I am all for all of the relief efforts for the victims Tsunami on Asia but I marvel at how the human mind works. Since this was a quick disaster, over Christmas no less, there is an outpouting of concern, and money, into the region. Good for us, I am proud that we are doing what we can to help.
However more people will die in the man-made disaster in the Sudan and apparently things are not much better in Congo. But to stop these killing of people in Central Africa, hundreds of thousands, if not a million people, would involved putting our own militarys in harms way. So they die.
Here is an update from the Weekly Standard, courtesy of Instapundit:
Allied soldiers liberated Nazi concentration camps throughout Europe, bringing an end to the nightmarish Nazi system that utilized factories of mass death to eliminate enemies and despised ethnic and religious groups. The pledge "never again" was heard then, and various agreements were solemnly made by leaders to ensure genocide never occurred again.
Over the decades, much has happened to cheapen the lofty rhetoric of the victorious World War II leaders. Genocide or something close to it has happened in the Congo, Burundi, Uganda, East Timor, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and most recently the Darfur region of Sudan. In all but Kosovo, the international community ignored the horror of mass murder. The few interventions were thrown together haphazardly with peacekeepers whose hands were tied by weak-willed mandates that did more to aid the perpetrators of slaughter than the victims.
Darfur was supposed to be different. It came in the wake of successes by leading nations who intervened to halt conflict and potential mass murder in Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. President Bush had achieved more towards peace in Sudan than any previous leader. The United Nations, troubled over failures in the past, seemed eager to apply the painful lessons learned, and committed to true reform. The African Union appeared ready to accept the challenge of ending war on its territory, and the European Union claimed it was ready to support admirable goals like ending the slaughter in Darfur.
All have failed miserably.
What will it take for us to do something about this? Or more to my actual fear, will anything get us to stop it?
