Save Darfur Rally: Full of sound and fury signifying nothing!

Given yesterday’s article on the Hispanic boycott of America and today’s article (and many previous ones) on Darfur, I feel obliged to disabuse readers of this weblog of any impression that I’m a bleeding-heart-liberal do-gooder. Because, truth be told, I do not understand how anyone who lives and works in Washington, DC (and has a conscience) is not compelled to actively support one cause or another that is trying to persuade or coerce the U.S. government to act to better the condition of poor and oppressed people somewhere in the world.

In my case, my conscience moves me to do whatever I can to help alleviate the suffering of people throughout the world, especially across Africa and the Caribbean. Occasionally, this requires lending my feet and voice to marches and rallies – as was the case yesterday. These events invariably aim to persuade the government to use its unparalleled power to help poor, powerless, and oppressed peoples.

Which brings me to the people of Darfur. Regular readers know that, despite my participation, I have little regard for conscience-soothing rallies to “save” people who have been suffering the ravages of genocide for more than three years. Indeed, as I wrote in this article just months ago, even if America were to deploy the necessary forces to stop the killing today, I would understand if the long-suffering people of Darfur greeted that move by saying “Thanks for caring America, but you’re already a genocide too late….”

Nonetheless, I implored my American readers in that article – as I had in previous ones – to call their representatives in Congress to demand military intervention now. Because, I argued, our collective conscience should have been sufficiently pricked already by this unfolding holocaust to consider intervention a categorical imperative.

Therefore, as I participated, I wondered how rallying in Washington could possibly help people in Darfur? And I lamented that neither the sublime admonitions of Elie Wiesel nor the celebrated entreaties of George Clooney would prevent a single person in Darfur from being slaughtered….

The clarion call on Sunday was for the U.S. government to “put pressure on Khartoum” to stop the killing. Indeed, speaker after speaker implied that all it would take is a phone call from President George W. Bush to end the genocide today. That’s misguided nonsense, of course, which is surpassed in its fallacy only by the expectation that international organizations like the United Nations and African Union will save Darfur.

Clearly, the world is fiddling again as genocide rages on. Because we all know that diplomatic pressure has proved (and will continue to prove) as effective in halting the Janjaweed’s holocaust against blacks in Darfur, as diplomacy proved in halting Hitler’s holocaust against Jews in Germany, or as effective as it is now proving in halting Iran’s plans to “wipe Israel off the map.” And, anyone who questions my cynicism in this respect needs only consider the absurd spectacle of rap mogul Russell Simmons raising the hopes of people at Sunday’s rally by sharing the “breaking news” of a “peace for our time” in Darfur, only for it to be reported hours later that nothing could have been further from the truth. (Not quite a Neville Chamberlain gaffe, but close….)

Alas, diplomacy is but a shield to the pendulum-sword of genocide in Darfur.

For the record, here’s why I’m so disgusted with political words of concern in this context:

On 25 March 1998, President Bill Clinton went to Africa and apologized to the survivors of the holocaust in Rwanda on behalf of the United States as follows:

The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy….We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past. But we can and must do everything in our power…to ensure that another genocide like this never happens again in Africa…never again.

Then, less than two months later, on 7 May, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan followed suit and apologized on behalf of the international community as follows:

The world must deeply repent this failure. Rwanda’s tragedy was the world’s tragedy. All of us who cared about Rwanda, all of us who witnessed its suffering, fervently wish that we could have prevented the genocide. Looking back now, we see the signs which then were not recognized. Now we know that what we did was not nearly enough–not enough to save Rwanda…not enough to honor the ideals for which the United Nations exists. We will not deny that, in their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda ….

Today, such words must constitute a cruel joke in the minds of the people of Darfur. Especially since the world was put on notice about this genocide even before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case for (a just) war against the Janjaweed militias (and their enablers in the Sudanese government) on 9 September 2004 as follows:

…we concluded, I concluded, that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility — and that genocide may still be occurring.

To date, 300 thousand people have been reported dead and over 2 million have been displaced to “safe haven” refugee camps, where reporters and interested celebrities can go to report on what the world has known about for years….

But unless President Bush amasses a coalition more willing to intervene in Darfur than the coalition he amassed to invade Iraq, the casualties from this genocide will soon make what happened in Rwanda seem like an ordinary drive-by shooting in South Central, LA. And, it’s all happening with our eyes wide shut…

NOTE: I’d like some of my African American friends to help the world understand why they seem more morally outraged and politically exercised by one black wom
an’s claim that she was raped in North Carolina almost 2 months ago than they are about thousands of black women being raped and murdered daily in Darfur. Because, even though I rallied with fellow-blacks, they were invariably African blacks, not “African American”….

ENDNOTE: If you think Darfur is a nightmare, consider the horror of DR Congo.

Darfur Sudan