Heartthrob actor George Clooney wants the U.S. government to help stop the Sudan government’s bombing raids and attacks on the many Christians and animists living in southern Sudan.
He visited the White House today to pitch his message to President Barack Obama for 15 minutes.
He gave a short press conference on the White House driveway, and announced that Sudan’s war-crimes could be prevented by talk.
Back in 1999, however, Clooney starred in the war film “Three Kings,” which portrayed him as one of a group of U.S. soldiers who violated orders to aid Iraqi Shiites who were being bombed and attacked by Iraq’s Sunni-led dictatorial government.
Twelve years of diplomacy didn’t stop Iraq’s real dictator from attacking the Shias with real bullets and bombs, but one month of U.S.-led assaults in 2003 toppled that dictator, Saddam Hussein.
Clooney and his Hollywood friends, however, changed their support for the Shias once Hussein’s tribes allied with al-Qaida, Syria and Iran to wage a bloody war against Iraq’s elected Shia-led government.
The U.S. military and people stood by the Shia-led government until 2010. (RELATED: More on Clooney’s trip to Washington)
Hollywood ran away by 2007, and produced numerous anti-war movies and very few pro-military movies.
The Daily Caller asked the Hollywood hero if he and his Hollywood friends will run away from the fight to aid the people in southern Sudan if the going gets tough.
“If we do follow your advice and get more involved in Sudan, what’s to say that you and your friends won’t walk away from us next time?”
Clooney was not pleased.
“No one here has at any point advocated any form of military involvement — none — by the United States,” he responded. “No one is really advocating a tremendous amount of money be spent.”
“The point is, of course, is that this has to be something that we’re doing diplomatically. … Use diplomacy. Diplomacy is what we do great,” he declared.
“What we’re hoping to do is get people in the room talking more, right now, so we can avoid having to mop up a mess of a hundred, or two hundred or three hundred thousand dead people in the next four or five months.”
Clooney has warned that the Sudan attacks could mirror the earlier Darfur struggle that killed many refugees.
The government of Sudan, which is led by Islamists who once hosted al-Qaida, seems to be driving non-Muslims out of the southern border region and into the new country of South Sudan.
That country was formed from a chunk of Sudan in July 2011 after a two-decade war with Sudan’s government that killed more than two million people.
The problem is further complicated by the existence of oil fields in South Sudan that are linked by pipelines to ports in Sudan. The fighting has crimped the oil supply, much to the dislike of United States and China.
Oil prices spike whenever there is a supply problem, mostly because worldwide oil production is only slightly above demand.
This shared interest in a stable oil supply may allow the United States and China to cooperatively pressure the Sudan government to end its warfare on the people in the southern region, Clooney argues.