthrew the Emperor Bokassa after he killed those schoolkids for not buying their school uniforms from his factory. (I can't remember if the Emperor ate the children or if it was somebody else he ate). It got like two paragraphs on p. 7 of the Houston Chronicle. I remember thinking that this would be a bigger story if America had invaded somebody.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 6, 2007 1:26 AM

When I was a little kid in the 1960s, newly independent Africa was very fashionable. There were lots of movies and TV shows about nice white people and nice black people helping animals in Africa, like "Born Free," "Hatari," and "Daktari." We all sang "Kumbaya" a lot at summer camp. Africa was the future!

Boy, that was a long time ago...

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 6, 2007 1:34 AM

Steve Sailer:

Let me understand your innuendo correctly:

Because we decolonisation no longer is the subject of popular movies, black people are inferior --- Quod Erat Demonstratum!

I also suppose there aren't too many good movies about the British murder and detention of hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu during the Mau Mau revolt.

Posted by Menshevik Bill | October 6, 2007 1:51 AM

D'oh -- should read: Because decolonisation is no longer the subject of popular movies....

Posted by Menshevik Bill | October 6, 2007 1:53 AM

There was much optimism in the American entertainment and news media in the 1960s about the prospects for independent Africa, newly freed from the burdens of colonialism. And thus there was much interest in America in Africa back then.

Now there is neither.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 6, 2007 5:30 AM

Hari's article, by the way, seems more than a little hysterical in tone. He tends to suffer from typical White Egomania where you assume that Africans can't get their acts together enough to accomplish anything bad on their own -- that blacks are too incompetent to slaughter each other so it has to be the fault of Europeans.

But Matt's point is valid: Lots of bad stuff happens in Africa, and the more we get involved in Africa, the more we'll be involved in the bad stuff that happens there. And, while the French may be malign, we're completely clueless, and that's even more dangerous. We probably will get even more people killed than the French do the more we blunder about Africa with our vast military.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 6, 2007 5:52 AM

Steve Sailer, the vile racist amking the usual viley racist comments. Could anyone be more of a degenerate racist than Steve Sailer. The racist in chief, always recruiting with a trail of disgusting Steve Sailer racist slime.

Posted by Jennifer | October 6, 2007 8:07 AM

Simply mention Africa in passing, and racist Steve Sailer will find the mention and slime slime slime away. How does a person get to be a professional racist? I don't get it.

Posted by Jennifer | October 6, 2007 8:11 AM

I see Jennifer, the dumb cunt troll, is doing her usual one-line ad hominems because she is too stupid to argue any position coherently.

Fred - France's actions have probably ameliorated African dysfunction, rather than made it worse. The biggest African disasters (e.g., Zimbabwe, Darfur) seem to happen where western powers don't intervene.

Generally, anywhere there is black majority rule, unless there are strong minority rights for the people that keep a place functioning - there is failure. From Africa to Haiti to NOLA.

Only a thin veneer of civilization has penetrated most blacks. When they have control of institutions, those institutions decline. Once in decline, natural savagery takes their society down the rest of the way. Even in America, where the looters and pillagers just wait for the next blackout, hurricane, or racial controversy to weaken police so they can spring into anarchy. We have succeeded, though, in moving part of the US black population into productive, autonomous lives where they (the black middle class) are productive and largely free of the crime and dysfunctionalism of the black parasitic class. But not too far - the same responsible black middle class rose on it's own in the 19th century..and all the Welfare State has done is to effectively legitimize and spread out of wedlock births, shield the black underclass from the consequences of their irresponsiblity, lack of effort, and poor behaviors.

The French try to stabilize the Africans descent into barbarism. Just as we do in America with 5 interventions to stop Haiti's sporadic descent, or bail out black-run cities...it's no cure.

And to the barbarous black's bad luck, they are finding the Whitey they hate at least cares somewhat about them - while Muslims, Asians don't care at all.
Nor are blacks in America finding Hispanics their "brothers of color".

