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Name: Donald
Location: Virginia, United States
Birthday: 7/11/1978
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Interests: Rambling on and on about both everything and nothing...
Industry: Government
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Member Since:
6/12/2002
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| I admit it ... all I use my Xanga for is to save articles of interest to me... =)
Mark Steyn: Coalition of the giving
The Australian
January 10, 2005
WE have Agence France Presse to thank
for both the most striking headline and photograph of the tsunami
devastation. The headline was "Tsunami Devastates DiCaprio", and for a
moment I couldn't quite place the island: DiCaprio? One of the lesser
known Maldives? Wasn't there an old Gracie Fields song – "'Twas on the
isle DiCaprio that I found you?" Has Kofi Annan been flown over the
devastated DiCaprio so he can marvel rhetorically: "Where have all the
people gone?"
Well, they're his agent and hairdresser and they've gone to lunch. The
devastated DiCaprio turned out to be Leonardo of that ilk, making a few
observations on the catastrophe during a promotional visit to Rome. And
in his own way he was indeed devastated. He's believed to have given
$US1 million ($1.32 million) to disaster relief, as has Sandra Bullock.
Michael Schumacher has given $US10 million.
For purposes of comparison, Herr Schumacher's donation is the same as
that of oil-rich Kuwait. As for even oil-richer Iran, its Government
has earmarked $US627,000 for disaster relief.
For purposes of further comparison, that's barely a twentieth of what
was raised at the Sydney Opera House concert this weekend. Today's
all-star cricket match between a World XI and an Asian XI at the MCG
will do more for the beleaguered Muslims of Banda Aceh than Libya,
Syria and Egypt combined.
In fairness to the Saudis, they've just upped their pledge to $US30
million. But for purposes of one final comparison, consider this: a
single Saudi telethon in 2002 managed to raise $US56 million. That was
for widows and orphans of Palestinian suicide bombers, those deceased
as well as those yet to blow. It seems nothing gets the wealthy elite
of Riyadh and Jeddah adding the zeroes to the cheques like
self-detonating on an Israeli bus.
As for the most striking photograph of this disaster, it's by AFP's
Jimin Lai. I haven't seen it in any of the papers, oddly enough. It
shows a tsunami-devastated village in Galle on the southwestern coast
of Sri Lanka: a couple of rescuers are carrying away a body while,
behind them, smack dab in the centre of the picture, a young man looks
on. He's wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.
I gave up worrying "Why do they hate us?" on the evening of September
11, 2001. But, if I were that Osodden bin Loser guy watching the
infidels truck in water, food, medical supplies and emergency clothing
for villagers whose jihad-chic T-shirt collection was washed out to
sea, I might ask myself a more pertinent question: "Why do they like
us?"
The path of the tsunamis tracked the arc of the Muslim world, from
Sumatra to Somalia; the most devastated country is the world's most
populous Muslim nation, and the most devastated part of that country is
the one province living under the strictures of sharia.
But, as usual, when disaster strikes it's the Great Satan and his
various Little Satans who leap to respond. In the decade before
September 11, the US military functioned, more or less exclusively, as
a Muslim rapid reaction force – coming to the aid of Kuwaiti Muslims,
Bosnian Muslims, Somali Muslims and Albanian Muslims. Since then, with
the help of its Anglo-Australian allies, it's liberated 50 million
Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That's not how the West's anti-war movements see it. I found myself
behind a car the other day bearing the bumper sticker, "War Is Costly.
Peace Is Priceless" – which is standard progressive generic autopilot
boilerplate, that somehow waging war and doing good are mutually
exclusive. But you can't help noticing that when disaster strikes, it's
the warmongers who are also the compassion-mongers. Of the top six
donor nations to tsunami relief, four are members of George W. Bush's
reviled "coalition of the willing".
What was it the Romans said? "If you seek peace, prepare for war." It's
truer than they know. It's because Australia's prepared for war that it
can do all the feelgood humanitarian stuff – such as landing 10 army
engineers in Banda Aceh to attach a mobile filtration system to the
decrepit mains pipes and thereby not merely restore the water supply
but improve it.
