he'll call it genocide, so now what?
Powell recently decried the events in Dafur as genocide. What I want to know though is why he waited so long to do so and now, what is to be done about it? Now that American political leaders can finally admit what even the Boise Weekly has been viewing as genocide is such, will this change anything? Is it even meant to? When do mass murder and mass rape finally merit world attention and, more importantly, more than world sympathy? I think it is a difficult line to draw, because those who critique American hegemony also must recognize when such power can come to good use in the form of intervention but the war in Iraq has shown us just how easily “intervention” can be manipulated into a pr campaign for American hearts and minds and lives. So what now?
How can the UN be seen as anything other than a US puppet if it has no legitimate power of its own?
Can we all breathe a collective sigh of relief now? But then what, going back to holding your breath wondering what is to happen next while the mass murder and mass rapes continue? I wonder if the UN will eventually become a place where such events will culminate into international tribunals and clean up crews that still will be so very limited in their effectiveness. I think if the US truly wanted to do something to stop the events in Dafur and prevent such events from occuring again, it would have to cut the UN free to be something other than what it is now. Not just the US of course, but all of the " great powers" if you can truly call them that.
2 Comments:
Jen,
Someone came over from your blog to mine, so I thought I would visit. I'm glad I did.
Speaking as both a product and a member of academe, I can tell you are both a thoughtful and a passionate reader and thinker: a rare combination these days, no matter one's politics. I don't know if anyone is reading your blog, but it's a shame if no one is. With your permission, I would like to post a link to your blog on mine and invite you to visit mine. Mine is more arts-and-culture oriented than yours, but I do address politics on occasion, and I have some links to some of the more reasoned political blogs, both left and right. Perhaps you'll find something of interest there.
As to your post on Darfur: this morning, I was listening to NPR's story on Powell's declaration, and I thought back to Clinton's decision to urge NATO to commit troops to Kosovo. A risky proposition, and not universally applauded, either. But as I told my brother, when he was in the Army at the time and called to tell me his unit would be deployed there, circumstances were so dire there that someone had to do something and that I was proud of his service to people that I would never meet, much less know. It stirkes me that Dafur is a case similar to Kosovo: a clearly-established need for some entity to intervene for humanitarian reasons. The case for U.S. intervention there is clearly stronger, to my mind, than was the case for invading Iraq even under the reasons then presented to us. There are those who fear that U.S. intervention might be presented as yet another case of our nation's desire to attak Arabs and/or Islam; here again, though, the lesson of Kosovo is valuable because Muslims there were among the ethnic groups needing protection. However, I personally think the best course of action is for a coalition of African nations to intervene: that would be a way for those emerging nations to assert their influence internationally.
I too would like to see the UN have more power than it does. One thing that cripples it is the granting of veto power to the 5 permanent members of the Security Council. Like I'm an expert in such things, but I'd change that rule to require 2 nations to vote against resolutions. That would better keep the U.S. or the other permanent members from willy-nilly imposing their will when it's clear that injustices have been perpetrated.
This has turned into a much longer comment than I had intended; I had really just wanted to say that I like your work. I look forward to reading more of it.
Jen,
(I would have e-mailed this, but you don't have an e-mail link on your blog)
Hello to you as well. Thanks for visiting my blog and for the kind words. You're welcome to share with others whatever you might find useful.
Regards,
John B.
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