Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Shame On All Of Us

Much the same has been true of the Western response to the Armenian genocide of 1915, the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, and the Bosnian massacres of the 1990s. In each case, we have wrung our hands afterward and offered the lame excuse that it all happened too fast, or that we didn't fully comprehend the carnage when it was still under way.

And now the same tragedy is unfolding in Darfur, but this time we don't even have any sort of excuse. In Darfur genocide is taking place in slow motion, and there is vast documentary proof of the atrocities. Some of the evidence can be seen in the photo reproduced with this essay, which was leaked from an African Union archive containing thousands of other such photos. And now, the latest proof comes in the form of two new books that tell the sorry tale of Darfur: it's appalling that the publishing industry manages to respond more quickly to genocide than the UN and world leaders do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it would be nice if there were some soldiers to spare to fix that.

Doug Fields said...

You're a damn fool. We've got plenty of soldiers to fix that. Hell, it would only take a few thousand college students with clubs. But the problem's not the means to fight, it's the will. The same as the fight against terrorism.