Darfur, Democrats, and Doing Right
This morning's paper, read as we prepare our breakfast and talk about plans for Thanksgiving, tells that civilians in Darfur are being raped and murdered again this weekend in Darfur and villages along the border with Chad. At the same time, Khartoum's evil leaders parse language and continue to blunt efforts by the AU and the UN and others to put a credible military deterrent into the region to stop the human slaughter unfolding. I'm having trouble enjoying my toast and eggs and coffee, things I take for granted everyday. What can I do as an individual? Write my congressman? Send a contribution to Mercy Corps or similar groups? Pray? All of those things seem to be awfully easy conscience-salving.
Nikolas Kristov wrote earlier this week about the situation on the Chad border. His piece was very strong in his own admission of helplessness when he faced marauders in a burned out village. He painted a vivid image of local Chadian villagers facing a certain attack who were planning to defend themselves with bows and arrows. Against machine guns, rpgs, and a cold murderous intent. They had nowhere to go and were forced to face evil.
Is there any of us who don't share some responsibility for not making a more insistent outcry? For something more than a shake of the head over the newspaper? I truly struggle with this.
Kristov, no stranger to the slow machinery of the international community's response to events such as Darfur, suggests a course of action which might have some impact. He urges the US and France, who have the capacity, to ask the Chadian government to allow the use of airbases within Chad to provide an an air cover over the Darfur region. The open terrain of this area would make it easy for our high tech systems to observe and map villages and military movements. In fact, I am astonished that we have not gotten satellite proof to demonstrate that Sudanese army units are implicated in the carnage.
I suppose, actually, that we may have such evidence but have not felt it was timely to say so.
I support exploring this idea. Quickly. Before Thanksgiving. And others. This situation needs solution. The new Democratic majority in Congresss could demonstrate something really different to the American public by posing a new American strategy of engagement in North Africa to the President, a strategy of "doing right" that can extend to other places as well. Not far from the tortured bodies and smoldering villages of Darfur and Chad, there are potential flashpoints in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea and right now the US has little credibility that it is on the side of the angels in the region.
I cannot be thankful this week without acknowledging that I am only a participant in this wealth of things in my life by the accident of being born in the US and not in a hardscrabble village somewhere named Darfur.
Nikolas Kristov wrote earlier this week about the situation on the Chad border. His piece was very strong in his own admission of helplessness when he faced marauders in a burned out village. He painted a vivid image of local Chadian villagers facing a certain attack who were planning to defend themselves with bows and arrows. Against machine guns, rpgs, and a cold murderous intent. They had nowhere to go and were forced to face evil.
Is there any of us who don't share some responsibility for not making a more insistent outcry? For something more than a shake of the head over the newspaper? I truly struggle with this.
Kristov, no stranger to the slow machinery of the international community's response to events such as Darfur, suggests a course of action which might have some impact. He urges the US and France, who have the capacity, to ask the Chadian government to allow the use of airbases within Chad to provide an an air cover over the Darfur region. The open terrain of this area would make it easy for our high tech systems to observe and map villages and military movements. In fact, I am astonished that we have not gotten satellite proof to demonstrate that Sudanese army units are implicated in the carnage.
I suppose, actually, that we may have such evidence but have not felt it was timely to say so.
I support exploring this idea. Quickly. Before Thanksgiving. And others. This situation needs solution. The new Democratic majority in Congresss could demonstrate something really different to the American public by posing a new American strategy of engagement in North Africa to the President, a strategy of "doing right" that can extend to other places as well. Not far from the tortured bodies and smoldering villages of Darfur and Chad, there are potential flashpoints in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea and right now the US has little credibility that it is on the side of the angels in the region.
I cannot be thankful this week without acknowledging that I am only a participant in this wealth of things in my life by the accident of being born in the US and not in a hardscrabble village somewhere named Darfur.
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