It is in regards to the Darfur matter that I now bring up this truism concerning the possibility that your subjective intentions and the objective consequences of the actions that you take might well be in conflict with o­ne another.

        For those that don't know, a civil war marked by brutality and atrocities -- for which the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias effectively allied to it are primarily, though not exclusively responsible, -- has been going o­n for around 4 years in an enormous region located in Eastern Sudan known as the Darfur.  Rapes and rather barbaric forms of slaughtering civilians have, it seems, been among the tactics that the Janjaweed militias have -- generally with the tacit support of the Khartoum regime -- resorted to in the course of their campaign against the various rebel groups located in the Darfur.  And, what is both even more tragic and predictable, various graphic images taken from the conflict zone have been utilized by the Bush administration, various of the reactionary organizations allied to it, as well as sundry bourgeois-"liberal" groupings and personalities that are ostensibly opposed to it, in order to get certain relatively influential elements of the American population to grant backing to Washington as it seeks to advance its always concealed and always sordid objectives in the African region in question.  Those "liberal" personalities and organizations that back a US or UN-led military or so-called "peacekeeping" operation in Darfur (and which thus either support or advocate a still-more aggresive variant o­n the existing Bush administration policy in relation to that region) must be exposed for what they really are: either mendacious and consciously pro-imperialist scoundrels or, alternately, "useful idiots" that, probably without trying to do so, are propping up the US's criminal and increasingly unpopular government. 

          

        This "intervention" of mine into this cynical and, in essence, soundly pro-imperialist block of events on campus was preceded by a "mass email" that I sent out to all those who belong to the "UCF Progressive Council" and "Peace Action" groups at the school; these two organizations were listed on the aforementioned glossy cards as numbering among the official sponsors or supporters of the "Project Darfur" events.  I explained to those o­n the respective email lists the fact that any military intervention or so-called "peacekeeping operation" headed by either the Western Powers or the UN, respectively, would be tantamount to placing Darfur at the mercy of the military, economic and political institutions controlled by the Great Power states and thus condemning the residents of that unhappy region to a future in which they would be stripped of any chance of creating through popular struggle a truly democratic society devoid of all the scourges which flow directly from the miserable condition of extreme economic impoverishment; I further mentioned to the members of these nominally anti-war and "progressive" organizations that their sponsoring of the de facto pro-interventionist message being pushed through the medium of the "Project Darfur" campaign would make them politically responsible for the humanitarian disasters that any such western-led military or "peacekeeping" operation in the region in question would inevitably generate.  To my own message, I added two exchanges on the topic at hand which had been published o­n the Wold Socialist Web Site (wsws.org [3]); in the respective exchanges, a couple of readers of the site wrote in, criticizing it for opposing an intervention by the Great Powers in the Darfur, a position to which several members of the editorial board of the site responded by explaining (in a rather comprehensive and convincing manner) why socialists were obligated to oppose any such operation of this type. 

             I had responded in an identical fashion perhaps o­ne day earlier after seeing that pacifists from the "inland northwest" who oppose the Iraq War had sent me an email which certainly implicitly sugested that a Western-led or organized military intervention or "peacekeeping operation" in the Darfur was the natural and most "humanitarian" solution to the crisis in question.  My desire to present a genuinely humanitarian -- that is anti-imperialist and anti-interventionist -- alternative to those who would attend the events organized under the "Project Darfur" umbrella at UCF o­nly strengthened when I realized that many different and ostensibly "progressive" grouplets from all over the country had, at precisely the same time, all gotten behind the idea that foreign troops should be sent into a part of Africa that, a few brief months before, surely only a small fraction of them had ever heard of.

            Due to work obligations, I was not able to attend the 1st and 3rd evenings of the 4-day event.  However, the list of speakers (printed o­n the reverse-side of the glossy cards that I already made mention of) was readily available, and it made still clearer to me the extraordinary degree of cynicism that the organizers of this and other similar events being held around the country were willing to resort to in order to achieve their reactionary political objectives.  "Chuck D" was the featured speaker o­n the first night; undoubtedly best known to most of the assembled students for his role as one of the members of the since-disbanded late-80s and early-90s black-nationalist rap group "Public Enemy," Chuck D. has now morphed into one of the hosts o­n the relatively widely-syndicated "Air America" radio program.  For those who don't know, "Air America" functions as the voice o­n the radio of the Democratic Party establishment; this program's staunchly pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist orientation is further underlined by the fact that its name just so happens to be the same as the o­ne of the airline which the CIA used for decades while conducting its covert operations all around the globe.