But it goes beyond that, beyond even John Howard's spectacular
billion-dollar pledge. Most citizens in the West look at the tsunami's
victims and recognise our common humanity. When a chap is pulled down
from a tree to survey the wreckage of his home and learn of the loss of
his family, we see him first as our fellow man – a man in need. And if,
afterwards, we happen to spot the sopping Osama T-shirt, we tactfully
agree to overlook it – which is why I haven't seen that Sri Lankan AFP
photo in any Western newspapers.
By contrast, Muslim leaders divide the world into the Dar al-Islam and
everybody else. Yet the deaths of 100,000 members of the club in Banda
Aceh alone isn't enough to catch the eye of the big shots in the Arab
world. The Arab world's principal contribution these past two weeks has
been the usual paranoia: "Was it caused by American, Israeli and Indian
nuclear testing?" wondered Mahmoud Bakri in the Egyptian weekly Al
Usbu. "The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and
Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to
liquidate humanity."
Colin Powell was foolish to suggest that, in its response to this
crisis, the Muslim world would come to appreciate the true nature of
the US. Fat chance. "It's OK that aid from the US is here," said Hilmy
Bakar Almascaty, spokesman for the Islamic Defender Front. "But if they
open bars, sell alcohol or open prostitution centres, then we will
fight them." Almascaty also warned the Australian charity Youth Off the
Streets that its plan to open homes for 35,000 Indonesian orphans was
all very well, but on no account was it to try converting Muslim
children. Jeez, man, would it kill you once in a while just to send a
box of chocolates and a card saying "Thank you, you infidel sons of
whores and pigs", and leave it at that?
But one day the smarter lads in the Osama T-shirts will begin to wonder
what they're getting in return for their glorification of a
multimillionaire whose followers these days spend most of their time
killing Muslims – in Iraq, in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, even in
Indonesia. With friends like that, who needs tsunamis?
It shouldn't be necessary to point out the good deeds of Australia and
its allies these past two weeks. But it is, because of the grand
panjandrums of Western self-loathing. Peter Jennings, the smug Canadian
who anchors America's ABC News (which is broadcast on Sky News
Australia at 10.30am AEST), reported the other day that "in the
oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf, citizens are being urged to do
more . . . Ironically, the controls on Muslim charities after 9/11 may
be keeping contributions down."
Ah, yes. If it weren't for the US cracking down on Saudi
money-laundering to terrorists, Sumatrans would be able to wallpaper
their new homes with Arab cheques. Maybe it's time for the western
self-loathers – Jennings, The Guardian, Melbourne Age cartoonist Bruce
Petty – to ask themselves: Why do we hate us?
| | |
| On one hand, we so need to do more of these programs... on another,
it's always humbling and telling when you see an outside view looking
into ours...
Worlds Apart
Can five weeks in the United States change how Muslim students see a country they've been taught to hate?
By Eric L. Wee
Washington Post
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page W16
Mamoona Gul didn't sleep at all during the daylong flight to the United
States. She was too scared, she would explain later. She'd never been
on a plane before. Never been outside Pakistan before. Never been on
her own before.
Maybe I'll never see my family again, the 23-year-old journalism
student remembers worrying. Maybe her parents didn't love her after
all. Perhaps that's why they had encouraged her to get on this plane
and go to America. It was a place, she'd heard, where people hated
Muslims, a place where she now worried she'd be killed.
At first, she'd wanted to go. She was curious about the United States.
She could meet Americans herself and decide if what she'd heard about
them was true. But now she wondered if she had made the right decision
to make this journey.
When she finally came out of customs at Dulles International Airport,
she looked exhausted. A solid-looking middle-aged woman with
short-cropped graying hair named Charlotte Staelin approached her. She
was there, Staelin remembers telling Gul, to take her to where she'd be
staying. A relieved expression flowed across Gul's face.
