Saving Darfur Now Declared Part Of "Crusader" War Against Islam

Osama bin Laden has once against emerged from his rabbit hole to pronounce, in part, that his followers are to take up arms in preparation for the coming invasion of Sudan by the "Crusaders". According to Mr. bin L, "The US was not satisfied by all the sedition and crimes, but went on to incite sedition, the largest of which was the west Sudan sedition by exploiting some disputes between the tribes and sparking a savage war between them that will spare nothing, prior to sending in Crusader troops to occupy the region and steal its oil wealth under the pretext of peacekeeping."

There are two points to be made here: first, progressives are already wary about US military action in Sudan. Their general opposition to any foreign involvement has now been hammered into a solid steel belief system by the war in Iraq. The progressive impulse to stop the genocide in Darfur has been reduced to a hope that by some magic the UN will actually, for the first time in its history, use force to stop such crimes or that peaceful means such as sanctions will do the job. By incorporating Sudan along with the progressives' other favorite middle eastern country, Palestine, bin Laden has practically sealed the opposition of the left to any truly effective means of stopping the Janjaweed slaughter.

Secondly, bin Laden drags out the old saw that the US is motivated by our demonstrable addiction to oil. For the record, Sudan has estimated oil reserves of 1.6 billion barrels, ranking 34th in the world. The daily oil consumption of the United States is over 20 million barrel every day. Thus, all of Sudan's reserves, assuming we took total control of it, would be gobbled up in a mere 80 days. Personally, I'm more inclined to snatch the oil of the 38th ranked country, Denmark. That way we'd at least get open access to their wonderful Tivoli gardens and nifty statue of the Little Mermaid.