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a_priori
Guest
Thanks for the link.
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a_priori
Guest
It’s interesting that threads such as this tend to fade fairly quickly. Many threads that address the more serious issues in life such as hunger, debt, etc., etc. don’t tend to do well.
Someone posts a thread about a guy who puts a firecracker up his butt and lights it and that gets many responses.
Sigh…
Someone posts a thread about a guy who puts a firecracker up his butt and lights it and that gets many responses.
Sigh…
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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
did and bump
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Liberalsaved
Guest
It’s not just nonsense, that gets too much attention, though. It’s also threads about “issues” like whether people are naked in the movies that don’t matter nearly as much. This applies to all of society, not just the net. There are both more photogenic places than Darfur, and juicier issues than genocide to feature on the evening news, front pages and during lunch hour.
What else can be done about this is to post this link at other websites you visit. I’ve talked to people who’ve never heard the word “Darfur”. Spreading that word is a greater tool than money or politics because it will influence how both are used.
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a_priori
Guest
Very well said.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
Well, that may not be interesting to you, but I’ll bet he thinks about it every time he passes a toilet paper display in the grocery store.
But seriously the problem is, how do we solve the issue? What do you propose we do?
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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
I would like to see America conduct a War on Terror. War bonds and taxes and a military industrial complex being cranked up. I’d like rationing if it would help. I’d like to have 10 times the amount of boots on the ground in Iraq and have it disarmed and pacified within a year (Posession of firearms or ordnance leads to automatic imprisonment) They should not even worry about a constitution for years, but simply pacify the populace under martial law. This should also be funded by Iraqi oil. Once pacified, begin a lavish rebuilding and reducation of the populace.
Then move to a policy that genocide is unacceptable ANYWHERE in the world and ENFORCE it as best as we can in areas that we can, such as Darfur.
Unless America has a credible military force we should prrobably pursue isolationism, because Iran will eventually be nuclear as well as other 3rd world countries and if we are not in a proactive position by then we had better have an isolationist policy and a missile defense system. To expect people in the 2nd and 3rd world to respect anything other than force would seem to indicate a fatal misunderstanding of the course of world events in the 20th and 21st centuries.
With a suitable demonstration of force, war can often be avoided.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
But where will we find the resolve to do that? We’ve just shown that we’d rather switch than fight.
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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
We need a Theodore Roosevelt
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vern_humphrey
Guest
He’d be hounded out of office.
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Liberalsaved
Guest
I’d like good, solid evidence that Iraq did anything for which they deserved to be “pacified”, or since that isn’t really what you want, conquered. I’d also like to see where we were given the right to be rulers of the world.
The last line in this post is so laughably devoid of any sense of having learned from history, it hurts.
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Liberalsaved
Guest
Roosevelt would be too smart to do that nonsense you mentioned.
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Carrie_Andrews
Guest
Thanks for this info Libersaved!!! The forums should have a place for threads like this, like a sticky or something.
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a_priori
Guest
I suspect he would now argue that differing brands are more highly nuanced than the rest of us could ever appreciate.Well, that may not be interesting to you, but I’ll bet he thinks about it every time he passes a toilet paper display in the grocery store.
As with any issue that has a political component, it requires enough people to become active and form a critical mass. Then something will happen. The problem is that the situation in Darfur strikes people as distant, inevitable and intractable. We tend to consign it to the category of unfixable.
People tend to think that “the poor will be with us always” and the problem is simply too big. What we should remember as people who name the Name of Christ is that we have an unambiguous mandate from our Savior to work in order to help suffering people at the expense of our own comfort. I’m not very good at this. But I don’t think it is a choice.
I can anticipate being at the Judgment and hearing the God of the universe say to me “What were you thinking?” “Did you not know that people were suffering and dying while you were shopping for that new motorcycle”? “Did it not bother you that millions of babies were dying of easily preventable causes while you were deciding to pay $20,000 more for your car rather than buying what you actually needed?”
I’m not suggesting that our affluence is inherently evil of itself. But surely it tends to anesthetize us [me] when it comes to fullfilling our [my] mission to bring the message of the Gospel to a dying world and to alleviate suffering and injustice where we find it. (Virtually everywhere).
If large numbers of Christians began to feel an immediate and grinding sense of personal responsibility to God to help suffering people created in His image for whom Christ died, things would begin to change. Thank God there are many Christians working tirelessly to serve the poor. We all have something to learn from their example.
I don’t think the anesthesia of my relative affluence will wear off any time soon. But it WILL wear off for all of us and we will “come unto ourselves” as the Prodigal Son did and then we will understand the true gravity of what we did or did not do for our fellow man.
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a_priori
Guest
Yes!!
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vern_humphrey
Guest
The problem is all these cases (Dafur is not the only one) are traceable to one issue – they are countries run by corrupt, brutal dictators, often with tribal connections.
The situation in Dafur (and Zimbabwe and many other nations) is not due to drought, nor blight, nor lack of charity on the part of the rest of the world. It is due to deliberate, brutal exploitation and brutality.
The cure is to get rid of the brutal dictators and their tribal henchmen. That requires military force.
And you see that we lack the stomach for that.
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rpp
Guest
There is one other point. The victims are mostly Black and mostly Christian. The Government and the Janjuweed are Arab Moslems.
If anyone tries to do any serious intervention, you will have bands of hooligans in the streets of Indonesia, Pakistan and the West Bank screaming about another “Crusade” against Moslems. They will cleverly and successfuly divert attention away from the victims and turn it into a “Chrisitian and Jews against Islam”.
To a great extent, they have already succeeded. Arab states are among those keeping the UN from taking any real action.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
If anybody tries to do any serious intervention, you will have bands of hooligans in the streets of Washington, San Francisco and New York screaming about another “unnecessary war” and pundits on television seizing on every flaw in our intelligence to proclaim the President “lied.”
And they know that. They know we lack the political fortitude to do anything about it.
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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
Study history and the evidence is there.
The last line is true. Read Sun Tzu, Art of War.
Please be more charitable when responding to my posts.
Thank you
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MichaelTDoyle
Guest
My point exactly, which is why we should be developing policy as a country unwilling to prevent evil in the world despite that we have the power to do that. If that is our (lack/spineless) national will–to allow evil unchecked–then we should plan accordingly to protect ourselves against the active powers that are filling the vacuum and will eventually be nuclear.
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