It was 11 p.m. as they got into a white van and drove. Staelin asked
Gul about her trip and made small talk. Gul sat with her head covered
by a flowing scarf, listening to the soft, melodious inflections of
Staelin's voice. It reminded her of her mother speaking. But this woman
couldn't be as nice as she sounded, Gul recalls thinking. She's trying
to trick me.
They drove until the lights of Washington faded behind them. The night
was clear, and the stars were out as the van rolled over the Bay Bridge
and onto Maryland's Eastern Shore. It was well past midnight when they
turned onto a smaller road and cornfields began to flank them. Then,
over a two-lane bridge, Colonial Chestertown emerged, with its steeples
and wide-porched Victorians perched on the banks of the Chester River.
There were none of the skyscrapers or neon-lit, packed streets that Gul
expected. When she got out of the van in front of Washington College,
all she heard was silence.
WINNING THE GOODWILL OF ORDINARY MUSLIMS represents a small front in
the U.S. war on terrorism, but a crucial one. On this unheralded
battlefield, the State Department is taking a gamble: Bring a few dozen
bright Muslim students from Arab and South Asian countries and show
them America. Have them live at American universities for five weeks
over the summer. Give them classes on U.S. history, politics and
society. Show them everything from a local soup kitchen and Fourth of
July parade to Ellis Island and Ground Zero.
The two-year-old program, which costs up to $18,000 per participant, is
aimed at students like Ovais Ali, a 21-year-old from India's Kashmir
region who'd always dreamed of studying in the United States. America
beckoned with a popular culture that intoxicated him, he says. He'd
watch CNN just to hear how the presenters talked. He'd watch Tiger
Woods just to see how he walked. He'd watch American movies to cloak
himself in the vibe of America.
But hatred for America swirled around him, too, especially after the
September 11, 2001, attacks led to the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq. To many in his world, he says, America is the land of evil,
filled with godless people who despise Muslims.
Now Ali was among the 21 students from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh
at Washington College. Another 55 students from Arab countries would
spend part of the summer at Georgetown, the University of Delaware and
Purdue University.
Peter Benda, a State Department official who helps run the program,
says he and his colleagues know they likely won't change how the
students feel about U.S. foreign policy. But give them an honest view
of the United States and its people, Benda says, and maybe they'll
become voices of reason at home.
The program's organizers carefully planned lectures on all aspects of
American society. Each week had a different theme: early American
history, the struggle for civil rights, the inner workings of a place
like Chestertown. The hope was that these topics would give the
students a foundation for understanding the contemporary American world
around them. Yet it would be the unexpected experiences that affected
these students the most.
When Iftekhar "Ifti" Ibne Basith lost his Bangladeshi passport in an
airport baggage claim, and a janitor found and returned it, Basith was
amazed. Maybe Americans were different from what he thought. Later, the
return of Basith's lost bag in a New York City diner solidified his
view that Americans were an honest, even moral, people, he says.
Instead of hatred, he found strangers on Chestertown's streets saying
"Hello" and "Welcome." And, for the first time, he met Americans who
were opposed to the war in Iraq. There was a difference, Basith
discovered, between American foreign policy and Americans. The policies
were bad, he says. The people were not.
His problem, he says, is that people back home won't believe him. They'll think he's been brainwashed.
NINETY MINUTES AFTER LEAVING CHESTERTOWN, the bus slows in front of the
minor league baseball stadium in Wilmington, Del., home of the Blue
Rocks. As the South Asian students climb off, fans in shorts and
T-shirts engulf them. Parents yell after their children, who scurry
past with mitts. The Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis move past the
blue cotton candy stand. Past the Blue Moose Grille, with its $4.50
Italian sausage sandwiches. Past "Rocky," the Blue Rocks' moose mascot.
Eventually, they reach their seats along the first-base line.
They cheer. They eat funnel cakes. They buy souvenir bats and balls.
They ask endless questions, using the game of cricket as their frame of
reference. ("What happens when the bowler throws the ball, and they
don't hit it?")