Posted by Chris Ford | October 6, 2007 9:36 AM

Africa has more potential than any other place in the work, and probably always will

actually .. that's a joke economists used to tell about Brazil

anyhow, it is easy to be branded a racist on The Atlantic if you deviate from the Popular Front views on race and foreign relations

Posted by Jozef | October 6, 2007 9:43 AM

If the US did anything like this, you wouldn't hear the last of it. But this is the first report I've read.

Because what? And from whom would we hear?

From US citizens, at least the blame-america-firster of Mr Sullivan's fifth column?

From The rest of the world? They would all be blinded by some partiality against the US out - envy, maybebe, or freedom hatin' or some other Inscrutable Motive.

What is the signification in the end of Sullivan's weird little sentence apart of "out there, they're out to get us"?

What a freak.

... Montaigne, bitches! Montaiiiiigne!11!

Posted by yabonn | October 6, 2007 10:01 AM

I knew the post topic would attract a delightful explosion of primitive racism from Jew-fearing neo-Confederate Chris Ford, and, hey, he doesn't let us down.

Posted by El_Cid | October 6, 2007 10:19 AM

There we have the insane Chris Ford trying to outdo the racist Steve Sailer. Does the insane racist Chrish Ford manage to come out ahead of his racist teacher? I simply see the name of the insane racist Chris Ford and spit and move on. Racist Chris Ford, competing with the master and even more insane.

Posted by Jennifer | October 6, 2007 11:18 AM

No; there is nothing neo about racist Chris Ford, only utterly insane racism. There is the core of the insanity which runs deeper. Insane racist Chris Ford.

Posted by Jennifer | October 6, 2007 11:22 AM

Jozef is coming ever closer to the insane ones.

Posted by Jennifer | October 6, 2007 11:24 AM

Man, if we had a post which combined Africa, US welfare for inner cities, Palestinian rights, and appreciation of Muslim culture, imagine the dizzying heights of freakish racist ethnocultural hatred we could achieve on these very comment pages!

Posted by El_Cid | October 6, 2007 12:41 PM

El_Cid says all:

"Man, if we had a post which combined Africa, US welfare for inner cities, Palestinian rights, and appreciation of Muslim culture, imagine the dizzying heights of freakish racist ethnocultural hatred we could achieve on these very comment pages!"

Posted by Jennifer | October 6, 2007 1:25 PM

Matt Yglesias, the ball's in your court. You have your mission.

It is your historical task to write the one master post which will unify all the common cockroach crank ethno-haters on the blog in one giant explosion of anti-virtue.

It won't be as easy as you think -- just getting Chris Ford in common cause with SLC would be achievement enough for many. But you need to go farther, and draw all the early proterozoic commenters together into, er, some giant simultaneous climax, or egg release, or whatever it is they do.

Posted by El_Cid | October 6, 2007 3:05 PM

By the way, Hari's article helpfully clears up my confusion over whether back in the 1970s the Emperor Bokassa ate the schoolchildren he slaughtered or ate somebody else. Hari writes:

"Bokassa was famously mad, declaring himself "Emperor of the Central African Republic", eating the leader of the opposition, and opening fire on a group of school-children who were protesting for help to buy their school uniforms."

So, the Emperor did _not_ eat the kids, he ate a rival politician.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 6, 2007 9:24 PM

Thomas P.M. Barnett had a big article on this earlier in the year in Esquire:
http://www.esquire.com/features/africacommand0707

Posted by Mike P | October 6, 2007 9:27 PM

Matt is certainly right about the American media not covering African events much. I suspect most Americans learn more about recent African history from those Nigerian scam spam emails that always begin with a little story ripped from the headlines: "I am the natural son of the deposed god-emperor Mbubu ..." (to quote Colby Cosh's formulation).

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 6, 2007 9:28 PM