Sarman
How about explaining to me why a few palestinians in Gaza are so important and all the progressives, rather progressively ignore Darfur? Oh right, it is the Muslims slaughtering hundreds of thousands of blacks, well that explains it.
thestar.com
Beth Gorham
canadian press
WASHINGTON – Retired Canadian general Romeo Dallaire blasted the U.S. and Canada on Monday for failing to rally the world and provide the political will to save people in Darfur.
The reason so many people have been allowed to die in Sudan already, Dallaire told a Senate subcommittee, is simple.
"There's no self-interest. Who cares about Darfurians? They're sub-Saharan Africans. They're like Rwandans."
"(It's) the fear of casualties in a country that doesn't count in an area that doesn't count," he said.
"Not one of us is more human than the other . . . Why did the Yugoslavians count when we poured in tens of thousands of troops and billions of dollars? Why do others count and why do these Africans in Darfur not count?"
Dallaire also said it's not up to the United States to send troops to end the genocide in Sudan.
"Why do you always want to set yourselves up?" asked Dallaire, who led the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994.
"Why should you necessarily have to commit all those capabilities? Why can't the Chinese provide (soldiers)? They've got them."
Dallaire, who pleaded unsuccessfully for 5,000 UN troops to stop the Rwandan genocide that killed some 700,000 people, was hailed by Senator Dick Durbin as a "hero."
"If more people had listened to him, maybe things could have been different in Rwanda. I hope people listen to him now."
Durbin, a Democrat, chairs a new Senate subcommittee on human rights, a first for the country.
While U.S. President George W. Bush was quick to call the Darfur violence genocide, little has been done to quell it.
The United Nations says more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in four years of fighting, rape and plunder.
Durbin introduced legislation Monday authorizing state and local governments to divest funds from businesses working in Sudan.
He noted that Bill Clinton has said his inaction on Rwanda was the worst foreign policy mistake of his presidency |
