Genocide in those countries is more or less directly supported by you and your fellow countrymen driven by insatiable appetite for natural ressources. Each american citizen uses about 5 times as much of any ressource as any other in the world, oil, electricity, coltan, water - you name it.

"Among the many companies involved are America Mineral Fields, Inc., formerly headquartered in President Clinton's hometown of Hope, Arkansas, and the Barrick Gold Corporation of Canada, which until recently listed former President George H.W. Bush on its international advisory board. Few of these companies, the rebel militias, or Congo's African neighbors have much interest in ending the country's Balkanization. They benefit far more from a cash-in-suitcases economy than they would from a highly taxed and regulated one that would tightly control natural resources."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Africa/Heart_Sadness_Congo.html

"The US involvement in Congo today is not a simple act of defense of national interests but a pure oppression of a colonialist style. The attitude of the United States of America could well be seen when the "former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was fond of calling pro-US military leaders in Africa who assumed power by force and then cloaked themselves in civilian attire, `beacons of hope'."[18] Today's policy towards Congo may be different form the colonialism of the 18th century in its implementation, but the result of the policy is the same."

http://www.ummah.com/waragainstislam/western_policy.htm

First, the DRC is a different country from Sudan and Uganda.

Second, even though the Sudanese civil war is financed by oil money, that does not mean that I bear responsibilty for their actions. You imply that you can shift the blame all the way up the chain of causation from the policy of genocide to the Sudanese government to Chevron to the oil refineries to the gas distributors to me as a consumer. I simply refuse to accept this. If I buy ice cream from a company that gets its milk from a company that raises cows in a country that is trying to exterminate all of Quebec in order to get more farmland, the blame lies with the exterminators, not with me. To claim otherwise is basically an existentialist argument -- that I am responsible merely because I am a participant. I don't buy it.

Now if your point is that I as a consumer can exert negative pressure on these people by boycotting their products, then you're right. But in this case I think political pressure has the potential to be much more focused and powerful than any boycott by a few minor commuters. Especially when you consider that it simply isn't an option for the majority of US citizens to refuse to use gasoline altogether. Therefore any boycott would be doomed to ineffectiveness from the start.

My original point was that our leaders, in particular George W Bush, don't seem to care about this atrocity, and don't seem to be exerting any political pressure. That is what I cannot understand, and that scares me almost as much as the original crimes. It's truly frightening that the most powerful man in the world is ignoring the worst crimes in the world (and arguably is commiting crimes of his own over in Iraq), especially since his neglect appears to be at least somewhat influenced by his financial interest in the oil industry. Greed trumps morals, in the worst possible way.

Censorship at its finest!

dvision, I deleted your comment because it seemed to amount to "oh why don't you just shut up, and while I'm at it let's stir up some hate against muslims because they routinely cut people's heads off". That plus your choice of handle (dvision), made me decide that you were just being a troll -- and not a very interesting one at that.

Since you clearly stuck around long enough to notice that I removed your comment, and since it bothered you enough to post a protest, feel free to post again -- and this time I'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt when deciding whether you're just trolling.

As usual the choice boils down NOT to:
War or Peace
But:
Freedom or Surrender

Kim, I apologize for the terseness of my post; I have a tendency to post biting, half-sarcastic, but honestly held and fiercely defended beliefs in an extremely short form that is often mistaken for trolling. I often lack the time to explain myself in detail--my posts generally fall in two categories; serious points in two sentences, or page-long rants. Neither generally goes over well, but certainly the shorter ones take less effort for me.

I was trying to make a point, but I'm sorry that I disguised it as a troll. The US is often stuck with a Catch 22--get involved, and suffer the mountain of insults, ingratefulness, and unforeseen consequences of a stung and embarassed people and facial international outrage, or sit idly by while atrocities that average Americans cannot even imagine happen routinely throughout the world. Inter and Intra-national conflicts happen so often across the globe that America does not have the resources to interfere in all of them--it must pick and choose its battles. Military expeditions are dangerous and costly. Then there is always the cost of justification--who has made the US the world's policemen? I, for one, do not trust the United Nations any more than I trust the least of its members. What other trans-national entity has suffered more terrorist bombings? They're more of a target than the US, and for many of the same reasons. We should do well not to make the UN more powerful.

I really don't see how we could stop it, with our military already spread so thin by Bush's brain-dead Iraq war and other commitments. But there's really no chance that Bush would do anything about it even if we had a spare 100,000 troops.

dvision and rps, you both seem to think that the only solution is for us to send in troops. I called for political pressure, not military pressure. At a minimum, we could publically denounce the violence and encourage other countries to do the same -- in contrast, the US has been largely silent. We could impose economic sanctions. Unfortunately I don't think we have much leverage there. We could send monetary assistance to humanitarian aid organizations, and/or provide them with security forces to ensure they can do their job without trouble.

We could also encourage the UN to get involved. Unlike you, dvision, I think that would be a good idea. I don't buy your argument that the UN is only as trustworthy as the least trustworthy of nations -- I think it's more likely that it's only as trustworthy as the most influential nations (i.e. the US, China, etc).

As it is, large parts of Africa are currently going through wars that seem to have the potential to have the same impact on that continent as WWII had on Europe. I think it's morally wrong to object to getting involved simply because it's hard to know what to do about it. You should pick your battles based not only on the effort they require but also based on their importance. And I think that the moral importance of what's going on in Africa right now is pretty high on the list.

If we hadn't picked a fight with Iraq, maybe we'd be in a stronger position now, with more options available to us. Maybe we'd have some troops to spare. And maybe the rest of the world wouldn't deeply distrust our motives in matters of foreign policy.

The New York Times has an Op-Ed on Darfur. Their point is that American apathy is part of what makes what's happening in Darfur so horrific.

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