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The World is Thinking

Darfur & Beyond with Mark Hanis

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James - Ireland Avatar
James - Ireland
Posts: 4
Posted: 11.11.09, 04:56 AM
While appreciating the genuine concern that the speaker has for human rights, it dispiriting to see the low level of political understanding exhibited.

Firstly, there is the example of “definition creep”, whereby genocide is trundled out to describe a brutal civil war, but what it is clearly not a campaign to exterminate rival tribes. If we take the slaughter in Rwanda or the WWII holocaust as examples of genocide, or even the slaughter in Yugoslavia, clearly the conflict in Dafur, however unpleasant, is far away from that. After 6 years, there is still no evidence of mass graves, of the hundreds of thousands of people killed during the conflict. Repeating ad naseum the charge of genocide is no substitute for hard evidence.

Secondly, there is a simple moral principle that one should be primarily concerned about situations which one is responsible for. In daily life that means you’re responsible for taking care of your children and not someone’s else’s. It’s very laudable to condemn the actions of the disreputable family down the road but if your own kids are suffering from neglect, it won’t be a surprise if you aren’t taken seriously.

This applies very simply to the United States. While it continues to attack and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan (who has has ordered more bombs on innocents, Bashir or Obama?), not to mention its long history of military interventions elsewhere, it simply has zero credibility in the rest of the world when it preaches against undoubted atrocities conducted by its enemies. Add to this its support for the Israeli occupation, the extremely regressive Saudi regime, and its support for the Pol Pot regime against the Vietnamese and it becomes difficult to take even well meaning human rights activists seriously.

The latter could make a significant contribution towards reduction in atrocities by campaigning for the cessation of American aggression in the world. This would firstly directly improve the situation in Afghanistan, Colombia etc, but secondly, it would enhance America’s credibility. Since the bulk of the talk was about how to influence US decision makers, it makes sense to focus on issues that they can directly affect rather than on the issues that they can only have a very indirect effect (and possibly a negative one).

While ordinary Americans have an understandably positive view of their government's policy stance towards Sudan, many in the rest of the world - and not just the Arab world - perceive its goal to be the break up of Sudan and that it is using humans rights as a vehicle to do so.

Instead of banning investment in places like Sudan, the West should try to invest in productive industries which can help people out of severe poverty. The conflict in Dafur stems partially from a shortage of resources for pastoralists and farmers, which means that the population is struggling against each other for survival. Putting other options on the table for people to make a living would be a lot more beneficial than invading or bombing Sudan or paying another country to attack as the US paid Ethiopia to intervene in Somalia.

Finally, it was the Soviet Union that largely defeated Nazi Germany, and was therefore primarily responsible for the liberation of the death camps, especially the huge ones in Eastern Europe. It gets a bit tiring to see history so blandly rewritten as the band of brothers.
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