On first read, Tod Lindberg’s recent article in Commentary (“The Only Way to Prevent Genocide”) is horribly depressing.
In part, it’s an insider’s tale of the consequential dithering and trademark ineptitude that have defined the Sudan policymaking world. Here’s one particularly damning anecdote from Lindberg’s account:
“We knew that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had given a couple of speeches urging NATO to assist the African Union’s Darfur efforts. One ambassador at NATO told us he thought this represented an opening. The Europeans who were reluctant to involve NATO would not change their minds based merely on a speech by Annan, but if the [UN] Secretary-General actually sent a formal letter to NATO asking for alliance help, that might change the debate. It would be one thing to say NATO shouldn’t insert itself into Africa, quite another to decline a UN request for help.”
“Does this sound ridiculous? Hundreds of thousands of lives potentially at stake over whether the contents of a speech are transferred to a letter? It does, and this is an indication of just how ill-equipped the “international community” as a whole was to deal with an emergency on the scale of Darfur.”
To think that a tremendous number of lives would have (by all accounts) been saved in Darfur if only Kofi Annan had sent one letter to NATO. And to recall that he failed to do this when given the chance in 2004. When genocide is the problem at hand, such a moral breakdown is beyond comparison. This is the kind of sin that can’t be forgiven.
Despite deconstructing this and other tragic flashpoints (ultimately, Lindberg writes that “the response to Darfur has to be judged a failure”), this article is still a hopeful one. Lindberg describes the work of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, which is playing a necessary and important role in institutionalizing the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. And more importantly, regarding the present — regarding today’s Darfur genocide, and the millions of displaced Sudanese who need help today — Lindberg reminds us that, in confronting the worst of crimes, we at least have the consolation of our moral certainty. And our certainty is this: given what it is, we know that we must do everything that we can to stop the genocide in Sudan. Period.
You might think that this is an insane and sterile claim. Because: So what? What can we possibly do as ordinary citizens for the people of Sudan? How do we speak truth to power when the power that we have to deal with is thick with every imaginable kind of bureaucracy?
Good questions. In response, we must only say: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. (And remember those who’ve succeeded! “Memo to slavery: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Memo to apartheid: Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Etc.)
It’s time to ramp up our efforts for the people of Sudan.