The sky has darkened by the end of the game. The stadium lights dim to
nothing, and a fireworks display starts to stream upward. Red shards of
light fill the sky, followed by blue and green and purple. Volley after
volley shoots up. The South Asians think it's over; then another stream
of lights streaks skyward.
The mouths of the students gape as the pyrotechnic show continues for
five minutes, then 10, then more. The students scramble to their feet,
break out their camcorders and struggle to film themselves in front of
the exploding colors. Then they fall back into their seats, eyes
skyward, stunned looks on their faces. When it is finally over, the
crowd erupts into wild applause. Some of the students join in.
"It was beautiful, wasn't it?" one of the American student aides asks Ali and a group of Bangladeshi students.
"It was beautiful," they say in unison.
But as Ali and the Bangladeshi students walk to their bus, they try to
make sense of what they've just witnessed. How, they ask, can Americans
spend so much money on a fireworks display for just a few thousand
people? How can they consume those kinds of resources when people in
their home countries don't have food to eat?
As the bus makes its way back to Chestertown, everyone is quiet. They
aren't singing as they did when they arrived. Ali sits alone, his legs
stretched out.
"It was awesome," he whispers in the darkness. "But, at the same time,
I feel awful. I can't comprehend the feelings inside me right now."
IT WAS GUL'S 10TH-GRADE TEACHER, the young woman says, who taught her
to hate America. He'd visited the United States and warned that it was
a place filled with arrogant people who hated Muslims. Don't ever go
there, the teacher told Gul and her classmates.
Then there was the night she was studying for exams. Her mother leaned
into her room and told her that planes had hit a building called the
World Trade Center. Gul would see the images of the attack later. But
when her mother told her the news, she recalls thinking: Well done.
America got what it deserved.
Now she stands at a wire fence on the edge of Ground Zero. She'd
arrived in New York City a few hours earlier. She looks up at a large
black building next to the gaping hole. She asks Minty Abraham, one of
the American student aides, if the World Trade Center was taller than
that building. Yes, Minty replies, describing how people jumped from
the burning buildings. The enormity of what happened in this place
begins to dawn on her, she says later. Standing there, she starts to
weep.
Ali is not with them. He doesn't want to look at something that doesn't
exist anymore, he explains later. His take on September 11 would
unnerve a lot of Americans. Of course, it was a tragedy, he agrees. But
he doesn't believe there is enough evidence to blame Osama bin Laden.
And the idea that a group called al Qaeda hijacked planes with box
cutters and flew them into buildings?
"I don't believe that scenario at all," he says. To him, it sounds like
something out of a Hollywood film. He isn't even sure that there is a
group called al Qaeda. But he is certain that the destruction of the
Twin Towers gave the United States a convenient excuse for wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
This isn't coming from someone who seems like a fanatic. Ali is
charming, intelligent, more reflective than most Americans his age.
But, as he talks, it's clear how much of his vision of America is
colored by the lens he's imported with him.
He says he can see the frustration in the faces of the Americans he's
met. He says Americans are weakened because they leave home when
they're barely adults and their families become strangers. He compares
Americans to unprotected acorns without shells. This, he declares, has
resulted in a government with a foreign policy that attacks others.
Americans, he argues, exaggerate everything, including 9/11. What about
all the death in the Third World that no one pays any attention to?
"There are many places in the world that are facing much more terrorism
than America is," Ali says. "They aren't talking about their 1/1s and
12/30s, and all the days in between."
BY THE PROGRAM'S MIDPOINT, the group has fallen into a comfortable
routine. The Pakistani students, who initially kept to themselves, now
mix easily with the Indians and Bangladeshis. The women's traditional
clothing and head scarves have begun to give way to jeans and Yankees
baseball caps.
Gul continues wearing elaborately patterned, richly colored salwar
kameezes, though she often drops the scarf to her shoulders, leaving
her brown hair and smooth face visible. At home, in the traditional
market town of D.I. Khan in north-central Pakistan, everything but
Gul's dark brown eyes would be covered in public. And she wouldn't
mingle casually with male classmates, as she does here.