          Chuck D's position in relation to the Darfur conflict is the same as the o­ne espoused by the ostensibly "progressive" (or at least "liberal") members of the Congressional Black Caucus; that is, all of these individuals accept without question the notion that the US military (and allied or auxiliary forces, such as those of NATO and the UN) can and indeed should be used to alleviate the suffering of impoverished and oppressed people in a far-off part of the world.  In that what concerns the interests of the working masses, both in America and in the rest of the countries of the world, the above-outlined position constitutes a deadly trap.  It prevents people from understanding the fundamental truth that, due to the fact that it constitutes the political arm of the ruling class of multi-millionaires and billionaires, the capitalist state is organically incapable of taking measures which will lead to a fundamental change for the better in the conditions of life for the working and peasant masses.  Being that its central, driving objective is to enhance the ability of its own financial elite or oligarchy to further enrich itself, each capitalist state -- regardless of the subjective hopes or naive wishes of some ordinary people who are not privy to its inner workings -- is, given the larger social context in which it operates, obligated to pursue policies which, in the final analysis, can o­nly diminish to zero the possibility that the "ordinary" people will be able to exercise true, comprehensive democratic control over their societies.  Foreign military interventions carried out by the "Great Power" capitalist states can, as long as they last, o­nly guarante the perpetuation into the distant future and indeed intensification of the misery, poverty, desperation and powerlessness of the citizens who happen to reside in the countries being occupied.  This is a hard truth, but, if working people both at home and abroad are going to be able to make themselves the masters of the societies in which they live, they absolutely must assimilate it.

           So, what was the fundamental significance of the fact that Chuck D. was invited to speak to those students and locals who had gathered on the UCF campus  -- presumably with the entirely admirable intention of finding out more about a humanitarian catastrophe in some far-off section of the world -- during the brisk late February and early March nights in question?  In short, due to the fact that the nation's young people tend to see them as vaguely countercultural and oppositional figures Chuck D and, as we shall see, various other celebrities who have opted to participate in events of this nature have great value for an American elite that has decades and decades of experience in dominating the country's social and political life.

     First of all, Chuck D is black, and much of the wretched pro-intervention propaganda is based o­n the patently absurd myth that Washington could prove that its intentions towards Africans are, at base, really good, if it would just send a part of its massive military apparatus into a part of the African continent where, in truth, many dark-skinned people are suffering terribly.  Related to the first reason would be the fact that his entire musical career was bound up with his promotion of a stridently black-nationalist viewpoint which, at least to many youths who listened to his former band Public Enemy's albums, probably appeared as something in opposition to the country's "establishment."  Finally, as a Democrat, he can present himself simply as someone who, despite his lack of any partisan allegiance to Bush, sees the "humanitarian need" to apply the White House's aggressive militarist approach to a new spot o­n the globe (this time, to the Sudan.)

          The humanitarian window-dressing aside, the fact that events organized o­n the UCF campus as part of the "Project Darfur" campaign had as their essential goal the attempt to manipulate and deceive -- as much as possible -- the politically vital demographic of college-age people into supporting a new American military aventure was also strengthened by the planned appearance as a speaker of Mia Farrow, the actress who -- to the current generation of college students -- is probably best known for the fact that she was for a long time involved in a relationship with American film director Woody Allen.  Allen's (less and less) deserved reputation as an amusing and witty critic of the foibles of upper-midle class residents of New York City, combined with Farrow's acting career and public persona serve to reinforce the notion that supporting military intervention (whether it is to involve, o­n the one hand, bombing attacks or a land invasion openly directed against the Sudanese government or, o­n the other, is to be officially designated a multilateral "peacekeeping operation") is really an entirely normal thing that reasonable -- and especially vaguely "progressive" -- people couldn't possibly oppose. 

             Mia Farrow's status as someone who is not significantly involved in any sort of controversial political activity was again, in the calculations of the organizers of the effectively pro-imperialist "Project Darfur" set of events, probably viewed as a positive factor; after all, having celebrities that are not known to have any close past affiliation with any particular political campaign or party speaking in favor of some military -- or (sic) "peacekeeping" -- operation cannot but lead many people (especially the relatively impressionable and idealistic youth) to conclude that there exists a universal, impossible to contradict consensus of "sensible" folk regarding the "need" for "our government" to do "something good" by intervening in the place that is currently beset by crisis.

In opposition to the insidious attempts by the capitalist ruling elite and its faithful political servants and mass-media mouthpieces to convince us that western military intervention in o­ne form or another in impoverished and crisis-ridden parts of the globe is necessary and "the right thing to do," we Marxists must patiently explain to as any many ordinary people as possible that it is imperialism (via its diverse economic, military and political arms) that is, at base, responsible for virtually all the problems that it is now proposing to "solve."  Furthermore, we Marxists must make clear that short-term "solutions" that involve an intensification of imperialist meddling into the affairs of the weaker, more impoverished countries of the world are completely inimical to the steps that the latter really need to take in order to resolve their historic problems: cancel their debts to the international banks and end their rape by the transnational corporations -- in short, achieving real independence via the road of socialist revolution.  This perspective, which represents the o­nly way forward for the poor and oppressed peoples of the world, be they from the imperialist nations or from the historically exploited o­nes, is singularly advanced by The Socialist Equality Party and wsws.org [4]