 assembled for something like $800m - for a full year.
Add $100m for the air component of a handful of air superiority SU27 warplanes, ground attack SU25s and some helicopters, plus logistics airlift, and you are there.
So, for $1.3bn - approximately £700m at current exchange rates and half of Sudan's military spend - you could field, feed and sustain an army for a year that could beat anything in Africa , permitting you to deal with the Sudanese forces and their attendant militias.
A cost too far? Well Live Aid raised $300m in a single concert to buy food for a starving Ethiopia in 1985. In the UK alone we've apparently just drunk more than £1bn in booze over Christmas. So put in those terms it is not so much.
Of course, in my little indulgence I have ignored international law, national laws and the complexity of international relations. Certain dictators might not react kindly to Westerners funding the most effective army in Africa. And how would it make our own
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Force is the only real solution. Our forefathers - those with brains and a conscience - left their homes to fight fascism in Spain |
|
|
Government look, with our own overstretched forces running hot while Gordon Brown indulges in incoherent ramblings about Third World debt to enhance his humanitarian credentials?
But force is the only real solution. When our forefathers - those with brains and a conscience - detected the stench of a movement that threatened not just decency but civilisation itself, they left their homes to fight fascism in Spain (left). Abandoned by France and Britain, the democratically elected government and the International Brigades were defeated by fascism. It wouldn't have mattered a jot except - as predicted - we were next.
A ruined Europe later, with hindsight, it would have been a good idea to have stood up to that wrong early on. Shall we see history repeated? To paraphrase Sir Bob, "Maybe its focken' time to do somthin'.' 
FIRST POSTED JANUARY 4, 2007
|
