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please forgive the grammar but it was translated from Spanish without much craft only so that I could share it with you all.
MR. BUSH: WATCH MTV
Nicholas D. Kristof
EE.UU.
When Turkey was massacring the Armenians in 1915, the administration of president Woodrow Wilson chose to see decidedly towards another side. The ambassador of the United States in Constantinople sent furious cablegrams to Washington, requesting action of some type against what he called "murder of a race", but the White House shrank its shoulders.
It was, after all, a confused and extremely dirty situation, and there was no easy form to end the slaughter. The United States was desperate to stay out of reluctant World War I and to not poison their relations with Turkey.
A generation later, American civil employees said they were too busy waging war to worry about the Nazi concentration camps. In May of 1943, the government of the United States rejected suggestions to bomb Auschwitz, claiming it did not have airplanes available for that task.
In the decade of 1970, the United States did not try to prevent the Cambodian genocide. It was a confusing situation as well, in a hostile country, and there was no a perfect solution. The United States also was negotiating the establishment of relations with the government of China, the main ally of the Red Khmer, and it did not want to alter that diplomatic process.
Similar things happened in Bosnia and Rwanda. As Samantha Power narrates in her wonderful book “A problem from hell: America and the age of genocide”, the pattern was repeated time and time again: a slaughter prolonged somewhere in the world was carried out, but Americans had other priorities and the simplest answer for the government of the United States always was to look the other way.
Now president Bush is writing a new chapter in history. The army of Sudan and the military services of the janjaweed have dedicated last to the destruction of the region of Darfur, assassinating children and men, raping and mutilating women, throwing corpses down water wells to poison the water and literally throwing children into fire. Just one week ago 350 attackers undertook what the United Nations described as "a wild" attack against the village of Khor Abeche, "killing, setting fire and destroying everything on their way". Once again, there is no a good solution. And so we Americans we have turned the other way again while 300,000 human beings have been assassinated in Darfur, with another 10,000 who added every month.
In the meantime, president Bush seems to be completely paralyzed before the slaughter. He has made an excellent work in providing humanitarian aid, but has refused to face Sudan vigorously or to denounce the massacre to the rest of the world.
There is no perfect solution, but there are obvious things we can do. Bush could impose a zone of nonflights, provide logistical support to an African force or to the United Nations – one of greater size than the present one, send Condoleezza Rice to Darfur to show that this is a priority for his government, consult with Egypt and other allies, and of all things, to speak vigorously about this subject.
In fact, MTV is presenting this case with more vigor than our own White House. It is a national shame that MTV is more aggressive as far as denouncing
genocide than our president.
But if the Bush administration has remained quiet as far as Darfur, other countries have been even more passive. Europe, with the exception of Great Britain, has been blind. Islamic aid, the aid group, has carried out an extraordinary work in Darfur, but in general the Muslims of the world would have to be ashamed of the fact that they have not helped the Muslim victims in Darfur as much as American Jews have. And China, who has not stopped condeming Japan’s atrocities of 70’s, has been supporting the atrocities in Sudan in 2005.
In each one of my three visits to Darfur, the victims of that place showed an extreme kindness, guiding to me to safe places and offering water whenever I was thristy and exhausted. These are people who have lost their homes, their children and virtually everything..., nevertheless, somehow, with their compassion they have showed me that hey have managed to keep their humanity. Therefore I am crushed and appalled that we, who have it all in comparison, can not even show the basic humanity, the simplest of all which is to save their life.
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