Chestertown has become a haven for her and the others. One student from
India nearly didn't come because of her fear of crime in America. Now
she regularly rides her bike at midnight to the local convenience store.
And America has surprised each of them. A Pakistani student recounts
her shock when an American student she briefly met lent her his laptop
when she needed a computer. Ali is amazed that students work in the
cafeteria, something that would never happen in his country. He marvels
at how proud people are of whatever work they do. The South Asian
students express astonishment that Maryland Congressman Wayne Gilchrest
drove to Chestertown in his truck, without any bodyguards, when he came
to speak to them. This, they say, would be unthinkable in their
countries.
But not everything has impressed them. When Ali arrived in the United
States, he thought Americans would know about his country just as he
knew about America. He waited for people to ask him about the new South
Asian trade accords. He waited for Americans to discuss the troubles in
Kashmir. But the questions never came. Then one night an American
student aide explained why: "I don't care."
First, Ali was shocked. Then it made sense. Americans, he says, are
like children who don't know what their country is doing to other
nations. They care about their individual lives and little else.
Mohsin Mughal, a 22-year-old from India, says it's obvious to him that
America is still a segregated society. How else to explain why most of
the blacks in Chestertown live in one neighborhood? Why, he asks, are
the ones making the speeches at local civic gatherings always white and
the ones sweeping the floors always black?
Then there's the dinner Mughal and Basith attend one evening at the
home of a Chestertown resident -- part of an effort to give the South
Asians opportunities to interact with typical Americans. Jane Hukill
serves the two of them hot chicken salad and local vegetables out on
the porch of her bungalow. The 71-year-old former library director
tells them her husband died years ago. Her grown children and
grandchildren are spread out from North Carolina to California.
"It's just me and the dog," Mughal remembers her saying.
It's a common perception among the students that Americans don't care
much about family. For Mughal, this confirms it. Coming from a country
where an extended family of a dozen people often lives together in one
house, Mughal finds it intolerable that this "old woman" lives alone.
As he looks into her eyes, he is sure he sees her deep loneliness.
Told later about Mughal's pity, Hukill laughs. Lonely? She takes adult
classes down at the college. She's got a semester-at-sea trip coming
up. And don't come over on Thursday. That's golf day. She's practicing
for a tournament. As for her kids, she phones and e-mails them all the
time. It's great when her grandchildren visit, she says. But it's great
when they go home, too.
"Most of the time," she says, "I'm wishing I had a free day."
THE STUDENTS SPEND THE FINAL DAYS OF THE PROGRAM IN WASHINGTON. One
afternoon, they take Metro's Red Line to Rockville and then pile into
cabs. Soon they're driving through a neighborhood in Potomac. The
houses are large and the lawns neat.
They pull up beside a large red-brick colonial belonging to a South
Asian international relations professor who teaches at Washington
College. He's throwing a barbecue for them.
As the others chat on the deck, Ali roams the house. He breaks out his
camcorder and films each room, slowly panning back and forth. He sits
by the professor's pool. He eats the professor's burgers.
Ali's criticisms of the United States haven't disappeared. They've only
grown. It's a country, he says, that doesn't have a distinct culture or
a real history. It's a nation without strong values. It's a place where
people constantly brag about everything. But his time here has changed
him, he says. He thinks he's become more American, more concerned about
his own individual life, more materialistic. If he moved here, he says,
he could become wealthy in a way that would never be possible in
Kashmir.
He records the front of the professor's house, then puts the camera
down and looks at what's before him, what could be possible for him one
day if things go right. "I'm liking America more and more," he says,
smiling.
THE STUDENTS HEAD TO A NIGHTCLUB in Dupont Circle. From a perch on the
second floor, Gul watches the throngs below her drink and mingle at the
bar. Young women drift by wearing tight T-shirts that read "Bad Girl"
and "50% Angel." Soon the dance floor is packed with couples
dirty-dancing to pounding rap music.
A place like this doesn't exist in her world. Gul says she wanted to
see for herself who comes here. These people, she concludes, don't
respect their elders. They obviously came here not caring what their
parents thought.
