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“With my cross-bow I shot the Albatross”
E. Ablorh-Odjidja
I couldn’t help recalling the poem
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as I listened to a BBC
interviewer asking President Bush why he would not send
American troops to Sudan, “despite what he calls a genocide
taking place there.”
The conversation took place, between
Bush and Matt Frei of the BBC, on the eve of President Bush’s
departure for Africa, Ghana being one of the major stops on this
trip.
Bush described his refusal to send a
force to Sudan as a "seminal decision" because of his “desire
not to send US troops into another Muslim country.” Frankly,
were I in his shoes, my response to the questioner would have
been less charitable.
How about Iraq as reason for an
uncharitable answer? Bush intervenes in Iraq and the venture
has turned into an albatross which he has to wear around his
neck for the rest his time in office, hence, my recall of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s poem.
However, what is an American force
to do in Sudan when the one in Iraq is regarded as an
occupational force in a Muslim country? There is no doubt that
a force is sorely needed to stabilize the situation in Sudan.
An American force would have been very helpful, but the world’s
condemnation of Bush’s Iraq policy has made this proposition
impractical.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Darfur
continues to mount. The question is who will wear the albatross
this time for this genocide.
A revisit of the assault on Bush
immediately after the Iraq incursion is needed here: There was
no just cause for his action. No weapons of mass destruction
found. He simply went because of oil; an excuse uttered so
often that it assumed the authority of a pseudo-savant’s mind.
Some went on, as did Timothy
Garton Ash in his article "To
strengthen Miliband's case for democracy, drop Iraq, add
Europe,", to
state cynically that “..among the most remarkable achievements
of George Bush is that he has come close to giving democracy a
bad name.”
For forceful intervention in Iraq,
Ash has concluded that Bush has given democracy a bad name.
What name does the inaction on Sudan give humanity, one ought to
ask Ash. Bush was first to call Darfur genocide. Now the world
has come to admit, howbeit reluctantly, that genocide is taking
place in Sudan.
For all the arguments advanced
against Saddam Hussein, the point that was never pursued
aggressively was whether he committed genocide. The Human
Rights Organization thought that his attacks on the Kurds were.
But this admission proved to be too much for some since doing so
would have meant that Bush was, at least, half right on his call
on Iraq.
The admission could also have
justified an American incursion into Sudan today. Instead, the
moral impasse that resulted from the opposition to Bush has led
to the worsening of the situation in Darfur.
Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir,
President of Sudan and the Janjaweed Arab gang know that,
regardless the abuses they pile on Darfur, they would never have
to experience the fate of Saddam Hussein, given the current
world opinion about Bush. The Bush Doctrine has been successful
marginalized by world opinion. Unfortunate for the rest of
humanity, no effective doctrine has replaced it. Consequently,
thousands in Darfur must die..
Whatever happened to that profound
lesson of history that said “The only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” (Edmund Burke,
1729-1797)?
Perhaps, the few good men left are
mounting protests in Western capitals against Sudan. Sessions
upon sessions of UN Security Council meetings have been held,
but none has dislodged Sudan from her intransigent ways.
The Africa Union has peacekeepers in
place in Darfur but her force is too weak and too small to cause
any consequence. Bluntly speaking, that force has become a joke
and a symbol of how weak an African force can be in the face of
Arab aggression.
Coincidentally, there is an outside
power in Sudan, that has also been operating in several
countries in Africa. That power is China.
China is in Africa for economic
gains and especially in Sudan for oil, just like Bush has been
said to be doing in Iraq.. The difference, however, is that the
Americans are dying in Iraq for their oil while in Sudan, the
Darfurians are dying so the Chinese can have easy access to
Sudanese oil.
Clearly, China is in a position to
pressure Sudan for change. But her problem is oil. Her hunger
for this commodity is too great to allow her to jeopardize her
access with humanitarian concerns for Darfur.
China has insisted on
non-interference from her lofty position at the UN Security
Council. Her policy position, obviously, is in direct conflict
with the Bush Doctrine. She may even not acknowledge the one
lesson that Edmund Burke taught – that evil triumphs when good
men opt out of a fight against it.
Luckily, China is being prodded from
another side by some men of conscience; Steven Spielberg, the
Hollywood mogul,
Don Cheadle,
Mia Farrow, actor and actress respectively, and others.
Spielberg, until last week, was
serving as the artistic advisor to the 2008 Summer Olympics in
China when he tendered his resignation to protest against her
stance on Sudan.
He said in his resignation letter
that “my conscience will not allow me to continue with business
as usual.”
Spielberg continued “China’s
economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of
Sudan … provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press
for change.” The question is would China change her ways?
Darfur should not be the battle
ground for adjusting the world’s posture on conscience. But
this is now being done at the cost of thousands of lives. It
did not take this long and this many lives for the World to
respond to Kosovo. Come to think of it, the so called civilized
world did not respond to the genocide in Rwanda either until
some 800,000 people were murdered.
Must we therefore conclude that
while the world dithered, people died in Darfur; or shall we
blame it all on Bush - again?
E.
Ablorh-Odjidja,Publsiher
www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, February 14, 2008
Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or
reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website,
email a copy of the web page to
publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.
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