GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: Follow-Up -- One Big Double Standard

All last week The Inquirer reported on Genocide in Darfur. And all week we meant to post an essay singling out New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof. As it played out, some hard news pieces came our way, zapped our resources and the piece went by the wayside.

That's why we're catching up now, because Kristof wrote a spot-on column in today's paper about the world's double standard in dealing with Darfur.

The Times' Op-Ed page is perhaps some of the most valuable ink in the country, and Kristof has repeatedly turned away from the often bland and repetitive pundocratic blather to which many columnists fall victim and instead focused the world's attention on the genocide in Darfur.

While Kristof's dispatches from the area have been riveting, he's always retained the fairness of a good reporter: he's called on President Bush to break the silence yet remained levelheaded enough to compliment the administration when they've made advances, say, on aid for the region.

And from today's column, entitled "Shrugs for the Dead":

Even the world as a whole has double standards. The U.S. and European countries are working frenetically on a U.N. solution in Lebanon, and there is talk of rapidly sending European peacekeepers to stop the bloodshed. In Darfur, there is nothing like as much interest in what is often considered the ultimate human crime: genocide.

You could say that's tough to argue against, but the reality is that most people won't bother arguing at all. It's a month into the Israeli-Lebanon conflict, and there are UN actions, heated diplomacy and moral outrage. Three years into an African genocide and there's barely enough money to sustain a 7,000-member African Union peacekeeping force. A more effective UN force at the moment looks like a pipe dream.

Consider his argument today. Read the past columns. And then, what really is perspective, that is, once you've opened your eyes to look out across the globe?

Comments

[Jay McGinley]

Darfur Hunger Strike Day #28; White House Day/Night Vigil Day #80

STOP THE NONESENSE. STOP THE KILLING. I mean YOU mass media. I mean YOU Nicholas Kristoff. You are killing what time these folks have left.

STOP POINTING THE FINGER THE WRONG WAY. Bush, the UN, world leaders cannot and will not ever stop this genocide, just as they have not stopped any other!

Samantha Power's definitive Pulitzer Prize winning analysis of the genocides of the last 100 years are clear (Problem from Hell). "The battle to stop genocide has always been lost... on the field of US public opinion!"

WE-THEP-EOPLE HAVE OUR LAST AND ONLY CHANCE TO SAVE DARFUR ON SEPTEMBER 17TH. September 17th there are demonstrations around the world where people can STAND UP AND BE COUNTED. SAVEDARFUR.ORG

In my assessment, 1. If the numbers are huge, and 2. if some of us engage in suffient nonviolent civil disobedience sufficient to be HEARD LOUDLY, that will give the mandate THAT WORLD LEADERS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!! We the people of the world have been the problem.

September 17th WE MUST BE THE SOLUTION. With aid workers being shot the anticipated death toll as they leave is 25-50,000 per week among the 3,000,000 now in the concentration camps. THEY AND WE WILL NOT GET ANOTHER CHANCE.

September 17 THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD STAND, OR THE PEOPLE OF DARFUR AND I DIE of starvation, or worse, quickly thereafter.

Simple.

Jay McGinley
White House
484-356-6243