Even for those who don't always read Nicholas Kristof,
today's is still a don't-miss. We can't let the Pope's funeral week, of all, things, pass without acknowledging the horror in Darfur.....-- one of the last world crises Karol mentioned. (I'm sure Terri Schiavo and abortion will be referenced more than enough.)
I am so on deadline (today!), and shouldn't be doing this. And perhaps as I write, Jeanne or Roxanne is drafting something much more eloquent than I've time for. But I haven't seen it yet, and I need to toss out the meme: today,
I'm actually going to post the whole thing, below. I'd say Kristof has hit a home run -- except that he didn't mention Bush's opposition to this week's referral to the ICC, one of the few bright spots in this rising Rwanda redux. But I'd say it's a solid triple.
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President Bush and other world leaders are honoring John Paul II in a
way that completely misunderstands his message. We pay him no tribute
if we lower our flags to half-staff and send a grand presidential
delegation to his funeral, when at the same time we avert our eyes as
villagers are slaughtered and mutilated in the genocide unfolding in
Darfur.
The message of the pope's ministry was about standing up to evil, not about holding grand funerals.
"Throughout the West, John Paul's witness reminded us of our
obligation to build a culture of life in which the strong protect the
weak," Mr. Bush said. Well, what about that reminder? What kind of a
"culture of life" is it that allows us to shrug as Sudanese soldiers
heave children onto bonfires?
The latest estimates, from the British government and others, are
that 300,000 or more have perished so far in Darfur. Mr. Bush has
forthrightly called this slaughter "genocide," but he has used that
label not to spur action, but to substitute for it.
These days the Sudanese authorities are adding a new twist to their
crimes against humanity: they are arresting girls and women who have
become pregnant because of the mass rapes by Sudanese soldiers and
militia members. If the victims are not yet married, or if their
husbands have been killed, then they are imprisoned for adultery.
Doctors Without Borders issued a report last month about Darfur that quoted one 16-year-old girl as saying:
"I was collecting firewood for my family when three armed men on
camels came and surrounded me. They held me down, tied my hands and
raped me, one after the other. When I arrived home, I told my family
what had happened.
"They threw me out of home, and I had to build my own hut away from
them. I was engaged to a man, and I was so much looking forward to
getting married. After I got raped, he did not want to marry me and
broke off the engagement because he said I was now disgraced and
spoilt. ...
"When I was eight months pregnant from the rape, the police came to
my hut and forced me with their guns to go to the police station. They
asked me questions, so I told them that I had been raped. They told me
that as I was not married, I will deliver this baby illegally.
"They beat me with a whip on the chest and back and put me in jail."
The report quoted another girl, 17, who was gang-raped and then
locked inside her hut, which was set on fire. She escaped through the
wall of the hut but suffered extensive burns.
John Paul wanted world leaders to show compassion for suffering
people like these girls, not for dead popes. Mr. Bush and other world
leaders flocking to Rome could truly honor the pope by meeting there to
establish a protection force in Darfur.
In the meantime, these attacks are continuing daily. And what are we
doing about it? When girls are mutilated after their rapes, we provide
free Band-Aids.
Mr. Bush has supported a humanitarian relief effort. But even the
aid agencies emphasize that what is needed most is a security force to
stop the slaughter.
"We're proud of what we do," said Kenny Gluck, the operations
director based in the Netherlands for Doctors Without Borders. "But
people's villages have been burned, their crops have been destroyed,
their wells spiked, their family members raped, tortured and killed -
and they come to us, and we give them 2,100 kilocalories a day." In
effect, Mr. Gluck said, the aid effort is sustaining victims so they
can be killed with a full belly.
I'm not proposing that we send American ground troops. But an
expanded United Nations and African force, with logistical support from
the U.S., is urgently needed. And Condoleezza Rice should immediately
visit Darfur to show that it is a U.S. priority.
Mr. Bush should promptly back the Darfur Accountability Act, a
bipartisan bill that would pressure Sudan to stop the killing (so far,
the White House hasn't even taken a position on the act). Ordinary
citizens can also urge their members of Congress to pass the act.
If there is a lesson from the papacy of John Paul II, it is the
power of moral force. The pope didn't command troops, but he deployed
principles. And it's hypocritical of us to pretend to honor him by
lowering our flags while simultaneously displaying an amoral
indifference to genocide.
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