On Monday nite, ABC's Nightline presented an
interview with journalist Jonathan Karl who has taken over 700 photos of the devastating carnage that has occured in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Karl hopes that his photos will be used as evidence to help make the case against Sudan's National Islamic Front government when it is tried for genocide and other war crimes at the International Criminal Court in the future. Millions of people have been displaced and the ethnic cleansing that has happened in Darfur is unimanaginably horrific. Hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered.
But, that's not what this diary is about.
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What this diary
is about is a question that was asked by Nightline's host of Jonathan Karl regarding Darfur:
Why should Americans care?
Now, I don't fault the host for asking that question because his job was use this program to inform the audience about the genocide and Karl's attempts to document, as thoroughly as he was able, the horrendous abuses of humanity occuring to this day in Darfur. However, I was taken aback by that question. Look at it again and think about it for a moment:
Why should Americans care?
My immediate response was, "why should that question have to be asked?"
Americans should care because people are suffering. Period.
That the question was even asked says a lot about our so-called "global village". Did anyone ask why Americans should care when Indonesia was hit by the tsunami months back? It seems that an automatic response to a natural disaster causing death is that Americans should care. So, why is this question asked about the hundreds of thousands of people wiped out through genocide?
There are a few different ways to think about this type of question. First of all, when it comes to caring, some people seem to equate that with having to do something about it. Yes, something definitely needs to be done, but that isn't the question. The question is why care?
Secondly, it seems that we believe we only have a limited supply of caring inside of us and, when we run out, we simply don't have any capacity for caring left. That's preposterous. Some also believe that caring involves a great expenditure of emotional capital that they somehow can't afford to spend their time or energy on.
Stop for a moment. Are you touched by the suffering of these people? If so, that means you care. No one expects you to wallow in it or to rush out and save the world. Caring ought to come naturally to people, but we've been taught that it comes with a price. What's the real price? A few moments of reflection? Sharing your caring with another person? Shedding a tear or two? Feeling heavy hearted? Is that price so much to pay that you can't afford to care?
Caring isn't about doing. Caring is about feeling. And, to ask if a country or a society should care about people in a far off land who have died and whose relatives and friends live in daily terror is just unfathomable. Of course they should! If they don't, there is absolutely no hope for humanity.
None.