Mr. Bush, Take a Look at MTV

[Colorado Blue]

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: April 17, 2005

When Turkey was massacring Armenians in 1915, the administration of Woodrow Wilson determinedly looked the other way. The U.S. ambassador in Constantinople sent furious cables to Washington, pleading for action against what he called "race murder," but the White House shrugged.

It was, after all, a messy situation, and there was no easy way to stop the killing. The U.S. was desperate to stay out of World War I and reluctant to poison relations with Turkey.

A generation later, American officials said they were too busy fighting a war to worry about Nazi death camps. In May 1943, the U.S. government rejected suggestions that it bomb Auschwitz, saying that aircraft weren't available.

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/opinion/17kristof.html?th&emc=th

Sudan's army and janjaweed militias have spent the last couple of years rampaging in the Darfur region, killing boys and men, gang-raping and then mutilating women, throwing bodies in wells to poison the water and heaving children onto bonfires. Just over a week ago, 350 assailants launched what the U.N. called a "savage" attack on the village of Khor Abeche, "killing, burning and destroying everything in their paths." Once again, there's no good solution. So we've looked away as 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur, with another 10,000 dying every month.

snip

Words fail.

At least, I understand the UN is planning "an investigation."

[lenidog]

1. Actually the UN and the US investigation is over

The UN says that there is no signs of genocide in the Darfur region while the US investigators have called it genocide. While for the past decade the Sudanese government has been waging a war of genocide in the southern region of the country against the Animists and Christians in the area. Those they do not killed are reported to be sold into slavery. this has earned Sudan a seat on the UN Human rights Comission.

[izzie]

2. We will send General Dyer to fix it all. do not worry.

--

[rodeodance]

3. Mr. Bush, Take a Look at MTV

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/opinion/17kristof.html?th&emc=th
Mr. Bush, Take a Look at MTV
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: April 17, 2005


.......One lesson of history is that moral force counts. Sudan has curtailed the rapes and murders whenever international attention increased.

Mr. Bush hasn't even taken a position on the Darfur Accountability Act and other bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senators Jon Corzine and Sam Brownback to put pressure on Sudan. Does Mr. Bush really want to preserve his neutrality on genocide?

Indeed, MTV is raising the issue more openly and powerfully than our White House. (Its mtvU channel is also covering Darfur more aggressively than most TV networks.) It should be a national embarrassment that MTV is more outspoken about genocide than our president.

If the Bush administration has been quiet on Darfur, other countries have been even more passive. Europe, aside from Britain, has been blind. Islamic Relief, the aid group, has done a wonderful job in Darfur, but in general the world's Muslims should be mortified that they haven't helped the Muslim victims in Darfur nearly as much as American Jews have. And China, while screaming about Japanese atrocities 70 years ago, is underwriting Sudan's atrocities in 2005.

On each of my three visits to Darfur, the dispossessed victims showed me immense kindness, guiding me to safe places and offering me water when I was hot and exhausted. They had lost their homes and often their children, and they seemed to have nothing - yet in their compassion to me they showed that they had retained their humanity. So it appalls me that we who have everything can't muster the simple humanity to try to save their lives.

E-mail: [e-mail]

[teryang]

4. We drove the Canadians out of Sudan

Now the plan is to drive out the Chinese. Oil, you know.

I suspect the reason that the chimp keeps a low profile is because a direct frontal assault on a Chinese national interest won't score any points.