It's a Black Thing

Or rather I should put it this way; if it was a white thing, it wouldn't be happening. For the past few years, people in Darfur (in Sudan) have been put to death because of the color of their skin (black). In the past year, the slaughter has continued with an average of five thousand people losing their lives each month, not to mention the raping of women and little girls. Four years after President Bush declared the mass killings there genocide, the horrors continue. As many as 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million driven from their homes. Genocide is the magic word, the trigger word, that is supposed to ignite the fire of indignation in the civilized world and band nations to together to stop it. But, this is a message to Bush as well as the rest of the leaders in the civilized world; words, fancy words, expressions of indignation, don't mean a damn thing unless you do some thing about it. There are two specific points I want to make about this human tragedy. The first, it is heartbreakingly clear that if the people who have have been murdered and are being murdered were white-skinned, this would not be happening. Our country would be present in a heart beat to stop the outrage. The second, Bush's toleration of this situation, in spite of his words, will be viewed by historians fifty years from now as his greatest failing as the leader of the free world. Think Pope Pius during World War II. His legacy is damaged by his passive acceptance of the knowledge of the Holocaust and staying silent rather than using the bully pulpit. Bush, on the other hand, publicly admits the existence of genocide, has the power and the means to address it, but has done nothing. It's kind'a like the international version of Bush's response to the victims of Katrina, yet much worse.