I’m already tired of the Fifth Anniversary of 9/11 hoopla. It’s one more sign of the United States’ self-absorption and inability to connect with the much larger world beyond our borders.
Yes, 3,000 people died in the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. Yet did you know that at least 3,000 people die every month in Darfur from violence, disease, and malnutrition attributable to the conflict?
Where are the memorials to these people? Where are the fervent speeches? Where is the determination by the Bush Administration to protect innocents from terrorists? Absent. Absent. Absent.
In the past three years it’s estimated that 250,000 to 400,000 Darfurians have been killed. It’s hard to shed a tear over 9/11 when faced with that statistic.
If you cry over 3,000 deaths, how are you to react to a hundred times that many? Perhaps that’s why we don’t let the inconceivable—and preventable—suffering in Darfur permeate our USA! USA! consciousness.
Recently I talked with a man who had returned from a lengthy stint flying UN staff around the Sudan. He said that his main reaction upon coming home was anger. He resented the materialistic me-first attitude of Americans. He resented how uninformed citizens here are about the disaster in Darfur.
Yet we have no problem focusing on every detail about 3,000 deaths that happened five years ago, because those were American lives. And too many of us have no problem ignoring the 40,000+ deaths of civilians in Iraq caused by our military intervention.
Which was billed as a response to 9/11. Which turned out to be a lie. Which means that our invasion has led to the needless killing of over ten times as many innocents in Iraq as died in the United States from the 9/11 attacks.
So pardon me if tomorrow I ponder the plight of those killed in Darfur and Iraq rather than those who died at the World Trade Center. I find it impossible to consider that the death of one American is more sorrowful than the deaths of 100 people elsewhere in the world.
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good points. We are being manipulated as always. One just hopes the rest of the manipulation, with trials to conveniently follow, won’t make Americans decide that a vote to continue this man in power is a vote against terrorism.
Dear Brian,
I also wish the Sudanese government cared as much about the deaths of their citizenry as much as the U.S. government at least pretends that it does about our “3,000.” Ditto for the insurgent “freedom-fighters” in Iraq.
Robert Paul Howard
No, Rain, that is not an argument…really, it is not. Europe is also completely lacking any usefull action in Darfur except for some people doing radio shows and stuff to generate money. The Dutch politics speak words but dont act. As for the Sudanees government; what if Darfur happened in America and Sudan reacted, non-reacted, as US and Europe do to Darfur now?? Would you like to be born in Us then? When, in a country, people are killed, raped and tortured, and their government does nothing then what was the American idea again?? Hello?? Iraq?? Saving the Iraqies from Sadam and coworkers, real heroic?? Get real, no one gives a rats ass about the Darfur people…they have nothing they are nothing…their death means nothing; therefor WE ARE NOTHING.
Sorry Rain, I reacted on Robert Paul Howard
spooky
Dear spooky,
Thank you for your reaction. Your conclusion that “WE ARE NOTHING” would probably be quite well received on Brian’s other (“Church of the Churchless”) website.
Robert Paul Howard
Hi, yeah , I read about that! But I am sad… Why is a place like Darfur not important enough? Why is Iraq head of priorities? I mean, I know some answers to that and then we might differ or agree. But I see it as a general form of measurement; when we treat some-one as unimportant it is our lack of greatness, we are then unimportant ourselves. The other – in this case the people of Darfur- suffer deeply because we make weird and unethical choises. It is extremely dishonest. Why dont we just say; ‘Hey, we dont like Sadam, we gonna kick his ass, then we have a nice position, close to oil and stuff. If by any chance some form of democratie enters in Iraq, he, nice, but its unlikely to happen, oh, Darfur, well , sorry guys, we dont care.’ If we as a people would really react like I just wrote; that would be at least honest; at least no hypocratie. Anyway, I dont believe in my government or yours.