HOW DEEP THE ROT


“You can see how far the termites have spread and how long and how well they have dined.”[1] The words are Christopher Hitchens and they are directed at the liberal left apologists of Islamism. They sprung to mind yesterday when reading a piece in the Guardian by Jumoke Balogun, respecting the more than two hundred teenage schoolgirls captured and enslaved by the Islamist group Boko Harem. Balogun, who is described at the end of the article as Nigerian-American, which I presume means she is a US citizen, begins by asking:-
“Simple question. Are you Nigerian? Do you have constitutional rights accorded to Nigerians to participate in their democratic process? If not, I have news for you. You can’t do anything about the girls missing in Nigeria. You can’t. Your insistence on urging American power, specifically American military power, to address this issue will ultimately hurt the people of Nigeria.’’ [2]
Therein lies the heart of the argument, the real problem is not the abduction of the girls, who rapidly disappear from the article, but the problems of democracy and civil society in Nigeria itself, problems created, you guessed, by American imperialist designs. The logic of Ms Balogun’s article is that even if the girls could be rescued by American intervention this should be resisted since such a rescue would ‘only embolden American militarism.’
To be fair to Ms Balogun she does implore us to ‘…learn more about the amazing activists and journalists …who have risked arrests and their lives as they challenge the Nigerian government to do better for its people within the democratic process.’
Well who could not support such an obviously laudable struggle, and I for one will take up her offer and find out more about these particular activists. In the meantime around 276[3] teenage girls are held captive, subject to rape or the threat of rape and a future of being sold into slavery or forced marriage, which is of course the same thing. Still maybe they will be sanguine about their fate so long as they know that American imperialists will not form part of the rescuing party?
Ms Balogun does not think too highly of those in western countries offering solidarity and demanding action to free the girls and adopts the tactic often employed by those on the far left when in more kindly mood of treating anyone who disagrees with them as naïve and simplistic, to be addressed in the patronising tone you would foolish children.
‘It heartens me that you’ve taken up the mantle of spreading “awareness” about the 200+ girls who were abducted from their school in Chibok; it heartens me that you’ve heard the cries of mothers and fathers who go yet another day without their child. It’s nice that you care.
Here’s the thing though, when you pressure western powers, particularly the American government, to get involved in African affairs and when you champion military intervention, you become part of a much larger problem. You become a complicit participant in a military expansionist agenda on the continent of Africa. This is not good.’
Of course the articles headline gives the game away 'Dear world, your hashtags won't #BringBackOurGirls;' what fools we all are to think they would.
Well as someone old enough to remember the struggle against American and South African intervention in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe I am not as naïve or foolish as the smug and self-important Ms Balogun seems to imagine. So my response to her tone of voice is, as we Londoners say, leave it out.
Now I don’t know whether American and British intervention can locate and rescue the girls, I fear too much precious time may have elapsed. I also believe it is vital that the Nigerian government also be pressured into acting a hundred times more vigorously than they have done thus far. But if there is a chance that intervention from the US or elsewhere can free the girls then it is worth a shot.
If such a rescue can be so affected Ms Balogun and all those other fellow travellers on the morally bankrupt far left[4] should be left to sit wrapped in the security of their ideological purity as they wring their hands, despondent at this further example of American imperialism.    
In the meantime if you want to read a thoughtful article about the plight of the girls and the current situation in Nigeria you could always read http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/11/nigeria-boko-haram-education-schoolgirls-kidnapped.


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRKXzER5AH8 I recommend viewing this video since in a few short sentences Hitchens demolishes the vacuous arguments of the left apologists of Islamism.
[3] Establishing the exact number of girls has proved difficult, itself revealing. It’s as if there is intent to remove these girls identity, reducing them merely to symbols.



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