Two nights later, Gul and three other friends walk down Connecticut
Avenue away from their hotel. It's late, but they want to find some
Indian food. They are laughing as they move past the closed shops. I
trail after them with my notebook.
A large shirtless man approaches them and politely introduces himself
as David. He says he needs $5 for a place to sleep. I move the students
away from him as he becomes more insistent. He wants some money. I tell
him we don't have any and flag down a cab. As I wait for the students
to get inside, David is behind me, yelling. He blocks me from getting
in.
"You lied to me!" he screams, spewing obscenities. He lunges and tries
to grab me. I dodge his grasp and scramble to get into the cab from the
other side. But there is no room. David chases me around the car as the
terrified students watch from inside. Eventually, David gives up. I
slide into the passenger seat, and the cab races off. Everyone is
quiet, stunned. I find myself telling them that I'm sorry they had to
witness that.
"We have to see this side of America, too," says Sarah Alam, who's from Pakistan.
Gul doesn't say anything. She cups her hands over her mouth almost as
if she's praying. Her smile is gone now. When she does speak, it's
almost a whisper: "I'm scared."
GUL IS AMONG THE LAST OF THE SOUTH ASIANS to leave the United States.
She stays up most of the night before, painting henna designs on the
hands of one of the American girls with the group. She picks up her
photos at a 24-hour CVS drugstore, where she stands at the counter and
flips through pictures of her at Rehoboth Beach, in the middle of the
mall at Pentagon City, in her Chestertown dorm room, the one she now
misses.
Her time here has altered her view of Americans, whom she now describes
as "good" and "peace-minded" people who are against the war in Iraq.
They've taken care of her like family, she says. She describes how she
came down sick briefly and had to be taken to the hospital. The nurses
hooked her up to an IV machine and told her she'd be attached to it for
several hours. Minty Abraham remained by her side the entire time.
And her time here has altered the way Gul sees herself. She's more
confident, she says. She'd never spoken in front of a group at home.
But on her last night in Chestertown, she found herself going onstage
during a cultural event and singing from the Koran.
Now she stares out of the van as it heads toward Dulles. When they get
there, the program's associate director walks Gul toward her gate.
They stop to say their final goodbyes. Gul, who five weeks earlier
wouldn't shake a man's hand, hugs him, he says later. Before she goes,
she asks him to do the group's secret handshake one last time. As
they've done many times in the weeks before, their hands go up and slap
for a high-five. Down for a low-five. Their hands go to their hearts. A
nod of the head. Another low-five.
They laugh one final time over this silly shared gesture. Then Gul
turns and moves past security, back to the life waiting for her.
| | |
| Ouch ... talk about astute....
Another Triumph for the U.N.
September 25, 2004
By DAVID BROOKS
And so we went the multilateral route.
Confronted with the murder of 50,000 in Sudan, we eschewed all that nasty old unilateralism, all that hegemonic, imperialist, go-it-alone, neocon, empire, coalition-of-the-coerced stuff. Our response to this crisis would be so exquisitely multilateral, meticulously consultative, collegially cooperative and ally-friendly that it would make John Kerry swoon and a million editorialists nod in sage approval.
And so we Americans mustered our outrage at the massacres in Darfur and went to the United Nations. And calls were issued and exhortations were made and platitudes spread like béarnaise. The great hum of diplomacy signaled that the global community was whirring into action.
Meanwhile helicopter gunships were strafing children in Darfur.
We did everything basically right. The president was involved, the secretary of state was bold and clearheaded, the U.N. ambassador was eloquent, and the Congress was united. And, following the strictures of international law, we had the debate that, of course, is going to be the top priority while planes are bombing villages.
We had a discussion over whether the extermination of human beings in this instance is sufficiently concentrated to meet the technical definition of genocide. For if it is, then the "competent organs of the United Nations" may be called in to take appropriate action, and you know how fearsome the competent organs may be when they may indeed be called.
