EDITORIALS : Speak no evil
Posted on Tuesday, September 2, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/236143/
IT’S BEEN a couple of good weeks for
the genocide-deniers. Does anybody
remember Darfur ? It’s the western part of Sudan where some 300, 000 black Africans have been killed and another 2. 5 million run off by the Sudanese government hand-in-spear with its allies. Chief among those allies is Communist China, which has been busy wowing the world of late with its splendid made-for-TV special called the Summer Olympics. The Olympics were a way for the regime in Beijing to present a happy, smiling face for all to behold. Did you catch the spectacular fireworks show on opening night ? (Okay, some of the fireworks were computer images slipped in for those watching at home. ) And did you hear the song of welcome by that adorable little girl with the great voice ? (Okay, the little girl was lip-synching for the real singer after a party boss decided she wasn’t cute enough. ) The Olympic village turned out to be more of a Potemkin one. The entire show had the same synthetic feel to it, though we’re pretty sure that Michael Phelps’ world-record swimming was real enough. This year’s Olympics reminded us of the old movie technique called backscreen projection. The actors would do their lines on a sound stage while a dramatic image was projected behind them—an image of the Grand Canyon, say, or the Statue of Liberty. Backscreen projection was a novelty in its time. Nowadays the technique is so obvious in old movies that it gets laughs. Maybe one day we’ll be able to laugh at tyrannies, too. But we doubt it. They’re too bloody.
THIS YEAR’S Olympics featured
some great performances in the
foreground, but a lot of obvious fakery farther back. Red China’s mediamanipulators made sure the world saw only what the regime wanted shown. It wasn’t just the fake fireworks and lipsynching. It was what wasn’t shown. No protests were allowed. No demonstrations against the regime’s standard mistreatment of its own subjects. Tibet went unmentioned, too. And, above all, no one was allowed to call this year’s games the Genocide Olympics in (dis ) honor of the role Red China has played in enabling years of horrors in Darfur. Over the years, Beijing and Sudan have been willing partners-in-crime. Sudan sells oil to mainland China, and China sells military equipment to Sudan. Meanwhile, Beijing runs interference for Sudan in the United Nations, making sure that other countries can’t do much about Darfur, either. The hypocrisy has grown so complete that the president of Sudan has been able to go on the road, assuring other countries that there’s no genocide back home. He may have been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes, but he acts as innocent as a lamb. Genocide ? War crimes ? Nothing to see here, folks. Not everybody is fooled. Prosecutors for the international court say that Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, and his official thuggery have teamed up with their freelance allies to assure the ethnic cleansing of Darfur. Despite El Presidente’s denials, the victims who have lived to tell their stories have made it all too clear that the Sudanese and their allies have been at their grisly work for years.
All the denials from Sudan’s murderous president, and all the cover provided by Beijing can’t mask the awful truth. What’s going on in Darfur is genocide. Recommended reading: The Devil Came on Horseback by Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace; Darfur’s Sorrow by M. W. Daly; and a slew of other solidly researched books that document this ongoing history of genocide in our bloody times. So far, the world hasn’t been able to muster an effective response to the atrocities in Darfur. At the Olympics, distinguished visitors were much too polite to yell bloody murder. The world seems to have gone from a vague hope that something could be done to being shushed into silence. And as always, silence is the most effective accomplice.
EVEN THE American politicians
who keep saying, yes, we must
protest what’s happening in Darfur, seem to be doing it only for show. They ask more people to speak up, but they themselves propose no realistic plan to actually do something to save the innocent. Our favorite quote comes from a United States senator who’s just accepted his party’s nomination for president of the United States. In a documentary about Darfur—the movie version of The Devil Came on Horseback—Barack Obama explained that “we need greater pressure from the American public to tell their senators this is something we are paying attention to, and we want you to prioritize it.” But Americans have done that and done that, and now Senator Obama wants us to put more pressure on... himself and his colleagues ? That’s it ? Just go around in circles some more ? There’s been no shortage of speeches, demonstrations and editorials like the one you’re reading now. What’s been missing is action. Action by senators like Barack Obama and John McCain, and a president named George W. Bush. What kind of action ? Armed force. A little would go a long way toward protecting the survivors in Darfur. In their book, Not on Our Watch, Don Cheadle and John Prendergast, put it plain: “Many of us peace and human rights advocates are rightly reluctant about the use of force. We need to get over it. There is such a thing as evil in this world, and sometimes the only way to confront evil is through the judicious use of armed force.” One airborne brigade would do more good than all the nice speeches in the world. We’ve already had a flood of those. They may make the speakers feel better. They do precious little for the victims of the world’s latest genocide.