Now another mass pogrom has assumed Iraq's role while the United Nations looks on with trademark fecklessness. Arab Muslim militias known as Janjaweed - roughly, "the devil horsemen" - are raiding, slaughtering and gang-raping black Muslim villagers in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. This while Sudan's government aids and protects the Janjaweed, confident that the United Nations won't insult Sudan's precious sovereignty by demanding that it actually halt these atrocities.
The United Nations knows much about sovereignty, having serially deferred to Iraq's sovereignty for a dozen years after the Persian Gulf war. That deference partly explains why, despite the umpteenth resolution ordering Saddam to obey its numerous prior resolutions, the United Nations slept the sleep of the dead until somebody else finally meted out those serious consequences.
And now, in Africa's largest nation, the bugles of global impotence again sound retreat from a battle never joined. With some 50,000 Sudanese men, women and children dead, with another 1.4 million driven from their homes, and with tens of thousands more Sudanese condemned to die from murder or malnutrition, the UN responds with ... an inquiry to determine whether this systematic eradication of black villagers technically qualifies as genocide.
The Bush administration loudly insists that it does, and repeatedly has urged the United Nations to lift one of its fleshy, lifeless fingers. On July 30, the Security Council adopted a resolution threatening to consider sanctions against Sudan if it didn't disarm its pro-government Arab militias. Fat chance. Did Saddam disarm his own Fedayeen?
The Security Council's 30-day deadline passed with little progress in Sudan and, predictably, no consequences from the United Nations. As if startled that the people of Darfur didn't realize they were supposed to stop dying after that valiant gesture, this month the Security Council passed a second resolution, again threatening to consider sanctions against Sudan. Someday. Maybe. Thus doth the United Nations - the lofty "world body" - lurch from Baghdad to Khartoum, in two empty gestures.
True believers in multilateralism envision a warm, global embrace, with despots and terrorists miraculously squeezed out, just as healthy grass supposedly squeezes out thistles.
It is inconvenient to mull the nobility of multilateralism, though, without averting the eyes from all those corpses in Darfur. Because the fact is that, as practiced on the global stage, multilateralism too often is but a sly dodge of any responsibility whatsoever to other human beings.
If the Security Council ponders a third resolution - and why not, they're cheap - it must make certain the wording doesn't offend China, which buys oil from Sudan; Russia, which sells Sudan weapons; or the European Union, whose emissary concluded last month that, well, genocide isn't really the right word for Darfur, so ...
Perhaps the U.N. diplomats, with their practiced commitment to inaction while other people agonize and die, will conjure up a Sudanese equivalent of Oil-for-Food. That was the shamelessly corrupt U.N. program from which Saddam Hussein looted billions - no doubt chortling over how easy it was to dupe the "world body."
These diplomats, remember, are the evidently amoral ghosts to whom some Americans look for guidance on the international use of force. If, during Thursday night's presidential debate, you hear a lament for unrequited multilateralism - a call for more deference to other governments - just imagine how that exhortation for greater caution might have intrigued the 50,000 slaughter victims of Darfur. Then again, they aren't any deader than all those Rwandans the United Nations mourned from a safe distance a decade ago.
Today the United Nations should isolate Sudan, slap sanctions on its oil industry, and pressure Khartoum to accept a large contingent of peacekeeping forces led by willing African nations.
Instead, lest the diplomats offend Sudan, the Janjaweed continue their slaughter, both to put down an understandable black rebellion and to seize the villagers' farmland. The current issue of Time magazine includes harrowing accounts of how Arab militias sweep into villages, shooting men and boys, gang-raping women and girls, burning huts and mosques, destroying crops and killing or stealing livestock. One woman refugee recounts watching Janjaweed fighters decide that a 1-year-old child was a future enemy. So one fighter tossed the little boy into the air as another took aim and shot him dead.
The United Nations has a Commission on Human Rights to worry about such injustices. Sudan's term on the commission doesn't expire until 2007. Then again, they aren't any deader than all those Rwandans the United Nations mourned from a safe distance a decade ago.
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© 2004, Chicago Tribune.
The United Nations knows much about sovereignty, having serially deferred to Iraq's sovereignty for a dozen years after the Persian Gulf war. That deference partly explains why, despite the umpteenth resolution ordering Saddam to obey its numerous prior resolutions, the United Nations slept the sleep of the dead until somebody else finally meted out those serious consequences.
And now, in Africa's largest nation, the bugles of global impotence again sound retreat from a battle never joined. With some 50,000 Sudanese men, women and children dead, with another 1.4 million driven from their homes, and with tens of thousands more Sudanese condemned to die from murder or malnutrition, the UN responds with ... an inquiry to determine whether this systematic eradication of black villagers technically qualifies as genocide.
The Bush administration loudly insists that it does, and repeatedly has urged the United Nations to lift one of its fleshy, lifeless fingers. On July 30, the Security Council adopted a resolution threatening to consider sanctions against Sudan if it didn't disarm its pro-government Arab militias. Fat chance. Did Saddam disarm his own Fedayeen?
The Security Council's 30-day deadline passed with little progress in Sudan and, predictably, no consequences from the United Nations. As if startled that the people of Darfur didn't realize they were supposed to stop dying after that valiant gesture, this month the Security Council passed a second resolution, again threatening to consider sanctions against Sudan. Someday. Maybe. Thus doth the United Nations - the lofty "world body" - lurch from Baghdad to Khartoum, in two empty gestures.
True believers in multilateralism envision a warm, global embrace, with despots and terrorists miraculously squeezed out, just as healthy grass supposedly squeezes out thistles.
It is inconvenient to mull the nobility of multilateralism, though, without averting the eyes from all those corpses in Darfur. Because the fact is that, as practiced on the global stage, multilateralism too often is but a sly dodge of any responsibility whatsoever to other human beings.
If the Security Council ponders a third resolution - and why not, they're cheap - it must make certain the wording doesn't offend China, which buys oil from Sudan; Russia, which sells Sudan weapons; or the European Union, whose emissary concluded last month that, well, genocide isn't really the right word for Darfur, so ...
Perhaps the U.N. diplomats, with their practiced commitment to inaction while other people agonize and die, will conjure up a Sudanese equivalent of Oil-for-Food. That was the shamelessly corrupt U.N. program from which Saddam Hussein looted billions - no doubt chortling over how easy it was to dupe the "world body."
These diplomats, remember, are the evidently amoral ghosts to whom some Americans look for guidance on the international use of force. If, during Thursday night's presidential debate, you hear a lament for unrequited multilateralism - a call for more deference to other governments - just imagine how that exhortation for greater caution might have intrigued the 50,000 slaughter victims of Darfur. Then again, they aren't any deader than all those Rwandans the United Nations mourned from a safe distance a decade ago.
Today the United Nations should isolate Sudan, slap sanctions on its oil industry, and pressure Khartoum to accept a large contingent of peacekeeping forces led by willing African nations.
Instead, lest the diplomats offend Sudan, the Janjaweed continue their slaughter, both to put down an understandable black rebellion and to seize the villagers' farmland. The current issue of Time magazine includes harrowing accounts of how Arab militias sweep into villages, shooting men and boys, gang-raping women and girls, burning huts and mosques, destroying crops and killing or stealing livestock. One woman refugee recounts watching Janjaweed fighters decide that a 1-year-old child was a future enemy. So one fighter tossed the little boy into the air as another took aim and shot him dead.
The United Nations has a Commission on Human Rights to worry about such injustices. Sudan's term on the commission doesn't expire until 2007. Then again, they aren't any deader than all those Rwandans the United Nations mourned from a safe distance a decade ago.
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© 2004, Chicago Tribune.