The United States said the killing in Darfur was indeed genocide, the Europeans weren't so sure, and the Arab League said definitely not, and hairs were split and legalisms were parsed, and the debate over how many corpses you can fit on the head of a pin proceeded in stentorian tones while the mass extermination of human beings continued at a pace that may or may not rise to the level of genocide.
For people are still starving and perishing in Darfur.
But the multilateral process moved along in its dignified way. The U.N. general secretary was making preparations to set up a commission. Preliminary U.N. resolutions were passed, and the mass murderers were told they should stop - often in frosty tones. The world community - well skilled in the art of expressing disapproval, having expressed fusillades of disapproval over Rwanda, the Congo, the Balkans, Iraq, etc. - expressed its disapproval.
And, meanwhile, 1.2 million were driven from their homes in Darfur.
There was even some talk of sending U.S. troops to stop the violence, which, of course, would have been a brutal act of oil-greedy unilateralist empire-building, and would have been protested by a million lovers of peace in the streets. Instead, the U.S. proposed a resolution threatening sanctions on Sudan, which began another round of communiqué-issuing.
The Russians, who sell military planes to Sudan, decided sanctions would not be in the interests of humanity. The Chinese, whose oil companies have a significant presence in Sudan, threatened a veto. And so began the great watering-down. Finally, a week ago, the Security Council passed a resolution threatening to "consider" sanctions against Sudan at some point, though at no time soon.
The Security Council debate had all the decorous dullness you'd expect. The Algerian delegate had "profound concern." The Russian delegate pronounced the situation "complex." The Sudanese government was praised because the massacres are proceeding more slowly. The air was filled with nuanced obfuscations, technocratic jargon and the amoral blandness of multilateral deliberation.
The resolution passed, and it was a good day for alliance-nurturing and burden-sharing - for the burden of doing nothing was shared equally by all. And we are by now used to the pattern. Every time there is an ongoing atrocity, we watch the world community go through the same series of stages: (1) shock and concern (2) gathering resolve (3) fruitless negotiation (4) pathetic inaction (5) shame and humiliation (6) steadfast vows to never let this
happen again.
The "never again" always comes. But still, we have all agreed, this sad cycle is better than having some impromptu coalition of nations actually go in "unilaterally" and do something. That would lack legitimacy! Strain alliances! Menace international law! Threaten the multilateral ideal!
It's a pity about the poor dead people in Darfur. Their numbers are still rising, at 6,000 to 10,000 a month. | | |
| Much props to Ha Seung-Jin, a 7-3 high-schooler from South Korea, for getting ready for the NBA draft. Amazing how much Koreans have grown. <sigh> No more race-based excuses for my height now. =)
Now only if South Korea could get him to lead the next aid envoy to North Korea ... the controversy it would spark up north would be most fascinating. Can you imagine being an average 5 foot tall North Korean kid who's been generally lied to about the state of the world ... and then have this happy-go-lucky 7-3, 300lb kid come from South Korea to hand you a couple bags of rice?
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| Very thoughtful editorial from Mr. Kristof. One particular highlight below. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/24/opinion/24KRIS.html
... There's also an odd lack of intellectual curiosity within the secular left about the Christian right. After 9/11, intellectuals rushed out to buy books about Islam. But on many campuses, it's easier to find people who can discuss the Upanishads than the "Left Behind" books about Jesus' Second Coming — which, with more than 40 million copies, are the best-selling American novels of our age. To be worldly, one should understand not only Tibetan Buddhism but also red-state Pentecostalism.
Liberals often protest that they would have nothing against conservative Christians if they were not led by hypocritical blowhards who try to impose their Ten Commandments plaques, sexual mores and creationism on society. But that's a crude stereotype, and it ignores the Christian right's accomplishments. Polls show that evangelical Christians are more likely to contribute to charities that help the needy, and in horror spots in Africa Catholics and other Christians are the bulwark of the health care system.
Moreover, saying that one will tolerate evangelicals who do not evangelize — well, that's like Christians saying they have nothing against gays who remain celibate. | | |
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