The tragic events that continually unfold in Sudan (like the events in Rwanda a decade since) are, the world must acknowledge, genocidal in their scope, in their intent, in their effect. For all intents and purposes, the world has acknowledged these facts; and yet the world has stood by, continues to stand by and watch it happen. One is tempted to observe, bitterly, that genocide has become a spectator sport — but spectator sports garner far more attention, and indeed far more money.
The United Nations decries it; the United States has, through its Department of State, declared the unraveling in Darfur to be genocide; and yet neither can muster the political will — or the military force — to intervene: the former because it is chronically weak, the latter because its forces are bogged down, as it were, in the Central Asian desert, the sand turning marshy as the blood pours recklessly, needlessly, and indiscriminately from invader and indigenous, infidel and faithful.
The world stands by as the people of Darfur are slaughtered. One is forced to wonder: Is the genocide-ignorer a genocide-enabler?
The United States deplores the events, but the colossus too is impotent. And one’s thoughts turn to America’s self-inflicted wounds, and the coming bloodbath in Iraq: genocide is in the wind there, too, and we are all but powerless to stop it. The invasion set it in motion, “Mission Accomplished” assured its emergence, and our continued presence slows its arrival — for now. And the question arises: When a power (however inadvertently) create the conditions for genocide, does it thereby undertake a continuing obligation to prevent it?
These are not idle or theoretical questions, by any means: They are central to winding down America’s misadventure Iraq, and they neatly define the quandary of Americans who opposed the invasion of Iraq as unwarranted and now oppose withdrawal as immoral.
The argument runs something like this: Having once created an unstable and untenable situation in Iraq, the United States cannot now walk away from the civil war that has ensued. Or: We lit the fire, after all; we ought to stick around long enough to put it out.
Alas, this is not a fire that can long be contained, much less extinguished. Like the wildfires that devastate the American west, this one will (I fear) have to burn itself out. The cultural animosities infecting the peoples of Iraq have alternately simmered and boiled over for centuries. Only Saddam’s brutality held the region together as a modern nation-state, as no occupying power — no matter how benign or benevolent — could ever do: the Ottomans had a hard time of it, and the British failed utterly. Now the United States takes its turn, and by freeing three disparate (and antipathetic) peoples from the tyrant’s grasp has unleashed the ethnic conflict and super-heated it.
For Iraq it hardly matters, at this moment, whether U.S. ground forces stay or go: by staying they forestall the inevitable conflagration; perhaps when it does occur, the other nations of the world will see fit to step in and suppress the violence. Meanwhile, other corners of the world where the American forces could make a positive difference — Darfur being uppermost at this moment — burn and bleed, because American forces are, as of now, spread too thin. Multilateral action — the African Union, the United Nations — has been tepid at best; only the United States has the power to take the kind of action, unilaterally, that is required.
And so the giant is twice shamed: for not intervening when it could, and then tying its own hands by intervening where it shouldn’t.
{Civics, Politics, Public Policy}
Additional resources:
“A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” (Samantha Power)
“Encyclopedia of Genocide (2 Volumes)” (ABC-Clio Inc)
SaveDarfur.org has a post called “Educate Others” that’s worth checking out…
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have responded to the suffering in Darfur by standing up and demanding that their governments take action to end the crisis. However, many individuals still have not heard about the genocide in Darfur. To build the political will necessary to…
[composed and posted with ecto]
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